MenEngage Europe welcomes new Director as it establishes regional secretariat office

The Board of MenEngage Europe is delighted to announce the appointment of Ilse Wermink as the MenEngage Europe Director. Ilse’s appointment comes as part of the establishment of a new regional Secretariat office for MenEngage Europe, with further staff positions to be recruited over coming months.

Ilse Wermink is a feminist policy and programme leader with almost 20 years of experience advancing gender justice and feminist peace in conflict-affected contexts. She worked for nearly a decade with peacebuilding organisation PAX, leading international programmes, partnerships and advocacy on gender, peace and security, including work on masculinities, militarism and engaging men in preventing violence and pursuing gender equality.

As part of this work, together with many others, she co-founded the Community of Practice on Engaging Men Towards Feminist Peace, as one of the ways to facilitate shared learning. 

She started her working life with WILPF, based in Geneva, which shaped her feminist political analysis and activism. A Dutch national, Ilse has lived and worked in Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and has worked for over 5 years on gender transformative programming in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, closely working with MenEngage member ABAAD.

Ilse brings strong policy influencing experience at national, European and international levels, engaging with governments, the EU, and multilateral institutions to advance feminist agendas. You can wake her up in the middle of the night if you’d like to talk Feminist Foreign Policy!

With the current rise of conservative and authoritarian forces and militarism in Europe and beyond, Ilse is deeply driven to strengthen the work from the MenEngage Europe Secretariat to engage men and boys into the pursuit of gender equality and social justice and transform current violent and oppressive patriarchal systems.

The personal is political and so is her life as a mother of two, raising a 5‑year old boy and a 8‑year old girl with her Irish life partner in this deeply gendered world. She’s currently based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and loves the practices of the Emancipator office where she currently is often working from, including taking off shoes when entering the office.

The formation of a European MenEngage Secretariat has been made possible thanks to a new partnership between the European Union’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme and MenEngage Europe.