Advancing the aims and working towards the strengthening of resolution 1325 is a high priority of Iceland. All Icelandic diplomatic missions are required to support the aims of Resolution 1325 in their work. Iceland is, for example, workjng actively to advance resolution 1325 within NATO and the OSCE, in addition to our work at the United Nations.

We are convinced that women's participation in the maintenance of peace and security is in itself a basic human right. In this context, we welcome that this issue has achieved a prominent place on the international agenda. We believe that the involvement of women into the peace negotiations and conflict mediation should be supported.

Taking this opportunity I would like to confirm that the Government of the Republic of Hungary is strongly committed to implement Resolution 1325. We stand firmly behind endeavors aimed at mainstreaming gender issues in the strategies, policies, programs and actions and promoting participation of women in decision-making and peace processes.

It is a pleasure for me to inform you that we are finalizing an action plan concerning the national strategy on the implementation of the above-mentioned UN resolution. As incoming EU Presidency in the first semester of 2011 Hungary considers to maintain the current momentum through organizing a conference as a follow up to the series of events marking the 10th anniversary of the UN Security Resolution 1325.

I strongly believe that the enhanced cooperation in the field of women, peace and security, and the joint commitment to foster the implementation ofthis agenda shall ensure that women fully enjoy their fundamental rights which are basic components of lasting peace and security.

I am very pleased to represent the Government of the Republic of Hungary at this meeting and commemorate with all of you the 10th anniversary of this groundbreaking resolution.

Beyond that, we have to recognize that violence against women, including sexual and genderbased violence poses real threat to global security and it also creates serious challenge to the full and active participation of women in peace processes.

Women listen with their feelings. Through the healing of the heart and the balm of emotion, they can reach the soul to cure wounds, where medicine stumbles and science fails.

When, in Central America, where I come from, we passed through the bloody polarization of the 1980s, the women who enlisted in any of these civilian trenches to aid the destitute, to care for refugees or take part in the reconstruction of their homeland were, unquestionably, heroines of peace.

The immigrants who, desperate and hopeless, leave their beloved homeland, risking everything, even their lives, to reach a destination that offers a way to provide for their kin — and who, ironically, with their remittances, help sustain the sickly economy of the country from which they fled — they are heroines of peace.