 From Washington, DC, it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the event Women Transforming Peace Celebrating 20 Years of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and beyond. My name is Kathleen Kienist and I direct Gender Policy and Strategy for the United States Institute of Peace and I am delighted to serve as your moderator for today's event. For those of you who may not be familiar with the Institute, USIP was founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent, non-partisan, national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, it is practical, and it is essential for US and global security. We are so pleased to co-host today's event with the US Civil Society Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. Established in 2010 as an engaged coalition, the working group offers expert analysis and awareness to the effective implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in US policy. Included now is the US Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017. With over 50 organizations making up the membership of this working group, USIP has been proud to serve as the secretariat over this last decade. 20 years ago, the UN Security Council sparked a global policy revolution when it recognized for the first time the unique experiences of women and girls in violent conflict. Resolution 1325 or what we like to call Women, Peace and Security or you may hear the acronym WPS laid a foundation for governments and also civil society to place women at the center of peace processes and as essential builders of peace. After two decades, however, and despite national action plans and legislation in 84 countries, women remain undervalued in peace building and we know today seriously underrepresented in peace processes. So today, we want to better understand this policy framework established in the year 2000 but also look beyond the policy for other ways to achieve women's meaningful participation in peace and security moving forward. Our discussion will look at the various ways that countries are expanding on women, peace and security by adopting new approaches including a feminist foreign and development policies and how civil society organizations are investing in masculinities programming as a complementary approach. These and other frameworks may prove as effective or more effective in advancing gender equality in peace and security especially in light now of the challenges posed by COVID pandemic where early studies indicate that women are finding themselves in precarious predicaments from an increase in domestic violence to diminishing economic opportunities for women worldwide. We'll talk about worldwide. Today, the audience is joining us from across the globe. We had 760 registrations so we are thrilled to welcome you all and we want you to be a part of the discussion today and I will remind you a little later in the conversation but to ask a question, there is a chat function right below your video player where you're watching this event. You can put your questions in there or you can submit your questions via Twitter using the women advance peace. We hope you'll use your social media and amplify these women peace builders who will be talking with us today. It is now a great honour to introduce you to Canada's first ever ambassador for women peace and security, Ambassador Jacqueline O'Neill who has advised the government of Canada on its first and second national action plans on women peace and security. She is a well-known career security professional who has helped support the development of national security strategies in more than 30 countries. She has been a long proponent for women peace and security working in such organizations as NATO and the organization for security and cooperation in Europe and the United Nation. Ambassador we look forward to your remarks. Greetings everyone and bourgeois from beautiful Ottawa Canada. Huge thanks to the US Institute of Peace for convening us on this anniversary as you have convened us over decades. I was thinking the other day that when I was living in DC there was a period where no exaggeration the ride sharing app that I used on my phone had two default options so every time I opened it it asked me if I wanted to go home or to the US Institute of Peace and that's a reflection I think of how often you opened your doors to this work. To my mind there is no better group to mark this anniversary with than civil society. It's because of the expertise and determination of civil society that we have resolution 1325 in the first place and it will be civil society who continues to be the lead driver towards full implementation and actual accountability. I think we have a lot to be proud of over the last 20 years and when I think about resolution 1325 specifically it's always striking to me that this is the most translated security council resolution ever. It's been translated into over 100 languages and we know that the majority of those translations were done by women peace builders who wanted to bring this into their community. As you all know we now have 10 resolutions specifically related to women peace and security at the security council. Several operations mandates and other resolutions with relevant language. We have 85 countries with national action plans, several multilateral organizations with dedicated policy or plans like the African Union OSCE NATO and more. We have several communities with local action plans and we have a handful of countries with feminist foreign policy. Our community of activists and scholars and advocates has also grown and often we do function as a community much more sharing experiences and resources and expertise and more. But we all know well that we are still not seeing the changes we need in terms of investment in prevention, impacts on peace processes themselves, justice for survivors of conflict related sexual violence and so much more. We see Afghan women still fighting for significant and direct representation in peace talks. We see Mali a country in crisis announced a new government last week only four women meaning they comprise 16 percent that's despite having a quota by law of at least 30 percent. Representation of uniform women in peace keeping still hovers around five percent and women peace builders are still dramatically underfunded. The challenges we're facing are tremendous and they're varied. We're seeing a rise of authoritarianism so far too many examples of strong man governments that are exploiting the pandemic in particular to crack down on citizens organizing and mobilizing on their freedom of speech on their ability to gather. We're seeing populism nationalism and an associated regression of women's rights globally and a growing backlash towards gender equality. We're seeing coalitions forming at the UN and elsewhere united by the aim of restoring the quote natural family or opposing quote gender ideology. We're seeing a rise of China which Emory Goetz has written about which has increased its military and financial and diplomatic support to many countries all the while enhancing its influence while rejecting the conditioning of that external support on democratic governance and respect for human rights. We're facing climate change and cyber security threats and more and we are still quite frankly wasting our time still having to make the case that there are deeply gender dimensions to those issues and that women need to play a direct and significant role in every aspect. The COVID-19 pandemic represents an existential threat to many women peace builders and community level women led organizations and despite the fact that what has become so apparent from the pandemic is what advocates of women peace and security have been talking about for years which is that we need a much broader understanding of what defines security that's what this work is all about. It's recognizing that all of the guns and tanks in the world are powerless in the face of a disease and weak health systems a big portion of the population facing violence in their own homes committed by intimate partners and much more and that said I think that the pandemic is creating windows for change and crucially the Black Lives Matter movement is creating windows for change and for genuine introspection and honesty about our institutions and about us as individuals and I see a lot of reasons for hope so I'll end by sharing just three. So first I see a potential for a lot more nuance going forward on anything gender related there's a lot more recognition of intersectionality and movement away from stereotypes and thinking about women as the homogenous group both the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement have driven home the absolute importance of collecting gender desegregated data so by gender but also by race by ethnicity by ability sexual orientation age much more we need much more nuanced data because ultimately we need much more nuanced policy solution. Second reason for hope is that I see much more attention to power which ultimately involves the use of more feminist approaches. I see growing conversations about inequality and about changing systems and practices that go far beyond representation to look at power dynamic and that's how we need to remove barriers that prevent people from realizing their full set of rights. And third we're seeing relationships changing between young people and government and government's generally in the people that they govern but particularly with young people so people are seeing treatment of others around the world and can compare how governments are treating them you know they see on the phones that they carry in their