Date 16 May 2025

UK Parliament International Development Committee

Call for Evidence – Women, Peace, and Security

Kvinna till Kvinna – South Caucasus and Eastern Europe

The Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation is a Swedish non-profit organisation that supports women in conflict-affected areas to increase women’s power and influence. Kvinna till Kvinna’s approach is based on strong local ownership and long-term support. We support more than 150 women's organisations in five conflict regions in their work for women's rights and peace. 

Kvinna till Kvinna has supported women’s organisations in the South Caucasus since 2002 and in Ukraine since 2014. Today, we support 20 partner organisations in the South Caucasus and in Ukraine through several programmes, focusing on women’s increased and meaningful participation and contribution to peacebuilding, gender-based violence prevention, women’s rights movements and advocacy, LGBTQI rights, as well as support to partner organisations’ capacity building and networking.  

Throughout our long-time tenure in the South Caucasus and Eastern Europe, we have amassed unique and valuable knowledge on the wider region and developed methods on how to support the Women, Peace and Security agenda from the regional perspective: finding common ground and bridging divides, challenging the cross-cutting problems and inspiring new networks to amplify women’s voices from the South Caucasus and Eastern Europe to contribute to the transformation and resolution of conflict-related, socioeconomic and human rights challenges. 

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to this call for evidence from the perspective of the South Caucasus and Eastern Europe. Please find below the responses to the guiding questions from the call.

• To what extent does the UK Government integrate Women, Peace and Security principles across its ODA-funded programming? 

• What financial resources has the UK allocated towards advancing the WPS Agenda? Are these resources appropriately distributed across programmes and regions? 

The UK’s increasing shift to funding through commercial contracting is deeply problematic when it comes to integrating Women, Peace and Security principles: in a world where civic space is shrinking, and defending human rights, and particularly women’s rights, is increasingly dangerous (both due to increased physical and online harassment, and also from heightened legal and social restrictions on women’s rights), the requirements of a commercial contract, namely the requirement to be able to work in arrears, and to stick to rigid outputs that do not adapt to the developing context, makes it nigh-on impossible for women’s human rights defenders working in conflict-affected communities to receive this funding. In reality, a large proportion of the funding that the UK has allocated towards advancing the WPS agenda in other countries is spent on the salaries of consultants in the UK itself, rather than women working at the grass roots. 

In our recent “Where’s the Money for Women’s Rights in Ukraine?” report[1] with Ukrainian Women’s Fund highlighted that while funding has increased in Ukraine, it remains project-based, short-term and focuses primarily on humanitarian needs. The report found that only 16.7% of organisations receive core support. Those receiving core support are primarily larger, well-connected women’s civil society organisations (WCSOs), while smaller, and particularly rural organisations struggle to access even short-term project funding. Short-term funding models push organisations into survival mode, meaning that local expertise is often taken up in fundraising efforts, rather than higher level strategic implementation of WPS goals. For systemic change to happen, funds should also be channelled to flexible core funding for organisations to work on longer-term development. In order to achieve the goals set out in the NAP, the UK government should increase core, multi-year and flexible funding, and ensure that it funds WCSOs equitably, reducing the number of intermediaries, and directly engaging WCSOs from marginalised groups, such as those in rural areas, displaced persons, persons with disabilities, and LGBTQ groups.

While WCSOs agree that there should be accountability and transparency in funding (not only for the benefit of UK taxpayers to understand where their money goes, but to ensure equitable approaches to WCSOs), “Where’s the Money for Women’s Rights in Ukraine?” also highlights the need for adaptable reporting approaches that reduce administrative burdens and strengthen accountability for WCSOs. Complex application and reporting procedures disproportionately disenfranchise smaller WCSOs and their ability to access funding. This is true not only in Ukraine, but globally.

• How does the UK’s current WPS National Action Plan compare to its previous iterations? To what extent is the UK successfully achieving the strategic outcomes it set out within the 2023 National Action Plan? 

