Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security
“Toward the 25th anniversary of Resolution 1325”
Tuesday, 7 March 2023
Statement delivered by the Permanent Representative of Italy, Ambassador Maurizio Massari
M.me President,
Italy aligns itself with the statements delivered by the EU and by the Group of Friends of Women Peace and Security, and would like to add a few remarks in its national capacity.
Italy commends the timely initiative of Mozambique to convene an Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security right at the outset of the works of the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women.
Indeed, participation is the challenge at the core of Resolution 1325. However, when we look at the data, in the last two years we observe that the rate of women’s participation as party negotiators or delegates in peace-processes have decreased from 23% to 19%, in spite of their constructive contribution at grassroots level and their presence on the frontlines. Structural barriers to implementation remain and need to be addressed.
For this reason, we welcome all efforts in this direction, such as: i) bring in more technical expertise, higher quality data, adequate resources; ii) promote strategy meetings on designing and supporting inclusive processes to identify and then implement measures with the most impact for each context; iii) strengthening gender mainstreaming across the work of political and peace-building missions; iv) ensure the support by regional organizations and Member States to make these efforts sustainable.
M.me President,
Italy has a long-standing tradition of promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. We are a proud supporter of the Mediterranean Women Mediators’ Network that we launched in October 2017 to promote gender equality and foster women’s inclusion in peace processes, mediation efforts and peacebuilding in the Mediterranean region. The Network offers training, capacity building and networking opportunities and has led to the establishment of the Global Alliance of Regional Women Mediators Network, uniting the voices from 6 different regions of the world in a call to accelerate the implementation the WPS agenda on the ground.
Peacebuilding, peacekeeping and mediation are sectors in which women have proved to be particularly effective. In this spirit, we welcome the prioritization of the women and peace and security agenda in the Secretary General’s Action for Peacekeeping initiative and in mandates of peacekeeping operations.
M.me President,
This is a time to engage to do things differently. The unbearable consequences of armed conflict, in Ukraine and elsewhere, call us to promote solutions to stop the suffering of women and girls in conflict-affected situations. We must listen to the call for action, accountability and justice coming from the grassroot, women-led organizations of the civil society and embed this call in our individual and collective action. To let women be not only victims but actual agents of change.
Thank you, M.me President.