hand the extent of inequality the access to basic rights that other people have and I think government itself now is more important than ever but the ways that it engages citizens have to change and young people in particular are really redefining what people expect and will accept for those who govern them and that comes back to women peace and security because it involves all people particularly women having a real voice in decisions that affect every aspect of their lives and to me that's the essence of women peace and security. We'll never forget being at a workshop at USIP of course related to lessons learned on the conflict in Afghanistan or something similar and one participant made a very relevant point that we should be referring to lessons identified not lessons learned because we have no evidence that they've actually been learned and fed back into a system. So I think we're at a moment of identifying lessons and I think it's up to all of us to make sure that they're actually learned. I'm so grateful that we're using the 20th anniversary to do both to reflect but also to plan. So thanks again for bringing us together Kathleen and the rest of USIP the very special community and I'm really grateful to mark this anniversary with you take care everyone thank you. Thank you Ambassador O'Neill for your warm words your very cogent analysis of our current predicament both the challenges and as you pointed out the opportunities of these real voices as we mark the 20th anniversary of 1325 it's always great to see you and we look forward to working with you hand in hand as we move forward. I would now like to turn our attention to our three distinguished panelists who I will introduce to you now. Before I do so I'm sending my best wishes to our colleague Anthony Keady. Unfortunately he's unable to join us today due to some unforeseen circumstances. We will still address the issues of surrounding masculinities in women peace and security but we well miss Anthony's voice in our conversation today. So I first want to introduce Rita Lopidia who is the executive director and co-founder of Eve Organization for Women Development in Juba, South Sudan. She is joining us from Juba this morning and afternoon there as she has worked and developed this organization to help women's participation in decision-making reconciliation peace building and conflict resolution in South Sudan. We know amid South Sudan's brutal warfare Rita has led women in seizing a peacemaking role. For her dedication and lifelong commitment to peace Rita has the distinction of receiving the inaugural 2020 US Institute of Peace Women Building Peace Award. I will return to you shortly Rita but I'm going to introduce your fellow colleagues here. Also joining us on the panel today is Sanam Naragi Anderlini who is the founder and executive director of International Civil Society Action Network known to many of us as I can and has over two decades of experience as a peace strategist working globally on conflicts crisis and violent extremism with a mix of civil society governments and also the United Nations. At ICANN she spearheads the Women's Alliance for Security Leadership known as WASL comprising of independent women-led organizations active in 40 countries globally who are working daily to prevent violence and to promote peace rights and pluralism. She will share with us in a few minutes her own experience as being a civil society leader and one of the original drafters of the historic UN Security Resolution 1325. So Sanam welcome as well and we are also joined by Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins who is the founder and president of Women of Color Advancing Peace Security and Conflict Transformation. She is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and president of Global Connections for Change. She previously served as coordinator for threat reduction programs at the U.S. Department of State in the Bureau of International Security and Non-Proliferation and she represented the United States at four nuclear security summits between 2010 and 2016. Ambassador Jenkins has made significant strides to advance the leadership and professional development of women of color in the fields of international peace, security and conflict transformation. So welcome all of you. I'm looking forward to the next hour and a few minutes to learn more about who you are and what you're doing in your life and in your work on women peace and security. And I want to begin with Rita in Juba today. As the 2020 recipient of the Women Building Peace Award congratulations you certainly have proven your dedication to advancing peace in your community. But can you tell us more about you and your work and actually kind of give us a feeling of what does it look like to be a woman transforming her community for peace? The floor is yours. Thank you very much Kaitlyn for this great event and for inviting me to be part of this and greetings to all from Juba South Sudan. I will be giving a reflection of my journey of knowing 1325 and as today we reached the 20th anniversary. It has been a long journey and I'm very happy to be with Sanam on this panel and she's been one of those who drafted but some of us just joined in midway. So I got to know about the resolution 1325 way back around 2008 when I and my friends formed EVE organization for women development and we were passionate about issues of women and girls but you know when you you you are passionate about something but you don't know where do you anchor this you want to teach people about leadership you want to participate but you're not sure of where and how to start. Then we were introduced to 1325 by an organization called Operations 1325 it's a Swedish organization so when I learned about the the the resolution it was the wow moment for us as EVE organization. When we learned about the four pillars this participation we were like yeah but this is what we want to do issues of protections yes but this is relevant to us and then the issues of prevention of conflict is like or it really speaks to the context of our country when Sudan was still one and then the relief and recovery bit is like there is peace so there will be a lot of work around relief and recovery so this is actually what we want to do as as people or young women who are very passionate about the issues of women leadership and and also girls education so we decided to anchor EVE organization on the resolution 1325 and we took it up from there to to to to work through with other women you know between 2018 and 20 2011 there were a lot of things happening in Sudan with the Sudan elections the census and the South Sudan referendum so we ran with the resolution mobilizing women to participate in the elections in the census as well as in the referendum of South Sudan and eventually those who will monitor or who will see the statistics huge number of women turn out to vote for the referendum and of course we had a new country a new country with a lot of challenges but there were a lot of excitement in the fact that this is now a new country we have a lot of work to do at first we didn't even understand the 25 percent affirmative action but then with 1325 we became very clear about it we used the resolution to push for women's participation in the transitional constitution process and we had more women in in the commission and we started talking about forming the civil society working group on 1325 we started raising awareness on the resolution because we thought we had a new country and the resolution will really help us move South Sudan from conflict now into stability so EVE organizations started working with the civil society and the momentum was there but unfortunately the country in 2013 went back into conflict and because we were already on the forefront we found ourselves being questioned so hey now we are back to conflict women are being killed displacement what are we going to do and that was a new experience to for us as EVE organization and as young women we found ourselves on the forefront then we took the resolution again to advocate you know for access for women in the peace process and then later on with the revitalization process because the country went back to conflict in 2016 we realized before even the second conflict as women we sat down and and we mobilized women as EVE organization we sat down and say what if the peace process doesn't go right what can we do so we had a plan A and a plan B and plan A was basically if things work well these are the priorities of women to ensure women participate the issues of transitional justice the issue of protection of women and reparation for women but if it doesn't work then we have to up our game on advocacy and all of this we have been using this framework for for that in 25 but we all know that in a situation of conflict it is so scary to stand up for the truth and it is not a popular thing you have to stick your neck out there and speak up but because we use the resolution and we know that member states for instance like South Sudan sign to it and we are like this is the tool we will use be it the warring party or the government they are a member state of the UN so we are going to use this resolution to speak out the truth and to demand for the protection and participation of women in the peace process we mobilize women again and you know with support of partners we are able to ship women to to add this to advocate and always as a point of advocates we refer to the resolution and I think the mediators were also aware of that and that actually helped in opening up the space for women to be at the table and eventually a number of women are signatories as stakeholders