 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you to my redneck colleagues. And thank you also for my various partners in crime who have been attending the annual dialogue on women, peace and security from the civil society side. So there's a wonderful group of people in this audience who are sitting in a university house drawing room writing a shadow report to government on the implementation of the women, peace and security national action plan, along with Sharon Maverin-Rolls from Fiji, who is our keynote speaker at the DBSC last night. So that's why the room is full of the novel. Thank you also to my redneck colleagues for coming along. All right, so to get to it, and I suppose that's what drives this presentation. It's an academic exercise, but it's also really trying to brainstorm and with all of you in the room, what should Australia do in September? So the main argument is that we should be progressing the women, peace and security agenda as much as we can during our presidency in September, along with the whole term that we're in there. And why should we do that? Because we said we would, and it's in all our materials. I'm going to make a serious, thoughtful argument to do that. But also I believe the how is really important. And the how is something that I'm sure deep-headed thinking about very hard now. And it's very interesting exercise which I think there's no exactly right answer, but I've come up with as many options as I can and the framework for judging which option we should take. I think here's this one, nation branding. So in other words, living up to the claims we made in our campaign and our general foreign policy branding, which is wear a smart middle power with all these particular types of attributes for practical, web problem solving, et cetera. Our current foreign policy objectives and our comparative advantage. This takes into account the actual reality of the amount of resources we have to thrive as a team of presidencies. And also what cutting edge issue that can progress the agenda are we best measures with what we can provide. This is what we're going to look at. Now, the scope of the talk will explain the research context, why we're going to be using security, why now, which is a very important question. What are the current blockages? What we should do and how we should do it. And then I've got three options. I want you to all vote whatever you want to vote with at the end about what you think we should consider. So just very quickly, I'm part of the security council analysis network along with my colleagues Jeremy and Hilary who are in the room and Marie-Eve who are in the room. Oh yes, she is. So the security council analysis network, which also comprises Jenny Whalen and Chris Markerson from UNSW. And that's what we're trying to do. And I'm also a member of the women peace and security academic collection along with quite a few athletes in this room. So the overall research context is the idea that the security council is an important Australian leadership that the security council is important and how are we going to evaluate in an academic way what that leadership has consisted of at the end of the term and during... I just like that photo. I just like that photo. Where is... All right. I've got to tell you too much about the security council. Except just if I could... Someone is a spunk. I'm just kidding. The maintenance of international peace and security and the existence of a threat. So this will come very important in a little while. I explained that one of the issues that the Devil's Security Council is the whole area of conflict prevention, which I think has been one of the issues in the peace and security agenda. All right. That is a picture of... Let me get this right. How are Bangura, who is the special representative to the Secretary General of Sexual Violence in Conflict, and there's been a whole range of architecture that has emerged since the Security Council Resolution 1325. It's actually a cluster of resolutions, these ones. And the essence of it, I won't go too much into detail about the content of it, but the essence of it is that, first, there's a differential experience of conflict that needs to be recognised. Second, that women and girls have an essential role in those areas that are crucial to the Security Council's overall mandate. And also, quite a few of the later ones, where Hillary Clinton had a big impact, are about impunity for sexual violence in countries. So it is groundbreaking, but one of the main issues of 1325, the only thing you have to actually do is to get yourself a national action plan. So each country is meant for a national action plan. Here's Australia's, which is a year old, but there's only 40 of them. And it's binding. Security Council resolutions are binding, so every member of the United Nations has been a part of them. So I think that's a clear right there. Only 40 countries have got a national action plan, and of those only a handful are funded in any meaningful way. And we don't have any baselines much. So it took until, I think, the 2009 resolution for the Secretary-General to have a line actually monitoring the implementation of the resolution. Now, there's been a lot of sound and fury in the Security Council around the thematic agenda. So women peace and security is known as a thematic agenda writer, along with things like children and armed conflict and peace building and various other ones, as opposed to country-based resolutions. So there's been some analysis that while the women peace and security agenda sort of infiltrating the country resolution, the thematic resolutions of the last couple of years have been very