S/PV.4208Resumption1 Security Council

The President: The next speaker inscribed on my list is the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Mozambique, Mr. Hipolito Patricio. On behalf of the Council, I welcome him. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Patricio (Mozambique): It gives me great pleasure to join previous speakers in congratulating Namibia on its assumption of the presidency of the Security Council and for the brilliant manner in which you, Mr. Minister, and your able Permanent Representative are conducting the work of the Security Council during the month of October. I wish to commend your initiative to convene this open debate on "Women and peace and security" on this very important day - United Nations Day. This debate is certainly an excellent occasion for us to once again join efforts and exchange views on the search for appropriate and concerted actions. It is also an opportunity to delineate adequate follow-up procedures to implement the decisions taken and the recommendations made during the Millennium Summit and the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled "Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century", with a View to ensuring the more active participation of women in the promotion of peace and security worldwide. Peace and security will continue to be the major concern of humanity in the new millennium, as conflicts continue to grow and devastate many parts of the world. Women and girls are vulnerable both in time of peace and in time of war, due to the profound gender inequalities that still characterize our societies. It is estimated that 80 per cent of internally displaced persons and refugees are women and children. Women and girls are also victims of rape, domestic violence, sexual exploitation, trafficking, sexual humiliation and mutilation. The reversal of this situation requires from all of us great political will and determination to fulfil our commitments with regard to all decisions and recommendations relating to the protection and promotion of the rights of women. As stated by our heads of State and Government, assembled here at the Millennium Summit, "No individual and no nation must be denied the opportunity to benefit from development. The equal rights and opportunities of women and men must be assured". (A/RES/55/2, para. 6) Against this background, women must play a role of relevance in conflict prevention, the resolution of disputes, peacekeeping, post-conflict peace-building and the reconstruction process, and development. In this regard, my delegation appreciates the dedication shown by United Nations bodies such as the Department for Disarmament Affairs and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which, in close collaboration with the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, are joining efforts to ensure the participation of women in the promotion of peace and security, as stated this morning by Ms. King and Ms. Heyzer. We also commend the leadership role that the Secretary- General has provided throughout the United Nations system on the advancement of women, which he reconfirmed in his statement today. We very much appreciate the decision by the Government of Namibia to host the seminar on "Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations", organized by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The seminar adopted the Windhoek Declaration and the Namibia Plan of Action, documents that identify actions to be taken to ensure that a gender perspective is adopted in all multidimensional operations in support of peace. In order to protect and promote the rights of women, including their involvement in maintaining peace and security, the Government of Mozambique adopts political, social, and economic policies which envisage gender perspectives in all spheres of activity. This is done in conformity with our Constitution and the many international legal instruments and declarations that have been incorporated into our internal laws, including the 1995 Beijing and Copenhagen Declarations. The Government has committed itself to increasing the effectiveness of all regional and international legal instruments to which it is a party, through reviewing national legislation. Accordingly, in close cooperation with civil society, the Government has embarked on the process of reviewing national legislation aimed at incorporating into our internal laws the main provisions contained in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and other related international and regional instruments. The Government has also been taking action to increase awareness of women's rights in Mozambican society. As part of this process, a national debate is taking place on the review of the law of the family, in which women from different social groups and religious backgrounds are actively participating in order to express and defend their rights on such matters as marriage and related issues. To enhance the institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women, the Government has established a Ministry of Women and Coordination of Social Affairs, which coordinates the activities of an operative group, including Government officials and representatives from civil society and academia, whose objective it is to supervise and enhance the implementation of policies and programmes for the advancement of women. The participation of women in leadership and decision-making has also been encouraged by the Government. For instance, representation of women in Parliament increased from 65 to 80 between 1995 and 2000, out of a total of 250 Members of Parliament. At the executive level, the number of women increased from one minister and four vice-ministers to three ministers and five vice-ministers. The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the United Nations Children's Fund, is promoting access to education for the girl child so that women will be able to take their rightful position in society. In the context of the implementation of the Government's Action Plan for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty, for the period 2000-2004, the role of women is being underlined as a matter of priority, with special attention being paid to women in rural areas and to women as heads of family. Women are also accorded priority among vulnerable groups with regard to HIV infection and the impact that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is having in the country. For that reason, they deserve special attention in the context of the national response to the epidemic, a response that is being led by the Government, with the participation of various social groups, through the implementation of the National Strategic Plan to Combat HIV/AIDS. The implementation of these policies and programmes is enabling the protection of the rights of women and their participation at all levels in the national reconstruction process and in social development. In order to defend and promote their rights, Mozambican women are organizing various specialized associations, and they are also members of international women's organizations. Earlier this month they organized various rallies and marches throughout the country as part of the 2000 World Women's March. In the capital city, Maputo, thousands of women and men participated in a march that culminated in a big rally where they conveyed to His Excellency Joaquim Chissano, President of the Republic of Mozambique, their demand for the protection of women's rights and protested against domestic Violence. Durable peace and security will be obtained only if all peace-loving nations dedicate themselves to tackling the root causes of conflict in the world. One of them - for developing countries, the most urgent - is the eradication of poverty. This noble task requires the commitment of all international and national actors, including women. In Mozambique and many other African countries, women have played, and still play, an important role in looking for urgent ways to bring about durable solutions to the conflicts still prevailing. They are always at the forefront of peace and economic development in Africa and all over the world. Women and girls need to have greater access to education, employment and social and political participation in this noble endeavour to maintain peace and security. In the Southern African Development Community (SADC), we also develop and implement programmes that enhance women's participation in the process of economic cooperation and integration, following the guidelines of the Beijing and Copenhagen Declarations as well as of the recent Millennium Declaration. It is now time for all of us to translate commitments already made into concrete action. In conclusion, we commend the Security Council for its initiative and urge it to continue its endeavour to ensure that all concerned refrain from human rights abuses in conflict situations - particularly abuses of women and children, as highlighted in Ms. Graca Machel's report - respect international law and promote non-violent forms of conflict resolution and a culture of peace.

The President: I thank the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Mozambique for his kind words addressed to Namibia. I should like to inform the Council that I have received a letter from the representative of Nepal in which he requests to be invited to participate in the discussion of the item on the Council's agenda. In accordance with the usual practice, I propose, with the consent of the Council, to invite that representative to participate in the discussion, without the right to vote, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter and rule 37 of the Council's provisional rules of procedure. At the invitation of the President, Mr. Sharma (Nepal) took the seat reserved for him at the side ofthe Council Chamber. The President: The next speaker inscribed on my list is the representative of Egypt. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Aboulgheit (Egypt) (spoke in Arabic): At the outset, I should like to express my delegation's deep appreciation to you, Sir, and to your sisterly country, Namibia. I also wish to emphasize Egypt's full commitment to and support for all efforts to protect and advance women, as well as to foster their participation in all fields of peacemaking. Before touching on the subject under discussion, I should like to stress Egypt's firm position, which we have stated time and again before this Council, with regard to the need to place the protection of women and children in armed conflict in the broader context of the protection of all civilians. In this connection, I also wish to make two main points that should be taken into account when the Council deals with humanitarian issues. The first is the need for the Council to deal with these subjects in an atmosphere of full respect for the delicate balances among the main organs of the United Nations, as specified in the Charter, particularly the inherent role vested in the General Assembly, in addition to other United Nations bodies and organizations outside, whether governmental or non- governmental, whose main task is the protection of the civilian population. The second point is the pivotal principle that implementation of international humanitarian law should not contradict the need to respect and carry out the provisions of the Charter. We welcome and support the Council's readiness to respond to cases where civilians are targeted and where humanitarian assistance is deliberately blocked. Yet this should be Viewed only in line with Chapter VII of the Charter and Article 39 thereof. In cases where the Council fails to exercise its responsibilities for reasons that go beyond the topic under discussion, we should always consider the viability of benefiting from General Assembly resolution 377 (V), on Uniting for Peace, in this connection. Last June, for the first time, the United Nations witnessed the largest international gathering - governmental and non-governmental - in five years. It was designed to emphasize political commitment towards enhancing the role of women and achieving the goals of equality, development and peace for all women of the world, through the General Assembly special session held to follow up on the implementation of the recommendations of the Fourth World Conference on Women. We, the participants in the special session, pledged to leave no stone unturned in order to elevate the status of women and to preserve their rights, stemming basically from human rights. The international community has recognized the need to take care of women and support gender equality in order to achieve development, peace and security. When we deny women the right to justice and participation in all aspects of socio-economic, cultural and political life, we are actually delaying desired development and prosperity. We are also reducing chances forjust peace throughout the world. Egypt believes in the need for the Security Council to perform its role in solving disputes and conflicts that threaten international peace and security, in a comprehensive and integrated manner, while addressing their root causes, so that the worsening of such conflicts would not lead to further hostilities among the parties to the conflict or to horrendous humanitarian conditions, such as the displacement or eviction of populations or their fleeing to neighbouring States. Hence the derogation of the sanctity of civilians, particularly women and children, and the entry into endless vicious cycles of Violence. Violence against women constitutes a main obstacle to achieving the goals of equality, development and peace. Undoubtedly, the violations to which women are subjected when caught in the heat of armed conflict, such as murder, rape, slavery, forced conception, torture and arbitrary detention are among the most glaring manifestations of civilizational backwardness and run counter to the simplest meaning of humanity. Consequently, Egypt calls for the pursuit of an effective policy to integrate the gender perspective within public policies and private programmes dealing with conflict and post-conflict periods, in order to enhance women's status at all times and under all conditions. While recognizing the important role undertaken by women in preventing and settling disputes and in peace-building, we emphasize the need to adopt swiftly specific, practical measures that would encourage women's equal participation, as well as achieving equal opportunity in terms of their contribution to all activities relating to peace. This is particularly so in cases of decision-making, mediation, diplomatic negotiation and preventive negotiation. The role of women is important in the course of armed conflict and deterioration of societies through their preservation of social order. Their role is equally important in post-conflict periods, with their resolve and efforts to foster stability, peace and development. We cannot ignore the achievements made by women in all walks of life. They have rightfully and deservedly proven themselves to be an effective and productive element, taking decisions in our societies. Last but not least, I wish to touch upon the deteriorating situation of Palestinian women under the yoke of occupation. We give highest importance and attention to this matter in my country. Women are suffering from manifestations of violence, suppression, despotism and injustice. They also feel bereaved on account of the loss of their husbands, brothers, children - wiped out, regrettably, by the bullets of the Israeli forces, putting aside any political, international or even ethical obligations on this score. While we are discussing today the means for protecting women in armed conflict, as well as enhancing their role and participation in post-conflict time, we cannot ignore the appeals for dignity and succour launched by Palestinian women who live under the most severe inhuman conditions, conditions troubling to the world's conscience. Hence our delegation calls upon the Security Council to discuss the conditions of women under occupation, by identifying the Israeli agents who Violate the simplest rules of international law and human rights and the protection of humankind, with a view to trying them for acts of blatant injustice and unjustified Violence they have perpetrated against the Palestinian people. This will prove the Council's seriousness and will foster its credibility when it tackles humanitarian matters that may threaten international peace and security. There should be no double standards in dealing with such matters in the future.

The President: I thank the representative of Egypt for his kind words addressed to Namibia. The next speaker inscribed on my list is the representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whom I invite to take a seat at the Council table and make his statement.