to the revitalized peace agreement and not only signatories but there are key articles in the agreement that refer to addressing women issues in terms of humanitarian access in terms of participation in terms of protection of women and we even work to ensure that refugee women are also represented in the process all these were able to do because we use the advocacy we use the resolution as an advocacy tool and now we are in the implementation phase things are moving on slow there is still the issue of political will to really implement the issues to to deal with having more women in decision making we will get back to that later on with the challenges of why we have the resolution but there are still challenges of the political will to get things moving but I think in the context of south Sudan you see how we use the resolution throughout when there was relative peace then we are back to conflicts and then now in the implementation we are still using the resolution so I think some three points that I would put over is that I think the the the framework itself 1325 provide direction to anyone who doesn't who have a passion but doesn't know how to start and it is the reason as if organization now we are working with young women because as young women we were we didn't know what to do but right now we are helping a lot of young women to know the resolution but also the other related resolution including 2250 which is more on youth and equipping them with these tools to use for advocacy and then secondly this resolution today is able to bring us globally together and these are common issues the issue of participation protection prevention and relief and recovery it's a global thing it reminds me of of my catholic faith you know in the catholic faith we say the homily is global every sunday and these four pillars are global and it brings women from all corners of the world to work with this resolution to open ways and to address issues affecting women and it also gives you the confidence to demand for your rights and I think these are strong points that I would like to put over and this is the experience that we have lived in south sudam and I'm happy to share this with the audience today thank you Kaitlyn. Rita thank you so much I I love that image I ran with the resolution I mean and you've really painted a story here for us to to really see the as you said the flexibility and yet the continuity of this framework it's common language globally and how it you know all ships rise in confidence as as one group gains confidence we all are with you in your efforts there in juba today I'm going to come back to you with a few more questions but I'm going to turn now to our colleague Sanam Naragi-Anderlini and Sanam it's not the first time I've asked you this question but I do remember you quite early on as one of those original drafters and I can I recall the first time I met you it was like wow she had one of the pens that helped craft this original resolution and as Ambassador O'Neill pointed out has been translated into more languages than any other resolution tell us about it and how did you get into all of this Sanam? Thank you it's lovely to be here with you I can't imagine a better group of people to be marking and celebrating or at least marking I don't know whether we're celebrating it but these 20 years thank you Kathleen um for me it has two dimensions in a way um it's very personal um just like Rita's story um as as I have aged over the last 20 years and I reflect back on kind of what drove me into the space it's really basically kind of a lifetime experience I was 11 when the Iranian revolution hit our lives and we were kind of suddenly flung out into the world um I didn't see my dad for seven years and it was interesting as I looked back as I as I sort of became an adult to realize that the revolution had basically forced women into the front lines so when my mother talked about her experiences of being in Iran and her brothers being arrested and in jail it was women who could go visit them the men had to take a back seat my father lost his job when when we came into exile again the men were stuck there and it was women having to take the mantle of responsibility and and be so taking on so it was it was kind of the subtext if you want of my life of my life literally of age 11 onwards but um but what I was always interested in was this question of um why is it that violence becomes the norm why violence you know when you think about all the horrors that that we experienced in the world you know tsunamis and earthquakes and so forth war and violence are the ones that are entirely man-made they are entirely every every bullet that you shoot every bomb that you drop is into every sort of element of torture that that people might experience it's always somebody is deciding that and it can be undecided it can be you can take a different path to resolve your conflicts so for me the the the the issue was you know the rupture in my own country and and the rupture that has continued you know for most people the Iranian revolution is history for me it's present um I can't go back to Iran to visit my father's grave because I might get arrested for who knows what right so it's kind of an ongoing crisis and I was in my 20s I was interested in the very simple idea of saying I would like to do something so that nobody else goes through what I went through and that we can help others resolve or transform their conflicts non-violently I was inspired by South Africa at the time it was the 1990s and and you know the Mandela story and and the South African women and so forth and I was working I started working at international alert and we had the first global conference of women women's experiences of war and peace and we had women from 50 countries in this one very small very um kind of tightly packed conference room and that was my aha moment because all of a sudden you know we've been talking about conflict prevention and structures and early warning systems and so forth but the fundamental challenges that we had was we have an international system that is designed on respect for sovereignty of state and non and principles of non-interference and yet we were dealing with conflicts that were increasingly civil wars and internal conflicts which meant that that international system was limited in how it could engage and so the question for me was who who responds who was the first who were the first people to address the humanitarian crisis to stand up and try and stop the violence to take action in in some sort of ways and it was as I looked across the room and in the colleague in the dialogues that we would have been having with my colleagues it was that women are doing it and and they've always been sent central to war and peace it's just that they've always been taken for granted and they've always been the invisible forces and voices because we don't think of them as a unit of analysis either in terms of you know maybe victimhood but definitely not as agents have changed and that was the moment where we said given how global this is and given and as Rita said this I mean it the the reason why this agenda continues to be relevant is because there's a universality of experience through time and geography frankly of when you have conflict and war what happens and where are women in this space and so at that in 1998 we said we need to bring this and have a common shared global vocabulary that was the beginnings of an idea for a campaign called women building peace from the village council to the negotiating table and as part of this campaign and program at international alert we said it should have a policy pillar and the policy pillar there was a participation pillar and a partnership pillar and others but as a policy pillar we said well where do we go and it was a security council because that's some biggest that's the most important body the organization for security and cooperation in europe and then the european union and I was 20 I was by this time I was 28 29 years old and I was told go get a security council resolution and I didn't know how the system worked all I knew was I needed to have a coalition and and you know so we had all we'd been doing consultations around the world in conflict areas and Rita coming back to your point that's why the resolution speaks to Rita in 2008 and it speaks to Yemeni women in 2015 and you know probably speaks to Belarusian women in 2020 it was consultations on the ground that helped us distill the key elements we went to new york we found my partners in other NGOs and and there was a group of us and I actually want to mention the names of the women that were fronting this it was my colleagues in london were Jochenya Pizalopez and Ansel Adrian Paul one was Guyane and one was Jochenya's Costa Rican and Mexican in New York it was Aisha Daifan who was Sierra Leonean and had left Sierra Leone because of the war um maha Muna who was Palestinian American um Coro wise and Betty Reardon who were like Duyens of American police movement and and and yet so generous in terms of working with us who were much younger women um Felicity Hill who was Australian and came from a nuclear weapons background this was our sort of cohort of people um that we would go and lobby government you know like the the NGO the the ambassadors and when we had the commission on the status of women meetings we invited all of the governments to come to the caucus where we had 60 organizations from war zones women's organizations from war zones talking directly to we invited the whole of the security council we invited all sorts of you know ambassadors through the time partly because as a young woman I didn't