The UK’s continued commitment to the WPS agenda, and to championing women’s rights more generally, in a time when anti-gender movements are increasing in influence and women’s hard gained rights are under threat, is appreciated. By championing and highlighting UK expertise, from women peacebuilders in Northern Ireland to the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) and the What Works to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls programme, the UK shows on the international stage that it walks the talk and can share its national and international experience in other countries.  

The UK’s Focus Country Model overlooks the globalised nature of the anti-gender movement which is one of the main challenges to the implementation of the WPS agenda. If Ukraine is a priority country, it should stand to reason that those countries that face the same threats should receive similar attention. The fate of women and girls in the South Caucasus conflicts are closely tied to developments in Ukraine, and thus it is vital that this interconnectedness is recognised, which would in turn support the UK’s goal of ensuring that programming responds to the needs of women and girls as part of its approach to transnational threats. In the face of decreasing aid funding in favour of increased defence spending to ensure the security of Ukraine and Europe more broadly, the UK could and should ensure that funding in those contexts which are in one way or another connected to the war in Ukraine (both in the South Caucasus and further afield in Moldova-Transnistria, Syria-Turkey, CAR) are addressed through WPS programming. Where women’s rights are protected, democracy flourishes, and strong democratic institutions are necessary for the resolution of conflict.

• Are women’s voices, particularly those from conflict-affected communities and marginalised groups, sufficiently included within the UK’s approach to the WPS agenda? 

In the South Caucasus, women’s rights organisations, particularly those working on peacebuilding, have difficulty in developing relationships with UK embassies – it is unclear to them how to engage with Embassy representatives, what their priorities are, and on what topics they should engage. Embassies are often reliant on already established relationships with local civil society, meaning that it is difficult, particularly for young people and marginalised groups, and those working outside capitals, to engage with embassies meaningfully. While it is commendable that UK Embassies design their agendas based on local insights, they tend to be overly influenced by civil society elites in capital cities, who are often English-speaking and Western-educated. These elites, while they carry a significant legacy and bring much expertise, often act as ‘gatekeepers’, preventing new experts, and especially those representing marginalised communities, from engaging meaningfully in WPS processes. It is vital to incorporate the contributions of both these longer-established experts and emerging and/or marginalised voices when considering the direct impact of conflict on the ground. Furthermore, spaces should be created and maintained to encourage and support dialogue among these different generations and groups of civil society actors within communities, countries and broader contexts. These should be moderated by trusted and impartial actors.

It is imperative that UK Embassies work more closely with those working directly in unrecognised entities, as well as conflict-affected border communities and with marginalised groups, such as displaced women, to ensure that they have direct interaction with WHRDs working in the context, beyond those long-established contacts, and beyond only receiving information about rural, marginalised and cross conflict communities from partner organisations based in capitals. This might entail allocating additional resources that would make these platforms more inclusive of and accessible to these marginalised voices and expertise, e.g. budgeting to support the travel and accommodation costs for representatives from conflict-affected, non-capital settings to participate in regular consultations, additional travel and monitoring to these regions to ensure consultations on the ground, and additional resources for language interpretation.

• Are there appropriate accountability mechanisms in place to ensure that the Government is meeting its WPS commitments, and that these commitments are translated into substantive outcomes? 

• Can you provide examples of successful programmes or initiatives where the UK’s WPS framework has led to measurable improvements in women’s security and participation in peace processes? 

In the South Caucasus, both the Artemis Alliance and BREN have made significant improvements to the Women, Peace and Security agenda through supporting subgrants to local organisations. One example is Frontline Youth Network in Armenia, who have developed a strong network of young people engaged in peace education, and work closely with teachers and state education agencies to strengthen peace education in the country. Their work within UK-funded programming has produced two handbooks (on countering disinformation and on trauma-sensitive education) which have been approved for us in schools by Armenia’s educational regulation authority.

Nevertheless, the programming offered to local organisations is often short term (sometimes as short as six months) and often highly limited by the contracting agency, rather than being truly locally driven. These short programmes also come with high reporting burdens, for example, within the Artemis Alliance, in one six-month project, the organisation receiving a £25,000 grant were obliged to produce three progress reports, which does not represent good value for money, as the implementing partner ends up spending a large amount of time reporting rather than carrying out activities, without being able to capture measurable improvements (as these are usually seen in the longer term) and the subgranting agency also spends time on quality assurance and assessment of the project.

