Global Action in India
 Dr. Meenakshi Gopinath, Founder and Honorary Director of Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP) is the newest member of the Steering Committee of Global Action to Prevent War. WISCOMP is an initiative of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness The Dalai Lama (Awarded Nobel Peace Prize, 1989) which promotes the leadership of South Asian Women in the areas of peace, security and regional corporation.
WISCOMP was established in 1999. It is a non–profit, non–sectarian, non–denominational organization, committed to facilitate the leadership of South Asian Women in Conflict Transformation, Diplomacy and Peacebuilding. WISCOMP is also a recipient of the WANGO (The World Association of Non–Governmental Organizations) Peace and Security Award, 2003.
The work of WISCOMP is informed by UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which recognizes that civilians--particularly women and children--are the worst affected by conflict, and that this is a threat to peace and security.
WISCOMP initiatives work to:
• Enhance the role of women as peacebuilders, negotiators and as agents for nonviolent social change.
• Contribute to an inclusive, people-oriented discourse on issues of security, which respects diversity and which grounds the perspectives of women and other marginalized peoples.
• Facilitate theory-building and innovative research on holistic paradigms that address the resolution and transformation of intra- and inter-state conflicts.
• Empower a new generation of women and men with the expertise and skills to engage in peace activism through educational and training programs in conflict transformation.
• Build synergy at various levels--between theory, practice and policy; between those working in academia, in the formal structures of foreign policy and diplomacy and those engaged in grassroots peacebuilding.
• Build constituencies of peace through research, action and mentor programs that focus on areas such as multi-track diplomacy, peace advocacy, active co-existence and cross-border networks.
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 WISCOMP runs several kinds of programs which reflect its mission to facilitate gender sensitive peacebuilding, research, dialogue and conflict transformation in South Asia . It has also built a unique interface between academia and the NGO sector. WISCOMP runs the following programs:
The Scholars of Peace Fellowship Programme
Engendering Security Programme
The Conflict Transformation Progrmamme
The Gender and Multi- Track Diplomacy Initiative
The Peace Constituencies Initiative
For more information, please see the WISCOMP website at http://www.wiscomp.org/index.htm
The information on this page was compiled by Seema Thakur, GAPW intern on Women, Peace and Security.
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