UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (James Duddridge)]

My right hon. Friend, the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Baroness Anelay of St Johns), has made the following written statement:

I wish to inform the House that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, together with the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, are today publishing a progress report on the UK’s third “National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security” which was published on 12 June 2014 (Official Report, 16 June 2014, columns 72-74WS).

The national action plan sets out our priorities on women, peace and security from 2014-17. It is the guiding national policy document that sets out the direction and vision to the Government and their partners as we work to ensure that women and girls are at the centre of our efforts to prevent, respond to and resolve conflict. The report published today outlines the progress in our international and domestic work and gives examples of this against the four main pillars of women, peace and security: participation, prevention, protection, and relief and recovery. The annexes to the report also provide details of activities under way in the UK’s six chosen focus countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Somalia and Syria.

The strategic defence and security review was clear about the importance the Government attach to work on women, peace and security and its centrality to peace and stability overseas. We will continue to collaborate with our international partners and civil society to drive forward this agenda using the international momentum from the high level review of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in October 2015. We will increase efforts to ensure that women's voices are represented in wider peace processes, negotiations and state-building.

We will continue to report to Parliament annually on progress, with our next report due in autumn 2016.

The progress report has been published on gov.uk:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-national-action-plan-on-women-peace-and-security-2014-17-report-to-parliament-december-2015.

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