Name of the organization/initiative and year of foundation

Women’s Initiatives for Peace in Donbas (WIPD) is a peacemaking dialogue platform that brought together dozens of women from Ukraine (controlled as well as non-controlled territories), Russia, and European countries. WIPD began its work as a platform in 2016.

Mission

Establishing relationships between representatives from different conflict sides; offering mechanisms to decrease tensions and de-mythologize fears and enemy images; analyzing expectations and needs to find common constructive resolutions to urgent problems; giving civil society from different parties to the conflict a voice to be heard by the other sides of the conflict and by the international community; making members of the local population from conflict zones and other parties to the conflict aware of their roles, and demonstrating options for participation in peacebuilding; identifying potential actors of peaceful development in the region. 

Actions and projects in the context of armed conflict

The project “Women’s Initiatives for Peace in Donbas” (2017 – 2020) is implemented through close partnership with the German NGO OWEN – Mobile Academy of Gender Democracy and Peacebuilding (Berlin, Germany), the Center of Public Initiatives “Ideas for Change” (Kyiv, Ukraine), and the Foundation for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights “Women of Don” (Novocherkassk, Russia). The project creatively combines the areas of peacemaking and women’s activism using dialogue and diapraxis. During the project’s implementation, seven dialogue meetings and one online assembly were held, more than 30 joint mini-initiatives were implemented belonging by the project participants. The WIPD participants have an opportunity to take a course on negotiation skills held by the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael.

Apart from the dialogue meetings under closed doors, the dialogue platform of WIPD holds various events for attracting the attention of multiple public groups and experts. Given the high risks for the project and individual participants, events and discussions are held in specialized expert forums directly related to the conflict, in particular among human rights and humanitarian organizations, within the international, diplomatic, and donor communities.