contested and fiery, and there's a sense that the thematic agendas have gone too far, that they are overreaching the mandate, and that in fact, only countries and only issues which are currently the subject of Security Council interventions should be on the agenda. So the most obvious example of this is where the Secretary-General's report talked about electoral violence and sexual violence occurring in an electoral context, and that was heavily objected to by countries like China, Russia and others. So, and at the same time, those among you will know that the Commission on the Staff of Women has been extremely contested in the last couple of years, and she wasn't able to reach a final conclusion, but this year, of course, we'll get to that. These are the thematic areas of the women peace and security resolution. Generally speaking, I would say, or they're all fairly underdone, but particularly underdone in the analysis of the police women collective and other activities is the participation. All right, so here we go, Australia's turn. Now, we had a campaign, it's got a big kangaroo on it, it's beautiful, but in there it says we have been a constant champion of the women peace and security agenda, and that is true. Every time there has been a vote, anything to do with the peace and security agenda in the past, Australia has always been supportive, but of course, we've never been a member of the Security Council the last 20 or 20 years. The other factor we need to take into account is that DFAT has limited resources and they're probably about to get more limited. They do have specific resources for the Security Council, too, though. The opportunity is we are the pen holder of Afghanistan, which I have now, which was a term that the devil thinks somewhat, but it thinks that we are the main point of contact and that we draft, we're the key drafter on resolutions. So we're the Afghanistan pen holder in the Security Council. Gary Quinlan sits on the Iraq Sanctions Committee and we will have two one-month terms in person during our two years on the Council. What the first one is in September 2013 and there'll be another one in 2014 where the date will get set. The story so far, the major thing we have done has been a major speech by Bob Carr on Afghanistan last month and we have also been active in various resolutions on North Korea and Syria and made statements about Syria, particularly about clinical weaponies and access to medical care, health emergencies. So this website down here is always gives you exactly what's going on at any one time and it's really well worth bookmarking and having a look at what we're saying and who's saying it. So why we're a piece of security right now? I think it's a really good time. At the moment there's the Rwanda presidency. Rwanda obviously has a huge moral cred when it comes to speaking to Security Council about conflict prevention and sexual violence in conflict and it's usually it's President Xi to talk about both those things. So as we speak they are talking about conflict prevention in Africa and in next week they'll be talking about the Secretary General's latest report on sexual violence in conflict. So that's happening. We also know in June the UK presidency is going to very much focus on Rwanda piece of security because they've just made this speech, G8 slash at the foreign ministers meeting which was about the stopping impunity for sexual violence in our conflict but also some resourcing and particularly they unveiled a 70 team expert group, 70 member team expert group for deployments and quite a lot of money. So the G8, we know the UK is going to be participating in the presidency. We also have a new cross-coding report which basically points out the great detail by the major monitor of the Security Council for the Security Council reporter which talks about the progress and length of progress it's made and this year is focused very much on the sanctions regime and using the sanctions regime to combat sexual violence perpetrators. And we just have out the latest Secretary General's report on sexual violence in conflict. Australia also is following with Norway, I believe, a conference in Wild Park focused on the Secretary General's report on women in peace building, lately. And the Security Council announced a DRC intervention brigade for the first time and that was targeted based on the incredibly sad reports of ongoing sexual violence for years and years and years. So that was within the Security Council outside as I mentioned the G8 efforts. We know that in here in South Africa have been getting what's called normalised foreign policy reporting about sexual violence. So this is, I think, a new phenomenon. In other words, sexual violence in India is reported as a high-level foreign policy issue talking about an impact on their GDP and their foreign policy. The Commission on the Status of Women recently met on violence against women and got a successful outcome but also the head of viewing women at that time, Michelle Clashlet, said she was stepping down to go back to Chile. So sort of a positive and minus winner Hillary Clinton has also moved on from her Secretary of State role. They've established a team of experts on sexual violence in conflict and we have this architecture, so we have UN Women, we have the new sexual violence and conflict special repertoire, we have the UN Action to End Violence Against Women, so we have some new architecture that's quite recent. And we have a new NATO envoy on gender equality and we have the Great Lakes sexual declaration in Africa. So since in the last two years there's been an enormous amount of work happening on gender violence and gender equity