UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2014-17

Monday 16th June 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

I wish to inform the House that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, together with the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, published on 12 June 2014 our “National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, 2014-17”.

The national action plan is a tool to enable us to articulate our priorities on women, peace and security and co-ordinate implementation of our work at national level. It serves as a guiding national policy document that is able to capture the diverse set of initiatives on this agenda taking place within the UK Government across our security, foreign policy and development work. It outlines the results that we expect these initiatives to bring. It serves to provide direction and vision for our staff and partners to ensure that women and girls are at the centre of all our efforts to prevent, resolve and respond to conflict.

The UK has a strong global reputation on women, peace and security, which I am committed to maintaining. We play a lead role at the United Nations Security Council on women, peace and security, including on debates and ensuring the role of women features in the mandates of peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions. The landmark UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security has been built on by six new resolutions, and calls on UN member states to adopt and deliver national action plans. The UK was one of the first countries to publish a national action plan in 2006. It was revised in 2010 for a further three years.

The aim of this latest three-year national action plan is to put women and girls at the centre of all UK efforts to prevent and resolve conflict, to promote peace and stability, and to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls. It sets out our intent to strengthen our ability to reduce the impact of conflict on women and girls and to promote their inclusion in conflict resolution. As well as bringing together all of the UK Government’s activities on this area, it shows the depth and breadth of our work on the women, peace and security agenda. It builds on the momentum generated from the range of women, peace and security-related initiatives including the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, DFID’s strategic vision for girls and women, including broader work on violence against women and girls, and the call to action on protecting women in emergencies.

This national action plan focuses specifically on tackling the challenge to advance women and girl’s participation, to prevent violence against women and girls and protect them from it, to provide targeted relief and recovery, and to build UK national capacity to deliver all of this. It signals the UK Government’s continuing commitment to the agenda in our focus countries, which include: Afghanistan, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Somalia and Syria—as well as work at home. In identifying these countries, we have considered whether it is a priority country for the work of all three Departments and of the National Security Council and that through our local consultations in-country, we have determined there is local appetite for change.

Government staff working in UK embassies and DFID offices in conflict-affected states have been consulted, as have women who have been or who are affected by conflict. This plan reaffirms this Government’s ambition to work as one to pursue visible change for women and girls affected by conflict, including in partnership with NGOs, Parliament and our international partners.

We will develop and publish an implementation plan, including indicators and baseline data on this national action plan by the end of 2014. For the first time, this baseline data will be used as a benchmark to assess UK efforts on women, peace and security throughout the life of this national action plan and will further articulate the key actions to be undertaken together by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence. This national action plan will be reported on annually from autumn 2015. The annual reports will be deposited in Parliament and shared with the Associate Parliamentary Group on Women, Peace and Security.

I am placing a copy of the national action plan in the Library of the House.