2nd National Action Plan Women Peace Security Academy Workshop

Jakarta, Indonesia, 9-11 April 2025 – The ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (ASEAN-IPR) and UN Women Indonesia jointly organised the 2nd National Action Plan (NAP) Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Academy Workshop, themed “Strengthening the Implementation and ASEAN Regional Plan of Action on WPS at the National Level.” The Governments of Canada, the Republic of Korea, and the United Kingdom supported the workshop. 

This is part of the ASEAN-wide initiative in empowering women for sustainable peace,  prevention of violence, and promoting social cohesion in ASEAN. It brought together government focal points and civil society representatives from Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam, with approximately six participants from each country. 

Over three days, the workshop facilitated capacity-building, peer learning, and strategic dialogue aimed at improving the development and implementation of national-level WPS, while also aligning these efforts with the ASEAN-level WPS. 

Eow Shiang Yen, Communications Officer of INITIATE.MY participated in this workshop with Malaysian delegates representing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, Malaysian Armed Forces, and Sisters in Islam (SIS) or known as SIS Forum.

Throughout the sessions, participants: 

• enhanced their skills and institutional capacities to design, monitor, and evaluate NAPs more effectively. 
• exchanged good practices and lessons learned from their respective national contexts and explored the use of ASEAN’s WPS Localisation Toolkit and Guidelines as a means to adapt regional goals to local realities.
• discussed ways to strengthen coordination mechanisms, promote institutional accountability, and ensure that civil society organisations play a central role in national and local WPS implementation.
• discussed lessons learned from over two decades of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, and strategies for integrating emerging challenges such as climate change, cybersecurity, and violent extremism into the WPS framework. 

The workshop highlighted the need to localise WPS commitments by adapting them to specific political, cultural, and institutional contexts within each ASEAN Member State. Localisation is not a mere administrative task but a transformative process that enhances legitimacy, relevance, and impact on the ground. There was a sharing session on case studies in Indonesia, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, Thailand, and Cambodia, highlighting inclusive coordination models and the value of grassroots engagement in advancing gender-responsive peacebuilding.

Notably, the workshop coincided with Malaysia’s forthcoming milestone, as the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development moves toward the official launch of the country’s first National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security in September 2025. INITIATE.MY views this development as an opportunity to fully translate Malaysia’s commitment to the regional WPS framework into the national WPS.

Participants of the 2nd NAP-WPS Academy Workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia representing ASEAN Member States, civil society, and international partners gathered to strengthen regional collaboration and localisation of the WPS agenda.