Herve Ladsous, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations

Additionally, when supporting women's organizations, we must mobilize all members of the country team to serve as consultative partners for civil society. That gives women's groups confidence to act with the assurance that they may turn to the United Nations family if they perceive a threat. The country team also supports women's organizations with funding, information-sharing and capacity-building activities. For instance, women's groups convened by DPKO and UN-Women at the Open Day in Timor-Leste in 2011 called upon country team members to help sustain the participation of women in community-level mediation and peacebuilding activities. As a result, the United Nations Development Programme and the Ministry of Social Solidarity implemented a project that helped establish a Department of Peacebuilding and Social Cohesion within the Ministry of Solidarity. That department specifically includes women at the community level in local conflict resolution and peacebuilding efforts. Another positive example is the recently signed memorandum of understanding between the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan and five women's non-governmental organizations on the implementation of the Women's Police Mentoring Programme, which aims to build the capacity of policewomen and to address the issue of abuse.

I am grateful to the Security Council for welcoming the contribution of gender advisers and women protection advisers to the implementation of resolutions on women and peace and security. I wish to express my commitment to ensuring that gains made in the protection and promotion of women's and girls' rights and empowerment remain sustained, including during United Nations mission drawdowns and transitions. This year, peacekeeping missions have supported important progress in some areas, notably women's political participation at the local and national levels. Experience also showed that in other areas — including the protection of women activists — more could be achieved. Women continue, unfortunately, to be largely absent from or to play merely symbolic roles in formal peace processes. Social and cultural norms certainly pose serious challenges to the full and meaningful participation of women in peace processes. In addition, women are frequently exposed to gender-based violence and have limited access to decision-making.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, approximately 5,000 women of all political tendencies, including from civil society, f looded Kinshasa's main commercial avenue a week ago to protest the fall of Goma to rebels from the Mouvement du 23 mars. That was the most massively organized non-violent protest in the country following the fall of that city. The women protesters were received by MONUSCO's senior management. However, women have not been given any political leverage in the regional negotiations aimed at bringing peace to the embattled eastern part of the country pursuant to the provisions of resolution 1325 (2000) that demand that women be a core part of all peacebuilding processes and related agreements.

Regarding political participation, I have seen our missions work with women's organizations to bring women into State political institutions, to strengthen advocacy efforts, and to form strong, effective networks for peacebuilding, conflict resolution and leadership skills development. We have seen, for example, that women can successfully resolve conflicts relating to land ownership, water and cattle raiding by establishing dialogues with other women's groups from across border lines. In South Sudan, the women's community dialogue forum in the state of Central Equatoria has held meetings with community's leaders to discuss the issues affecting women and children who had been displaced after the conflicts between the Mundari and Bari communities. Two women who were involved in the community dialogue forum were nominated to the state legislative assembly.

We are moving forward in the right direction and I belive that we have made significant progress. For example, in 2011, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) trained 380 members of the armed forces, 280 of whom were women. It also trained 767 police officers, more than a third of whom were women, in the prevention of gender-based violence and in the search for appropriate solutions. MONUSCO also provided training on the gender-based analysis of conflict for members of the Commission on the Resolution and Prevention of Conflicts in Goma. That training made it possible to develop the capacity of the Commission to respond to the serious problems stemming from movements of women and girls in conflict areas, in collaboration with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.