Unficyp hosts online Women’s Day event
THE United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (Unficyp) hosted an online event titled “International Women’s Day 2021 – Youth Voices” to mark March 8.
Elizabeth Spehar, special representative of the UN Secretary-General in Cyprus and head of Unficyp, opened the event with a short speech.
She highlighted other women who have held leadership roles in Unficyp such as Major General Cheryl Pearce of Australia, who was force commander from 2018 to 2020, and Chief Superintendent Fang Li from China, the senior police adviser, and talked about the organisation’s recent activities in the field of working for civil society, including young people and women.
Ms Spehar talked about a committee on gender equality that focuses on women’s concerns and needs in Cyprus, the gender impact of the pandemic, and that will look at conflict resolution through the “gender lens” during the forthcoming “informal” UN-led talks next month.
She said a separate project involves a group of 24 Greek Cypriots and Turkish
Cypriots with equal gender representation working with Unficyp to promote actions on environmental peace-building in Cyprus under Unficyp’s “Young Champions for Environment and Peace” initiative, based on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Following the event’s introduction, attendees were split into groups to discuss the barriers and opportunities to women taking on leadership roles in their respective communities; the barriers and opportunities for young people in taking an active role in civil society, economy and politics; ways that young people can make a positive influence; concerns in light of the pandemic, including the impact of the pandemic on young people’s lives; ideas on how these concerns can be addressed; and what greater participation of women in the peace process would mean for the process itself .
Members of the groups then presented their arguments to each other, Ms Spehar and Unficyp’s Gender Affairs Officer Lauren McAlister.
These discussions prompted Ms Spehar to state that the media does not offer different perspectives on the peace process “neither in the North or in the South”.
News stories about the Cyprus problem are overwhelmingly written by male journalists and youth perspectives are often ignored as well, Ms Spehar claimed.
On the discussions regarding the nature of gender equality she said: “We get asked a lot: ‘Why are you pitting women and men against each other?’ . . . It is not a matter of men or women. It’s the system that was created over centuries, if not a millennia.”