know that this wasn't the protocol of how NGOs are meant to relate to governments I was like well why not their people were people their governments there are governments and so this this kind of sense of possibility of why not and why shouldn't we and who says that it has to be done a certain way and so forth that ability to just think outside the box um and think about it in a constructive collaborative way was something that really helped and our message that resonated was women build peace the problems are complex you can't do it alone and this I think again is something that is coming back again now um 20 years later as as the really transformative element of our agenda thank you thank you Sanam and thank you for mentioning your cohort you know I love that I love the fact that uh you know again we we we have to make visible and speak the names of those who have played a very significant role in this unique um and 20 years enduring resolution so thank you for sharing that and we will come back around for another set of questions here I'm going to turn now to our colleague ambassador Bonnie Jenkins lifelong diplomat peace builder um you've seen it all from the policy side what works what doesn't work and of many foreign policy efforts so I'm really interested in your entryway into this uh unique resolution and also you know your inputs on how a feminist foreign policy adds to our approach here great first of all thank you uh Kathleen for inviting me to be a part of this uh it's an honor to be here with my fellow panelists a reader for all the work that you do and congratulations for receiving the award you certainly deserve it and it was very uh enlightening to hear what you had to say and I'm looking forward to hearing more and and of course Sanam good friend uh thank you for what you've done as pioneering and for your colleagues for pioneering this work um and uh yes there's a lot of work to be done but we do want to celebrate uh that we have this and we have something in a platform to work forward with um as you say Kathleen my my entry into this has been uh from the policy side um I have always been interested in working in in the government uh when I grew up in the Bronx New York uh starting to work in city government and state government and getting into the federal government uh finally and uh I've been working in the area of international security the quote unquote hard security side since the early 90s um and during that time I really got to see that there is a huge absence in the policy side a huge absence and those who are making the policies that impact the U.S. and uh our colleagues internationally um in between that time I had a chance to work at the Ford Foundation and while I was there my for my my portfolio was U.S. Foreign and Security Policy but I also had the fortune to have a kind of a smaller pot of money that was dedicated to uh something called conflicts and in that area I was able to fund work on issues of peacekeeping peacemaking child soldiers uh women in conflict a number of areas and that was really wonderful because it gave me an opportunity to complement the side of my work that's a quote unquote hard security side and it gave me a perspective on security that was much broader uh in terms of the work that's being done um so when I when after that I would reenter government uh as an ambassador and I continued my work um I really got to ask my continue to ask myself the question where is the diversity in the foreign in the policy making community uh where are the people of color where are just diverse voices of many respects and you know there really there really is a dearth of um diversity in terms of the policy making uh that's being done um and you know I dare say that it's just uh the U.S. but there certainly is a diversity uh lack in in the policies that we make on peace and security that affect people around the world on the ground uh which mean there's a lack of perspective on what policies are being made a lack of perspective and cultural sensitivities and gender sensitivities are not only how our decisions are made but how they impact people on the ground people who are doing the work the people who are engaged um and so for me that doesn't make a lot of sense because so many of the areas of peace and security affect women predominantly affect women of color predominantly around the world and yet we were not at the table so that was really my catalyst that was my question and that was a catalyst that led me to establish the organization which when I did and what Sanam says it reminds me a lot of what I did was I wasn't sure how this would work um I didn't know if there would be any interest in it um I just knew that there was a need um there were women of color who would approach me and and say I feel isolated I feel like I'm the only one doing this um you know a lot of the imposter syndrome because you're the only one in the room that's different and I was hearing this and I realized we need a network we need a way for women to talk to each other to know that you know you may be the only one in this room but there's other women who are working on these issues I mean there may not be a lot of us but the ones who are we need to connect um and then there are areas where there are more women but they're not at the at the high level of decision making you know some areas of peace and security and here I define peace and security broadly to mean not just the issues of quote-unquote soft security and a quote-unquote hard security whatever those terms came from but all the issues from climate change to infectious disease to weapons of mass destruction um and it was important in my perspective for us to understand how our work relates how our work connects to get away from the silos to understand that all of these issues are affecting women all of these issues are affecting women of color predominantly we have to understand how they do and how they connect um and we don't really do that and so we we are we don't allow ourselves an understanding to understand to see all these issues of security holistically um it also made me recognize that we need to look at how we are defining security itself because our definition is was not it's not a definition that was ever one that reflects a diverse view it's not a definition that reflects women particularly or women of color uh it's a or or lgbtq or other groups it's a it's a definition that represent represents those who are in power um and therefore it can't possibly be representative of the security that all of us feel that we need and how we as individuals define it based on the culture the subcultures that we grew up in particularly if you think about what's been happening recently with the racial issues that's been going on you know the the people who who grew up in the Bronx for example have a different definition of security than people who grew up in a different environment um and so we need to have a security that really represents what all of us need to feel that we need to have policies that implement um ways in which we can all feel secure and not just a particular portion of a society that has a different perception and understanding of security um so all of these are things that you know have been have led to my starting the organization and trying to build a network of women in these areas who could focus on the policy making but also important and we could talk about this more later is how we connect with women around the world you know how do we make sure that these policies really are doing service and doing what needs to be done to help women around the world um and just briefly on you touched on a feminist foreign policy i'll take just a minute to talk about that you know i've had the honor of being a part of a discussion of women who are putting together a feminist foreign policy for the United States and understanding the ways in which we need to approach foreign policy some of these areas that we are looking at in terms of feminist foreign policy is recognizing the importance of a more balanced approach to the way which we do our foreign policy so it's much more much less militaristic in its view and approach and recognizes other important things like development diplomacy and in other areas like climate change and immigration um it focuses on a concept of intersectionality and importance of bringing all voices into the discussions of foreign policy and it's a progressive inclusive right based agenda uh that really values working with allies and working with international institutions recognizing that women's rights are human rights um and that we are represented we have to be representative inclusive and responsive and accountable to everyone and it really centers on the experiences and expertise of women in being at the table and also the important role of 1325 so these are some of the concepts of feminist foreign policy which i think as you can see really dovetails very well with some of the concepts and some of the thoughts that we're talking about today with 1325 so i think i'll leave it at that kathleen thank you for the question and looking forward to our next round yeah thank you very much bonnie and for uh you know really helping us dive deeper into how we define security i think sometimes when we talk about women peace and security we're really focused on the first word women but the security part is is kind of like not often you know uh explority enough and i think in defining and how each of us experience security is a really uh important lens that we need to talk more about and certainly the feminist foreign policy efforts that you're talking about are uh a leap in that direction well