- What has been done so far? Reporting back.

• Dear participants, I very much appreciate that this conference put Security Council Resolution 1325; women, peace and security on the agenda on this International Day for Combating Violence Against Women. War and conflict affects women and girls in the most brutal and unacceptable ways, and resolution 1325 addresses this.

As you know,

• March 8th this year, my government launched an Action Plan for the implementation of the Security Council Resolution 1325. The resolution represents a strong incentive for efforts to make sure that women are better protected, but also given access to arenas of decision making and participation in peace building processes.
• The main purpose of developing an Action plan was to scale up the ongoing work on 1325, and make it more coordinated and systematic.
• The Action Plan is a joint effort between four different Ministries- Ministries of Defence - Justice and the Police, Ministry of Children and Equality with my Ministry as the coordinator. Through the process we have enjoyed a fruitful dialogue with Norwegian NGOs and research institutions. Norwegian NGOs were active supporters to push the Resolution through when Norway was a member of the Security Council, and I know you still are, very dedicated to follow-up the process of implementation.

We presented the plan for three reasons:

• First, coherence. An overall and systematic follow-up will make it possible to utilise all existing resources efficiently.
• Second, visibility and measurability. The plan spotlights our ambitions and set benchmarks for our efforts.
• Third, dialogue and process. We see that openness and debate strengthens our efforts. The Action Plan should be adjusted, altered and improved as we go ahead. We will report regularly on its progress, and will encourage debate and discussion.

Implementation - What are the opportunities and challenges we are facing?

• Today, Norway uses every opportunity to promote the implementation of SR 1325. But we see that six years after the adoption, the accountability and monitoring mechanisms for its implementation at the national, regional or global levels are still weak.

• We are currently reviewing our own activities and measures to implement the plan. The purpose of a review at this early stage is partly to put pressure on ourselves. The process is in itself a way of ensuring accountability and securing that, women, peace and security is put high on the agenda.
• The review will inform our future work, and make us able to be clearer on which priorities we need to make.

Review of the implementation so far.

• Since the work is still in progress I will not go into details about all our activities and efforts to implement the plan, we will present a report at a later stage. But I would like to take this opportunity to give you some “first impressions”:

The reporting shows that,

• A whole range of activities to support the implementation on 1325 are taking place – in all of the Ministries involved. Some initiatives have been taken as a direct result of the Action plan; some ongoing activities have been intensified. The plan has contributed to increased knowledge and awareness about women, peace and security within the ministries.
• We try to be more proactive than we used to be. The ministries are raising the gender question in areas that traditionally has been “gender free zones“.

Still, the biggest challenge in our daily work, is how to do it. The reporting show that we need to share good practices and establish operational guidelines in order to utilise all existing resources efficiently

• We must avoid that the gender-advisors are doing the job themselves because they are the only ones who are requested to do it. The ministries must make sure that everybody are accountable and that everybody have the skills and resources they need to follow up the Action Plan on 1325 and other policies on women and gender equality.
• In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs we are now developing training courses to make progress in this regard. We also need to put in place mechanism to make sure the work on gender are institutionalised, and not person-driven alone.

Joint Donor Review on the Implentation of 1325

• To gain a clearer understanding of how 1325 translates into change on the ground, a review team made up of representatives from the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Norway, in close cooperation with the DPKO, visited four major UN peacekeeping operations – in DRC, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Kosovo.

• I would like to present some of the findings and recommendations from this evaluation that relates to women’s situation in war and conflict…
• All of these four missions demonstrated a number of shared challenges in the four countries. The gender focus was missing from the earliest stages of mission development; resources were inadequate, accountability was still limited; and the sustainability of gender efforts was still in doubt.
• Although there were examples of best practices, the need for a clear and more systematic approach to gender issues, starting with the mandates, was evident.
• Gender based violence is an important aspect of almost all armed conflicts. Protection must be incorporated into the mandates of all peacekeeping missions. UN peacekeeping operations must make systematic efforts to prevent and combat gender based violence and sexual exploitation and abuse.
• The UN and other international actors must take more concerted action and make better use of the repertoire of tools at our disposal to strengthen practical protection on the ground.
• UN peacekeeping troops themselves must practice zero tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse. Not doing so will affect the legitimacy and the efficiency of the UN operation.
• The experience from DRC is that sexual exploitation of local Congolese women and girls has seriously undermined the credibility and legitimacy of MONUC in the eyes of the local population. Indeed, it was a serious blow to UN peacekeeping as a whole.
• We therefore welcome the initiative of a the High-level Conference on Eliminating Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by UN and NGO Personnel that will take place in the UN-secretariat 4 December.
• Sexual Exploitation and Abuse must be considered as a potential issue in all peacekeeping operations as well as in the activities of humanitarian and development organisations. Norway has been actively involved to ensure that the UN cracks down hard on the perpetrators and imposes measures to prevent all forms of sexual exploitation.
• The establishment of a Conduct and Discipline Unit at UN Headquarters and Conduct and Discipline Teams in the field has given positive results. All UN peacekeeping missions should also have an Office of Gender Affairs, which can work with other components of the mission e.g., Rule of Law, Police, child protection and HIV/AIDS units and ensure that adequate legal and social structures are put in place to prevent and address sexual and gender based violence issues and support victims.
• It is our impression that the UN takes this seriously, but there is still a lot to be done before we are satisfied that sufficiently robust measures are in place to prevent and react to sexual exploitation and abuse. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on is an important guidance in this respect.
• Increased recruitment of women as personnel in peace operations is a key factor in preventing future abuse. The troop contributing countries have a special responsibility in this regard. Twelve percent (12%) of the Norwegian troops deployed in Afghanistan are women. That means that the percentage of Norwegian female soldiers in Afghanistan is almost double of the percentage of women in our national defence forces. We take that as a positive sign, we need more women in international operations for many reasons.
• I also want to greet India going in front as a good example for the troop contributing countries; 125 Indian women have been trained to form an all-women team of United Nations peacekeepers — the U.N.'s first such peacekeeping group. The peacekeepers have already been deployed in Liberia, where their assistance is highly needed.