in the international, at the hard end, the hard end of foreign policy. So that's the kind of the context. So why now? I believe because there's an actual political opportunity where there might not have been in the past. But there's a lot of blockages to this progress and not least, so there's some step forward. So in other words, the Security Council monitor has said even though the thematic debate's absorbed, we are getting good language in country mandates and maybe that's the most important thing. So they're pointing to the DRC and also the, well, most of the mandate missions, but Guinea-Bissau and Syria have had no positive language on the peace and security agenda and there's also been some expansion of the work in sanctions at committee level. But no correlation between the work of the special rapporteur on sexual violence and conflict and the work of the sanctions community. So the analysis of the Security Council rapporteur has been the sexual violence work of the Security Council is sharper but everything else is inconsistent, I suppose would be the message. And then there's been this massive pushback in the thematic debates that I referred to. The Secretary-General's latest report in 2012, which I had in the fly for this talk, basically talks about the participation representation in peace talks is still pales. So 16% since 1919, up to 2000 years ago, we had an press release for the event yesterday. Only 16% of peace agreements have mentioned women, been signed by women, had any context for gender and all and yet this is still seen as perfectly okay. So the peace agreement piece, despite some really amazing work, has not progressed. And these protection gaps ideas in other words on the front line, sexual violence against women still occur and there being no access to resources or justice for women. And this one, which has been talked about increasingly, budgets financing, the financing for women's empowerment and the women peace and security agenda has really stalled in terms of financing. Actually governments put budgets around their obligations, it hasn't gone very well at all even though there was some very important meetings last year in the Security Council about this issue of violence. The, as I said, the report has just come out and these are the key findings. So this is the new era, sexual violence against men and boys, forced marriage, which is something Australia has been very active on lately. The links between sexual violence and natural resource extraction. So you can see from the point of view of countries that don't like overreach in the dramatic area, some of these issues are very close to the bone and the correlation between sexual violence and inadequate security sector reform. And then there was some country-based information over here that the Secretary General raised and this one is probably very relevant to us about Team of the West and also about Afghanistan. But they've dropped a whole lot of countries, so they dropped Chad and Egypt and they removed all the information about sexual violence in the context of internal strife and elections, which is bad news for all the countries like Fiji and Puglian. All right, so in terms of diplomatic possibilities, we have these various mechanisms. What, at the top of the pyramid is a presidential statement that means Australia could release a statement which is agreed on by all members of the Security Council and has quite a lot of weight as a consensus document. So that would be the best outcome we could have is a presidential statement. We could have a narrow formula meeting which is an informal type of mechanism that can move the debate forward and that usually uses NGOs or academic experts to try to push a agenda item a little bit further outside or in the corridors of the Security Council. And the best example of that recently was, and she came to the A&E to talk about was Rachel Koch and World Bank talking about climate change as a security issue should be coming under the mandate of the Security Council, someone like that. And there's been a lot of area formula meetings about women, police and security agenda and in fact, that's how you got women, police and security agenda was lots of area formula meetings. There's also country debates. Now, Security Council of course has a process management mechanism primarily so the Australian presidency could be completely taken up with North Korea or Syria depending on what happens during that month. So if there is a country focus for the month of our presidency, what would we do in that context to focus on the person's security agenda? There's also a diplomatic, this is completely informal diplomatic process called fireside chat. So this is just completely informing, informally, Australians and schooled officers to bring particular countries together or particular leaders from particular places to have an informal discussion to unblock some of the blockages, for example. And then there's good old-fashioned side events. So this is where a country might use sort of a second tract of policy or just basically bring things up to the notice of other security council countries without any obligation for them having to attend. And basically it's a way of airing a new and urgent climate issue. So here are the options I have. Obviously I'm a transitional justice scholar so I put that first, but I actually think it's probably the least likely. But I do think transitional justice is a very understood area of the security council. Multidimensional peacekeeping is the new black in the security council. But this could include the new use of gender advisers and mediators. It's very important to get more female mediators