Remarks by Ambassador Swanee Hunt
Arria-style Meeting between Members of the Security Council and NGO’s
Security Council Resolution 1325 - 5th Anniversary
Hosted by Denmark
Tuesday, October 25, 2024

Distinguished Delegates,

My name is Swanee Hunt. I direct the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and I am the founder of The Initiative for Inclusive Security, which has a global network called Women Waging Peace. Since 1999, Inclusive Security has called for women’s inclusion in peace processes. We do so because women remain an untapped resource for global stability.

I am honored to address you, and I thank Ambassador Loej for inviting me. I’m particularly glad to see the heroic Noeleen Heyzer from UNIFEM here today.

Why should we include women in peace processes? Of course, women constitute over half the population, so sidelining them is discriminatory and fundamentally undemocratic. But the rights argument is persuasive only to those who cherish fairness. For those who prioritize efficacy, ignoring them is patently unwise. Worldwide, women make profound contributions to peace building. If we hope to transform instability and violence into prosperity, we must incorporate the expertise of women.

Resolution 1325 was a first, critical acknowledgement that women must be included in all efforts to promote peace. And since its passage there has been some progress. Gender focal points are now included in many UN missions. In places like East Timor, the UN mission organized women's political coalitions to build bridges to civil society. Recognized as a stabilizing force, women were provided resources to become active participants in their country’s political affairs. As a result, today they comprise 26% of the Constituent Assembly. Similarly, consultations with women are becoming more common when senior UN officials are in the field.

But for all the good intentions, apart from a few exceptions, the UN has failed to realize meaningful, broad-based women’s inclusion.

We are squandering a tremendous opportunity. In Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Bosnia, and elsewhere, I’ve seen firsthand how women prevent the eruption of violence, mediate among warring factions, and repair shattered societies after conflict.

Evidence of women’s contributions is compelling. The Initiative for Inclusive Security has conducted 15 field studies to document women’s impact in every stage of conflict. We’ve archived some 500 interviews with women leaders discussing their extraordinary work. It’s clear they are highly invested in peace and - were they consistently at the table for strategic planning with policy makers—they could have an enormous positive impact on discussions, debates, and decisions relating to security.

The colleagues speaking along side me today represent tens of thousands of women around the world. Let me mention four more.

o In Sri Lanka, Visaka Dharmadasa was motivated by grief when she founded Parents of Servicemen Missing in Action. But her empathy made her forge into enemy territory to meet with mothers of missing Tamil Tigers. She then designed Track II talks between civil society leaders from both sides of the conflict. When formal negotiations floundered, Visaka carried messages from LTTE leaders to the government.

o Here’s another. In Colombia, as coordinator of the National Network of Initiatives Against the War and for Peace, Ana Teresa Bernal mobilized 10 million people to vote for peace in a 1996 national referendum. She helped create a vehicle for civil society and government to bring their interests into the negotiations between the government and the FARC. Today she is one of two women representing civil society on the recently established National Commission of Reparation and Reconciliation.

o Vjosa Dobruna, a physician, served in the Interim UN Joint Administration as the Kosovar minister responsible for democracy building, civil society and independent media. She organized nearly 6,000 women to train UN peacekeeping troops in gender issues. And she drafted a regulation requiring that one in every three candidates for the new assembly be female. Then she led in the formation of a multi-party women’s caucus in the assembly, bridging ethnic and party lines—the first cross-party body.

o And finally, at 26, Aloisea Inyumba, became Rwanda’s minister of gender and social affairs after the genocide. She created programs to bury 800,000 corpses, and designed a national adoption campaign to find homes for 500,000 orphans. As head of the Commission for Unity and Reconciliation she went village to village helping victims dramatize their tragedies, preparing them for the reintegration of perpetrators. She created women’s councils that fed into the Parliament, resulting in the highest percentage of women legislators in the world.

So you see, identifying talented, experienced and courageous women is not the problem. Leveraging their value to negotiations, DDR and transitional justice is. There is no good reason why women like these—whose leadership has been tested and refined—are not tapped for key roles in conflict prevention and resolution.

So we have the women, and we have the words. But we lack the will.

The Council has drawn attention to the crucial role of women in many resolutions. In particular, 1590, which references the value of women in the mandate for the Mission in Sudan, should serve as a model for all future resolutions. But while your resolutions are powerful tools, the world is a more dangerous place because of the failure to live up to the commitments enshrined in those resolutions.

I was asked by one of you if I could give specific ideas for how the lofty words of 1325 could be implemented. And so I’ll close with some first hand observations—from visits to four peacekeeping operations and conversations with women from a dozen others.

I have seen how soldiers may receive one session of “gender sensitivity training”. But in the field, enforcement is missing.

And I’ve witnessed how the preponderance of men in leadership at posts makes officials seem hypocritical as they insist on gender sensitivity among the troops. An egregious example is when, at the request of the local women (who couldn’t get an appointment), I urged an SRSG to declare brothels with trafficked women off limits to troops. “You are asking me for the sexual repression of 10,000 men. Absolutely not,” he told me. His mission, by the way, was staffed almost exclusively by men.

Enough hand-wringing. Lest you become dragged down with discouragement, let me encourage each of you to catalyze change by fulfilling the following five recommendations:

1. Hold the Secretary General and Secretariat accountable by creating specific metrics for compliance with the spirit and mandates of 1325. For example, two female SRSGs and one female Deputy SRSG in 26 peacekeeping missions is indefensible; a list of dozens of qualified women has sat on the Secretary General’s desk for years.
2. Use your authority to mandate that all UN missions appoint at least 30 percent women at the highest levels, especially in policy-making. Submit lists of qualified women from your countries and ask your colleagues to do the same. This is the critical mass that Vina discussed in her remarks.
3. Demand that governments, negotiators, and signators to peace agreements fulfill their commitments to include women. Publish lists of the commitments, send monitors into conflict regions to identify and recruit talented women, and ensure that all gender focal points are senior officials with substantial resources and robust staffing to carry out their mandates.
4. Insist that all relevant parties include women in decisions related to constitutions, justice systems, or security sector reform. The UN and your countries should withold funding when post-conflict governing committees and commissions fail to involve strong contingents of women.
5. And last, recognize explicitly, in every document that comes out of this body, that women’s inclusion is a critical tool for successful peace building.

If these actions were easy, you would have already done them. But you face enormous resistance, in part from power-holders who don’t perceive a problem, in part from bureaucracy that advances at glacial speed. So push hard. Be persistent. Remember, this isn’t about satisfying some vocal women. It’s about fulfilling your own vision.

To build on our moderator’s comments, this work is always difficult but, I assure you, not impossible. I look forward to working with each of you, your governments, and with the United Nations to accomplish this objective fully, speedily, and with the utmost priority.

Thank you.

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