As previously mentioned, the UK could better adhere to its WPS commitment by supporting more flexibly at the grassroots level of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, working with smaller, regional organisations, and reduce reporting burdens, while ensuring sufficient transparency and accountability to UK taxpayers.

• What are the current trends that can be observed in respect to adherence of the international WPS agenda? What roles does the UK play on an international scale, and how can this be improved? 

Despite increasingly shrinking civic space and rapid democratic backsliding in the South Caucasus region and globally, the UK is still regarded positively by most of the local authorities (although this is not guaranteed). The UK Government can act as an intermediary, engaging the local governments, to find ways of working with independent civil society in a meaningful way that does not put them at risk of legal or physical threats. 

National Action Plans, where they exist, are usually documents used by governments as indication of advancing the WPS agenda in and of themselves, but are not adequately funded, lack monitoring mechanisms and are isolated from broader peacebuilding and conflict transformation efforts. Little is done to popularise the idea of engaging women in the peace and security agenda in a broader sense, or the idea that all those working on the peace and security agenda should be meaningfully addressing women and girls, and their rights.  

National Action Plans have been developed with the input of the same handful of organisations over the past decade, with little chance for engagement from broader stakeholders, including other government agencies and civil society more broadly. This means that they become the domain of only a small section of society and that the WPS agenda is not mainstreamed across civil society, government institutions or the societies more broadly.  

It is evident that the WPS agenda has increasingly trended towards “hard” securitisation. There is a focus in NAPs on women’s participation in the armed forces, which only further reinforces the militarisation of conflict, rather than its transformation towards peace. Where at the governmental and international level, the “security” element of the Women, Peace and Security agenda focuses on this hard security, women most acutely affected by conflict and civil society actors are calling for more of a focus on human security, on their physical and mental safety and security, and on economic security.[2]

• What can the UK government do to ensure that its WPS efforts are sustainable long-term, particularly in light of global political shifts?  

Where direct funding to local organisations is possible, it must be prioritised. If this is not possible, it should be channelled through entities that prioritise locally led design of programming.

The UK government can also facilitate other forms of sustainability, building on Britain’s reputation for strong educational institutions by providing educational and training opportunities for women and girls. Chevening’s approach to the South Caucasus, where applicants from unrecognised territories can apply as being from the “South Caucasus”, has been very impactful for women in the region, with numerous young women, who otherwise would not have the opportunity to study in world-class institutions being able to bring what they have learned back to their communities, where they are able to improve the lives of those who live there. Programmes such as these must be maintained and properly resourced. The experiences of the South Caucasus in this programme could be replicated for other regions with similar conflict dynamics.

Additionally, the UK government can support in creating safe spaces for women’s participation in dialogue by providing support for obtaining visas, as the UK is still regarded as a safe location for sensitive discussions and dialogue. The UK’s practice of giving visas for slightly longer periods of time, in contrast to the Schengen system of visas for specifically proscribed dates, is beneficial, as it allows a certain amount of flexibility if plans have to change, nevertheless, the overall visa process could be streamlined, with review processes that take into account that women in conflict-affected contexts may have more difficulty in meeting financial requirements for standard visitor visas: in these instances, the focus should be placed on the inviting agencies, as they are usually covering all travel and accommodation costs. Furthermore, the UK government could facilitate the involvement of mothers (particularly of very young children) to take part in discussions and dialogue in these instances by also supporting visa applications for their children.

The FCDO could also integrate and synergise its wide-ranging Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy 2022-2030 with the WPS National Action Plan, as disabled women are often forgotten entirely within the WPS agenda, with “traditional peacebuilding” efforts only touching the issue of disability as if affects veterans, rather than all disabled people. Currently the NAP focuses specifically on the rights of women with disabilities when it comes to humanitarian assistance, but more could be done to focus on their inclusion in peace and conflict transformation when it comes to the pillars of participation, prevention, relief and recovery.