How does peacebuilding lead to women empowerment in Mauritania ?

21 Apr

Concordis International has been working in Mauritania since 2014, in villages where the relationships between the Moorish, Pulaar and Wolof communities were non-existent and conflicts were numerous.

Thanks to nine years of investment in these communities, working with community mediators from both sides of the conflict, these populations now have symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationships.

This social harmony is particularly beneficial for women, as it’s opened up opportunities for them to work collaboratively in developing new sources of income, and therefore earn more. In some villages, groups of women even obtained a plot of land to farm together, thanks to inter-community agreements.

Social cohesion that emanated from Concordis’ conflict mediation has enabled communities to sit down and decide that the best way to use the contested plots of land was to grant them to women’s cooperatives, to be farmed by women from both sides of the conflict.

We are excited about this, for four reasons:

This win/win solution to the conflict, designed and owned by the whole community, also begins to addresses important issues around female empowerment and economic engagement
Not only do women benefit from this peace initiative, they are also its architects.
These benefits to women also address root causes of grievance, including lack of livelihoods and food insecurity.
The men in the villages are increasingly recognising women’s role as autonomous economic actors, and now give them more space in collective decision-making

Most importantly, our programme in Mauritania shows that, with carefully facilitated dialogue and plenty of time, attitudes and behaviour can change. That applies to hardened attitudes towards conflicts, and it can also apply to gender stereotypes. Change is possible.

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Joanna Kerr