Mr. Ileka (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (spoke in French): My delegation is very pleased to see presiding over the Security Council the leading diplomat of a friendly country, Namibia, with which the Democratic Republic of the Congo has excellent, long-standing relations marked by mutual confidence and esteem. I congratulate you, Mr. President, on having devoted today's meeting of the Council to the issue of women and peace and security. I also sincerely thank the Secretary-General, the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women and the Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) for their significant contributions this morning to the discussion, which is part of the momentum generated by the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, "Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century". That special session was a unique opportunity to marshal the efforts to reaffirm and ensure implementation of the commitments made at the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. These commitments were strengthened by the adoption of the Political Declaration and new measures and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, through which the General Assembly, as part of its effort to achieve a more just society, stressed in particular that peace is indissolubly linked to equality between women and men, as well as to development. My delegation is pleased that during the celebration of International Women's Day, the Security Council, in its presidential statement of 8 March 2000, stressed the complex links between peace, gender equality and the need for women to participate fully in all efforts to prevent and resolve conflicts. This recognition of women as an equal partner in the prevention of war could be considered a very significant step. However, a great deal remains to be done to recognize fully the role of women in peacekeeping and peace-building. My delegation supports the Windhoek Declaration and the Namibia Plan of Action, adopted last May, because they are valuable documents that should be applied, particularly in the implementation of the Brahimi report, in order to enhance effectiveness. It is absolutely essential that initiatives aimed at resolving conflicts and consolidating peace take into consideration women's concerns, experience and perspective. My delegation dares to hope that the organs of the United Nations will be able to incorporate these concerns and work to promote increased awareness of the capacities of women, in particular those affected by armed conflicts, as well as their ability to contribute to the promotion of a gender perspective in all peace-building activities. Women must be involved in the conflict-prevention and conflict-resolution mechanisms so that they can give humankind the benefit of their ability to build consensus, resolve conflicts and build peace. There can be neither equality nor development without peace and justice. Here I should remind the international community, through the Security Council, the principal United Nations body charged with the maintenance of international peace and security, that my country is the target of aggression by a coalition of armed forces from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, in flagrant violation of the Charter of the United Nations. This conflict, with its attendant violence, continues to create enormous movements of internally displaced persons and refugees, the vast majority of whom are women and children. One result of these exoduses is to increase considerably the poverty of the civilian population. Women and children are the main victims of this senseless, unjust war, which has done such harm to all aspects of life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The education sector has been particularly affected. The war has prevented many Congolese from pursuing a normal education programme. However, it has been proved that for a developing country such as ours schooling allows women to preserve their health and that of their families, plan their pregnancies and participate in the political, social and economic life of their country. Therefore, to deprive women of education is to do a kind of violence to them. Women and children have also been the object of attacks on the civilian population by the regular armies of Uganda and Rwanda during their three ruthless actions against Kisangani to expropriate the underground wealth of this region - not only gold and diamonds, but above all niobium. Though extremely rare in the earth as a whole, this metal is found in relatively large quantities in the eastern province. It is used in some alloys to strengthen armour plating and spacecraft. This war has destroyed all the country's efforts to rebuild and revive its economy, efforts that could in particular lift women and the whole Congolese population out of the indescribable poverty in which they now find themselves. Today close to 80 per cent of the Congolese population is living in absolute poverty. Worse than the poverty is the inhuman and degrading ill-treatment of Congolese women by armed elements of the aggressor countries, which have made such ill-treatment a means of waging war. Women have been massacred, as they were last year, during the week of 15-22 November 1999, in Mwenga, where the Arme'e patriotiqne rwandaise, assisted by armed elements of the Rassemblement congolais pour la de'mocratie, buried women alive, as ordered by their commander, Kasereka. Those women's crime: trying to resist the mass rape that the aggressors were getting ready to commit. Their punishment: they were bled white, their bodies coated with pepper, which was then inserted into all their bodily orifices - their eyes, their mouths, their noses, their ears and their genitals- before being thrown into a common grave. In addition to the incident in Mwenga, many cases of violations of women's rights have been recorded and denounced in white papers issued by my Government and in various reports of the Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr. Garreton, the most recent of which revealed many cases of imprisonment of militant feminists, of the rape and beating of high school students for requesting the validation of their exams, and of rape of women prisoners. The criminal, barbaric and inhumane practice of mass rape is also responsible for the spread of HIV/AIDS. This scourge has ceased to be simply a health problem in my country. With its tragic consequences, it now has a worrying effect on development. AIDS is a significant obstacle to progress and national development. It was estimated at the end of 1999 that 1,100,000 adults and children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo had been infected with this fatal virus. Children orphaned by the disease are estimated to number 800,000, of whom 450,000 are still alive. In the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo - the part occupied by Ugandan troops - in the space of two years the prevalence of AIDS has increased from 4.5 per cent, the national average, to 22 per cent. In other words, it has increased by five times. The catastrophe looming on the horizon is attributed to sexual contacts with Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers, who come from countries where the disease is widespread. Besides AIDS, it is worth noting here the resurgence of diseases such as malaria, now responsible for 500,000 deaths a year, many of which are of children under five years of age. The national maternal mortality rate is 1,837 deaths per 100,000 births, compared with 3,000 in the occupied provinces, which is one of the highest rates in the world. On 9 June the American non-governmental organization, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), announced that at least 1,700,000 people, out of a population of 20 million, in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo had died since 1 January 1999 as a result of combat and the breakdown of infrastructures. In the village of Moba, Katanga, alone, 47 per cent of infants under one year of age have died since 2 August 1998. Throughout this area, to escape the Violence, people are fleeing into the forest, where, completely neglected, they are dying of malaria. It would be useful for the international community to get accurate figures of the number of people who have died, directly and indirectly, in the fighting throughout our national territory, and to study the impact of these deaths on the Congolese family. Congolese women have lost their lives, husbands, sons, daughters, brothers and fathers in this absurd war, which for three years now has allowed Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda to outrage the entire world with impunity. It is obvious that Congolese women are directly involved in the promotion of peace in their country. Their search for a liberating peace should be supported by all the members of the Security Council, because the restoration of peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will help Congolese women to pursue their struggle against poverty and all forms of Violence against them. The Council must assist them in achieving this goal by denouncing the war of aggression and discouraging all those countries involved in the war against my country, which dehumanizes Congolese women. Given that the Council has asked my Government and the other parties to demonstrate their commitment to peace in the weeks to come, it has no right to withdraw from the peace process; rather, it should mobilize as it did so well in Kosovo, in East Timor and, more recently, in the crisis in the Middle East. My delegation can in no way believe that, on 15 December, the international community will decide to withdraw from the search for peace in my country because powerful and differing interests do not wish it to be restored there. If it were to do so, the international community would be abandoning millions of Congolese citizens, men and women, to their sad fate and to the schemes of those who were so recently lauded as a new breed of leader in Africa. Abandoning us would mean not helping people at risk. It is inconceivable and unimaginable that the Governments of people who claim to be steeped in humanism and to respect human rights could even consider taking such an attitude. In conclusion, let me reiterate what my delegation has continuously stated to a world dedicated to peace and justice. My delegation wants the entire world to understand that the men, women and children of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are tired of a war of aggression that is futile and stupid. My people want and seek peace. They want to live in a Democratic Republic of the Congo that is strong and united, enjoying full sovereignty and territorial integrity. They want to live in understanding with the peoples of the nine States bordering my country. My Government is open to any proposal or initiative aimed at putting a speedy end to the barbaric bloodshed that has engulfed the entire Great Lakes region. Whether it comes via the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, as amended by resolution 1304 (2000), in which the Security Council demanded that Uganda and Rwanda, which have violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, withdraw all their forces from the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo without further delay; Via direct negotiations between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and aggressor countries; or via direct negotiations between the Government and our Congolese brothers who have chosen to resolve their differences by violence, the main thing is that we should be able to work together to achieve a lasting peace for the entire region. Such a peace could be guaranteed by the international community through an international conference to address the thorny problems of law and order in the region and to consider what is needed to achieve peace and sustainable development throughout the region, so that the underlying and immediate causes of the disaster overwhelming our subcontinent can be eliminated once and for all. Given their rich social, cultural and ethnic diversity, the peoples of our subregion deserve such a peace. They are entitled to peace, without which any hope for human dignity, for the advancement of women, for wellbeing and for development would be futile and compromised.

The President: I thank the representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for his kind words addressed to my country and to me. The next speaker inscribed on my list is the representative of South Africa. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Kumalo (South Africa): I thank you, Sir, for conducting this meeting today. I know that, in the next few days, you will be returning home to a warm, sunny Namibia - for a while, I hope - and I just want to pay tribute to you and to tell you before this body that you have made us proud to be people of southern Africa and, more importantly, to be Africans. Your stewardship in the General Assembly and in this body has made us keep the faith that things could, indeed, get better. I thank you very, very much for everything you have done for us during your term of visit in New York. In our commitment to dealing with conflicts in a comprehensive manner, including addressing the root causes of conflicts, we must acknowledge that the widespread exclusion of women from political and economic decision-making is a significant obstacle to the realization of sustainable global peace and security. In other words, and as was so concisely summed up in a very powerful and simple statement in the final declaration of the All-Party Burundi Women's Peace Conference, held in Arusha from 17 to 20 July 2000, "women's rights are human rights". The significance of women's active contributions to South Africa's liberation and their relevance to today's debate go far beyond South Africa, our subregion and even our continent. Indeed, for South Africa and the rest of us in the region of the Southern African Development Community, this topic has special relevance, bearing in mind the critical and essential roles played by women in our struggles for liberation from colonization, apartheid, conflict and repression. These women, and many others elsewhere in the world, have demonstrated that women have an indispensable social, political and economic role to play in bringing about sustainable peace and security. It was for this reason that, on 9 August this year, at our National Women's Day celebrations, the South African President dedicated a monument in tribute to the role played by women in shaping a democratic, non-racist and non-sexist South Africa. In that ceremony, President Mbeki unveiled the portraits of courageous and dedicated women leaders, such as Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Raheema Moosa and Sophie de Bruyn. These leaders were at the forefront of the struggle for a just society in South Africa. We pay special tribute to them for their role in leading the mass defiance campaigns against apartheid legislation and to the many unsung heroines of that struggle, which culminated in 1956 with a march by tens of thousands of women to Pretoria. Thanks to the positive examples and contributions of pioneering leaders such as these, South Africa is today committed to achieving and sustaining equal participation and representation of women in our Parliament and Government, which currently stand at about 30 per cent. It is true that, in today's conflicts, it is civilians, and women and children in particular, who bear the brunt of gross abuses of human rights. There is another dimension, however, and we need to move beyond the limited approach of portraying women solely as victims in conflicts. For all societies in this world, and more so for societies in conflict, women play a key role in sustaining both the family and the wider community. In many developing countries, our communities are fracturing under the combined weight of internecine conflicts, poverty, communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, mass urbanization, economic restructuring and other effects of globalization. More often than not, it is the working women who must quite literally put bread on the table and hold families together. Given the central role that women play in the social, political and economic development of our societies, it is morally right and logical that the full realization of equal political and economic rights for women must be treated as an essential component of our collective approach to preventing and resolving conflicts. In Africa, where there are already signs that there is a political and economic revival, it is clear that women have played, must play and will continue to play a full role in the renaissance of our continent. Anything less, therefore, would be short-sighted, and despite our best intentions, our collective commitment to address the root causes of conflicts will come to naught unless women are afforded an equal role. In her address to the General Assembly on 13 September 2000, South Africa's Foreign Minister, Ms. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, said, "The founders of the United Nations based the Charter on the assertion of human dignity, human rights and the equality of women and men and the aim of promoting better social standards. (A/55/PV.]3, p.]]) The equality of women and men still remains a subject of great concern. All we need to do is look around this Hall to realize how far we are from realizing the vision of the founding Members of the United Nations. Secondly, the feminization of poverty is a big problem. The marginalization of women, both in their countries and in the multilateral forums, means that our countries and organizations, including the United Nations, are functioning at half-capacity and are deprived of the unique qualities, energies and creativity that women would bring." (ibid., p.12) We have all already agreed that the root causes of conflict are poverty, disease, lack of education, lack of human and political rights and a lack of economic opportunity and justice. We must now equally agree that we cannot adequately address these problems if we exclude over half of humanity from enjoying these rights. Neither can we do so if we continue to prevent womankind from participating in the process of finding and implementing solutions. As a minimum, we suggest that we must pay special attention to the impact of armed conflicts on the rights of women and girls and promote and implement specific strategies to protect and assist women and girls in armed conflicts. We must promote strategies that maximize women's participation in domestic, regional and international conflict prevention, management and resolution initiatives. The United Nations must set an example by making sure women are represented adequately at all decision- -making levels. In addition, we must promote and strengthen women's participation in comprehensive post- conflict peace- building initiatives, including in such areas as electoral, constitutional, legal and judicial reforms. In conclusion, let me say that it is my delegation's hope that today's debate in the Security Council will strengthen existing efforts in the United Nations system, including in the General Assembly and in the relevant United Nations agencies, to improve the status of women globally. My delegation would like to express its profound thanks to the presidency of the Council for this month for placing the issue of women and peace and security on the agenda. We also welcome the transparent and participatory approach adopted by the presidency this month in arranging today's debate. The imaginative use of the Arria formula to hold yesterday's consultations between Council members and non-State actors from international women's rights organizations and other human rights organizations is further welcome, as they have much to offer our deliberations and decisions. This is further evidence of the positive trend towards the adoption of more open working methods and procedures in the Security Council. We indeed appreciate that.