i'm going to take one more round of just questions and i also want to open it up to the panelists to jump in on each other's questions or comments at this point and after this round then we're going to open it up we're already getting questions in from our audience again if you want to join us for the q and a please use the chat box function that's right below the video player on the usip event page so i'm going to come back to this question that each of you had about women peace builders and you know are these humanitarian workers who are these women you know i uh rita you began with what you called a wow moment and then you found the resolution as part of your mapping to how to make change happen whether it was going in your direction or not but maybe we need in all of our work to understand who are these women peace builders and i'm going to open the floor i'm not going to go around if anybody wants to jump in right now go ahead uh unmute and we'll begin the conversation so now it looks like you're ready definitely thank you um this is such an important comment question who are these women um two weeks ago i published a paper called recognizing women peace builders and it's really kind of it's like distilling 20 years of all this work that we've been doing but actually trying to articulate that this is a community of practitioners for many of us it's a vocation whether we're sitting internationally or or sitting locally and when you begin to look at how people have become involved in peace building it's different experiences so so my colleague robin robombe whose birthday it is today and she's Ugandan her story is very similar to mine she became a refugee and went back to Uganda and thought i don't want other people i don't want other girls and young women to experience my colleague the sake dharma dasa was the mother of uh soldiers her her son was in the army in Sri Lanka he went missing and she got a group of women together to go look for her son and they ended up being the first ones to talk to the tamil tigers in in Sri Lanka and opening up the channel of communication when you look at how people have become involved in in peace building there is a moment i i sometimes say it's women who run to the problem as opposed to running away from it but if they start with uh with this thing i'm looking for my son they end up being the mediators if they started with um my colleague moot alohman who was a poet in Yemen and started doing food and starting trying to mediate getting kids with blood cancer out behind from you know behind militia lines and then realized that that the different parties in Yemen were recruiting children into their armed groups and she said children shouldn't be going to get a gun they should be you know getting pens in their hands it's it's people who start in one for the one entry point and then eventually end up being the ones that not only are doing mediation and addressing rights issues of human rights um and doing humanitarian work but actually have the courage and the compassion to say i have to talk to the other side we have to find the humanity in each other even if they are they've been perceived or presented as the worst evil at some point we have to try and dig deep and find that and recognize that there are different truths and we need to get through that um and and to this day you know i can when i think about it because you have to do it in your own context right so when i think about can i do that with the with the iranian regime with the people who have really affected my life on a personal level it's really hard it's really really hard i remember being in that when i came to the states at some point um in the just after 9 11 and this whole question of republicans and democrats right and it's like here you have politicians who are telling israelis and palestinians could to talk to each other and in this country people couldn't sit in the rooms in the same room together you know as republicans and democrats so so this idea of are we willing to talk to the other side and and find common ground and risk our lives this to me is where i see women as women who become peace builders and you know we have peace builders and then we have women and and the women what's fascinating and and again in this paper i've tried to pull out is that they will draw on faith traditions superstition whatever kinship ties whatever it takes to further their goals for for peace and justice it's not just all the law says this and i should do it it's very much i'm the daughter and so and so and my father was so and so and i can you know or in my culture in west african in west african culture if elder women you know expose themselves um it it has all sorts of curses against the other side so that's what they did in sierra leone elderly women lifted their skirts up and bared their bottoms to you know to the r u f and it propelled a movement um in terms of uh how helps how in the moving movement towards peace so it's it's amazing how they pull on other things but at the core of it is this belief that we have to stop the violence we have to sit down and talk and and one of the one of the issues that i just want to say is that you know in the in the opening channel it um uh credits it said peace is hard no peace is not hard war is hard war is awful sitting down and actually saying we can resolve a conflict by talking maybe we have to shout maybe we have to cry maybe whatever it is but talking is an awful lot more easier and and more constructive than than going to war and and i would say that you know hobs thinks that we're all violent no if hobs had looked at life through the lens of women and how women constantly are trying to sort of create normal normalcy and and and the experiences of women's lives um we're we're not as as beings i don't think we're necessarily violent i think our predisposition is to be peaceful and to try and coexist and and and that's what we should be elevating and and this is what i see with women peace builders that they are that at at the cart they have this and there's a capacity for compassion which is beyond um it's so inspirational uh i i would wish everybody in the world to know the women i work with truly thank you bani yeah yeah i think for me the the definition is i try not to get too wrapped up in definitions because i like to get kind of get underneath those and for me peace builders are i look at it broadly kind of like the way where i do redefining national security is i look at the action and what people are doing and the and the results that they're trying to achieve um so we have peace builders who are many of the ones and all ones that sonam has mentioned but i also include uh women who are trying to make a change um in the policies as well as how the policies are going to be uh implemented and how things are being done you know um around the world um one thing i always try to well i grew up as i as i as i mentioned i my my work started in the wmd world what was the mass destruction world and there's this this dichotomy of thinking about whether those issues really fit into peace and security are those peace and security type actions and i would say well preventing nuclear weapons is certainly promoting peace you know ensuring that we don't have to use nuclear weapons trying to have treaties to prevent to on on arms control and non-proliferation when you have those treaties that's promoting peace that's to prevent conflict that's to make sure we prevent the ultimate conflict um in the work that i do i've done on infectious disease and in work it's how do you build capacity how do you how do you strengthen uh capacity so it can prevent um disagreements um on on issues of you know of scarcity issues um so many things that we do are promoting peace and so many things that people do in terms of these issues are building peace or maintaining peace um so when i look at the issue of peace and security that's why i said i look at it broadly because i want people to understand that even though we have in our minds sometimes separated what's peace and what's this other thing that's going on out there to look at it more in terms of we are all playing a role in ensuring that we maintain peace whether it's you're doing something you know on the nuclear side or on the you know uh mass atrocity side or you know you have to figure out where you fit but that's all promoting peace and ensuring that we're secure and ensuring that we prevent conflict Arnie just thank you and Rita please yes yes i just wanted to add on uh what has already been saved um women as peace builders i think naturally as human beings nobody wants to keep on on fighting or being in a state of conflict throughout their lives and in the context of conflict it is evidence that it is the women that bear the brunt of of of the violence and i'm bringing us back to our context in south Sudan uh when the conflict erupted you will find that it is the women that um that are being violated in terms of displacement and when you displace a woman you displace the whole family it is the woman that loses her husband in the conflict and she takes over the responsibility of of the husband taking care of the family you'll find that those who lost their livelihood those who go for refuge women don't normally go alone you will find them carrying kids you will find them carrying what they they were used to cover themselves what they will eat on the way and how they can find shelter and if they're on the way i they will find some other kids that are stranded no woman would leave other kids so you'll find that in conflict women move heavy and the reason why personally i say women are peace builders because the consequences