INTERNATIONAL: Changing the Game: Gaining Traction in Fragile States

Speech by Inés Alberdi, UNIFEM Executive Director

Date: 4 March 2010

Occasion: Women Thrive Worldwide and UNIFEM Co-Host Second Annual International Women's Day Legislative Breakfast Event in Washington, DC — "Lessons from the Frontline: Haiti, Afghanistan, and the Challenge to Build a More Secure World".

Good morning – thank you all for coming out so early. I am very grateful to the event's co-hosts: Senator Mary Landrieu, Senator Olympia Snowe and Representative Nita Lowey. We are honoured by the recognition of UNIFEM's work on the ground and want to thank Senator Landrieu, Representative Lowey and Congressman Mark Kirk for being so receptive to UNIFEM's message. And we deeply appreciate the many ways the US Government supports the work of UNIFEM: as a contributor to our programmes in developing countries and to the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, which UNIFEM manages; as a leader at the UN on ending sexual violence in conflict and rape as a tactic of war, and as a clear voice for women's human rights globally.

Today's event provides frontline reports from two very different fragile states – Afghanistan and Haiti – countries where UNIFEM has been supporting women's rights groups over the past several years. This is a pivotal moment for women's rights. After much advocacy and internal stock taking, the UN is mobilizing to create a more robust and high level organization to advance progress for women, headed by an Under Secretary-General. UNIFEM strongly supports this proposed reform, which will position a much stronger UN women's organization to support UN system-wide programming and policy advice on gender equality in response to demand from member states in all regions. . We urge UN Member States to resolve to establish this organization, jump start its work and provide sufficient funding to really do the job.

This year is the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. Who can forget the cry “Women's rights are human rights”, which first gained recognition at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 and received widespread US attention two years later at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing because the person giving the call was the remarkable First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now Secretary of State, Clinton is applying that phrase in powerful new ways.

Over the past two decades, UNIFEM has supported and built partnerships with women caught in armed conflict and crisis situations in more than 30 countries around the world, advocating for their inclusion and helping them to participate in peace processes.

Making the case for women at the peace table has been an often lonely and always difficult task.

We think back to the brave women of Northern Ireland who brought the peace process to reality, united across religious and geographic divides and hanging tough against the fearful backlash of male combatants and politicians. Kate Fearon, a leader in the Northern Ireland peace effort recalls her experience when she finally got the chance to rub elbows with the male party members. She writes that her interventions were met with calls of ‘sit down you silly woman' and was told that it was the duty of the good loyal Ulster woman to ‘stand by her man'.

The women in Northern Ireland knew exactly what the women in Sudan, East Timor and Guatemala know: The parties to the conflict are not at all the same as parties to the peace.

Northern Ireland showed how women's inclusion and perspectives can break the stalemate. Yet, in spite of the evidence, women are still told to keep out.

The most glaring recent example occurred in late January at the London Conference on conflict and governance in Afghanistan. In the lead up to the Conference, the call by women to be included fell on deaf ears. Members of the Afghanistan Women's Network were told the conference was on ‘security' and it didn't concern ‘ladies business'. The official Afghan government delegation included only a single female Member of Parliament.

To plan their way onto the agenda, in December a group of Afghan women came to the UNIFEM Kabul office. Soon after, UNIFEM brought to Dubai a group of 10 Afghan women, who worked together to produce their statement of priorities, including recommendations in three critical areas: security, governance and development, and the need for regional approaches to cross border problems.

Next, UNIFEM supported four of the group to travel to London in advance of the Conference and, along with the Institute for Inclusive Security, helped open doors so they could meet and lobby a range of leaders including Secretary of State Clinton and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Media welcomed the women's story and perspective and broadcast it globally. As Time magazine noted, the failure to include women was “inexplicable.”

However, the one woman who was finally included to address the plenary carried the groups' message on behalf of Afghanistan's women. This demanded:

• The military surge must be accompanied by a robust effort to boost civilian support for recovery and long-term reconstruction.
• The Government and its international backers must invest in community development, health and education services, security for women so they can move freely, and governance without corruption.
• Women's rights and gender equality must not be bargained away.

And while the whole delegation could not attend nor speak at the proceedings, they were a visible presence thanks to Secretary of State Clinton, who invited them personally to attend her press conference. They were also roundly applauded when she asked them to rise.

But the most meaningful recognition is the fact that many of the Afghan women's priorities – particularly the Afghan Government's commitment to protect and promote women's human rights in any negotiations and incentive packages directed to the Taliban – made their way into the official communiqué.

In this instance, with the help of UNIFEM, women really were the game changers. Their recommendations provide a road map to gaining traction in Afghanistan. Investing in the national priorities articulated by Afghan women is the soundest investment the international community can possible make.

But really, should women have to work so hard to gain their rightful place?

A new test comes in May, when Afghanistan convenes a peace Jirga and Kabul Security Conference to explore possible relations with the Taliban and avenues for reconciliation with warring forces.

Is the door open for women or will we once again have to find the back entrance? Will women comprise at least 25 percent of any upcoming peace process including the proposed Peace Jirga, as the Afghan Constitution promises? After the London experience, we can be sure that the world will be watching and counting.

The 27 March Haiti donors' conference at the UN provides an imminent opportunity to adopt a ‘game changer' approach. Women, who head nearly one-half of Haiti's households, have been leading the recovery efforts from the very beginning, caring for entire neighborhoods, improvising communal meals and child care arrangements. Kathy will be talking about all of this a little later.

But, as a matter of right and as smart development and security policy, women must be included in sufficient numbers in the planning and funding of post-disaster relief and recovery. Significant funding must be directed to increase gender equality and gender equality must be a priority in Haiti. We must support the efforts of Haitian women and men to build a fairer and more durable society out of tragedy.

Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot continue to exclude one-half of the population and we must meet the challenge to build a more secure world. We will not have security without human security and we will not have human security without sufficient – even equal – numbers of women at each and every decision-making table.

Let's make 2010 the year we really change this game.

Thank you so much.