The President: I thank the representative of South Africa for his kind words addressed to the Namibian delegation and to me. The next speaker is the representative of Liechtenstein. I invite her to take a seat at the Council table and to make her statement.

Mrs. Fritsche (Liechtenstein): At the outset, I wish to express my delegation's gratitude and satisfaction to you, Mr. President, and to the Government of Namibia for organizing today's open debate on women and peace and security. You have, in addition, chosen 24 October, United Nations Day, for this debate, thereby underscoring the commitment of the Security Council to pay special attention to the role of women in preventive diplomacy, armed conflict, peacekeeping and peace-building. I would also like to thank Angela King and Noeleen Heyzer for their thought-provoking statements and the suggestions contained therein. The United Nations engagement in peace operations has evolved from peacekeeping in its traditional sense towards multidimensional peace support operations. Despite this, the gender considerations in peace processes have not been adequately addressed. A full understanding of the impact of armed conflict on women and girls is necessary in order to effectively promote and maintain international peace and security. Women and children constitute a disproportionate number of civilians affected by armed conflict. An estimated 80 per cent of all internally displaced persons and refugees are women and children. During armed conflict, women and girls are threatened by rape, sexual exploitation, trafficking and sexual humiliation. Every setting presents risks, whether at home, while fleeing or in camps for displaced persons. Sexual violence has devastating effects on the life of women and children, ranging from sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS to humiliation and trauma. Humanitarian assistance in armed conflict should therefore include psychosocial and reproductive health services, and relief workers have to be trained to respond to needs of victims of sexual violence. My delegation would welcome the establishment of systems for reporting on sexual violence, abuse, exploitation and trafficking of women and girls within military and civilian populations, to be followed by enforcement and monitoring mechanisms for peacekeeping personnel. It is, in our view, also necessary to establish disciplinary and oversight mechanisms in all peace support missions. Peacekeeping personnel must meet the highest standards of conduct. Training in international human rights and humanitarian law, including gender training and instruction on their responsibility towards civilian communities, should be an integral part of the preparatory process. We all know that Violations against women and children have also been committed by United Nations personnel. These offences must be investigated and the offenders punished. The authorization or perpetration of sexual violence during armed conflict constitutes a violation of international law. If these violations happen on a large scale or as a matter of policy, they constitute a crime against humanity. Historic precedents have been set by the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. These Tribunals have, for the first time in history, punished sexual violence in a civil war and have classified rape as an act of genocide. My delegation is very gratified at the fact that the Statute of the International Criminal Court will have the potential to protect and promote the human rights of women and girls. The Statute also addresses trauma counselling, rehabilitation and compensation to the victims of war crimes and calls for gender and child-sensitive court procedures. Although the contribution of women in peace- building, peacemaking and conflict resolution is being increasingly recognized, the role of women in preventive diplomacy has so far been very limited. The Secretary-General's strategic plan of action (A/49/587) calls for an increase in the participation of women at decision-making levels in conflict resolution and peace processes. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action stress the need for an increased participation of women in conflict resolution at decision-making levels. The Beijing + 5 outcome document, inter alia, encourages the involvement of women in decision- making at all levels and the achievement of gender balance in the appointment of women and men with full respect for the principle of equitable geographical distribution, including as special envoys and special representatives and the performance of good offices on behalf of the Secretary-General, in matters relating to peacekeeping, peace-building, and in operational activities. The women Ambassadors to the United Nations began to address this problem in 1996 by establishing and updating a list of female candidates, and we intend to continue our efforts to considerably enhance the role of women in preventive diplomacy. In this context, my delegation welcomes the Windhoek Declaration, issued on the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group, which proposes that an advisory board should be set up within the Department of Peacekeeping Operations to ensure that a comprehensive database as well as existing lists of female candidates be given due consideration. My delegation is furthermore of the opinion that gender issues need to be mainstreamed into the actions that will result from this debate and, in particular, also in the implementation of the recommendations contained in the Brahimi report, which lacks a chapter on gender. Every attempt towards democratization and peace-building must be based on fundamental values, including the principles of gender equality. Women must therefore be participants in all peace processes and at any stage of these processes. Today's debate is a concrete step towards realizing this goal.

The President: I thank the representative of Liechtenstein for her kind words addressed to Namibia. The next speaker on my list is the representative of Singapore. I invite him to take a seat at the Council and to make his statement.

Mr. Mahbubani (Singapore): Mr. President, few leaders have had the honour and distinction of presiding over both the General Assembly and the Security Council in the same year. You belong to a small, distinguished league. I am confident that your unique experiences with both the key organs of the United Nations will result in an unusually productive month in the Council. The decision of Namibia to place the issue of the role of women in peace and security on the Council's agenda reflects Namibia's keen awareness of the impact of peace and security issues upon women. We are equally pleased that the discussion will not be one- dimensional. It will not reflect just women's traditional role as victims of war but also, more recently, as key victors in several peace processes. The role of women has changed significantly in the twentieth century, and the Council should recognize this. Clearly, over the course of human history, more men than women have died in armed conflict. But women have also suffered in countless ways. Mothers grieve when they lose sons in battle; so do wives when they lose husbands. We saw this most recently in Bosnia when men were separated from women and brutally slaughtered. Women have also suffered more directly. Over the ages, in armed conflicts women have been victims of direct and immediate physical injury that involve rape, forced prostitution, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, abduction and even slaughter. Women also make up the majority of refugee and internally displaced populations that result from the outbreak of conflicts. Downstream consequences of sexual violations, loss of male family members and eviction from their homes impose incalculable burdens on women, and these may last several years after the end of conflict. Clearly, these barbaric practices must come to an end. One of the greatest contributions of the twentieth century the clear spelling out of the norms that should govern armed conflict. But as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) recently observed, "If women are subject to so many of the tragic repercussions of armed conflict, it is not from any shortcoming in the rules protecting them, but rather because the laws are not observed. International humanitarian law grants wide-ranging protection to women. There are more than 560 articles in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, which protect both women and men, as civilians, and also as combatants who have fallen into enemy hands. Among these, more than 40 are of specific concern to women." The tragedy we face today is that these norms were written on the assumption that armed conflict would take place between well-trained and well- disciplined armies which could be schooled in the rules of war. Unfortunately many combatants today are young and lack the basic rudiments of education. In a speech to the Council in April this year, we quoted from a booklet published by the ICRC entitled, "International humanitarian law: Answers to your questions": "The lack of discipline among belligerents, the arming of the civilian population as weapons flood the territory and the increasingly blurred distinction between combatants and non- combatants often cause confrontations to take an extremely brutal turn, in which there is little place for the rules of law." Realistically, we could do little at this stage to try to educate such combatants on the civilized rules of war. The only solution is for the international community to deliver robust responses when major infractions take place. This is too large a subject to be covered in this debate. But we are pleased that the Summit meeting of the Council endorsed in general the Brahimi report. If the Council can now follow through with deeds that match its words, all victims of armed conflict, women as well as men and children, will benefit enormously. The resolve of the international community to tackle the issue of impunity should be demonstrated by meting out swift and effective justice to those who violate universally accepted norms. Indeed, the death penalty would be both an appropriate judicial response and a key deterrent to prevent a recurrence. The International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which the Council established in response to the widespread violations of international humanitarian law, have done much good work. Unfortunately, many key perpetrators remain unapprehended. Many have not even had charges filed against them. The wheels ofjustice have to be seen to be moving more swiftly if they are to provide any deterrence at all. One major change between the second half of the twentieth century and earlier times was the growing recognition that women can play an effective role in ending or resolving conflict. You expressed this well, Mr. President, when you addressed the gathering on the occasion of International Women's Day on 8 March this year: "Women know intimately the horrific warfare and bloodshed that they face daily in conflict zones, but they also know the conditions that need to be met to ensure that the peace in their countries is sustainable, equitable and just. Women and children are the first Victims of conflicts. Is it any wonder, then, that women are uniting to end the conflicts that destroy the lives of their loved ones, as well as of their communities? Women are half of every community. Are they, therefore, not also half of every solution?" (GA/SM/157) The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) should be commended for highlighting the significant contributions women have made towards both achieving and consolidating peace. In this regard, we also commend both Ms. Noeleen Heyzer and Ms. Angela King for the excellent statements they made earlier today. I would also recommend that we read carefully UNIFEM's publication entitled "Women at the Peace Table: Making a Difference". It has captured well many examples of the achievements of women all over the world in fostering the conditions for peace and stability. I will cite a few examples. In South Africa, women formed a strong Women's National Coalition that cut across racial, social and political lines, contributing in no small measure to South Africa's success in establishing a democratic Government today. In Northern Ireland, another women's coalition, the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, which drew its membership from both the Catholic and Protestant communities, also succeeded in galvanizing the grassroots and securing a seat at the peace table. In Guatemala, women's voices and visibility in the peace process were achieved again through the existence of a cross-party and cross- sectoral women's coalition. The exertions of their sisters in Georgia, Palestine and Cambodia, often in difficult and even hostile environments, have also led to positive outcomes. This morning we saw a video presentation of the determination of the women of Burundi and elsewhere in their efforts to contribute to the peace process. Their courage should set an example for us all. Having praised the contributions of women towards peace, I hope that I will be forgiven for introducing a slightly politically incorrect note. It is true that women have often sought peace. But it is also true that women have on occasion displayed equal propensity to encourage human rights violations. When they were not in positions of leadership, women have sometimes, as wives, supported and participated in the evil deeds of their husbands. As some of those present may be mystified by these comments, let me explain that we in South-East Asia have had direct experience of this, as some of the wives of the Khmer Rouge leaders were as brutal as their husbands during the genocide in Cambodia. Lady Macbeth was certainly no solitary exception. As we reflect on this issue, we may have to acknowledge that neither vice nor virtue is gender based, nor is it confined to young or old. In considering how we can better harness the potential of women playing a role in enhancing peace and security, we should therefore be honest and realistic. In not all situations have women marched for peace. Some have marched for war. We see this on our CNN screens occasionally. To achieve real peace and security, we must gain the commitment of both men and women to enhance peace. To our mind, the surest way of developing and sustaining peace is to make all citizens of the society stakeholders in peace. For this reason, development issues cannot be divorced from peace. Those who live in abject poverty, as many do, have no vested interest in pursuing peace if peace fails to uplift them. The temptation to loot, pillage, rape and murder grows more acute when there is little to lose. But a population that believes that tomorrow will be better than today will be more inclined to pursue peace. Peace and development should therefore be seen as two sides of the same coin. Both women and men can and should play an equally important role.

