I therefore wish to suggest a sharing of tasks among these various bodies in order to accelerate mutually reinforcing efforts in this crucial field. For example, the Economic and Social Council could ensure follow-up and monitoring of the indicators developed by its Statistical Commission on violence against women.

Gender equality and the empowerment of women are cross-cutting issues for all development policies and, indeed, increasingly for all international policies. The Economic and Social Council has taken the full dimension of this requirement and reviews on an annual basis how the United Nations system mainstreams gender perspectives in its activities.

By maintaining close dialogue among our different bodies, we can strengthen the impact of the United Nations voice in our common areas of work. I trust that this meeting today has been a valuable step in this direction.

2011 will provide important opportunities to follow up on those events. At its coordination segment in July, the Economic and Social Council will review the coordinated follow-up and implementation of the ministerial declaration adopted this year. In so doing, it will focus on the further mainstreaming of the gender dimension in the work of the system at large and will address the programmatic aspect of the work of UN Women.

2010 has been a very constructive year for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women at the United Nations.

Moreover, our multidimensional operations have greatly benefited from the recruitment of gender advisers in each of our missions. Those advisers have provided valuable technical expertise in the Sudan, on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration; in Chad, on prison reform; in Burundi, on election support; and in Afghanistan, on constitutional reform.

With regard to police personnel, beyond the presence of a woman — who is seated behind me — at the head of our entire police force around the world, we have set up a plan to enable us to achieve a 20 per cent proportion of our worldwide police personnel being female by 2014. As for our 15 peacekeeping missions, three are now led by women, while none were a few years ago.

We have seen in Liberia and Haiti how effective the links of female peacekeepers with the local population have been, particularly in internally displaced persons camps, as in Haiti, for example. Besides their professional qualities, those women model the principle of gender equality.

Thirdly, we will continue to engage closely with troop- and police-contributing countries to help them prepare military and police personnel with the knowledge, skills, expertise and profile to effectively implement resolution 1325 (2000).

The protection of civilians has assumed central priority in the work of peacekeeping today. We have initiated a broad policy and operational reform effort, including training, guidance and planning. Together with the Office of the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Ms. Wallström, and other United Nations partners, we are advancing a broad protection agenda.