and more gender advisers. This has already been highlighted in a meeting last year by Norway, I believe, that we could do more on financing women's organisations under the participation pillar. Maybe we could focus on our region, for example. With this one, as I explained, I think it's the favourite. Strategies for holding gains in women's rights after military drawdowns, particularly if there's real issues in the security sector reform. And this is the one I believe Oxfam is the best. Protection of women advocates and organisations. So there was a really quite amazingly good resolution from the Human Rights Council recently, which was about protection of human rights advocates, particularly those who receive external funding. Very important for Russia, but very important for a range of organisations. And also important when it comes to mission drawdowns, how are we going to protect the women doing these women's pieces of security work around them? What about the front line? What are we going to do to help protect and support those women? Regional efforts to promote 1-2-5, as I'll say, I think all our campaign materials said we would carry a brief for our region. We would carry a brief for the Pacific. We would be an Asian-Pacific voice. So that's something we could credibly do. If you'd all go along to Sharon's talk, she told us a lot about the Pacific Regional National Action Plan. But it's also relevant to ASEAN. Developing and funding national action plans. If the key idea is for each country to have a national action plan, ending the first resolution in 2000, and we're in 2013 and we only have 40, maybe we should walk before we should run. The most important thing in all of international law, as you know, is domestic implementation. So maybe that's what we should focus on, actually getting every country to have a national action plan and the fundamental way and the implementer, including us. And this issue of data, so we could focus on peace agreements, but we could focus on anything. Yesterday, it really shocked me, we still don't have decent data on sexual violence in the DRC. We don't know. It's ridiculous when you think about it. So it's often the case in almost every conflict context I've ever studied, is that you don't know the sexual violence in any degree of exactitude. So that is a really important issue. All right, so the recommendations. So we've got my three criteria, nation ranking, so in other words, in fact, our whole motto for the campaign was we do what we say we will do. So it's quite a ominous story. And then, more show, but anyway, I don't know if that's always a good thing, but in our view, we said, we will bring creativity, energy and a practical problem solving ethos. So, I do think that is probably the character of Australia at the UN, the idea of we get things done, we don't fuss about. And we're quite, we're a middle power who is not an official failure in many international configurations and we're pumped, we're all Western Europe and other three, so in some ways, that gives us a lot of freedom in the Pacific, so at least we have someone to relate to. That's right, the city is also in that category. So we are a bit of a free agent, so perhaps we can see ourselves as that broker in that broker role in some of these issues. So maybe we can talk to China about stopping some of its blockages around the World Peace and Security agenda, for example, if we're brave enough. So that's one of our key recommendations, braveness and boldness. The second is, what are our current foreign policy objectives and comparative advantage? The Secretary, Peter Vargaese, he told DFAT at the beginning of the year that they're, all they need to know, six plus two plus N. So that means the six primary countries of importance to us, now let me remember, China, India, the US, Indonesia, and then there's two, or Korea and Japan, I believe, something like that. So six plus two, the two is the two organizations, that being East Asia Forum and the G20, and the N is the native group. So the six key bilateral relationships, those two forums and the native group. So anything we come up with, unless you want DFAT to suddenly sprout wings and work harder than they are, should I think it's possible, is going to have to somehow align to what we're currently working on. And then these cutting edge issues. Yesterday, Paul Rabilia basically said, conflict prevention is the weakness of the Security Council. So he's the head of the Security Council Task Force and he didn't know. So I thought that was quite important. And recently, Gary Quinlan in a debate said that protection of civilians is the core of the Security Council's legitimacy. He said that should be our moral compass. So if we're basing our priorities on what we have said recently in the Security Council, they're two of the ones that are serving support. So, number one, we take a protection focus. We talk about drawdown strategies and SSR failure list. And we look at AFG and SNRs in two weeks. And I don't think we could do any of these alone. I think we should work with other countries in all these strategies. I think that is the advantage we have is that we can partner easily. So we should be partnering, but I think that one is a key one. It will affect him or it will affect Ramsey or it will affect Afghanistan somewhere where we have skin in the game, if you will, as the fence would say. So, and it's technical, but it's also very practical. I think we could add some value to that discussion. And I think it's an important discussion to have at that time, given what's going to be happening in Afghanistan, but it has much wider ramifications for other countries. And I think