The President: I thank the representative of Singapore for his kind words addressed to me and my delegation.

Mr. Ahmad (Pakistan): I first express our appreciation to you, Mr. President, for convening today's open debate on an important subject of interest to all of us. We are particularly pleased to see you, as Foreign Minister of a great country, Namibia, preside over this Security Council meeting only a few weeks after the Millennium Summit, which owed its success to your diplomatic skills and true qualities of a freedom fighter. We all have a shared concern about the plight of women in armed conflicts. This is an issue that has not received adequate attention from the international community. We therefore view the present initiative as an important opportunity to reflect on issues concerning the protection of women in conflict situations and their role in conflict resolution, conflict prevention and peace-building. The issues raised in the background paper circulated by Ambassador Andjaba and the elements proposed for incorporation in the draft resolution which - we are happy about the change in working methods - will be considered by the Security Council this afternoon, on the subject of women and peace and security, are most pertinent. However, their detailed consideration and implementation cannot be the exclusive responsibility of the Security Council. The Council can focus on some aspects that fall within its domain. In fact, most of the issues covered in the background paper are currently being discussed in the Economic and Social Council and other relevant bodies of the General Assembly. So, instead of duplicating our efforts, we must focus our attention on strengthening the existing mechanisms. Each organ of the United Nations has its own defined sphere of responsibilities that must be respected. Mr. Andjaba took the Chair. We all know that the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action contain comprehensive recommendations on women and armed conflicts. Unfortunately, there is less enthusiasm about ensuring implementation of the relevant provisions of the Beijing Declaration. There is a need to ensure their early and effective implementation. It would not be prudent to start the process anew at a forum that does not have the mandate to deal with all the relevant issues in a comprehensive manner. Having said that, my delegation notes with concern that during the last decade the number of conflicts has increased manifold. So has the devastation that has been inflicted upon civilian populations around the world, particularly women, children and the elderly. In recent years a number of United Nations reports have highlighted the suffering of women and children in armed conflicts. This catalogue of Violations of human rights and international humanitarian law is an affront to humanity. Violence against women has taken on myriad shapes and forms, including sexual slavery, rape, systematic rape, sexual abuse and forced pregnancies. Displacement compounded by the loss of home and property, poverty, family disintegration, separation and other consequences of armed conflict is severely affecting target populations, especially women and children. Girls are also abducted or recruited, in violation of international law, into situations of armed conflict, including as combatants, sexual slaves or providers of domestic services. The recommendations contained in various reports on Violence against women and children should be implemented to improve their plight in conflict situations. Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that "All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law." (General Assembly resolution 217 A (110) Article 55, subparagraph (c), of the Charter stresses "universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion." The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women is a giant step towards protection of the rights of women against all forms of violence. Unfortunately, civilians are subjected to enormous suffering despite the existence of comprehensive international legal instruments. Violations of the rights of women in conflict situations are indeed Violations of fundamental human rights and principles of international humanitarian law. Respect for these legal instruments needs to be ensured by all the Member States of the United Nations through intergovernmental processes. It cannot be imposed from outside, nor can it be subjected to any imaginary so-called international standards. It is unfortunate that rape is used as a tactical weapon of war to humiliate and weaken the morale of the perceived enemy. This pernicious weapon is used to terrorize a population or to force civilians to flee, as has recently been practised in the territory of the former Yugoslavia - particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Croatia - and in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Even today, rape is being used as a weapon of war against innocent women and girls in Jammu and Kashmir, where people are struggling for their right to self-determination. Amnesty International catalogued such incidents in Jammu and Kashmir as early as 1993, highlighting that "rape and ill-treatment of women are usually reported to have taken place during counter- insurgency operations". In Afghanistan the reluctance on the part of the international community to engage in the country's reconstruction and rehabilitation process continues to compound the suffering of the civilian population, particularly that of women and girls. Apparently, there is a cultural bias when it comes to dealing with the problems and issues relating to the womenfolk in Afghanistan. Instead of measures to address their genuine humanitarian needs, sanctions have been imposed on the people of Afghanistan that have further compounded their suffering. We also cannot ignore the plight of Palestinian women, and their agony, as they see their young sons killed before their eyes - not for committing any crimes, but for raising their voices for freedom, justice and their right to self-determination. Sanctions imposed on other countries also need to be revisited to minimize the suffering of civilian populations, particularly the suffering of women and children. Notably, the background paper on women and peace and security and the proposed draft resolution do not say anything about sanctions and their impact on women and children. Due consideration must therefore be given to this important aspect of the debate. It has also been widely reported that poverty, hunger and desperation in conflict situations may force women and girls into prostitution, obliging them to offer sex for food, shelter or safe conduct through war zones. This aspect has not been highlighted in the background paper that is under review in the Council today. The focus of the international community should be devoted equally to poverty eradication, development, conflict resolution and conflict prevention so that crimes in any form or manifestation against any section of a society, be it men or women, are not allowed to take place in the first instance. The Charter places a clear obligation on the Security Council to uphold international peace and security. There can be no two views on the fact that prevention is better than cure. The Council therefore needs to act to treat the disease itself, rather than to react to deal with the symptoms subsequently - with the attendant high costs in terms of widespread death and devastation. In meeting its Charter obligations, the Security Council must not only ensure prompt and effective responses to crisis situations irrespective of their geographical locations, but also avoid selectivity in the implementation of its resolutions and the application of different standards to conflicts in different parts of the world. In conclusion, may I reaffirm that Pakistan remains committed to the peace, prosperity, progress and development of peoples in all parts of the world. We will continue to extend unflinching support and cooperation to achieve these goals, particularly the alleviation of the sufferings of women and children in armed conflicts around the world. Lastly, I need not elaborate on the role of women in my country. We have produced women heads of Government, women leaders of opposition parties, women elected leaders, women doctors, professors, academics, scholars, newspaper editors and diplomats. In order to see this reality, one need only look right here.

The President: I thank the representative of Pakistan for the kind words he addressed to my Minister for Foreign Affairs and to the Namibian delegation. The next speaker is the representative of Japan. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Akasaka (Japan): Having experienced frequent outbreaks of regional conflict since the end of the cold war, the international community has come to realize the need to address major issues relating to conflicts, such as the protection of innocent civilians in armed conflict and the prevention and settlement of conflicts, from a wider perspective and in a more comprehensive manner, in order to put an end to the scourge of armed conflicts in the new century. In this context, for example, significant progress has been made in the field of the protection of children during and after conflicts through efforts to put emphasis on that issue. From that standpoint, Japan shares the view that a gender perspective must be taken into account, and that concrete issues such as the protection of women in armed conflicts and their participation in peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building should be further discussed if progress is to be made in this area. I should therefore like to pay high tribute to you, Mr. President, for your thoughtful initiative in convening this open debate. My delegation also commends Ms. Angela King, Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, and Ms. Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), for their efforts in this regard. This year, at the Beijing + 5 special session of the General Assembly, the international community reaffirmed its strong commitment to mainstreaming a gender perspective in every area of human endeavour. Among the efforts being made to follow up that commitment, this discussion in the Security Council is particularly timely and meaningful, as the issue of conflict is the most critical issue that we have to tackle in the twenty-first century. In that context, we welcome the efforts already made in this area, such as the participation of women in the Burundi peacemaking process and the adoption of the Namibia Plan of Action on the occasion of the Windhoek seminar on mainstreaming a gender perspective in multidimensional peace support operations. I believe that, with these precious inputs, our discussion today will lead us to an exploration of further concrete actions in this area. I would like to take this opportunity to state the views of Japan on some important points relating to this issue. First of all, there is a clear need to strengthen efforts to provide protection to women and girls in conflict situations. In view of the horrific reality that we are facing, where innocent civilians continue to be victimized in armed conflicts, the protection of women and girls should be our paramount concern. I would like to appeal to all the parties to conflicts and to the international community as a whole to form as clear a picture of the situation as possible, face up to it and together take the measures necessary to protect women and girls and to introduce the viewpoint of women victims into the peacemaking process. The second point I would like to emphasize is the importance of the role of women, especially in peace- building. Because women are such a Vital part of every grass-roots community, it is essential that they be involved if the vicious circle of poverty and conflict is to be broken and if rehabilitation is to be successful. Japan has long attached special importance to the role of women in addressing poverty, which is a root cause of conflict, and for that reason has promoted the Women in Development initiative that it launched at the Fourth World Conference on Women. In view of the need to enhance the participation of women in the rehabilitation process, which makes an important contribution to peace-building, Japan actively supported the convening of a symposium on empowerment of women in post-conflict reconstruction, held by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Tokyo last July. Further, Japan has been implementing many projects in areas such as education, health and the economic independence of women in countries in Asia and Africa, such as Cambodia and Ethiopia, all of which have been severely damaged as a result of conflict. Japan intends to continue those efforts. My third point is the importance of a comprehensive approach to this issue, and the concomitant need for cooperation among international organizations, Governments, non-governmental organizations and other partners of the international community. Today's debate should be a turning point for us. We should move from a phase of advocacy to one of concrete action. Japan is of the View that relevant international organizations, such as UNIFEM, that have gender expertise should strengthen their efforts to study specific measures to achieve gender mainstreaming in conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building, and to implement programmes to assist women in the field. Japan believes deeply that we should put emphasis on a human-centred approach which gives priority to respect for the life and dignity of every human being in order to achieve in the coming century an international society characterized by peace and stability. We are convinced that greater participation by women in the process of peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building would greatly contribute to the consolidation of peace and stability, as women are the ones who have been experiencing a serious degradation of life and dignity in armed conflict. I would like to conclude my statement by reaffirming Japan's readiness to take an active part in the efforts of the international community to address this issue, guided by the Council's debate here today.

