Participation PP

We have had a year — a year to increase the effective participation of women in peace processes; a year to increase women’s roles in the military and peacekeeping; a year to increase the finance to support all this work and more. So how have we got on? Well, let me take those three points — participation, peacekeeping and money — in turn.

On the first, over the past year the United Kingdom has been pushing to get women a seat at the negotiating table, and not just because it is the right thing to do. We are doing so because it works. As the Secretary- General and Samantha reminded us, when women are at the table the chances of peace increase by 20 to 35 per cent. And yet less than one in ten negotiators is a woman. In Yemen, United Kingdom support has enabled the United Nations Special Envoy to employ an expert on women’s political participation. It has enabled a UN-Women project to boost the influence of Yemeni women in the peace process. And in Syria, we have worked hard to ensure that women’s views are heard, including through support for the Women’s Advisory Board and the Women’s Consultative Committee that Carolyn rightly mentioned.

Some would say that this counts for very little when the bombs still fall — that these are just token gestures. But as many of my colleagues have done, let us look at Colombia. The guns have fallen silent. The negotiations included a gender subcommission. Three delegations of women’s organizations held talks with the negotiating team in Havana. Those are not token gestures. They are meaningful steps towards bringing a sustainable end to more than 50 years of war, and I am proud of the diplomatic and financial support from the United Kingdom that has helped to make that happen.