what that will highlight is this issue that the best conflict prevention mechanism is good peace building and reconstruction strategies. We know that conflict is cyclical. We know what happens in the cycle. We know that countries will experience conflict who experienced conflict before. We know the security council has these incredibly long negotiations with countries once they have intervened. So we should stop this sort of particle when the security council do things and not do things. Focus on where we do have an intervention window and make the best of it for conflict prevention purposes, at least. We could focus on the Asia Pacific. Rwanda is doing something on conflict prevention in Africa as I've stated. I've had a look. I've never seen the security council take on conflict prevention in the Asia Pacific. Might be because China won't let it. I don't know. But it does have this wonderful synergy with ASEAN and the East Asia Forum. Ares and Century Focus. And in a very natural way, it took me, I thought about this hard because it's my other active area, it's the G20. There is not a lot of overlap. But one of the things that it does when it talks about all the time is stability and economic stability. So one of the primary economic drivers in the world at the moment is the Asian region. If there is conflict in the Asian region, the whole world will suffer. So there is a real issue here and it might be a sideways way of looking at issues like the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea. Financing strategies. It doesn't sound as sexy, but it could be the most useful thing we do. So in other words, just raising money for frontline women. I think it's really important. And how would we do that? And again, it's got to be something that you can show domestic practice, I think, to be really successful in the security council of the country, seem to be able to, Norway and Sweden are always very good at drawing on what they have done themselves and drawing out what other countries might be able to do. So there might be things we can come up with from the defence reviews, for example. There might be all kinds of implementation, financing implementation from a data perspective that would also, this healthy economy point is, what does everyone say about Australia? We've got an amazingly healthy economy. It's part of our nation branding. It's also a G20 strategy. Why are we world leaders? Because we haven't, or no one like everybody else has, in the budget to say it's right. The other thing, which was highlighted at the Wilton Park Conference, was trying to put some real political energy underneath a seven point action plan on gender responsive peace building by the Secretary General in 2010. And there's a series of ways we could do that. But again, that would be, I think, a practical and useful thing that we could do that Australia has a story to tell. So, can you send me some key resources for you? But now it's your turn. I want folks, I want to crowdsource the best idea. So I want to show our hands, please. So we'll be completely battle of people watching on the web. Who likes the idea of protection and Georgia strategies security sector reform plan? Do we only have one? No, no, no, you can only use your luck. Okay, who likes that? Oh, that's a popular one. Yes, yes, okay, that is exceptionally popular. Who likes conflict prevention from the age of Pacific? Who likes the debate broad? Yeah, a lot of people like that one. Who likes financing strategies? All the women's organizations. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, okay, who likes gender responsive peace building? Yes, but not a zero point action plan. Well, that's the Secretary General's elimination plan. Yes. Yes, but not a zero point action plan. No other Secretary General's. But that's less popular, partly because it's a bit older, I think, but also it just hasn't been implemented at all. So it is a bit of a disgraceful enterprise. But anyway, if we get these for us, we might have better gender responsive peace building. So I think the prize goes for number one. So I will talk to the women's peace and security activity collective and we'll write one of our hard-hitting letters. We get so much action in the fall, you know, and powerful. But, you know, this is something where the Australian government needs and whoever the Australian government might be when we are president of the Security Council, which is something I've written and I've been on this. Anyone's interested? It's a really difficult period for us politically because there may be a change in government, but whatever happens there will be an election right in the middle of the presidency. So it's really important that Australia tries to choose something where there is bipartisan support, but also a high level of public support. And it will need to have some sort of domestic legitimacy as well, or at least able to be explained to domestic constituency. So I think, I do think most Australians get this, most Australians understand that they're going to pull out of Afghanistan and that's going to be a very serious situation for those people. So that's probably got the highest media value. But now, I would like to end there. So thank you very much. It's fun voting for Security Council, it's quite popular vote. Yes, we'll put that to depot as well. And now, some of the questions. Yeah, so we've got at least half an hour for questions. Claire has got microphones, so just give them to me. Okay, so that's great. I was just wondering what the sort of next steps in regards to the credible strategies that exist to actually promote any of that agenda and how do you see that working to actually