The Turkish and Greek leaders of the divided island of Cyprus met Wednesday to launch an inclusive action plan to boost the role of women in future peace processes led by the United Nations.
The meeting, which was held at a U.N. compound off the defunct airport near Lefkoşa (Nicosia), was attended by Colin Stewart, the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission chief and special representative of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Cyprus, Turkish Cypriot President Ersin Tatar, Greek Cypriot administration leader Nicos Anastasiades, negotiators from both parties and members of the Technical Committee on Gender Equality that drafted the action plan.
A U.N. statement said that the Cypriot leaders "attended the official launch of an action plan on ways to ensure women's full, equal and meaningful participation in the settlement process in Cyprus."
The plan was developed in response to a U.N. Security Council request to encourage the sides to ensure the needs and perspectives of women are addressed in a future settlement.
"The technical committee on gender equality expressed their intention to conduct further outreach to civil society organizations" to solicit their views on "how to include a gender perspective in the settlement process," the U.N. said.
There have only been a handful of informal meetings between Tatar and Anastasiades since the former was elected to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) presidency in 2020.
Cyprus has been divided since Turkey used its guarantor rights to militarily intervene in 1974 in response to a Greek-engineered far-right coup aiming to annex the island.
There have been no official U.N.-sponsored settlement negotiations since talks in Switzerland collapsed in July 2017. Guterres said he wants to restart talks between the two sides.
Voters in the TRNC elected right-wing Tatar, an advocate of a two-state solution, at a time of heightened tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean over exploitation of hydrocarbon resources.