Why is implementation such a challenge?

• We are talking about complex conflict situations. About dealing with problems with a whole range of different means – military and civilian, short-term and long-term. We are talking about humanitarian efforts and aid.
• Even though the integration of a gender perspective in humanitarian assistance has been on the agenda for more than a decade, recent experience from the Tsunami, the Pakistani Earthquake and Darfur indicates that the humanitarian community has so far not succeded in doing this in a systematic way.
• It has become abundantly clear over the last few years that "gender blind" programming and implementation in practice means that the needs of women and girls are not sufficiently taken care of. Existing imbalances can only be overcome by assessing humanitarian needs through "gender lenses".
• The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) has now taken a very important initiative to rectify this dysfunction on the part of the humanitarian community, and has presented a five-point action plan that Norway supports fully. We will pursue the implementation of the plan in our continued work with humanitarian organisations.
• Gender programmes can only effectively feed into mainstreaming in operational programmes if they are combined with strong accountability measures .
• The transition from humanitarian aid in a crisis to development and reconstruction once peace has finally been made is critical. The newly established UNPeace Building Commission will strangthen our ability to coordinate efforts in the very critical phase of transition. The challenges now rests on this commission to ensure that the experiences as well as the rights and interests of women are given a prominent role.
• Norway is a member of the PBC and we are currently the biggest contributor to the Peacebulding Comission, with approxemately 30 million USD (200 mill.NOK). We intend to use our position to put gender equality high on the agenda.
• Let me give you one example of how we try to secure PBC’s focus on gender issues: Norway was actively engaged in the budget process for the Peace Building Support Office in the 5th committee, were we managed to get acceptance for our suggestion that the Office should include gender perspectives in their mandate. The mandate for the PBS Office now states that the Office is required to have the necessarily competence on gender issues to mainstream gender in their work.
• Furthermore, in accordance with our Action Plan, we have now managed to integrate SCR 1325 in the country strategy for Burundi. Norway will also allocate funding for the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 in Burundi and Sierra Leone.

Transitional justice is a key word in Liberia, and in other countries rebuilding after years and decades of conflict and war.

• Armed conflicts are generally characterised by grave and systematic human rights abuses, impunity and absence of accountability. Whether we are able to end impunity will also strongly influence how we are able to prevent future conflict. Transitional justice mechanisms provide tools for a society to grapple with a legacy of mass-atrocities and large-scale human rights abuses; such as prosecution of perpetrators, truth telling processes, reparation to victims and institutional reform.
• The aim of a transitional justice process is to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation.
• But what accountability if sexual violence goes unaccounted for? What justice if rape victims are given no redress and any time may run into their abuser in the street? What reconciliation if the suffering women have experienced is not brought forward or if women’s grievances are not met?
• It is decisive that we understand how a transitional justice process influence the lives of women – how it may strengthen their position – or undermine it. The use of traditional reconciliation mechanisms is a very relevant example in this regard. Many would tend to think that women prefer approaching traditional bodies. A survey made in Northern Uganda among the population in the extremely war effected area indicated that women were actually more hesitant than men towards the use of traditional mechanisms. One reason for this may be that women are subject to often patriarchal structures governing many traditional bodies and rituals for reconciliation.
• This knowledge is vital. We must not risk supporting structures that in reality undermines women’s part in the reconciliation process and we risk severely restricting their access to justice. If their trust and confidence is not placed in a body it will fail to the extent that it will only respond to the needs of the male population.
• A dramatic but regular consequence of armed conflicts is the breakdown of rule of law.
• In the re-establishment of legal order and rule of law women’s claims to justice must be accounted for. A main task in ending impunity is securing that women are given access to justice. Reform of police and the judiciary must secure that the institutions that are built are able and willing to be accountable for the effective protection of women’s human rights. The UN Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, CEDAW, as well as the standards and principles formulated in the UN Declaration on violence against women are core instruments in this work.
• Norway supported UNIFEM’s Gender Justice Programme in Liberia, and we will continue to support UNIFEM and other national and multilateral agencies that address women’s rights issues and strategies to increase gender equality. The Norwegian government’s commitment to deliver for women, and to work with both women and men to achieve that is reflected in next years budget and in our constant focus on the importance of this work.

Dialogue and process.

• We all gain from openness and debate on how we adress the challenges we face in the broader field of gender justice.
• Here in Norway, we have set up a consultative body consisting of an inter-ministerial working group, relevant directorates, research institutions and NGOs. This body will meet twice a year to exchange information, knowledge and experience of ongoing projects. Personally, I had the pleasure of chairing the first meeting which was held in June. This arena is of course only a supplement to the more regular contact the ministries different sections have with the different stake holders.
• Measurability is a challenge, and we need to give it some time before we can measure impact on the ground. Realities for people in conflict must always be our main focus. National Action plans are tools to implement SCR 1325 on the ground, for women and men, girls and boys who experience violence and armed conflict.

Thank you for listening,

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