During the #16Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, I was honoured to be invited by UN Women Georgia to present to security partners, including the შინაგან საქმეთა სამინისტრო / Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia and the Ministry of Defense during their training to build on and support their prevention of sexual harassment work.
This work supports international efforts to mainstream gender equality in the military and police, and builds on needed reforms in the RCMP in Canada, the US and Australian military, and beyond. Command-control environments can be ripe for sexual harassment and assault, and many institutions are now, rightly, taking leadership to shift the culture to support whistleblowers, send strong messages around zero tolerance to sexual misconduct from the top down, and integrate sexual harassment training into their wider training on sexual assault and violence prevention.
The workshops are part of the UN Women project “Accelerating Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Georgia”, generously funded by the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund of the British Government.
For more on this work see this article and this post.
See more on my work with UN Women Georgia in this article on my previous training on sexual harassment investigations.
Let’s continue to integrate sexual harassment in gender mainstreaming work in the security sector and beyond, and make survivor-centred and trauma-informed approaches the norm in all these institutions!
