Empowering women in peace and security: Growing U.S. partnerships through Political-Military Affairs
CISRSUMMARY: Around the world, PM is supporting women who are leading in a key aspect of post-conflict stabilization: They survey and clear landmines, improvised explosive devices, and other deadly hazards left behind in their communities. These operations not only save lives but allow for humanitarian aid deliveries, reconstruction, and economic development essential to post-conflict recovery. PM funds and manages CWD programs implemented by various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), through which women work as deminers or are employed to deliver mine risk education to affected communities. Since 2014, PM has funded all-female demining teams in Tajikistan, and a dozen all-female demining teams in Sri Lanka. In Cambodia, where three decades of armed conflict left the country littered with landmines and unexploded ordnance that limit access to farmland and development for communities, PM supports all-female teams of deminers in partnership with the NGO Norwegian People’s Aid. These all-women teams currently are surveying six million square meters in priority villages to identify hazard areas.