Japanese Government Announces 3.6m USD Support to Women Refugees in Uganda

The Government of Japan and UN Women have joined forces to empower women and enhance peace and security in Uganda's refugee settlements and host communities. A new two-and-a-half-year project, backed by approximately $3.6 million in funding, will be implemented by UN Women to address critical needs in the region.

The announcement was made during a signing ceremony between the Japanese government and UN Women held at the Office of the Prime Minister and witnessed by the State Minister of Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees Hon. Dr. Lillian Aber on 7th August 2024.

“We hope that this project will encourage gender equality and women’s empowerment in both refugee settlements and host communities,” said H.E. Mr. Takuya Sasayama, the Ambassador of Japan to Uganda. He also said women can participate in peace processes with their leadership, which leads to sustainable peace societies.

 “Women are increasingly at risk in conflict and underrepresented in peace processes. These negative trends are setting back both gender equality and global peace,” said Dr. Paulina Chiwangu, UN Uganda Country Representative. She also added that the positive impact can be achieved by strengthening the capacity and leadership of women and girl refugees to participate in mediation and peace processes, increasing the learning and economic opportunities and supporting women’s and girls’ resilience in vulnerable settings.

Hon. Lillian Aber applauded the government of Japan for being Uganda’s strong ally noting that Japan has contributed over 22m USD through UN agencies to humanitarian support and refugee response in the country.

“We believe this money will enable UN women to support 11,000 women, girls, boys, and men in Adjumani, Yumbe, Madi Okollo, Isingiro and Kwegegwa districts. These are frontline districts which are currently receiving a large influx of refugees from DRC, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and South Sudan,” she said.

Aber also revealed that the government is in the process of streamlining its partnerships with all actors in the humanitarian responses so that it could quantify the contributions of each actor to establish whether such refugee response is in line with Uganda’s humanitarian and development priorities urging all actors: namely the UN agencies, International and local NGOs; civil society actors and faith-based organizations to visit the Department of Refugees at OPM and get acquainted with the process for better service delivery.

The Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) project enhances support to women peace builders and women’s human rights defenders, integrating gender in risk reduction and humanitarian response, increasing the capacity of humanitarian actors on gender, and building women’s and girls’ resilience, including through economic empowerment and enhanced response to Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) stemming from insecurity in West Nile and Southwest regions.