get some action response on these issues? It's very tightly held, these decisions, as you would expect. And they're also, I think, quite dynamic because what Australia does and its presidency in some ways is affected by what the country is immediately preceding it does. And also what countries have done in previous years, especially recent years. So I looked at all the different early forming meetings and all the different open debates from last year on the peace and security and tried to come up with things that had an edge. You need to be at the edge of the Security Council needs to kind of be in the forefront of some of these debates, which is possibly why things don't get implemented properly because everyone moves on to the next tool. But in terms of domestic channels, DEFAT is holding a Security Council consultation with a massive group of people, as far as I can tell, in May. There's a classic route to the Prime Minister's strategy, which does work sometimes. So if you've got brilliant ideas about what you want Australia to do in September, you should just write to them. And I'd probably write to Julie Bishop as well, just. And then there's also, you could also, I think, lobby the task force, the Security Council task force, and also you could write to Ambassador Quinlan. But the big picture issue will be a political decision. So it will be a political decision based on advice from the Security Council task force and the ambassador as to what Australia focuses on. And then after that, there'll be, I would think, some sort of socialization of the idea, but there might not be. I don't know. I mean, there hasn't been any real socialization or any sort of socialization. Thank you. Thank you. Am I from Aileen, PhD? What about the women in post-conflict? Does it have space on that, the discussion on that? And also, you've got the Australian National Action Plan, the issues of monitoring. I don't know, because I wasn't able to come yesterday in the time of meeting. But I'm sure that's also the main important issues that needs to be discussed. What's the role of civil society? And also specifically in terms of the strategy for, I think it's quite comprehensive in its design, but how to implement it, because we're dealing with, you know, like Indonesia, for example, the Australian government has very interest on what's up on issue, for example. So in terms of implementing the strategy for into that context for Indonesia, that must be very quite difficult, I imagine. So again, in regards to the role of civil society, or the role of us here, how to engage it in an effective way and monitor it in a way, thanks. There's a whole new area of work called MARA, that's the acronym that's used in a Security Council debate. And it stands for, you think it would stand for something useful, but it's basically the monitoring of missions and how it's monitoring and evaluation work of Security Council action. That's called MARA, so if you search for that. And one of the issues that the previous one, this one, the idea of how do we get more gender experts actually doing monitoring of Security Council actions and how to make that meaningful? That is a very real debate and that would be also increasingly important. I mean, some of the issues are more technical than others, but that, again, we don't know, the Security Council often doesn't know what the reaction is of people in the community to its intervention, so that feedback loop, I think, would be quite important. So that is certainly something that was on the agenda of the Security Council report. And it's also the subject of a really good report, which I recommend from Care Corps, from Resolution to Reality, which came out about a three-country study inspired by the lack of any women at the Bond Conference, other than Care's initiative in trying to get the Afghan Women's Network to attend, but the idea that need you had to get some women to the Bond Conference, for example. So I highly focus on the participation pillar and some of the architecture around monitoring. Now, your second thing was the peace building, so you're saying the peace building plan, the 10-point plan, or 7-point plan, sorry, by the Secretary-General, it's quite comprehensive, but very politically sensitive. That was the second part. I was referring to the Australian National Action Plan that started before the international involvement. So our obligation is to try to include female peacekeepers, and when we are involved in the coordination of peace agreements to have women at the table, we have a very packed record about the towns for all the peace agreement from Solmans with women at the table, but in terms of you mean for West Papua, it's only where Australia's got confirmed involvement, so it doesn't mean Australia has to go to Indonesia and say, you need to include women in the West Papua peace process, or you need to get a peace process into West Papua women in it. It's not as proactive as that. So does that answer your question? It doesn't say that Australia has to take a proactive response in doing anything in the region that would be outside its current policy, or at least that. But what's the obligation of the Security Council then? Because if these things are still happening and nothing is mentioned about women in conflict, like in Papua or in Achea, for example, post-conflict, because things are not finished when the peace agreement was signed, because women in Achea are, you know, keep repressed, it even works. So what's the obligation that I mean as a woman? Yeah, I absolutely agree. So the problem is, most of the permanent five members will say that is outside the end of the Security Council because