Statement of Estonia at the WPS Debate October 2016
Statement of Estonia
A special thank you goes to the Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, for this year’s report on women and peace and security (S/2016/822). We align ourselves with the statement of the European Union and of the Group of Friends of Women and Peace and Security, and we reiterate our commitment to and support for protecting women’s and girls’ rights globally. The fundamental lesson that this report teaches us is the sheer level of detail that is required in order to address the issue of women’s rights violations, so that no one gets left behind.
Statement of Estonia
Every topic diverges into a number of smaller issues; for example, violence against women breaks down into matters such as stereotyping, conflict-zone violence, sexual violence and extremist violence. If we focus only on sexual violence, for instance, we start looking at questions of identification, prevention, detection and victim support. From victim support, we derive different types of services, whether it be creating awareness, promoting access or supplying psychological and physical specialists. This overall process is a fragile transition that begins with the facts, figures and estimates we read on paper, and narrows down to the actual care and support each and every woman receives personally. Every detail in that transition will correspond to a certain woman living in the world. When a detail is forgotten, a woman may be, too. We, as Member States, must do two things for the benefit of every single woman in need of help — invest and collaborate more.
Statement of Estonia
Estonia invests both domestically and globally in achieving gender equality. At home, we have adopted national action plans and development strategies aimed at tackling issues such as stereotyping, violence and inaccessible victim-support services. Mrs. Kaljulaid, our newly elected President, is hopefully a testament to the fact that Estonians can reach the highest ranks regardless of their gender. However, we continue to encourage women’s participation in all spheres of society, governance and industry. In the military, for example, where the majority of participants are male, we hope to triple the number of females in the next two years. Internationally, we remain committed to promoting the potential of information and communications technologies (ICT) and innovation for helping to protect women’s and girls’ rights. ICT can give access to voting and education, detect and collect data, offer victim-support services, and function as a platform for free speech and global communication. The list goes on. We must establish more ICT mechanisms with that goal in mind. In that regard, I would like to commend UN-Women for collaborating with us in the area of ICT, as well as for incorporating technology into their own programmes and supporting a number of related measures. That brings me to the subject of collaboration. While intergovernmental cooperation is extremely significant, everyone should be heard from, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society have the ability to provide new insights and data that might otherwise be missed. There can be no doubt that that helps our joint efforts to ensure that every detail is accounted for and that no one is left behind. I would therefore like to stress that representatives of civil society and NGOs should be given larger platforms and more access to United Nations meetings and conferences.