Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace Policy Day 2003
Remarks by Donald K. Steinberg, Director, Joint Policy Council
November 7, 2024

It is a great honor to be here today at the Policy Day for Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace, the culmination of the five-day colloquium. Like last year, I’m proud to represent what I call the Men’s Auxiliary of Inclusive Security: Women Waging Peace.

I’d like to congratulate you on what has been an inspiring program, and to thank in particular the international participants for your willingness to travel far from your homes to enhance our ability to build peace and reconstruct war-torn nations. You’ve brought “ground truth” to the deliberations: in the darkest and nastiest corners of the world, you’ve been the eyes, the ears, and even the conscience of the international community on issues affecting women and men in conflict.

From Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, from Congo to Guatemala, you’ve given a human face to the struggle against abuse, poverty, violence, and oppression. Equally important, through your energy, enthusiasm, and engagement, you have belied the all-too-common misperception that women are mere victims of conflicts. As Under Secretary Dobriansky stressed earlier today, women are far more than victims: they are the key to achieving the full range of social, economic, and security goals.

Bringing women to the peace table improves the quality of agreements reached and increases the chance of success in implementing them, just as involving women in post-conflict governance reduces the likelihood of returning to war. Reconstruction works best when it involves women as planners, implementers, and beneficiaries. Similarly, the single most productive investment in revitalizing agriculture, restoring health systems, reducing infant mortality, and improving other social indicators is women’s and girls’ education. And as Ambassador Prosper reminded us, insisting on accountability for abuses committed against women during conflict is essential for the re-establishment of rule of law.

Today’s challenge is how to ensure that these principles remain on the agenda for busy policy-makers who are always responding to the latest crises. Even well-intentioned people can find it difficult to keep their eyes on the prize. During my service as Ambassador to Angola from 1995 to 1998, our Embassy ran a wide array of projects to enhance the role of women in the political and economic life of the country, including dialogues across political and ethnic lines, support for women’s NGOs, and projects for girls’ education, micro-credit, and mother-child health care.

Yet as conflict re-emerged, we had to remind ourselves that we could contribute to post-conflict equality by bringing women to the table to plan for emergency aid; using women’s NGOs to distribute relief; assigning gender advisors to prevent domestic violence as ex-combatants returned to their homes; and ensuring women a seat at the table in the peace talks themselves.

These lessons were particularly useful as we addressed the political, economic and security reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq. Under the leadership of President Bush, gender issues have been high on the agenda as we press for full participation of women in political conferences, reconstruction programs, and civil society. As you heard earlier today from Under Secretary Paula Dobriansky, one model is the US-Afghan Women’s Council created by President Bush and Chairman Karzai in 2002. Under her leadership and that of Women’s Coordinator Charlotte Ponticelli, and their Afghan counterparts, this council has promoted education, vocational and literacy training, civil society, health care, micro-credit, political participation, and journalistic training for women throughout Afghanistan. There is still a very long way to go to overcome the tragedy inflicted on women in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there has been progress.

These lessons have also proved instructive in my current position as director of the Joint Policy Council. One of this Council’s key goals is to ensure that women’s rights and well-being are fully reflected in our foreign assistance spending. We use a lot of good words, but words alone cannot earn women a seat at the peace table, force financial institutions to provide capital to women entrepreneurs, or ensure adequate protection for women in refugee and displaced situations.

That’s why the US Government is putting its money where its mouth is. We are addressing women's and girls’ education, psychosocial trauma, special feeding needs, mother-child health care, and protective services for women refugees and internally displaced. We’re fighting trafficking in women and children; training hundreds of thousands of new teachers in Africa, mostly women; providing school feeding programs for seven million school children and scholarships for 250,000 African girls; and bringing clean energy to rural areas to end the indoor pollution that causes two million premature death each year from respiratory illness.

The President’s $15 billion HIV/AIDS Initiative, including its heavy emphasis on preventing mother-to-child transmission, will benefit women and men in the 14 target nations of Africa and the Caribbean, and well beyond.

People-to-people exchange programs are drawing together women across political, geographic, and ethnic barriers on every continent, building in particular the capacity of women to play their rightful role in politics, the economy, and civil society.

But before we congratulate ourselves too much on these efforts, we should remember that the hardships faced by women around the world remain serious and pervasive. For every picture of a woman addressing a national assembly, opening a business, receiving treatment at a health clinic, or taking her daughters to school, there are dozens of countries around the world where women are systematically excluded from peace processes and post-conflict governance, and where women’s access to education, health, business opportunities, and social services is minimal.

Further, we must elevate the issue of women in conflict within our foreign policy deliberations. Regrettably, this issue often still suffers from “second-class citizenship.”

Even with the heavy emphasis placed on gender issues by the President and Secretary Powell, you still hear advancement of gender interests described as the “soft side” of foreign policy, especially by those who have never worked on them.

Let me assure you that there is nothing “soft” about going after traffickers who turn women and girls into commodities. There is nothing “soft” about preventing armed thugs from abusing women in refugee camps. There’s nothing “soft” about holding warlords and other human rights violators accountable for their abuses against women, forcing demobilized soldiers to refrain from domestic violence, or insisting that women have a seat at the table in peace negotiations and post-conflict governments.

These are among the hardest challenges in our foreign policy agenda, and that’s why I’m so pleased to honor those courageous individuals here today who are dedicated to addressing them. Thank you.

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