UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for securing this debate. I know that she has a long history of support for UN Security Council Resolution 1325. I am glad that in this debate we have the opportunity to highlight the important issues while Her Majesty’s Government are in the process of developing the next UK national action plan. I declare my interests as the chair of the advisory board of GAPS and a member of the steering board of the Foreign Secretary’s PSVI initiative.

The UK is a world leader in setting the women, peace and security agenda and played a crucial role in ensuring that UNSCR 1325 ever came into being. This resolution addresses both the impact of conflict on women, and the vital role that women do and should play in conflict prevention, conflict resolution and sustainable peace. This includes women’s role in preventing conflict, preventing violence against women, protection of women, and women’s social, economic and political participation. The new UK NAP provides a key opportunity for the UK to commit to an ambitious plan to take this forward.

Women’s participation in peace processes is a key element of UNSCR 1325, yet almost 14 years after its adoption there is still little progress in this area. Over the past 25 years only one in 40 peace signatories has been a woman, and only 12 out of 585 peace accords have referred to women’s needs. Therefore, I pay enormous tribute to our Foreign Secretary for speaking out so strongly about including Syrian women at the Geneva II peace process and his groundbreaking work through the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative that is making a huge impact with leaders around the world.

The next two years are key for women, peace and security both domestically and internationally, with the preventing sexual violence summit in June, the NATO summit in September, international drawdown of NATO troops from Afghanistan, the post-2015 framework, and the 15th anniversary of UN Resolution 1325 in October 2015. This new NAP gives an excellent opportunity for Her Majesty’s Government to consolidate and bring their women, peace and security agenda under one framework, maximising opportunities to ensure that women are at the heart of conflict prevention, peacebuilding and recovery.

Domestically, government co-ordination is central to enable the UK to meet its international women, peace and security commitments. To guarantee consistency of policy, the Government need a more joined-up approach to ensuring that all departmental policies and initiatives stem from the NAP, including policies relating to violence against women and girls, the PSVI and DfID’s call to action on violence against women and girls in emergencies.

Stronger mechanisms to mainstream gender and women, peace and security internally within departments need to be established, and gender training needs to be mandatory for some jobs in the UK and overseas. The Ministry of Defence has not yet developed distinct policies and training in line with UN Resolution 1325, and when the UK trains other national armed forces, all training should include women, peace and security. The PSVI summit in June will provide a good opportunity for the MoD to announce developments in this area, and for it to display its commitment to the women, peace and security agenda and preventing sexual violence on a global stage. At a country level, commitments to women, peace and security need to be reflected in FCO country business plans and DfID operational plans, and those commitments should be outlined in the new NAP.

As has already been mentioned, there is concern that the NAP has no dedicated funding. Neither do the Government currently use any systems to monitor their funding on this. For example, we know that the UK has women, peace and security programmes in many conflict-affected countries but we do not know how the UK prioritises this in its funding, and the use of the OECD gender marker would enable this.

As has already been mentioned, in-country consultation through talking to women and girls at grass roots is essential to ensure that the UK’s NAP and women, peace and security priorities reflect the needs of women and girls in conflict-affected and fragile environments. The new NAP should contain a plan for ongoing consultations in its focus countries. Most importantly, the NAP should acknowledge the role of local women’s rights organisations in prevention of conflict and violence against women, and their contribution to peacebuilding. Thus the NAP should commit to ensuring women’s civil society organisations have access to necessary funding including for campaigning and advocacy. This will transform their role and status so that they can fully participate in their community and national peacebuilding.

Monitoring and evaluation of the NAP is also important and the new NAP indicators should demonstrate impact, rather than just output, to enable identification of where its programming, systems and policies are effective, and where changes are required. The annual NAP report to Parliament is key and I hope that my noble friend the Minister can confirm that this will continue under the new NAP.

I am pleased to understand that Afghanistan remains a focus country, as women’s rights there was one of the reasons for our engagement, and we must not allow the gains that have been made for women there to roll back. The NAP provides an opportunity for the Government to demonstrate commitment to women’s rights in Afghanistan and support to Afghan women who so desperately need it. It is also essential that women from Afghanistan are included in the NATO summit in September so that their views are heard and that security for women in Afghanistan is not forgotten as NATO withdraws.

In conclusion, I congratulate the Government on all that they are doing on the women, peace and security agenda. This NAP is an excellent opportunity to push forward this work and to demonstrate the UK’s strong commitment, through funding programmes and ways of working, to ensure women truly are at the heart of conflict prevention, peacebuilding and recovery.