U.N. Security Council reviews progress on addressing women's security issues

By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent

United Nations -- The United States places great emphasis on the role of women in resolving conflicts and building peace, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte says. "No approach to peace can succeed if it does not view men and women as equally important components of the solution," he says.

The United States envisions a world "in which participation in all aspects of civic life by both men and women is free and whole," says Negroponte, who is the chief U.S. envoy to the United Nations. "It is literally impossible to understand conflicts and then frame and implement policy responses to those conflicts without overcoming the inertia that too often sidelines, sidetracks, and silences half the world's population."

During a U.N. Security Council meeting on "Women, Peace and Security" October 29, Negroponte briefly outlined a few of nearly 175 projects the U.S. has under way in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Afghanistan a $2.5 million grant is building women's resource centers in 14 provinces. Another $1 million is going for education and training programs on topics ranging from employment to human rights education and political participation skills, the ambassador said. There are also grants to support women's political participation and female candidates in Baghlan, Sar-I-pul, Kapisa, and Wardak provinces and an advocacy training program to help Afghan women political activists prepare for the Loya Jirga.

From November 1 to 7 Negroponte was part of a Security Council mission to Afghanistan which, among other aims, reviewed progress Afghan women are making in participating in the post-conflict reconstruction of the country.

In Iraq the United States also is promoting women's inclusion in the building of civil society, Negroponte said. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has held dozens of meetings with Iraqi women on a range of issues including constitutional and legal reform, security, human rights, education, and health.

The U.S. is supporting Fatima Center for Women in Hillah which held a meeting in October entitled "Heartland of Iraq Women's Conference." Over 150 women involved in establishing women's centers and organizations in their communities attended from the five south-central provinces, he said.

"The United States is working to strengthen community-based groups in Iraq to foster citizen participation in the local policy-making process. In this regard our funding for women's organizations has helped them build their capacity to promote women's issues and interim advisory councils across Iraq and to organize workshops for Iraqi women to discuss reforms in such areas as matrimonial law, the prevention of violence and abuse against women, and equal opportunities in education and employment," he said.

The United States held the presidency of the Security Council for the month of October. An initiative of the U.S. presidency was the day-long Security Council discussion and review of resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security passed in 2000. The aim of the meeting was to "take stock of progress made, to see what can be done to continue to advance implementation, and to provide an operation perspective on implementation," the ambassador said.

Resolution 1325 recognized that women and girls bear the brunt of armed conflict and that they are an essential part of any lasting solution.

After the debate Negroponte pointed out that the majority of the speakers called for more work to be done by the United Nations in incorporating women into U.N. programs.

"Speakers noted the need for more women to serve as peacekeepers, military observers, and civilian police and understood their national responsibilities to identify and nominate women for these critical duties," the ambassador said. "The (U.N.) secretariat must do better at assigning women to senior positions including special representatives of the secretary general. A number of states highlighted that there is only one woman currently serving as a special representative of the secretary general and noted that the level of participation by women is not acceptable."

Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Affairs Jean-Marie Guehenno said that resolution 1325 had significant implications for U.N. peacekeeping operations and forced a radical change in the way the U.N. peacekeeping operation does its work.

"Women and girls suffer disproportionately in time of war," Guehenno said. "Pre-existing inequalities are magnified and exacerbated by conflict and social networks break down, making women and girls highly vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation.

"We have learned that when a peacekeeping operation is deployed in such an environment, our first duty is to listen to the voices of the victims. Only in this way can we best understand how effectively to help women and girls and how to lay down the foundation for a lasting peace," he said.

Calling women "a source of strength and inspiration in our struggle," the undersecretary general said that women can have tremendous impact when their knowledge, skills, and energy are harnessed to help bring peace and rebuild a country.

U.N. peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kosovo, Timor-Leste, and Afghanistan have gender experts and "gender affairs units" which are playing an active and decisive role in putting gender issues at the center of operations, he said.

Guehenno said that the U.N. is often embarrassed to find that it is pressing nations to have a higher percentage of women in national police forces than its U.N. peacekeeping operation has. Currently women make up only four percent of U.N. civilian police and military forces.

In the disarming and reintegration of ex-combatants into national life, the U.N. is focusing on helping women who are either ex-combatants themselves or were wives, working with fighters as cooks, etc. or forced to work as sexual slaves, he said.

Guehenno said that in Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste U.N. gender advisors are improving the quality of the missions' work by training national police forces in how best to handle gender-based crimes, especially domestic violence. In Afghanistan, gender analysis has helped the mission introduce measures to facilitate women's participation in elections such as separate registration facilities for women.

"The law of the gun has devastated the condition of women" in the DRC, Amy Smythe, senior gender adviser of the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), said.

"Some key features affecting women are internal displacement; the breakdown of almost every institution, beginning with the family; the inability to take care of crops or cultivate farms; rape and sexual violence on a massive scale; and complete impunity for the perpetrators of these heinous crimes," Smythe told the council.

MONUC has held sessions with the police on the rights of women; is recruiting women to serve in the military and civilian police, especially to help address problems of violence against women; conducts outreach programs for women as part of the disarmament and demobilization programs; and has helped run training programs to help women participate in the political process, she said.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)