Participation

One of the main objectives of the Italian action plan is to strengthen the participation of women in peacekeeping missions and their decision-making bodies. Italy has long honoured its pledge to avoid gender discrimination, enrolling women in all its national armed forces. This has resulted in an increase in the number of women in that field and in their participation at all levels and stages of peacekeeping operations.

As you are aware, Mr. President, Ireland launched a cross-learning initiative on 1325 in 2009. Yesterday afternoon, I had the honour to present the findings of this initiative to the head of UN Women, Under-Secretary General Michelle Bachelet.

The tenth anniversary of Resolution 1325 is an important milestone in the evolution of the women, peace and security agenda. Events marking this anniversary, both here in New York and worldwide, highlight the significant progress that has been achieved but also the long road yet to be travelled. Women are more visible in many areas, including peacekeeping, mediation and post-conflict recovery.

Ireland also welcomes the recent report of the Secretary-General on women, peace and security, noting in particular the comprehensive recommendations and the update on the set of indicators which will be used to track implementation of Resolution 1325 at the global level.

Noting that the resolution has galvanized important efforts at all levels on women, peace and security, it is important for the Council to continue making efforts to ensure its effective implementation. The international community has every interest in ensuring the full involvement of women in all stages of the peace process, peacekeeping and peacebuilding: women as peacemakers, women as peacekeepers and women as peacebuilders.

In an era when opportunities and knowledge abound, we find that women's potential contributions to conflict resolution processes have not been adequately harnessed. That represents an enormous deficit in our common efforts. Excluding or omitting women's participation in conflict resolution processes weakens efforts to increase representation by major stakeholders to achieve sustainable peace based on inclusion of all perspectives.

We can reach lasting peace and security in any country only when women are represented at the negotiating table or in talks on post-conflict reconstruction. In the same vein, let me add that the three pillars of lasting peace name,ly, economic recovery, social cohesion and political legitimacy, cannot be achieved without active engagement engagement of women.

We are taking further steps towards increasing the participation of women to 50 % in these institutions, which will take the number of elected women to 1.6 to 1.8 million. Presently, a Bill for the same is under the consideration of the Parliament of India. There are, perhaps, more democratically elected women in India alone than in the rest of the world put together.

The imperative of political empowennent of women cannot be overemphasized. India took a historic initiative of empowering women by reserving one third of the seats in more than 300,000 institutions of local self-government to women.

Resolution 1325 highlighted the impact of anned conflict on women and the need for effective institutional arrangements to guarantee their protection and full participation in peace processes.