The President: I thank the representative of Japan for the kind words he addressed to the Namibian delegation. The next speaker is the representative of Cyprus. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Zackheos (Cyprus): Although my delegation aligns itself with the statement made on behalf of the European Union, I would like to make a few additional remarks. I would like at the outset to express my appreciation to you, Mr. President, for convening this open meeting of the Security Council on this most important and relevant subject. This initiative of the Namibian presidency confirms the principled and important role that Namibia, and you personally, Sir, play with respect to international issues and, in particular, in the promotion of human rights. We welcome this initiative as yet another step forward in the efforts of the international community, as expressed through open discussion in the Security Council, on matters pertaining to conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building. The most tragic aspect of armed conflict has been the heavy toll that civilians usually bear when caught between opposing armies. The proliferation of conflict in many areas of our planet and the gross violations of the most basic human rights of civilians have been a major concern of the international community, as testified to by the open debates that have taken place in this very Chamber concerning the protection of civilians in armed conflict, the protection of children and the protection of humanitarian assistance to refugees and others in conflict situations. The most negative aspect of armed conflict, with both short- and long-term effects, is the plight of the most vulnerable groups of civilians, namely women and children. During armed conflict, the effect on families and traditional ways of life can be devastating. Great numbers of women are not only under the constant threat of sexual violence and death; but often have to endure the loss of parents, children or husbands and are forced to assume the role of main breadwinner and carry the heavy economic burden of the survival of their families. It is imperative for the international community, and constitutes a special duty of the Security Council, to assist and protect these women and children. The Security Council, in responding to such crises, should always take into consideration their situation and suffering, and pursue solutions that are based on its resolutions. We hope that this open debate of the Security Council will lead to practical measures on the role of women in peace-building and on humanitarian issues and the protection of women during peacekeeping and post-conflict support operations. One way to achieve this would be through the establishment of an independent panel of experts with the participation of the Secretariat, relevant agencies and civil society. One of the areas on which my delegation places utmost importance is the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons. The painful experience of the displacement of almost one third of the population of my country in 1974 demonstrated to the Government and the people of Cyprus the central role of women in post-conflict and peace-building situations. Their role in facing the adverse consequences of the invasion, occupation and displacement and in rebuilding our economy, despite their suffering, has been immense. That is why we fully support the position that women's rights during and following armed conflict must be safeguarded, and their participation in efforts to rebuild war-torn societies supported by every means possible. In this respect, we fully subscribe to the recommendations proposed by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and in the significant report entitled "Impact of armed conflict on children", prepared by Ms. Graga Machel, to whom I take this opportunity to express our deep appreciation. Another issue which I would like to stress, with regard to the positive developments that have taken place in the last few years on the accountability of human rights violators, is the question of impunity. Cyprus warmly welcomes the efforts undertaken by the community of nations to finally put an end to impunity, as demonstrated in the inclusion, in the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, of the obligation to prosecute those responsible for the crimes of rape and sexual Violence in civil war as perpetrators of grave breaches of international humanitarian law. The inclusion, as a war crime, of all forms of sexual violence against women in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has been a major achievement in our common pursuit to end impunity for these abhorrent crimes. The Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons estimates that 40 million people live today as refugees or internally displaced persons. Close to 80 per cent of these people are women and children. Their tragic situation and their vulnerability do not usually stop with the end of armed conflict. The vast majority of them continue to face the threat of Violations of their human rights long after the conflict has ended. The phenomena of sexual exploitation and trafficking and child labour, including the use of children as soldiers, are realities that we cannot ignore. That is why it is of extreme importance that the rights of women in post-conflict situations be secured through constitutional means, so that the injustices and suffering inflicted on them not be allowed to continue. Their contribution to rebuilding their societies is important and must be guaranteed. One final point I would like to make concerns the incorporation of the gender dimension in the approach of the United Nations, its specialized agencies and other actors involved in peacekeeping, peace-building and reconciliation efforts associated with situations of armed conflict. My delegation strongly supports the inclusion of a gender perspective in the provision of humanitarian aid and in the reconciliation efforts following ceasefire agreements. We would also like to pay tribute to the crucial role played by non- governmental organizations in highlighting the issue and in providing practical assistance on the ground. Before concluding, I should also like to thank Ms. Angela King and, through her, the Division for the Advancement of Women, and Mrs. Noeleen Heyzer and UNIFEM. for their devotion and considerable efforts in promoting the rights of women.

The President: I thank the representative of Cyprus for the kind words he addressed to me and to the Namibian delegation. The next speaker inscribed on my list is the representative of the Republic of Korea. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Sun Joun-yung (Republic of Korea): Mr. President, I would like to begin by offering my delegation's thanks to you for organizing this open debate on the important issue of "Women and peace and security". Recalling last June's twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled "Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century," my delegation welcomes today's meeting as a timely effort to build on the outcome of the special session. Although the threat of an armed conflict at the global level has continued to diminish since the end of the cold war, rampaging armed conflicts at the regional, national and local levels have increased, posing challenges to international peace and security. Though armed conflicts affect both women and men, the current patterns of conflicts make women and girls particularly vulnerable to numerous threats because of their status in society and their gender. In most cases, casualties among combatants are outnumbered by civilian deaths, mostly women and children. Increasingly, parties to a conflict even engage in deliberate violence against women as a strategy of war and terrorism. The fear of such violence has created a mass flow of refugees and displaced persons, the majority of whom are women, adolescent girls and children. Fortunately, there have been important developments in the treatment of violence against women in armed conflict. We welcome the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which took gender concerns into account when defining genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression. This Statute validates our agreement that no impunity is to be granted for the perpetrators of specific gender-related crimes. I also appreciate the work of relevant United Nations agencies, such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children's Fund, the United Nations Development Fund for Women and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for their coordinated and dedicated efforts. Nor should we forget the contributions of non-governmental organizations in raising awareness about the situation of women and girls in armed conflicts and in assisting them. Despite the progress that has been made so far, much remains to be done to ensure gender-sensitive justice, to address the specific needs of women affected by armed conflicts and to increase the participation of women in peacekeeping, peace-building and reconciliation processes. The relative absence of women in decision- making processes with regard to armed conflicts is also a cause for concern. My delegation shares the view of the Security Council that peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men, and that women should play an equal part in maintaining peace and security. We urge the Security Council to continue to expand its involvement in this issue. Having said that, I should now like to make a few points which in our View deserve the urgent attention and action of the international community. First of all, we must ensure, without further delay, the full participation of women at all levels of decision-making and implementation in peacekeeping and peace- building. We encourage gender balance in peace negotiations and in the appointment of special envoys and representatives of the Secretary-General. We also encourage States participating in peace negotiations to include women representatives, in order to reflect the special needs of women and girls. Secondly, my delegation believes that United Nations peacekeeping operations should pay more attention to gender mainstreaming in their work. With the expansion of the work of peacekeeping operations in political affairs, public information, humanitarian assistance and refugee return, among other areas, the role of peacekeeping personnel in meeting women's and girls' specific needs is also being enlarged. To ensure the effective work of protecting and promoting women's needs and rights, specialized gender training should be provided to all peacekeeping operation personnel. In this respect, my delegation welcomes the Secretariat's efforts to provide Member States with gender awareness guidelines and materials. In addition, the number of female personnel in peacekeeping operations, in particular those personnel addressing women's special needs, should be increased. The Republic of Korea, for its part, has included women officers in its peacekeeping operation missions and plans to expand their number in the future. Thirdly, considering that women are more likely than men to be placed in refugee camps, we believe that women refugees and displaced women should be more involved in the design and management of humanitarian activities so that they can benefit from these activities as much as men do. To this end, we ask the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other relevant United Nations agencies to provide all women and girls in refugee camps with appropriate health care and education and to ensure their safety. Without full gender equality and the advancement of women, we cannot achieve the world envisioned in the Charter of the United Nations. All Members should make the utmost effort and fully cooperate with the relevant United Nations agencies to effectively protect women and girls in armed conflict, redress Violations of their human rights and empower women as equal partners at every step of the process to achieve peace and security. My delegation wishes to reaffirm the strong commitment of the Republic of Korea to contribute to the efforts of the international community to this end.

The President: I thank the representative of the Republic of Korea for his kind words addressed to my delegation. The next speaker inscribed on my list is Mrs. Krishna Bose, Member of Parliament and Chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs of India. On behalf of the Council, I welcome her and invite her to take a seat at the Council table and to make her statement.

Mrs. Bose (India): We are very pleased to see you, Sir, presiding over the Council. The subject chosen for this debate is important to me as a woman and as a politician whose interests lie in foreign policy and security issues. We thank you for very thoughtfully sending around to your colleagues a folder of background reading which contains suggestions, presumably made by the Secretariat, for Council action. In addressing a subject that is vast and complex, I will limit myself, as I hope the Council will, to those areas which are properly within its mandate: the impact on women when peace breaks down, and their role in conflict and its resolution. The first point of concern must be that women bear a disproportionately large share of the burden of conflict, but have a marginal say in matters of war and peace. That is perhaps a function of the gender imbalance in our societies, which is reflected in positions of power and influence. On International Women's Day this year, the President of the Council issued a statement affirming that the equal access and full participation of women in power structures and their full involvement in all efforts for the prevention and resolution of conflict were essential for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security. I thank the Council for those sentiments, but, looking around this table, I should also like to say that a Security Council dominated by men illustrates the problem, not the solution. The second point is, of course, where the equality of the sexes - which we believe is a necessity - will lead us. Women form such a large proportion of the casualties of modern war because throughout the last century military doctrines no longer distinguished between combatants and civilians. From the Second World War onwards, civilians became preferred targets both because they were more vulnerable and because it was believed that the national will had to be broken to win a total war. Paradoxically, women became the favoured victims of modern war because they were not combatants. Does the answer lie, therefore, in giving women the dubious right to fight alongside their menfolk in modern armies? Throughout history, women have taken up arms when the need has been desperate. The Rani of Jhansi led our first War of Independence in 1857, and died fighting. Kaipkire of the Herero led her people in battles against European slave traders. Those, however, and others like them, were women who took up arms to fight against injustice. We need to consider the impact on our societies, and on their tendency to war, if women become part of and glorify the military culture. Who should women take as their model - Lysistrata, using her femininity to force men from war, or the Amazon, joining and beating men at their own bloody game? A generation ago, two psychologists, Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin, established that while certain gender stereotypes could not be proved, one could: men were the more aggressive sex. In every culture, the organized violence of war and conflict has been a male preserve. That is a steel purdah in which we can leave our men. There is also the question of the technology of war. Until the two world wars, weapons were heavy and hard to use, designed for soldiers who had to meet minimum physical standards and be trained in their use. In total war, weapons had to be designed for conscripts who were not fit and had little or no training; they became light and simple to use. As Graga Machel pointed out in her study on children and armed conflict, light automatic weapons were what made it easy and tempting to use child soldiers. If women become a significant percentage of armies, it is a foregone conclusion that weapons will be adapted even more to suit them, and what is light enough for a woman to use is also very well suited for a young boy or girl. These new weapons will make for even more indiscriminate use and could very well increase the use of children in conflict. These are not academic points, because in the Western societies whose norms tend to dominate thinking at the United Nations, women are now increasingly permitted by law to go into combat. At the United Nations, including in this Council, there are repeated calls for a gender balance in the composition of peacekeeping forces, which, as the Brahimi report, prepared by a Panel dominated by men, has pointed out, increasingly go into situations where robust military action might be needed. Is it in the interest either of women or of peace, or of gender equality, for women to embroil themselves in conflict, even if it is in the cause of the United Nations? We have problems enough with the feminization of poverty; we need not feminize Violence. It would be much better, surely, if women had a larger and more visible role in helping the United Nations to resolve conflicts, for instance, as special representatives of the Secretary-General. This the Council can and should encourage. I want to make one more point about peacekeeping practices. The Council has decided that AIDS is a threat to security, and peacekeepers must all be issued contraceptives by the United Nations. Unfortunately, as the United Nations knows, to its cost, a large number of the troops it fields are poorly trained; others, in the 1990s, trafficked in women. Blue Helmets might very well now believe that if the United Nations is giving them contraceptives, they are expected to use them. AIDS has never been a problem in any United Nations peacekeeping operation; the exploitation of women unfortunately has. The Council's decision could make this worse. Feminist lawyers argue that human rights law and international humanitarian law do not offer enough protection to women. This is a bit extreme; women's rights and needs have received the attention they deserve in the codification of international law. I do agree that there are loopholes even in the much stronger walls of legal protection that have been raised over the last 50 years, and these must be closed. However, insofar as these are treaty-based protections, action must be taken within the terms of these treaties, and by the States parties. Otherwise, in seeking to strengthen law, we would be undermining it. Therefore, unless there are treaties that give the Security Council a role in their implementation, we would urge the Council not to assume to itself rights and responsibilities that it does not have. There is a further point, which we have made in this Council before. By definition, it is States that are parties to the treaty-based system of international law. By and large, they respect them, and when they do not, penalties arise, through the provisions of the treaties. When their actions gravely threaten peace and security, sanctions can be brought against them by action in this Council. The most egregious crimes against women in times of conflict, however, have been and are committed by irregular forces, often warring against Governments; they obey no laws and are, as experience has shown throughout the 1990s, much more immune to sanctions than Governments are. How, in practical terms, will the Council tackle these forces, which are responsible for the bulk of the crimes that continue to be committed against women? Situations of conflict vary. Each has its own causes and consequences. Clearly, there cannot be off- the-shelf remedies or panaceas. We need to take practical and effective steps to mitigate the impact of conflict on women and to enhance their ability to restore and preserve peace. The Namibia Plan of Action on Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations has many useful elements. We support the call in the Windhoek Declaration of 31 May 2000 urging the Secretary- General to ensure that appropriate follow-up measures are taken to implement this Plan of Action, in consultation with Member States. The World Bank estimates that by 2015 the world will have more than 1.9 billion poor, most of them women. Globalization has affected both men and women, but women bear the double burden of inequality and marginalization. Empowering them is therefore both crucial and urgent. The Council will remember that the theme of the special session of the General Assembly in June this year was "Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty- first century". In considering the role of women in peace and security, the Council will, I am sure, bear in mind this wider perspective of the empowerment of women. This may well be the last statement we will make in the Security Council before Namibia completes its current two-year term. We would therefore like to place on record our very warm appreciation for the work of the Namibian delegation in the Council, and for the courageous and independent stand Namibia has taken on difficult issues on its agenda.