that come with conflicts are too huge and most of these responsibilities are being sold by the women i have been in the refugee camps where most of the population are women and children because the men are either killed or are in the front line i have been in situations where i see women who are not being able to get health facilities to treat their kids this responsibility fall on them young women losing their lives because there is no maternal care so all these things impact the woman first and then the family and then the community and every woman would want to have peace we want to have security such that the family which is um which is which is the core of humanity can have some sort of breathing space and peace that's why naturally um i would say women are peace builders because we know the consequences that comes with conflict thank you rita i'm going to pick up on that before we go to the audience questions because i am aware that uh anthony is uh not able to join us today and i wanted to see if any one of you could speak to why this idea of masculinities in peace building has become an approach uh to add to the women peace and security efforts and i'm looking at sanam who i know has worked on this and anyone else before we move on to the oh yeah thank you i think so i i did um back in 2008 i led a 10 country study for undp looking at men in violent contexts and young men in specific in particular and i remember at the time they said to me you know we're looking at the question of toxic masculinity and i said you know again from my own personal experience of my cousins and my father and my uncles and it was like i want to i want us to talk about the totality of men's experiences right and and we designed a um a research project and i was out in the field and i was talking to gang members in jamaica um ex militias in liberia it's awesome and asking them as men what it was like what do they fear what what's their experience and the interesting thing is that nobody ever talks to the guys nobody ever says to the men what was it like for you you know what is it like to and and and when you have conflicts so often it's women who are hiding men you know in napal they were telling us the army would come and then it's the women who would be standing at the doorway hiding their men men and boys the men are also scared the boys are also scared um and and the issue of being able to take into take into consideration that we take it as a norm that men and boys should go and fight why why are they being used for this father right who on whose behalf are they doing this how do we make sure that we're giving them alternatives to understand what is being done to them and also what else they can do in a positive way basically right and and one of the one of the areas of work that um we've been doing with through ICANN is we have a colleague in afghanistan who started working with men and provided them the space safe spaces imams and village chiefs and and and young men to actually talk about what it meant growing up through 40 years of war and what do they want and what violence has meant to them and their experiences and then from there teaching them about how children feel it how women feel it and they've become the champions of actually talking about nonviolent conflict resolution in their communities stopping taliban recruitment and and so forth same in iraq we've had colleagues who basically worked with young men and said to them jihad isn't spilling blood in the streets it's giving blood in the hospital it's cleaning doing god's work you know so it's not challenging the faith it's providing an alternative sense of belonging dignity manhood you know like positive role models of what it means to provide and to protect and so forth as opposed to always this kind of the drive towards um violence is or or you know mechismo is the way to do it so there is this work that's going on on the ground and this engagement but coming back to the resolution and our policy world we got 1325 it was very much about women building these you know kind of bringing women's voices then we came to 1820 and resolution 1820 was about sexual violence and about recognizing that sexual violence can be a threat to international peace and security in the um in the back channels i'd like just that you know sitting at home with my laptop and my one of my kids sick at home um we were back channeling in real time to the text of 1820 when it was being negotiated and i kept putting in men and boys as victims of sexual violence and it would come back and the text would be deleted and we would say well why is it being deleted and and you know my colleagues from the different admissions would say the libyans are on the security council and they say men and boys are not like this doesn't happen to men so in that in the text of resolution 1820 we ended up getting women and girls and then we put civilians people kind of gender neutral language as a way of trying to capture men's experiences a few years later i was at a meeting and there was a chat there um who'd written a big report um about the about this issue and his he critiqued us by saying you know they passed this resolution and they didn't mention men and boys and i and i went up to him and i said you do understand that i have the actual back and forth of emails and things to show we tried and we couldn't do it but here's a thought men and boys or women and girls have been victims of sexual violence in wars for 3000 years men have been in charge of these processes for 3000 years you could have raised it they could have raised it it's only when women started talking about these issues that men then had the courage to come and say actually it happens to us as well right so it's constantly this thing that the minute you bring in the experiences of women and women's experiences of war good or bad the question them because well what about men what about young men so we it's like it's like you put on a pair of glasses and you begin to see the multiplicity of human experiences um and it's the women fronting it that gives the courage for others to come and say i was also vulnerable i've also been victimized i've also i'm also scared and by the way i also don't want war you know i don't i want to come with you i don't want to go towards the the the the line of violence so so i it's really important these conversations but i also think that it's really important to always kind of give credit where it's due in terms of how women have opened the door for the for for this more colorful human the total diversity of human experience um around violence and issues thank you so no thank you i'm i'm going to move to uh because we have quite a series of questions thank you all from the audience uh i wish we could see you all uh it's just one of the downsides of zoom but the upside is that we can have all of the panelists right here in front of us and have such a great conversation so one of the questions i have here from the audiences how does one become an active peace builder beyond the spheres of family and local community rita bonnie sanam how we've talked about a lot of different dimensions here today are there other approaches sanam you're on mute i was just saying it would be i'd love to hear from um from bonnie and rita and then we can we can why i'm happy to contribute as well i have so many questions if one wants to take it i'll move on we'll come back to this question oh yeah rita go ahead with the question absolutely how does one become an active peace builder beyond the spheres of family and local community um i think in in in in real life or based on my experience i would say uh being a peace builder first starts with you as a person as a conviction and then it goes to your community and goes to the national level and based on that you get to go to other levels that is globally um but it needs to start with you yourself the experience you have how you share with people and then gradually you get to grow out of that space building the experience and being at the global level and i would add to that that um the the good news right now is that pretty much in any country you're in right now and if you're interested in peace building and as as rita says you're beginning to sort of think about these things um there is probably an organization on the ground who is doing this and we have the global network so i work with cameroonian women and and you know columbian women and afghan women everywhere we look they emerge and they rise and and the in the last 20 years i think one of the biggest achievements that we've had is that our global collaboration and our global community of practice is incredibly strongly knit um it's one one email away right so so if you're interested you know and you want to know look at our website call us we're happy to connect you with with the with the folks that that that we have and it's a very open and welcoming community of practice as well yeah i just want to add very briefly for those started with no one answering now we have three i guess i would add and i think it picks up um is that it depends on your circumstances and where you are and you know in my in my in the world that i have been in um you know for i impact based on you know i'm in washington dc this is where i am i care i'm i i care about these issues so i want to make change based on where i am and where i can have the most effect so i think it's really as rita said it's basically what you're interested in what you want to do and where you are at the time and what you can really what you feel you could impact based on based on where you are in your situation so thank you all those were great responses