The Community of Democracies is pleased to announce that it will be an official partner of the Women Political Leaders (WPL) Summit 2018 that will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 6-8 June 2018.

Women Political Leaders (WPL) is an independent, international, post-partisan and not-for-profit foundation whose aim is to increase both the number and the influence of women in political leadership positions. WPL Forum members are women in political office including Ministers, Members of Parliaments and Mayors.

The WPL Summit 2018 is a joint initiative of the WPL and the Parliament of Lithuania – a member state of  the CoD’s Governing Council and a strong advocate for women’s rights.

The Summit in Vilnius will bring together more than 200 female political leaders from around the world as well as experts and leaders from academia, business and civil society. The event will provide an opportunity to exchange best practices and lessons learned on women’s role in political decision making.

The Community of Democracies will be hosting a policy session on “Women: A Powerful Force for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism” at the Summit on Friday 8th June.

Facilitating a continued discussion on the Democracy and Security Dialogue (DSD) findings and building-up on the Advancing Women’s Political Participationpolicy recommendations, the session will seek to address the importance of gender inclusion in preventing and countering violent extremism (PVE and CVE) as well as good practices for improving women’s political participationin this regard.

For more information on the correlation between gender equality and sustainability of PVE/CVE programming, please read the DSD policy brief Can a gendered approach improve responses to violent extremism?