The President: I thank the Member of Parliament and Chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs of India for her kind words addressed to my delegation. The next speaker inscribed on my list is the representative of New Zealand, whom I invite to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Powles (New Zealand): May I congratulate you, Mr. President, on taking the initiative of holding this timely and relevant open debate, and also join the previous speaker in congratulating your delegation generally on its performance during its presidency. I would also like to recognize the substantial contribution to this debate made by Ms. King and Ms. Heyzer this morning. I have the honour to make this statement on behalf of the countries of the Pacific Island Forum represented in New York - namely, Australia, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu and my own country, New Zealand. The past few years have seen increasing recognition of the many roles of women in relation to peace and security, and the effects on women of armed conflict. The rights of women, their empowerment and the maintenance of peace and security are fundamentally linked. The Beijing Declaration notes that "Women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace". (A/CONF.I77/20/Rev.1, Annex 1, para. 13) It also recognizes the leading role that women have played in the peace movement and that women's full participation in decision-making, conflict prevention and resolution and all other peace initiatives is essential to the realization of lasting peace. In other words, women have both a key interest and a key role in the maintenance of peace and security. The Beijing + 5 review reaffirmed the importance of gender-sensitivity and analysis in assessing the impact of conflict, in working with those affected by it and in action to bring about lasting peaceful solutions. Beijing + 5 also recognized that situations of armed conflict are inextricably linked to violations of women's human rights, including through violence against women. It was noted that such violence was often of a sexual nature. Our delegations welcome the recognition of the seriousness of such acts in the Statute of the International Criminal Court, which makes certain forms of violence against women war crimes and crimes against humanity. The differential impacts of conflict on women, and the important role women have in peace-building, have been apparent from experience in the Pacific region. Women have disproportionately borne the effects of conflicts in the region, such as the secessionist crisis that stretched from 1989 to 1998 on the Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville. Women's insistence that peaceful means be found to air grievances and attain a durable peace has been a constant underlying strength of the Bougainville peace process. Women's groups in the Solomon Islands have played a key role in bringing the parties together and maintaining the momentum that culminated in the recent settlement agreed in Australia at Townsville. We hope they and other members of civil society will continue to be involved closely in the peace-building process. In these countries, as in the aftermath of recent events in Fiji, women's full participation in peace- building is essential. A gender-sensitive approach to peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building is essential and underlines the importance of ensuring adequate gender representation in all areas of the United Nations work dealing with peace and security issues. While the number of women serving in peace and humanitarian operations has been growing in recent years, the number of women employed in professional and policy positions continues to be low. We urge the Secretary- General to work to achieve gender equity throughout the Secretariat, including in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and to ensure that sufficient women officers and gender expertise are included in United Nations peace processes and operations and fact-finding missions. In this regard we welcome, as some others have today, the Brahimi report's recommendation regarding equitable gender distribution in the appointment of mission leaders. Accordingly we hope that Member States will incorporate a gender perspective into their decisions on the implementation of the report. In particular we are concerned by the complete absence of women envoys or special representatives and encourage the Secretary-General to urgently address this imbalance. I would now like to say a few words on behalf of my own delegation only. New Zealand was proud to host the Commonwealth South Pacific Gender Symposium on Peace and Politics in June of this year. The participants noted that women and children suffer the impacts of violent conflict disproportionately - yet they are often the ones left to cope with these impacts. The symposium recognized women's roles as mediators and leaders for peace and called upon Governments to increase women's participation in the process of peace- building. Participants considered it essential that gender and conflict training be provided for armed forces and police. New Zealand strongly supports this proposal and commends the Secretary-General's efforts to include gender affairs officers in operations such as the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). Through their work, the rights of women and girls are being promoted in all areas of UNTAET's activities. The Commonwealth Symposium also noted the increase in domestic violence during armed conflict and the need to address this during and after the conflict. We are pleased to note that the police training curriculum developed by UNTAET in East Timor includes modules on human rights, including women's human rights, and that recruitment for the East Timor Police Academy has attracted a substantial and growing proportion of women. This should help to ensure gender-sensitive perspectives in the local police force and attention to women's well-being in situations of domestic and wider violence. Women and children also tend to suffer disproportionately from the imposition of comprehensive economic sanctions. As we noted earlier this year, New Zealand supports "smart sanctions" to reduce the incidence of humanitarian suffering and mitigate any unintended negative consequences, particularly on women and children. The Council should also encourage impact-assessment studies before, during and after the imposition of sanctions to ensure that their effects are appropriately focused and monitored. In conclusion, the Pacific Islands Forum delegations appreciate the opportunity to emphasize the need to integrate a gender perspective into this Council's work. A dual approach is needed. First, gender issues must be mainstreamed into all aspects of United Nations activities for the maintenance of peace and security. Secondly, women's participation in those activities must be improved. Today's open debate is a welcome step towards achieving those goals, and we hope that the Council will formulate an innovative and comprehensive programme for progress in these two very important respects.

The President: I thank the representative of New Zealand for his statement and for his kind words addressed to me and my delegation. The next speaker is the representative of Zimbabwe. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Muchetwa (Zimbabwe): I wish to congratulate you, Sir, on your initiative to convene a meeting of the Security Council on such an important subject as "Women and Peace and Security". Your Government and country are well known for providing leadership and a good example in promoting an active and Visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective into all policies and programmes. Today's subject matter lies at the very centre of our endeavours to promote the culture of peace in human society. Rather than being treated as an agenda item to be ticked off the Council's work programme at the end of this meeting, this issue must be pursued on a continuing basis, and can be ignored only at our peril. When war breaks out, invariably we all pay a cost as individuals, families and societies, and as nations and members of the international community. Every occurrence of an armed conflict is a serious indictment of humanity. War is, in fact, a dehumanizing experience. To the extent that armed conflict is a challenge to all of humanity, everything relating to peace and security becomes the responsibility of all of us. Today's specific reference to "women and peace and security" reflects our acknowledgement of the particular vulnerabilities of women in conflict situations. It also reflects our acknowledgement of current inequalities in decision-making and power structures and, happily, our sincere endeavour to address that untenable condition. That women have everything to lose and an unbearable cost to pay in the wake of armed conflict establishes an undisputed mandate and role for them in all matters of peace and security. Unfortunately, and as correctly observed in the Windhoek Declaration of 31 May 2000 on the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group: "So far, women have been denied their full role in these efforts, both nationally and internationally, nor has the gender dimension in peace processes been adequately addressed." Every episode of war is accompanied by chronicles of horrendous assaults on the dignity and humanity of women. Dastardly as it is, the victimization of womenfolk has even been employed as a tool for the perpetration of war in some cases. The humanitarian fallout of armed conflict has almost always been disproportionately burdensome on women as refugees, as displaced persons or as traumatized heads of households with nothing but debris for a new beginning. Nobody can understand, let alone address this fallout better than women themselves. There is a glaring need for mechanisms that enhance the protection of women and girls in conflict situations. Current statistics show that more than three quarters of all internally displaced persons and refugees are women and children. My delegation therefore supports Security Council calls upon all concerned to refrain from committing human rights abuses in conflict situations, to respect international humanitarian law and to promote non-violent forms of conflict resolution and a culture of peace. However, it is obvious that preventive measures, which have the potential to resolve disputes before they erupt into Violent confrontations, offer the best possible protection to all members of society. In this regard, it is crucial that we recognize the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace-building. The organized involvement of women at the grass-roots and other levels makes them the linchpins of any early-warning mechanism. This meeting offers us an opportunity to once again call upon the United Nations and the international community at large to assist and cooperate with regional and subregional arrangements, such as the Organization of African Unity's Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution, as they seek to build their capacity and develop common indicators for early warning, taking into account women and gender issues. While distant international actors have tended to highlight only political and economic disruptions in the aftermath of armed conflict, the victims of war often wake up to social disorientation and disorder. In these collapsed communities, the role of women in re- establishing and preserving social order is unparalleled. As primary and continuing educators both in their families and in their communities, women play an important role in fostering a culture of peace in strife- torn societies. We call for the promotion and sustenance of this role on a continuing basis in order to prevent the resurgence or escalation of conflict, so that the culture of peace is inculcated in current and future generations. This constitutes a sure way of planting the seeds of a sustainable peace. While women are not necessarily better connected to the grass roots or more committed to conveying the concerns of marginalized people, and while there is no evidence to suggest that women at the peace table are more committed than men to promoting the greater good of the population at large, women are more likely than men to have arrived at the peace table via civil activism, often with first-hand experience of the brutal consequences of violent conflict. Both men and women suffer during war, but women are more likely to be the targets of gender-based Violence. Furthermore, the direct participation of women at the peace table is the most secure way to ensure that women's demands are incorporated into the agreements. The maintenance and promotion of international peace and security cannot be realized without fully understanding the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, without effective institutional arrangements to guarantee their protection and without women's full participation in the peace process. We are pleased to note that, in many parts of the world representing all continents, from Africa to the Middle East and Asia, from Latin America to Europe, women have not waited to be invited to the peace table, but have risen to meet the challenge, with an impact that has been, in some cases, nothing short of legendary. While women clearly need access to the peace table in order to advance towards the goal of gender equality, the peace table also requires women's participation to truly uphold the principle of democracy and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace.