and i i'm going to keep just moving through these questions because they're thoughtful and and uh you know asking for a response here so how do we encourage women in african countries to participate more in democracy peace processes and peaceful protests against injustices and gender inequality in their countries read i'm going to turn to you on that one thank you very much um i think i will highlight a few points um and and i wanted to start a little bit taking us back to the issue of uh but the the the toxic masculinity that's that is being addressed here um in in most of our contexts is or in most african contexts we have patriarchal society and in the society most women are seen as the caregivers and uh they provide care for the family and the boys um are given leadership positions right from when there were kids um a boy child is not supposed to to to cook or to clean the house a boy child is not supposed to cry because you are a man you have to man up and and some of these um uh cultural practices eventually the man grow up with that and in most cases it is also as women who encourages this negative masculinity and uh if if a boy is cleaning the house or is cooking uh you will be seen as not man enough but with time these things are changing it's because of awareness and uh because of education and i think one of the things that we need to encourage more women in in in my country and in other countries in africa in uh the women peace and security agenda is by continuously raising awareness and connecting the dots and uh for instance i've shared earlier on that if um it i i try it because i had the passion but somebody else came and saw me struggling and you know i gave a helping hand it's like hey well how about this and then i picked the resolution and i think this is about passing on the button it's about connections it's about networking um training and also mentoring the young generation of leaders that they are aware um we have a huge issue for instance in south sudan the issue of illiteracy but it doesn't mean that these women do not know their rights it's all about telling them these are the frameworks you need to use these are the rules or these are the policies that are in place and they will be able to use these policies to become vocal and to be able to use these policies to address their issues so i think the issue of awareness raising the issue of opening up the space uh for women the issue of networking and mentoring the young um women as well as looking into the the the the youth most of the time when we refer to youth we refer to the boy child or the the young male um in in our context in south sudanda a number of young men who are now more open to gender issues and some of them see themselves as feminists standing up for the right of women we have also seen a few men even during the peace process that supported the rights of women so i think this sort of conversation including men and and also raising the awareness for the young uh men and women on issues of equality peace building is quite crucial in the context of africa and in the communities as well can i just when i look back over my 20 20 odd years of doing this work the for me africa i mean when you think about the women of south africa the women of syria the women of liberia the women of sudan recently um the women of somalia right the women of cameroon these women are there and maybe one of the things that we're doing more and more of is telling their stories and capturing it and conveying it in a way so that across the continent and across the world people remember this history right because of the history if they're if we don't tell those stories um if they're not written into history they're always going to be excluded and it's always going to be as if oh in africa or in asia or in whatever the middle east you know women haven't ever done this that they've always been there but it's the it's the privilege of of information right and and thinking about what is our responsibility for making sure that these stories are conveyed in an accessible way so that whether you're literate or not you know you know those stories and you can build on it and and and be proud of it um you know to me african women have been across the continent have been extraordinary um in in and so much of the that they've achieved and and and have been pioneers especially in this in this question of being at the peace table or or engaging in peace processes including retail points well and we know that these stories are what expand our imagination and and so why they need to be visible and vocal uh critical to the path forward on the issue of uh people and especially women at the peace table there is a question directed to you bonnie um how can we ensure women's rights are not forgotten as a part of the uh inner afric afghan peace negotiations including their access to education and health care uh that's a thank you for that question i think that's really important to think about how how these things are not forgotten um i am very interested in and picking up what sanan was saying about telling these stories i think that we should be telling these stories and we should be recording these stories uh and we should be making sure that people understand the processes we hear a lot about uh the the women afghanistan but we're not you know it's not visible enough i think if the what's happening and what's what's going on and the processes i think certainly need to be uh a lot more understood um by many many more people um one of the things that you know we were talking about even before we started today was you know how do we ensure that um you know that everyone understands with all sort of people who are not in those circles understand and know what's going on and know the important work and the hard work that's being done um and those stories are not being told or they're being told in silos um and so we need to tell those stories we need to record those stories because we can learn we can obviously learn from what's been happening before but we need to highlight the important work that's going on the amazing women that are at the peace table trying to make change trying to make peace trying to uh continue peace and make a change for the future so um for me it's about record not just telling the stories but recording the stories and getting the word out there and i certainly would definitely benefit and so would my organization benefit from hearing these stories you know we're trying to make change in policy but how do we know that the policies that we're trying to make change is going to make it's going to make a difference unless we hear from the from people whose policies we are impacting um and so that's and we talked about how that in my view is one of the gaps that we need to try to fix in the future it's hearing those stories to make change and make sure that those change stay thanks thank you on that Bonnie i i have a question here that i'd love to hear from each of you what unconventional approaches have been found to be effective and why i'm sure each of you have a story what something you did or your your community did that was so unconventional i think sanam has already mentioned the one from sierra leone and of course we know about the one from Liberia through back to hell but are there some other unconventional approaches that have been effective and why do you think they have been floors open rita all right um i think uh because i've been involved in the southern peace process since uh 2014 and um we had uh i can say an unconventional approach that that that happened during the 2014 negotiation um during the process the mediators were really rigid and not wanting to give access to to women and um we kept on pushing and pushing then eventually one of the women who were also pushing uh with us during those days she decided to to lock up one of the secretariat staff in in a room uh with her inside and so it's like holding high hostage and uh she was asked to open the door several times and she said she will not open the door until she gets a confirmation that women will be allowed in and i think that was because of the frustrations of you know always advocating and and you know talking to people that it's important but you don't get feedback so i think she got frustrated locked up the woman and she waited until um the the special envoy has to the the special envoy was brought and uh he said okay open the door and uh will let you in in the negotiation and she said no i'm not gonna open the door unless you do that in writing and sign it then bring it to me when i read it then i'll be able to open the door and in fact that was what they did they wrote it down that yes the women's group would get into the negotiation and the chief negotiator signed on it and then they said okay we got the letter open the door and she said no you have to sleep the letter from under the door so i can prove that it is true so they sleep the letter she opened the letter she read it then she opened the door and i think what happened because that was so unconventional and uh so she was deported um uh because they took it seriously she was deported from from Ethiopia and uh but then her action actually led to other women to get access so she sacrificed uh she had to go that extra step to allow other women now to have access into the process and uh that that was one of um and i think that was based on on the pressure and the push and the frustration that women get around peace tables thank you it's uh yeah it's another form of community in that way taking risks like that for the community to make change happen Sonam or Bonnie do you have an unconventional um i've