STATEMENT OF LITHUANIA, October, 2015

Secondly, the spread of terrorism and violent extremism has had a horrendous impact on the lives of women and girls. While images and stories of Yazidi women being enslaved by Daesh or girls forced to become suicide bombers by Boko Haram capture our emotions, we need to go beyond the perception of women as victims of terrorism. Seeing women as a driving force in the fight against terrorism and violent extremism is crucial. In September, the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1373 (2001), concerning counter-terrorism, chaired by Lithuania, held the first open briefing on the subject with practitioners from the field. Furthermore, as the global study research demonstrates, countries with relative gender equality are less prone to violent extremism than those where the human rights of women are not protected. Therefore, all United Nations counter- terrorism strategies must be linked with civil assistance and human rights programmes aimed at shaping a different social environment, averting extremism and radicalization and tackling the root causes of terrorism.