they don't represent threats to international peace and security. They represent threats to Indonesia's peace and security, but they don't threat to anybody else. And this is why all those, that's why he was trying to highlight these issues, Secretary-General, for example, and having no luck at all in the thematic debates about those issues, because the countries were saying, that is outside our mandate. Basically, we have finished our involvement in those countries. We are not, or we're not engaged with those countries. And so we're not going to look at sexual violence in those situations, for example, and the Secretary-General saying, well, you should, because they're part of the wider idea of the Stoneman Security Council under the charge. So this is a very active debate that's happening. So, you know, removal of electoral violence. Well, look, that, to me, it seems a fairly intuitive idea that that could be represented threat to peace and security, but it's true. It's probably an internal threat to peace and security. It's come back to this feminist idea of public-private violence. The type of violence that is recognised as important by the international community is the type of violence that could cause problems for greater powers. So the sovereignty wall around an issue protects a whole lot of violence against women. So this is the very real debate that's happening at the moment, which is why I think, I think the temptation would be for DFAT to say, Rwanda's all over it, the UK is all over it, we're going to pull back from the women peace and security agenda and do something utterly safe, like working methods. And I think that is something they should not do. They should absolutely, if the debates from UK and Rwanda fail to get a result, and there's all the more reason, I think, for Australia to use this presidency to keep trying, but that's absolutely exactly the type of problems that are happening. So for Archangels, because they've never been on the security council agenda, that's even harder. I was just wondering, in regards to the fact that seeing as Australia will have the presidency during the time that we have the national election, how much of this do you think will actually be possible? And how much will that camp for our Australia's ability to really play a leadership role during that time? Well, I've wrote an op-ed that's called, I don't know why, which basically says it's disastrous. It's disastrous! I'm very upset. September is an incredibly important month for us. We have the June 20th, it's a peaceful day. We have the Pacific Island Forum and we have our President's Secret Security Council. And what you don't want in the middle of all of that is a caretaker period. And in our case, a caretaker period's going to last for a long time after the ban is posted in July. And it means September is gold for a UN Security Council presidency because that's leaders' week of general assembly. So if you're President of the Security Council in September, you can normally get these amazing high-level, prime minister level meetings to bolster whatever you want to get done. So we've lost that, basically, as we pull out, pretty good, a lot of times. But yeah, so it's really difficult and it puts a lot of pressure on people at the end of the world, like Eric Midland and also on DFAC, to make sure there's certain caretaker conventions about things we can and can't do. We can make those decisions, offer lots of briefings to the coalition and it can proceed absolutely. So they can do all of these. It will just won't involve the political leadership and often at the Security Council, it's that political leadership. So we sent Bob Carr to deliver the speech on Afghanistan and that was very strategic because that's the most important role we have in the Security Council to send our prime minister. It elevates it, it sends a message. So we won't be able to do any of that. I mean, some of the half of the Senate won't be elected so there are some senators that we could deploy. But yeah, it's fairly disastrous because you definitely will be aware of this. So it's just all the more important to get the dust lined up early. One very short question to go on, to go on that and then one bigger question. October is usually the month when there is some reporting on women making to CSW. Is that challenging? Given our September timing of the presidency and that's just a small question. My great question is, you mentioned your talk that participation was one of the key participation of women in peace processes is one of the key challenges of actually 25 and one that not a lot of action has been taken on it, but it wasn't one of your recommendations to further action. Why not? Just because, well, I'm sorry to take the first question, first year is a problem, I thought about that. But there's so many aspects of the women facing security agenda that we could easily do an aspect of that in September, following the last October's report. And I think that's fine. And in fact, there's no law that says it has to be in October or later, it's just when that's when the Secretary-General's report comes out, so that's when you open the vape on the hill. But, you know, there's no law about that. In terms of the second question, it was because they just had a big meeting on women in peace agreements to which Christine Bell's research was used. Yes, so they've just had a big meeting like that, an early formula meeting and also an open vape and it didn't seem to go very well. But that's, you see, again, no reason why we can't do things that didn't work last time, but it means if we'll do that, we need to know why, what the political blockages where I work