General Women, Peace and Security

Noting that the resolution has galvanized important efforts at all levels on women, peace and security, it is important for the Council to continue making efforts to ensure its effective implementation. The international community has every interest in ensuring the full involvement of women in all stages of the peace process, peacekeeping and peacebuilding: women as peacemakers, women as peacekeepers and women as peacebuilders.

Let me begin by joining others in expressing our appreciation to you, Mr. President, for convening this open debate marking a decade of our efforts with regard to implementation of resolution 1325 (2000). I also thank the Secretary-General for providing us with his important report (S/2010/498).

Today's open debate in the Security Council marks the lOth anniversary of the adoption of the Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on "women and peace and security". I am honoured to take part in this debate.

Let us not lose the momentum which has been generated on this issue on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Resolution 1325 - a symbol of strength for women in peace and security.

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.

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.

My delegation is grateful for the opportunity to participate in this open debate of the Security Council on the contribution of women to international peace and security. We acknowledge the visionary work of the Council and its members, aimed at enhancing the principles of resolution 1325 (2000) and the empowerment of women.

I come from one of those small nations, as the poet has said, where our history could be written in a teardrop, and I can vouch for this second type of heroism. For example, those self-sacrificing mothers in my homeland, bearing the cross of poverty on their shoulders, with no companionship other than their solitude and the burden of their responsibilities, support and educate their children, so that they can achieve their impossible dreams.