CONSIDERAZIONI INTRODUTTIVE DELL’AMBASCIATORE SEBASTIANO CARDI, RAPPRESENTANTE PERMANENTE D’ITALIA PRESSO LE NAZIONI UNITE, AL POLICY FORUM PRESSO L’INTERNATIONAL PEACE INSTITUTE SU “INTEGRARE LA PROSPETTIVA DI GENERE NEL MANAGEMENT DI CRISI E PEACEKEEPING: ESPERIENZE RECENTI E SFIDE FUTURE” (3 marzo 2014) 

General Jean-Paul Paloméros

Major General Adrian Foster MBE

Ms. Mari Skåre

Ladies & Gentlemen

Let me share with you some inspiring words of a great woman who knows a great deal about peace and conflict, Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi:

“For millennia women have dedicated themselves almost exclusively to the task of nurturing, protecting and caring for the young and the old, striving for the conditions of peace that favor life as a whole. To this can be added the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, no war was ever been started by women. But it is women and children who have always suffered most in situations of conflict. […] The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all”.

Ladies & Gentlemen

Security Council Resolution 2122 of last year, emphasized that persisting barriers to full implementation of the landmark resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security will only be dismantled through dedicated commitment to women’s empowerment.
We are here, today, to discuss this complex and multidimensional challenge.

We are here because we are concerned by women’s exacerbated vulnerability in armed conflict and post conflict situation.

We are here because we recognize that women’s and girl’s gender equality and empowerment, including economic empowerment, are critical to maintaining international peace and security and to promoting the stability and development of societies emerging from armed conflict.

And we are here to stress that women deployed in all areas of crisis management and peacekeeping missions have a tremendous impact on the local environment, supporting the role of women in building peace and protecting women’s rights.

Today, women constitute only 2.8% of military personnel and 10% of police personnel in UN peacekeeping missions. It is therefore an operational imperative to recruit more women in peacekeeping and strive towards gender parity, recalling that the ultimate responsibility in this field lies with individual Troop and Police Contributing Countries.

Ladies & Gentlemen

Italy has always considered the issue of Women, Peace and Security a key priority of its international agenda, and was among the co-sponsors of Security Council Resolution 2122.

On a national level, Italy endowed itself in 2010 with a comprehensive National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security and we have just finalized its Review.

Also, in this field, Italy prides itself for the leading role of the Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units (CoESPU) in Vicenza, which is organizing specific training courses for police staff on “Prevention and Investigation of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence”. COESPU is a UN Center of Excellence soon to share its headquarters with the NATO Stability Policing Center of Excellence. COESPU is actually already contributing to the overall effort of the Alliance towards the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. General Palomeros and Mari Skare lead the work of the Alliance in this aim. It is no wonder then that their presence in New York today moved us to organize this event.

I wish you a fruitful and inspiring discussion, whose conclusions may contribute to the global assessment of the progress made and of the way forward, to take place at the 2015 High Level Meeting on Women, Peace and Security.