Gaining awareness of their rights is not the only achievement achieved by the women who were targeted by the Women and Peace Project. The biggest achievement for them was their ability to form the Rural Women’s Peace Forum in the districts of Al-Ma’afer and Al-Shamayatain.

The Women and Peace Project, which is implemented by the Saba Youth Foundation for Development, with the support of the Danish Development Agency and in partnership with Oxfam, formed the Rural Women’s Peace Forum as an outcome of the “Gender Leadership of Women-Led Organizations/Civil Society Organizations in Al-Ma’afer and Al-Shamaytain Districts” that targeted rural feminist activists, with Representation of civil society activists in the two directorates.

The formation of the forum came as one of the necessary tools through which the voice and issues of rural women can be delivered to decision-makers and the negotiating table, with the need for a formation that enhances and facilitates women’s participation in conflict resolution and peace-building at the local level, in addition to pushing women’s development needs files to donors and the private sector and the official authorities.

The forum consisted of the 14 rural women targeted in the workshop, including 9 women from Al-Ma’afer and 7 from Al-Shamayatain, in order to deliver the voice of rural women, raise the effectiveness of the role of rural women as an essential element, enhance their participation in peace-building and in various societal fields, and direct public policies, and aims to raise women’s awareness rural women politically and economically, and to promote the principles and concepts of human rights among rural women.

The forum will work on protection programs (awareness – psychological support – protection), rights programs, advocacy, conflict resolution, mediation, economic empowerment programs and businesswomen, provided that it is expanded to include a larger number of rural women from different regions of the districts of Al-Ma’afer and Al-Shamayatain.