Peacekeeping: UNSCR 1325 (Hansard, 17 November 2003)

§ Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean

The United Kingdom's support for Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325), three years after its adoption in October 2000, is now focused on implementing its provisions and ensuring that the necessary mechanisms are in place for monitoring its implementation. UK support has included:

providing 150,000 dollars to the United Nation's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) to develop and implement a training manual and integrate its use into DPKO's Best Practices Unit;

providing compulsory training to all UK military and police officers embarking on peace-keeping or similar overseas missions on gender, child protection and human rights issues;

actively searching for and subsequently deploying UK female officers to missions and other conflict prevention/resolution operations, the most recent examples being the deployment of two female police officers to Sierra Leone and a senior gender expert to Baghdad to work with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA);

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developing a database of suitably qualified women based in the UK experienced in conflict prevention/resolution work, and willing to be deployed overseas;

continuing efforts in the UN Security Council to reflect gender perspectives in a meaningful way. The UK has argued for language in SCRs that establish or renew peace-keeping mandates as one concrete method of mainstreaming gender into the council's work. The UK is systematically looking for opportunities to ensure that gender concerns are properly addressed in resolutions, mission mandates and progress reports. Recent Security Council resolutions reflecting language taken from SCR 1325 or its provisions include those on Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cote d'Ivoire. We also repeated at the open debate of the Security Council on women, peace and security held on 31 October to mark the third anniversary of the resolution's adoption, the suggestion made at the same debate in 2002 that the council give thought to establishing a mechanism through which it can monitor its own progress on issues relating to women, peace and security;

welcoming the International Criminal Court's willingness to include within its remit certain crimes against women;

ensuring that those members of the various UK teams in Iraq, especially those working in or with the CPA, are fully briefed on the gender aspects of their work. The UK's Special Representative, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, on a recent round of briefing calls and meetings in London, met my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Minister for Women and Equality, and e-Minister in Cabinet (Patricia Hewitt), a representative group of Iraqi women, and representatives of UK non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including the Women's National Commission, active in the field;

funding through the Global Conflict Prevention Pool several initiatives relating to the implementation of SCR 1325, including the United Nations Development Fund for Women's efforts to gather information on women's peace-building and gender justice initiatives, and work with the Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights, an NGO that supports grass-roots activities in countries where there are multinational peace-keeping operations. It is our experience that small well targeted funding can make a big difference—for example, encouraging women to play an active role in Afghan politics by providing childcare facilities in the main Parliament building in Kabul.

Future ideas include a series of briefing workshops, held jointly by the UK and Canadian missions to the UN in New York, for newly elected Security Council members, to build a wider body of support amongst member states for SCR 1325 and the broader set of issues surrounding women, peace and security.