Mr. President, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen

In the year since I last briefed the Council on the efforts of my Department to implement resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, we have witnessed the historic election in Liberia of President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, the first woman head of state in Africa. This has provided hope and inspiration to many women and girls in Africa and beyond.  In the same period, Liberia has adopted a Rape Bill to stem the problem of gender-based violence; the women of Sierra Leone have succeeded in pushing for laws on trafficking, inheritance and property rights; and women in Timor-Leste have submitted a draft domestic violence bill to parliament. Full credit is due to women in these countries in their efforts to translate resolution 1325 into practice. We in the international community must continue to support them.

Long-standing Challenges

Despite these developments, challenges to women’s rights and gender equality abound in post-conflict societies. I would like to highlight three priority issues which confront peacekeeping missions working to support women’s participation in transitional processes and beyond, and which require the urgent attention of this Council.

First, is the problem of insecurity, which many women endure even after the guns have been silenced.  In many societies, violence is employed as a tool to control and to regulate the movement and actions of women and girls as they work to rebuild their homes and communities. In Afghanistan, attacks on school establishments put the lives of girls at risk when they attempt to exercise their basic right to education. Women and girls are raped when they go out to fetch firewood in Darfur. In Liberia, over 40% of women and girls surveyed have been victims of sexual violence. In the Eastern DRC, over 12,000 rapes of women and girls have been reported in the last six months alone.

The consequences of an act of rape against a woman are far-reaching. It impacts negatively on her health and psychological well-being; increases her exposure to HIV/AIDS; stigmatizes her; limits her movement and consequently affects her ability to fulfill her role as breadwinner, a responsibility which many women in these environments have to bear on their own. The persistence of rape is a fundamental indicator of our failure to provide security to communities in post-conflict countries.

Second, we need to work to ensure sustained support to women in the political arena of decision-making, beyond the initial step of supporting their participation in electoral processes.  To date, the most notable successes in electing women to political office have taken place where constitutional guarantees have ensured quotas for women, as in Burundi and Afghanistan. Where quota systems were absent, such as in the recent elections in Haiti, only 5 women won elective office. In Liberia only 14 of the 94 seats in the Legislature were won by women, and in the DRC, women constitute only 8% of the new legislature.

It is not enough to have women voting or being elected to office. That women represent 30% of the Legislature in Burundi, or 25% of the Lower House in Afghanistan, are important achievements but they represent only the very first steps of a long process enabling them to stay in power. In Timor-Leste, 4 women parliamentarians quit office within the first three months of their election to office in 2002, due to the highly demanding and often chauvinistic nature of the work environment. Training and peer-support mechanisms must be available to newly-elected women to enable them navigate the legislative system.   

Third, discriminatory laws that undermine women’s equal rights must be overhauled to enable them to effectively participate in peace-building processes. In Burundi, Southern Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire, women are unable to inherit land. Even where such rights are guaranteed in law, as in the DRC, its application leaves cause for concern. Yet for many widows and women-headed households, land access is the key to reversing their economic destitution in post-conflict contexts. We must continue to support the adoption and implementation of national and customary laws that guarantee equal rights standards for women and girls in their access to resources.

Our collective responsibilities

Mr. President, my Department has adopted a set of very concrete strategies to support implementation of resolution 1325. We have developed a comprehensive action plan, whose implementation is being monitored by my senior management team; we are making policy guidance and training tools available to peacekeepers and Member States; we have developed operational guidelines for our mission personnel to enable them translate resolution 1325 into practice; and established gender components in missions and at Headquarters to oversee this work. We continue to invest in efforts to ensure that our peacekeepers adhere to the highest levels of professional conduct and discipline. As part of this process, we will be convening on 4 December 2006, a “High-level conference on sexual exploitation and abuse by UN and NGO personnel” in New York, to take stock of achievements to date and challenges in stemming this problem.

Notwithstanding these necessary and important foundation blocks, real gaps remain in our implementation of resolution 1325. In seeking to transform our working culture, there are undoubtedly pockets of resistance. We have made progress but some of our personnel have yet to understand their own responsibility for implementation of resolution 1325 – that it is not the sole responsibility of gender advisers; nor can it be outsourced to our UN partners. I also recognize the need to build a critical mass of male champions to advocate and support the translation of our commitments to gender equality into practice. In that regard, I believe that my department needs a senior male Envoy to support our political advocacy efforts.

Clearly, my Department can do better to implement your resolution 1325 and we are stepping up our efforts to do so. Our Action Plan and a Policy Directive which I shall issue in the coming days to my Department and all missions provide the framework to guide our future efforts. We count on all the Member States to provide the support and resources required to fully implement this directive.

Beyond the actions of my Department, some of the outstanding challenges can best be addressed through partnerships with Member States and our broader UN family. For example, our predominantly male profile in peacekeeping undermines the credibility of our efforts to lead by example in the host countries in which we are engaged. We need Member States to nominate more women candidates for senior civilian positions in missions. 

Less than 2% and 5% respectively of our military and police personnel are women. Yet our peacekeepers are increasingly required to interact with women and men in the host country, for purposes of information gathering, screening during disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes, monitoring elections processes, amongst others. To engage more effectively with the local population, a greater number of women peacekeepers must be deployed. This is an operational imperative.

We also recognize the need for stronger partnership with UN agencies, to sustain the investments of peacekeeping missions during the transitional period.  Our experiences from Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste have highlighted the need for a smooth transitioning of gender-related programmes to the UN Country Team, following the completion of a peacekeeping mandate. Otherwise, we risk creating a programmatic gap  that can unravel the modest gains made by peacekeeping missions.

Oftentimes, the only full-time and robust capacity to support gender-related activities in the countries in which we are engaged, resides in the peacekeeping mission. Our UN partners need to be on the ground from the very beginning with the capacities and resources required to support women in the wide range of areas that fall beyond the scope and mandate of peacekeeping missions.  

Finally Mr. President, we must continue to invest resources in creating a stable and secure environment that will allow women to restore dignity, normalcy and hope to their lives in the post-conflict period. Programmes for women’s economic and political empowerment and to support the education of girls can only be sustained under conditions of security. This means that as Member States, you must meet your obligations to contribute sufficient troops to enable our peacekeeping operations to deliver this much-needed security. I count on your support and partnership in this process.

Thank You.