The President: I thank the representative of Zimbabwe for his kind words addressed to my country and to my delegation. The next speaker inscribed on my list is the representative of Indonesia. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Widodo (Indonesia): I have the honour to address the Security Council in the debate on the issue of women and peace and security. Allow me first to express my appreciation to you, Sir, for your initiative on this issue as President of the Security Council for the month of October. I would like to welcome the statements delivered earlier by the Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan; by the Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, Ms. Angela King; and by the Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Ms. Noeleen Heyzer. The issue of women and peace and security is among the paramount items on the global agenda and, in fact, has been addressed over several decades. At the international conferences on women, the issue of women and peace was taken up as early as the Nairobi World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women and has since been more than adequately considered in United Nations forums, such as in the annual meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women and of the Third Committee of the General Assembly, and also by various United Nations bodies, such as UNIFEM. and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, it was clearly recognized that the larger goals of equality, development and peace could not be achieved without the incorporation of the women's perspective at all levels of decision-making. One of the important steps taken on that occasion was to stress that women's involvement in decision-making was not only a question of quotas for women, but a process that also entails increased gender sensitivity in general, requiring appropriate training and more research on gender issues. My delegation would also like to draw attention to the efforts that have been made at the regional level to address this issue. We commend the work that has been accomplished under the auspices of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), especially in convening the regional preparatory meeting for the follow-up of the Beijing Conference on Women in June 2000, which, inter alia, highlights peace processes with action to encourage the full participation of women at all levels of decision- making in conflict resolution, peacekeeping, peacemaking and preventive diplomacy. We also welcome the initiative of ESCAP and UNESCO to convene a Regional Conference on Asian Women for a Culture of Peace, to be held in Hanoi in December this year. The plan of action to be adopted at that Conference is expected to promote equal participation in peacekeeping, peacemaking and preventive diplomacy. Moreover, it will outline the contribution of women to a culture of peace and sustainable development in Asia. We are confident that this forum will provide a comprehensive assessment of Asian women's political, social and economic empowerment and the educational requirements needed to strengthen their capacities to transform societies towards a culture of peace. Let me underscore that violence against women should remain at the forefront of all agendas concerning the situation of women and should be regarded as a criminal offence. In that regard, I would note that Indonesia has adopted a "zero tolerance" policy on Violence against women, and we are working with national women's groups, law enforcement and legislators to comprehensively address this serious problem. In fact, the State Minister for Women's Empowerment officially announced a joint State and community proclamation to eliminate Violence against women, involving the Vice President, all Cabinet ministers and parliamentarians, including representatives of national and regional groups. The international community and regional and national groups should no longer accept the committing of acts against women with impunity. My delegation underlines the importance of such national efforts to address violence against women receiving the full support of the international community. My delegation underlines that this issue should be addressed not only from the perspective of treating women as victims of armed conflicts, but also as makers of peace. Although historically women have maintained the family structure under the most difficult of circumstances and have very often assumed the role of head of household, there is still a lack of participation of women in the peace process. The burden is disproportionately borne by women when peace breaks down, and seldom are women given a visible role in the decision-making process for making and maintaining peace. I would like to note that one of the strategic objectives of the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women is to increase the participation of women in conflict resolution at decision-making levels and to protect women living in situations of armed conflict and other conflicts or under foreign occupation. While this goal must be pursued at the national level, it is important also to pursue it within the United Nations itself, with the appointment of women to senior posts and with equal participation in peace processes and conflict resolution. Indonesia therefore joins all those who call for a concerted effort by the international community to increase the participation of women in negotiations on conflict resolution and in decision- making positions at both national and international levels. The Security Council itself could consider the importance of injecting the gender dimension into its decisions on conflict resolution and of its resolutions providing for a clear mandate on gender mainstreaming. With regard to fact-finding missions, the Council could include gender issues in their terms of reference. Likewise, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations could provide gender- sensitivity training for peacekeepers in the field and foster an awareness of the traumatic circumstances faced by women. In considering the issue of women and peace and armed conflict we must not lose sight of the need to also address the root causes of conflicts and the link between social and economic development and peace and stability - especially so given the fact that women are disproportionately burdened by poverty. There is a need to develop and strengthen strategies and initiatives to reduce women's poverty levels and to protect women from the rapid changes inherent in globalization. In addressing the overall issue of women and peace and security, Indonesia would agree that measures for that purpose could be developed through close cooperation between the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council, noting that none of these organs is equipped to exclusively and comprehensively deal with these issues. In concluding, while we support the initiative of the United Nations to deliberate on any areas relating to peace and security, we do hope that its activities will not duplicate those of other intergovernmental bodies, but rather will serve to complement those efforts.

The President: I thank the representative of Indonesia for his kind words addressed to my delegation. The next speaker is the representative of the United Republic of Tanzania. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Mwakawago (United Republic of Tanzania): It gives my delegation particular pleasure to see you, Sir, presiding over this open debate on women and peace and security. My delegation warmly welcomes the convening of this meeting and hopes that the outcome of this historic debate will contribute to a better understanding of the gender dimension of peace processes. It is significant that in recognition of the importance that your country attaches to this issue, the seminar on "Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations" was held in Windhoek from 29 to 31 May 2000. In this regard my delegation supports the Namibia Plan of Action and the call made to the Secretary-General to ensure that appropriate follow-up measures are undertaken to implement it. This debate on women, peace and security is an important reminder to all of us of the need to resolve conflicts, particularly those in Africa and elsewhere which are of grave concern to all of us. Due to these conflicts, about six million Africans are refugees and over 15 million people are displaced, between 60 and 80 per cent of whom are women and children. The 2000 Machel review points out, in chapter 5, that: "During armed conflict, women and girls are continually threatened by rape, domestic violence, sexual exploitation, trafficking, sexual humiliation and mutilation." They are at risk in all settings - be it at home, in flight or in camps. In some cases, systematic rape and terror are used as weapons of war. After having been subjected to such atrocities, they are left with scars that take longer to heal. There is no denying that it is women who shoulder the responsibility of supporting their families and communities. Women serve alongside their male counterparts in times of war. It is also women who serve at the forefront of peace movements. Under these circumstances, it is evident that we cannot continue excluding women from conflict resolution processes. Expanding the role of women in this area is imperative, not only to address inequities but also to ensure that our societies benefit from their approaches to preventing conflicts, solving conflicts and building peace. Being direct victims of violence and discrimination, women have gained a great understanding of the need to address peace comprehensively. It is encouraging to note that given the prevalence of conflicts, particularly in Africa today, women have taken some initiatives to promote peaceful resolution of conflicts and to generate a culture of peace. In this context, the role of Burundian women in the peace process in their country - and the recognition of that role by President Nelson Mandela, the Facilitator of the Burundi peace process - should serve as an example and as a source of inspiration to the international community. It is the hope of my delegation that the Council will adopt a resolution that gives due weight to the role that women can play in peace negotiations and accord them due recognition. The international community needs, therefore, to agree on a framework that guarantees women that right. Both the final outcome document of the twenty- third special session of the General Assembly entitled "Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century" and the Millennium Summit Declaration place emphasis on shared responsibility to maintain international peace and security. On the occasion of International Women's Day on 8 March, the then President of the Security Council, Ambassador Chowdhury of Bangladesh, observed in a statement to the Press: "Members of the Council note that although women have begun to play an important role in conflict resolution, peacekeeping and peace- building, they are still under-represented in decision-making in regard to conflict. If women are to play an equal part in security and maintaining peace, they must be empowered politically and economically, and represented adequately at all levels of decision-making, both at the pre-conflict stage and during hostilities, as well as at the point of peacekeeping, peace- building, reconciliation and reconstruction." In reiterating this position, we call on the international community and Governments to intensify efforts aimed at the realization of the objective set out in that statement, including the enhancement of the role of women in various phases of the transition to peace and post-conflict reconstruction.

The President: I thank the representative of the United Republic of Tanzania for the kind words he addressed to my delegation. The next speaker inscribed on my list is the representative of Australia. I invite her to take a seat at the Council table and to make her statement.

Ms. Wensley (Australia): Thank you, Mr. President, for organizing this open debate. As violence continues in the Middle East - and the United Nations and its Member States struggle to service a growing number of peace operations around the world - some may wonder about the value of the Council holding a thematic debate such as this. What does it really achieve? Well, my delegation certainly thinks it worthwhile and welcomes the opportunity to participate. We consider it valuable for several reasons. First, it contributes to the ongoing process of opening up the Council, not just to non-members, but to new ways of thinking about what constitute threats to international peace and security and, more important, how to deal with them. Secondly, it helps us to move forward our broad agenda for the advancement of women, raising awareness of gender factors, moving consideration of so-called women's issues out of the enclaves of the Third Committee and the Commission on the Status of Women and into the central, vital organs of the United Nations. Thirdly, this thematic debate should assist the United Nations in dealing with a range of other major challenges that it is confronting. There are real and practical linkages to be made here with implementation of the Millennium Summit report and of the Brahimi report on peace operations; with the effort to establish the International Criminal Court; with the United Nations development agenda; and with the efforts to reform the United Nations and make it more effective. This debate could inform our thinking on how to deal with all these major areas of concern. Of course, we are not starting from scratch. The building blocks are there, going back to the codification of the laws of armed conflict in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their additional Protocols of 1977, in which the special needs of women in situations of armed conflict, both as combatants and as civilians, were recognized through clauses providing for their special protection. As so many of the preceding speakers in the debate have recognized, the negotiation of the Statute of the International Criminal Court represented a quantum leap forward, recognizing specific crimes against women as both war crimes and crimes against humanity. But I want to focus more today on women not so much as victims of armed conflict, as sufferers, as vulnerable people whose rights need protecting, but as contributors and active participants in problem solving. This is the important direction in which our thinking, as an international community, is evolving and where the Council can bring much needed momentum and muscle. Just as we came to recognize- not so long ago- the critical link between gender and development, and to recognize that achieving sustainable development required the active participation and involvement of both women and men in the development process, so we are moving, I think relatively rapidly, to recognition that the same, Vital linkage exists in relation to effective conflict resolution, peacemaking, peace-building and post- conflict activities. As we have heard, the Council itself gave a valuable boost to this in March this year, in the statement it issued on International Women's Day, when it recognized publicly the link between peace and equality between men and women. Today's debate builds on that acknowledgement - that equal access and full participation of women in power structures and their full involvement in all efforts for the prevention and resolution of conflicts are essential for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security. The Windhoek Declaration of May 2000 and the Namibia Plan of Action on "Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations", which were informed by the laborious three-year study conducted by the Division for the Advancement of Women and by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, were another very important step. Australia certainly can support many of their key conclusions and recommendations: that the gender dimensions of peace processes have not been adequately recognized; that women have so far been denied their full role in national and international peacekeeping and peacemaking operations; that the mandates of United Nations preventive peace missions, peacekeeping operations and peace-building should include provisions for women's protection and address gender issues; and that peace support operations should include appropriately staffed and integrated gender units and gender advisers. The recent review on war-affected children by Graga Machel is also very important. A new chapter that she added to the review, on the role of women and the peace process, recognized that building peace from the grass-roots level is an important aspect of women's participation- that even as they are trying to hold their families together in war and post-war conditions, women are creating and sustaining peace at the community level. But this chapter went further, to argue that the role of women must go beyond this informal grass-roots level; that women have potential to make a greater contribution to peacemaking and peace-building; and that they should be given an active role in the formal processes of conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. I am very happy that so many speakers in the debate have picked up on this new chapter. So the gaps - and the possibilities - in relation to women's participation have been identified; the linkages are becoming more evident and acknowledged by authoritative voices; the lessons learned are being examined and placed before the United Nations system and before Member States; and the calls to action - to factor women into the peace and security equation in new ways - are loud and becoming louder. The question is: how do we, how should we, heed them? Australia believes there are a number of practical steps that can be taken. We are applying these in our own development assistance programmes, in our region in particular. I do not want to take the time of the Council to go into details here, but we would be happy to share our experience in programmes in Bougainville, Solomon Islands and East Timor, which have been designed to support the role of women in peace processes, all the while operating alongside other programmes to empower women and to provide greater protection for them in situations of armed conflict. But beyond our national efforts, we want to see a more deliberate and concentrated effort at the regional and international levels to increase women's participation in peacemaking and peace-building operations. At the very top of the spectrum, renewed attention should be given to the consideration of qualified women for appointment as special representatives and deputy special representatives of the Secretary-General and as senior field staff for peace support operations. This requires effort on the part of the United Nations and Member States to identify suitably skilled and qualified women, both those already within the United Nations system and those from outside, for leadership positions. Partly as a result of the initiative taken by the women Permanent Representatives described earlier today by Ambassador Claudia Fritsche of Liechtenstein and partly because the United Nations Secretariat wants to update its database, my Government has just completed a lengthy and intensive exercise to do just that: identify suitably qualified women. We hope that other Governments will do likewise. In addition to identifying suitable women for these specialist tasks, or I might call them trouble- shooting tasks, we should all be working to place more women generally in the international legal system - in the Tribunals, in the courts, in the International Law Commission, which I understand has never had a single woman serve on it in its 50-year history. What sort of message does that send about women's participation? We should also be thinking now and preparing actively to be ready to meet the requirement of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (A/CONF.183/9). Perhaps not everybody has read the fine print and is aware that article 36, paragraph 8, imposes on States parties an obligation to take into account, when selecting Judges, the need for a "fair representation of female and male judges" within the membership of the Court. This requirement is also found in the associated article concerning the staff of the Prosecutor's Office and the Registry. The inclusion of these gender provisions, specifying the need for qualified women to be employed in all organs of the Court, grew in part from the United Nations experience with the two special Tribunals and the report produced by the Secretary-General that accompanied the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Finally, just on the areas where we might particularly focus, there is a new and growing emphasis, which we are all aware of, in the United Nations peace and security operations on the role of civilian police. Here too there is very real scope to consider and to incorporate a gender perspective. It is obvious that we need more sensitive and more sophisticated resources for gathering evidence, interviewing victims, counselling traumatized persons and interacting with communities in post-conflict situations. Recruitment and training should give appropriate attention to involving women in all these areas. I said at the outset that I felt that this was an important debate. It gives much-needed impetus to a clear trend towards greater involvement of women in managing conflict and in peace processes. Australia hopes that it will result in a renewed determination on the part of both the United Nations and its Member States to take the practical steps necessary to make this happen. Frankly, they are all within reach, but they need a good push; not just from Angela King, not just from Noeleen Heyzer and the United Nations Development Fund for Women, whose thoughtful statements today should have inspired everyone present, but also from individual Member States and from this Council in particular. I have not seen a draft of the resolution that the Council may be planning to adopt, but I hope it will be strong and, above all, that it will be action-oriented and will pick up the practical suggestions that have been put forward today by a number of delegations, such as those listed by the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Korea and more recently by the Ambassador of New Zealand, speaking on behalf of the South Pacific Forum countries. The resolution should help us all not just to talk the talk, but to walk the walk of women's involvement. Speaking of talk, there is a lot of talk in the United Nations about "smart sanctions". The phrase has taken hold. Let us be smart in other ways by factoring women deliberately and decisively into the peace, security and conflict-prevention and conflict- resolution activities of the United Nations. By doing things differently, we can do them better.