been struggling to figure out what i've done conventionally everything i've done i mean but but but here's going back to Bonnie's point about you know you figure out what you where you're situated and what your entry points are yourself so for me given that i've worked internationally on these issues and given that um i uh i am in the kind of dealing with the un and others but coming in from civil society um there was there were always assumptions you know there were always assumptions about oh she's some crazy feminist activist and you know there's a radical and so forth so part of my way of approaching it has been i remember going into the un in 2005 to do the first series of trainings for the department of political affairs on what they were meant to do for 1325 it was developing an action plan for the entire department and doing it with a colleague and we used to joke that we go in dressed and looking exactly like the bureaucrats you know we put on a suit and but you know so that so we blend in but then what you're saying is really really radical because it's stuff that they've never done and would you know hadn't thought about and it's it's trying to open their minds so it's this question of sometimes you need to be unconventional by pretending to be conventional you know and kind of and then sometimes it's about going in and disarming the conversation i was in afghanistan sitting with a group of men having a conversation and an infarcy you know chatting with them about about peace and security and peace council and this and that and after an hour um giving examples from various places i asked i said so what do you guys think about this and that and this chap sitting next to me said you're kind of little and you're kind of skinny but you know stuff so why don't you tell us and i and i started laughing because i was thinking so for a whole hour they had a perception of me based on what i looked like but they had the respect or the patience or the time or whatever to sit and chat with me and our conversation has taken us to a different level where we now are actually kind of we've moved the ball along so so i think unconventional comes in all sorts of different ways but certainly i've got lots of stories from colleagues from around the world who also um the other thing as as as rita was saying that sounds like uh you know this idea of having uh getting these stories out and writing these stories you could have one whole chapter on the unconventional approaches bonnie i know you have uh something to say here as well um well you know i don't know if i can i mean there are just thinking about the answer to this question i i would think most of the things that um i have done um is i guess unconventional approaches but for me it's how do you how do you attack an issue in a new way um and i rarely try to do things that um has been done already particularly if it hasn't worked um so for me it's always about what is the what is the what is the approach it hasn't been taking um and then you know putting putting my head down and just kind of pushing from there and always thinking that somehow you're going to make it work and you're going to adapt as necessary to push things through to make it work so it's it is unconventional approach but i look at it as the road the road has not been traveled you know and how do i and by doing that you're you are attacking something from a different way than people have thought of before so you're making inroads and you're making people think differently about something um and that is a way in which um people can open up their mind and be a little more open to something that they may have enclosed mine too before and then once you start doing that just like i said you put your right put my head down and just work on it and be and as all these things these difficult issues of peace and security is perseverance and persistence and getting yourself up and saying okay that okay dust myself off take a deep breath and you know push again and give yourself a moment when you need it but it's about you know once you've got that plan and you stop pushing it's just it's perseverance yeah i think it was buddha who said fall down nine times get up ten times well we have just a few minutes left and since we're talking about unconventional approaches i wanted to end with this unconventional time of COVID-19 and what perhaps is the opportunity here for 1325 for women peace and security and really looking at this issue of global health as a human security and uh would love any thoughts opportunities and if we can close this session with some optimistic signaling of the future i would be grateful we know the tough things ahead of us Rita would you like to start sure um i think um in south sudan um i would say COVID-19 is not as much as in other countries and uh we thank god for that because it would really be a disaster if it gets to the level of other countries but then when um uh when the whole thing started there was um a lockdown from the government and um a few weeks ago i visited a village that is like an hour's drive from juba and it is not more about COVID-19 itself but the impact of the lockdown on the people because when the city was locked down there was restriction of movement from juba to other villages and for people from the villages to come into juba just to curb the spread of the of COVID-19 so the impact of that in the villages is that there were no doctors that traveled from juba to the villages and there were no medicine so there are the health facilities but there are no doctors and medicines so kids uh children died uh the elderly also died and uh with the restrictions social gatherings were forbidden and uh in the villages most of these old people really depend on social gathering uh to talk with people and also to find something to eat uh most of them died of depression because there are no social gatherings they are not able to find food and in the communities they also do uh group farming last year there was the outbreak of low cast and this year they were not able to do group farming so you just do individual farming which is not um productive and uh there is no food so these are some of the impact and of course the schools were closed and the girls are at home and a lot of chores at home and there are violence uh related because everybody's home there is rice in the gender-based violence and many girls got pregnant and many other stories that got to that so I think one sliver of hope I think yes I'm getting to that is is that we have this resolution and it is still um um gives us hope as women all over the world we are able to connect with each other and I have met Ambassador Bonnie last year I'm not sure whether she remembers me in the international exchange program um in DC and uh it's just an amazing experience I've also met Senam in New York uh and there are other global networks like GNWP and um and uh within Africa the the the gender is my agenda of the African Union these spaces are all created to support women and we should continue with the exchanges and building on the women's movement to bring change in the world thank you I love that idea of making sure these exchanges continue whether virtually or in person we have really one minute left and uh Senam or Bonnie a final word from you we would be grateful it'll have to be a brief statement Bonnie okay well my statement is just to reiterate what what what you just said I mean for me it's the the we know a lot of the negatives the positive is this is the exchanges and I would certainly welcome opportunities to have more conversations like this with women around the world who are the peace builders you know so that is something that I think is an advantage I would love to do more of thanks thank you Bonnie Senam you have the final word in this conversation today about women transforming peace so number one I would say that it COVID shows us that our definition of security is much more relevant if we're spending eight hundred and eighty million dollars on a hypersonic drone and we don't have PPE and masks there's something wrong in our country and elsewhere second it shows that we shouldn't be talking about power sharing we should be talking about responsibility sharing and look at who takes the responsibility to protect communities which brings us to the third point which is that COVID has shown us that women peace builders across conflict areas have been the first responders I think it's the same in every community actually women have been the first responders and we need to go back to building up our local capacities and resilience for health for livelihoods for trusted messengers and essentially it puts into question the entire 40 years of neoliberalism and privatization and and and basically thinking that you know you can talk to governments here and they'll do something on the ground it's really a transformative moment and I think that it provides we have we have the answers we have the precedents it's just now putting that precedence of good practice to make it standard operating practice as opposed to reverting back to exclusion being the norm thank you thanks to each of you this has been a really engaging conversation about women who run toward trouble to help solve these difficult uh violent and in this case we've just finished talking about the predicament of COVID we want to salute the women peace builders around the world we hope that this conversation today has opened up ideas uh enthusiasm and as Rita said earlier it begins with a self-conviction of a commitment to solving human problems without violence thank you all goodbye from Washington DC and hope to see you soon thank you thank you