Participation

 The sustaining peace and sustainable development agendas intersect in multiple ways, but perhaps the most important priorities are gender equality, women’s empowerment and the participation of women and youth in peacebuilding and governance.

Moreover, partnerships with regional and subregional organizations, youth, women, civil society and academia will improve our early-warning systems’ ability to identify the source of tension, to address it and to consolidate the national, regional and international support needed to support peaceful and developmental processes built on respect for human rights.

We believe that women’s participation in United Nations peace and security efforts, including post- conflict governance and peacekeeping, is very important. Hungary has intensified its efforts to identify, nominate and deploy female military experts and police officers to United Nations peacekeeping and EU Common Security and Defence Policy missions.

That includes new partnerships, inter alia, with regional organizations — as has been mentioned — as well as with civil society. And it entails an inclusive approach in which all members of society, especially women, have a role to play. In that regard, resolution 1325 (2000), on women and peace and security, should guide our activities.

We also acknowledge the need to empower more women to serve as mediators. For that, sustained political support, coherence, cooperation, systematic efforts and adequate resources will be needed.

It is only natural for women and young people to play a central role in all phases of planning, implementation and follow-up of all sustainable peace processes as a means to move from conflict to peace. We believe that such an approach gives an objective and comprehensive meaning to the concept of national ownership.

The maintenance of peace is a complex process that covers a broad range of tasks and actors and that requires integration and coordination with the Government of the country involved, leading to dialogue and peace processes that are inclusive and representative of society as a whole. In this regard, we would like to stress that the role of women is essential in order to ensure peace.

As Permanent Representative for the past three and a half years, I know that the Council’s richest, most meaningful exchanges have come when we have heard from real people — when Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a Yazidi woman trafficked by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), implored the Council to take action because ISIL, in her words, was using rape “to ensure that women could never again lead a normal life” (S/PV.7585, p.6);

The fourth is that we need to harness the agency of women to create sustainable peace through inclusive processes. Experiences shared through a network of female peace mediators, which I have also initiated, confirm the importance of inclusiveness.

Sweden looks forward to a resumption of the United Nations-led intra-Syrian talks in Geneva on 8 February, in line with resolution 2254 (2015), and hopes that the Astana meeting can help create the right conditions for this. Syrian women must be fully involved in the process.