Mr. Mahbubani (Singapore): I too want to thank Under-Secretary-General Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Ms. Angela King and Ms. Noleen Heyzer for their statements.

I want to begin by saying that Under-Secretary-General Jean-Marie Guéhenno was a very brave man when he began his remarks by saying that he had encountered some scepticism. I believe that he said that in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) this was an exercise in political correctness and not really something of real value. To be completely candid, I thought that in some ways Mr. Guéhenno tabled the most important point that we need to address in today’s meeting, because, looking around this room, what I detect most of all is a huge, invisible elephant of scepticism about the value of this exercise.

Of course, those who are sceptical about this exercise are not going to come here and say "I am sceptical about this exercise; it is just a pure exercise in political correctness". But they exist, and to some extent, that is reflected in the fact that only 11 countries have signed up for this debate. Also, the number of seats that are occupied gives some indication of the degree of scepticism.

I make this point at the beginning because I thought that one useful contribution that both Ms. Angela King and Ms. Noleen Heyzer could make in the course of today’s debate would be to try to slay this invisible elephant in the room. One way of doing that is to indicate that this is not an abstract exercise; it is about real life situations and real people, whose lives can and will be improved by our debate today.

It is useful to provide statistics that make the case. For example, one statistic that I came across – which I suppose is obvious – is that at the beginning of the twentieth century only 15 per cent of the casualties of conflicts were civilians, but since the end of the cold war, 90 per cent of those killed in conflict are civilians. Apparently, three out of four fatalities of war are now women and children. So there has been this huge sea change in the nature of conflicts.

If I may talk of the good old days – if I may use that phrase – when the boys went out to fight boys and then came home, those days are gone. Now conflict directly involves women and girls, and that is why we need to address this issue more directly. It would help us if more details were provided along these lines to make the case that this is not an exercise in political correctness, but, as Mr. Guéhenno emphasized, it is an important issue that we have to address.

We were asked to pose questions. I have one for Mr. Guéhenno and one for Ms. King and Ms. Heyzer.

I appreciate the point that Mr. Guéhenno has made that DPKO is fully committed to the whole exercise of gender mainstreaming. I am sure that within the Department in New York there is that commitment. But, as he knows, many of the people who are sent to the field are parachuted in from their countries. They come in; they get briefings from DPKO, and then they go out to the field. I suspect that they come with all their cultural values and attitudes intact.

Here, since I cannot criticize other cultures, I will just say that, as is known, Asian males tend to be very chauvinistic, male chauvinists. I say this with some knowledge because my wife complains that she has not fully scrubbed male chauvinism from me. These gentlemen are essentially brought up with these traditional Asian values and martial traditions, and then they are sent out into the field and told: I want you to be sensitive in the way you handle women; I want you to understand the needs of women, and so forth.

As Mr. Guéhenno himself is an expert on the whole question of values and how to handle values, I am sure that it is a major exercise communicating abstract points on paper to real people in the field. I was wondering whether he had any thoughts on this. Here I note that Ms. Heyzer bravely said in her remarks that experts found that a gender perspective is not sufficiently incorporated into peace operations. Rather, it is isolated in the form of single staff persons or small units lacking sufficient seniority or resources. This is one question that I hope Mr. Guéhenno will try to address.

My next question is to Ms. King and Ms. Heyzer. One of the points made in these discussions about the role of women is that women actually can and do make a difference when they are involved in delivering peace. For example, I understand that President Clinton said in July, after the Camp David talks, that "If we had women at Camp David, we would have an agreement."

We also know that when they are involved in peace, women actually make a difference in some areas. I have been given the example of something called Jerusalem Link, a federation of Palestinian and Israeli women’s groups. In 2000 apparently its platform served as a blueprint for negotiations over the final status of Jerusalem during the Oslo process. Of course, we all know how difficult the Jerusalem issue is.

Are there concrete examples that can be provided of where the participation of women has made a difference in terms of delivering peace? It strengthens the case for saying: let us get women more involved. I noticed, for example, that, with regard to your debate, Mr. President, on the West Africa workshop, we were very concerned that all the good work that we had done in Sierra Leone might be lost by the new fighting breaking out in Liberia. I noticed that one of the two experts, Ms. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, is from Liberia. In my own brief visit to Liberia, I found the women in Liberia quite engaged and outspoken. Can she illustrate how the women of Liberia can play a role in trying to contain a real-life dangerous conflict that is troubling the Security Council now?

That is just one example. The others that can be provided will be very helpful.

I do actually want to apologize to Mr. Guéhenno, Ms. King and Ms. Heyzer. If I am not here to listen to their responses, I will be fully briefed. My apologies if I attend to other commitments.

Finally, two concluding points. One is that I would like to support the final concrete appeal that Ms. Heyzer made at the end of her statement about the women in Rwanda and providing some form of sufficient protection from the obvious difficulties they are facing. I hope that something can be done about that.

Secondly, I wanted to congratulate you, Mr. President, on the initiative of launching this debate. As I explained earlier, I think that it is a real issue and not one that should be dismissed. Even though there are other voices in the corridors of the United Nations that say that the Security Council’s job is not involved in norm creation but rather to handle specific issues, I think that in this particular case the Council can make a difference. I hope that, when the two reports come out in October, the Council will use them to continue the process. One debate is not going to change the course of events, but it is part of a very important process. I congratulate you, Sir, for participating in this.