BLOG: UN Britain - UN's Retreat on Women, Peace and Security, in Alpbach

Two day blog by Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant

Our Ambassador attended the UN's Retreat on Women, Peace and Security, in Alpbach to discuss the role of the Security Council in tracking implementation and strengthening accountability, ahead of the 10th anniversary on 1325 in October

Day one

This morning at the Alpbach retreat, the Deputy Secretary General and I introduced the session on what the Security Council might do to mark the tenth anniversary of Security Council resolution 1325 on the protection of women and women in conflict. I set out five areas where I thought the Security Council, in October, could take forward the mandate that had been set out in 1325 in a very practical way. I talked about endorsing the indicators that had been drawn up by the Secretary General, endorsing a Secretary General's report on women in peacebuilding and devising a proper monitoring and implementation programme so that we can show some practical steps of how we're implementing 1325. I also suggested that there might be a new role for the new UN women agency in coordinating the UN system's work on women peace and security. Then just before lunch we joined in the wider Alpbach European forum, where we heard the President of Austria and the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon setting out their views on the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis, with Ban Ki-moon in particular putting an emphasis on how we must rise beyond the economic crisis to focus at the MDG summit in two weeks time on protecting the most vulnerable people in the world. And he commended those governments, like the United Kingdom, that despite the fiscal constraints, had committed themselves to maintaining overseas development assistance.

Day two

It's finally stopped raining in the Alps, this morning there's a beautiful view of snow covered mountains and Alpine pastures, but it's something of an incongruous background to the discussions we're having in the Security Council retreat here in Alpbach about women, peace and security and sexual violence in conflict. It's good that we've been able to spend two days talking about the very specific subject. Too often these retreats have such a wide agenda that you never really drill down in to the detail and I think this time we've come up with some clear action points that the Security Council will be able to take forward in New York over the next couple of months. Ban Ki-moon joined us yesterday evening and talked about his ambitions for the United Nations including in this area where he wants to see the UN to be a beacon of hope for the most vulnerable societies in countries in conflict. And I think there's a lot of common view between members of the Security Council and senior members of the General Assembly who are also here and the senior members of the Secretariat at the UN, about how to tackle this agenda because if it isn't tackled on a global stage at the United Nations, it is never going to get tackled, because the countries in which these horrific events take place, such as the DRC, Sudan and Somalia, simply aren't capable of tackling the degree of abuse that is happening, in their own countries. So an incongruous background but a really valuable weekend's discussions.