The President: I thank the representative of Australia for her kind words addressed to my delegation. The next speaker inscribed on my list is the representative of Croatia. I invite her to take a seat at the Council table and to make her statement.

Ms. Greie Polie (Croatia): It is my pleasure to thank you, Mr. President, for organizing this open debate on women and peace and security. Indeed, Sir, you should be commended for using your presidency to bring to the spotlight the issue that often lies at the core of the success or failure of domestic, regional and international efforts directed at conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace-building, including post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction. In View of its participation last May in the adoption of the historic Windhoek Declaration and the Namibia Plan of Action on Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations, Namibia's leadership on this issue comes as no surprise. Rather, I see it as a natural extension of your country's well-deserved reputation for fostering gender equality. Also allow me to join others in welcoming this morning's excellent presentations by Ms. King and Ms. Heyzer. The enthusiastic response from the gallery is proof that they do make a difference. The principles of gender equality and mainstreaming of gender perspective in all dimensions of societal interaction lie at the core of democratic societies. Without active support for these principles, no society, no institution, including the United Nations, can hope to master the policies of inclusion in general and in the area of peace and security in particular. The maintenance of peace and security requires a contribution not by some or half of the world's population, but by all. Equally important, if such a contribution is skewed and reflects either only men's or only women's masculine or feminine perspectives, it remains seriously impaired. Likewise, if we were, for example, to direct our attention predominantly or exclusively to the impact of conflict and armed conflict on women and girls alone, we would be doing a disservice to the required comprehensive approach to the overall impact of such conflicts. Although that concern remains highly theoretical for the time being, it is from this fundamental premise that the Croatian delegation would like to share its views during today's debate. At the outset, we would like to recognize the evolving body of policy statements and other contributions made already to today's topic by the Secretary-General, the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the United Nations Development Fund for Women and various other organizations and bodies within the United Nations system. We would also like to recognize a growing body of related actions taken by the Security Council, such as on the protection of civilians and children in armed conflicts, humanitarian assistance to refugees and others in conflict situations, post-conflict peace-building and the reintegration of former combatants. In the area of United Nations peace operations, we would like to note the pioneering contributions made by the Windhoek Declaration, the Namibia Plan of Action and Ms. Graca Machel's review document on the impact of armed conflict on children and women. We also wish to highlight the final report of the Beijing + 5 conference (A/S-23/10/Rev.l), the Brahimi report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (S/2000/809) and the first follow-on implementation report of the Secretary-General (A/55/502). We are waiting to see the rest. Nevertheless, so far precious little serious social science research has focused on the issues addressed by the documents I have mentioned, mainly for a lack of recognition of their importance and, hence, of institutional funding. In this regard, we hail the accomplishments of such pioneers as Ms. Colleen Lowe Morna of South Africa, Ms. Louise Olson of Sweden, Professor Judith Hicks Stiehm of the United States of America, Ms. Maggie Patterson of Canada and Colonel Festus Aboagye of Ghana, to name just a few. The staff members of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations Lessons Learned Unit have also made a contribution to the field and will, it is hoped, continue to do so. So, what have we learned from their research? We have learned that in recent conflicts - from El Salvador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and from East Timor to Sierra Leone - women and girls are overwhelmingly the principal victims of deliberate rape, maiming, abduction and displacement. We are told that women and children constitute an estimated 80 per cent of all internally displaced persons and refugees. We have also learned that women and girls are treated differently from men and boys as soldiers or ex-soldiers, as prisoners or ex-prisoners, and as survivors of rape and mutilation. What can we do? The least we can do is impress upon the Security Council to call upon parties to conflicts to take special measures to protect this vulnerable population. Of course, within its prerogatives of determining mandates for peace operations the Security Council can do much more. It can request that special mechanisms be established for reporting on all forms of sexual violence and exploitation of women and can provide adequate resources for the institutionalization of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms for peacekeeping personnel. Next, the Security Council can, and should, require that all mission staff receive pre-deployment or early post-deployment training in gender sensitivity and mainstreaming. Also, it can ensure that planning for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration activities, all mine-related activities and public information outreach campaigns takes into account the different needs and different priorities of men and women. Last but not least, the Security Council must do its utmost to ensure the implementation of existing international humanitarian and human rights law. I wish to recall that it was only after the diabolic record in Bosnia and Herzegovina that rape was recognized as a war crime, and in some instances as a crime against humanity; and that only recently have such crimes as forced pregnancy, detention with intent to impregnate, and sterilization been sanctioned by article 16 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. In the post-conflict period, there is also ample space to support local women's peace-building activities and to strengthen their precarious economic situation - including their access to jobs in weak economies with high unemployment rates - and their access to counselling and human rights expertise, to name a few concerns. Most importantly, if the Security Council were to require the mandatory participation of women in all the implementation mechanisms of peace settlement with a view to their sustained participation in the political, economic and social life in the future, it would drastically increase the prospects for sustainable peace. Needless to say, the same approach applies to conflict prevention, mediation and resolution, where women must be adequately represented at all levels of the policy-making and decision-making process. Of special importance in this regard are the contributions made in United Nations field operations. The efforts and accomplishments of women staff members of such multidimensional peace operations as the United Nations Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES), the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and, especially, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) are absolutely precious because they were instrumental in both conceiving and implementing creative approaches to gender inclusion policies within the host environment, and in gender mainstreaming within the peace operation. As always, the support of the respective special representatives of the Secretary- General and the United Nations Headquarters figured prominently in their prospects for success or failure. Although in some cases today, and certainly in a perfect world of tomorrow, a special representative's gender should not, and would not, matter, we must recognize the fact that so far very few women have served as personal envoys, representatives or special representatives of the Secretary-General. In fact, unless I am mistaken, today we have no Dame Margarets and no Elizabeth Rehns; no woman is currently heading a United Nations peace operation or serving as a special envoy or special representative of the Secretary- General. Some argue that perhaps no qualified women exist for such posts or other senior posts; others point to an informal roster that suggests otherwise. During her United Nations press conference last June, Mrs. Elizabeth Rehn advanced the following bold proposal: when Member States are submitting candidatures for senior United Nations posts they should always present the Secretary-General with two equally qualified candidates, a man and a woman. The Security Council has in the past called for women to play an equal part in the maintenance of peace and security; so did the Secretary-General's strategic plan of action. Arguably, more can be done at the international level in concrete practical terms, but the issue also clearly rests with the Member States and their domestic policies. Hence, perhaps a comparative survey of State practices on a set of issues and topics addressed in today's debate would be a useful step towards institutionalizing reporting mechanisms within various areas of women's participation and gender mainstreaming in peace and security matters.

The President: I thank the representative of Croatia for the kind words addressed to my country. The next speaker inscribed on my list is the representative of Belarus. I invite him to take a seat at the Council table and to make his statement.

Mr. Ling (Belarus) (spoke in Russian): The delegation of the Republic of Belarus would like to congratulate you, Sir, the representative of Namibia, on presiding over this meeting of the Security Council. Namibia's contribution to the work of the United Nations this year is indeed greatly appreciated. The item on our agenda today is rather unusual, but we deeply believe that it touches on the most sensitive aspects of the entire contemporary system of peacekeeping and peace-building in the United Nations. We are happy to see that the Security Council is not beginning its consideration of this important item from scratch. The Council has had very important debates on its role in the maintenance of international peace and security, in disarmament and reintegration of former combatants, and in the area of children in armed conflict - all of which provided a sound basis for our consideration today of women within the scope of the Council's powers and responsibilities in the maintenance of international peace and security. The Republic of Belarus appreciates the work done in the General Assembly on gender equality and the advancement of women and in involving women more widely in the political, economic and social arenas of life. We believe that there is a very close link between those endeavours and the work of the Security Council, the principal organ responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security, as it considers the so- called women's issue in the context of armed conflicts - which directly involve women and from which they suffer more than anybody else. The Security Council statement issued on International Women's Day this year stressed that women's interests had to be fully taken into account and that women had to enabled to participate in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and crises. We believe that it is important for the Council to take the proper action to protect women, who constitute the most vulnerable group within the civilian population. That is no easy matter in today's conflicts, which are primarily internal conflicts and which involve a wide range of political, socio-economic, cultural and other social issues. Hence, it is very important to ensure that Council resolutions and peacekeeping mandates contain specific provisions relating to the provision of protection and assistance to girls and women. It is also very important that there be a reliable mechanism to ensure that all those who violates the norms of humanitarian law are held to account. Belarus believes that United Nations activities on gender issues have been of particular significance this year. They have included the June special session of the General Assembly devoted to women's issues, as well as today's Security Council deliberations. Together, these will define the future approach to the Organization's consideration of women's issues to ensure peace and security. The Republic of Belarus attaches great importance to gender issues, and is fully determined to make its contribution to those endeavours.

The President: I thank the representative of Belarus for the kind words he addressed to my country. A number of speakers remain on my list. In view of the lateness of the hour, and with the concurrence of the members of the Security Council, I intend to suspend the meeting now, and to resume it tomorrow, Wednesday, 25 October 2000, at 10.30 am. The meeting was suspended at 6.25 p.m.