on them, through our inform, they think this is before we attempt it again. But I would think if that will want to have something, it can put its thumb pretty long. Who knows, we don't know memories, institutional memory of how these things went previously, much, because it was so long ago, so it's all fresh slate, which is exciting. Fresh way to make a level state plan. Hi, John here from ActionAid. We're another one of the agencies who are keen on seeing one of these activities around Afghanistan and support the prevention point of suggestion. But on that, my question is about effectiveness of the suite of activities that you outlined and including your formal and presidential statements, et cetera. Do you have an analysis of where those tactics have produced better results, tracks where these side meetings are are a formal or presidential statements on thematic issues that occurred, and then what has happened through the Security Council's consequence of those meetings? And just on that to share, in talking with, currently at my table at the event yesterday from Prime Minister and Cabinet in de facto, they were, and I was talking about this, advocating for this particular, for an event around Afghanistan, and it was right in Afghanistan, they were saying, please do get a suggestion soon, which I think is part of your advice, but also think about what might lead you to the next presidential moment for Australia next year, and that they're thinking about a theme that they can develop under both the presidency. This too, I mean, it's incredibly difficult because of the room rotating presidency to get some sort of coherence between the previous president and the one coming after you and your second presidency, so that the debate actually builds. And I mean, that's the purpose of this thematic agenda is really, is to try and make sure you're actually building on something, and it becomes a more proactive agenda, which I think is why it's challenging to state some of the rather have security council have a reactive agenda. You see exactly the same dynamic that could play in the G20 where there's this idea of the crisis cabinet versus the steering committee and that tension in the government's rock. So that's why I think security sector reform is a good one because a lot of sexual violence happens because we get security sector reform wrong. So in other words, we have badly trained police, nearly armed after a conflict, a neighbouring cat, who are the actors most likely to be involved in the next round of conflict and the people that we armed and trained in the last round of conflict. So I actually think it's quite simplistic, but I think it has a strong conflict prevention aspect to it. So I think it's going to be broader than Afghanistan. I think the side of it could be in Afghanistan, but I think the actual debate has to be broader than Afghanistan for that reason. Otherwise, it will be, I think, too politicising, too difficult and too... And I don't think it serves our stated aim of being the small and middle country champion in the Security Council particularly well. So I think we do have to look at a wider idea of security sector reform or transitions in smaller, medium countries. The countries that the whole world's not staring at on regular basis. And so I think it's really important to link that kind of advocacy and exactly that kind of action to our existing national action plan. Because those commitments are already there by default in every other agency that's there, particularly around the gender-based prevention and sexual violence and also operational activities that the Australian government is currently involved in. So in regards to actually getting impact and actually getting work done, building that platform based on our current commitments in the national action plan is a way forward to then also build it up to UNSC but also to trickle down to the actual operations of the application of the sort of theory, I guess, too. So I think it's really important to use existing commitments because government doesn't do anything new without a piece of paper and it's saying it has to do this. So use that paper that we already have and the policy imperative we already have to make them do it. That's a question of how do we define Australia's leadership in the Security Council? Is that that we drive a global debate forward or is it that we made Australia, what Australia does better? And I've been really struggling with this. How should we, I mean, we as Australian citizens judge Australia's term in the Security Council, should it be that we somehow attributed to global leadership on the issue with the rest issue a little bit further or should it be that Australia did something better domestically or in the region because of its membership with the Security Council? It's a tricky one, isn't it? We really want both and we want them to be liens. But a lot of the domestic conversation in some ways is harder than the global leaching conversation. Especially because in reality, Australia has very little, I mean, in terms of peacekeepers on the ground, if you want to talk about books on the ground or funding of these projects in significant, in countries they have significant need, Australia actually doesn't do very much really well. So Australia doesn't really do very much at all. We have very few peacekeepers on the ground, we have, you know, in the police or military. And it's quite difficult to kind of, I think to kind of boss around those countries that are contributing in those ways if we don't have our own house and all that and if we're not putting our own resources behind that. I think it might be true at the moment, but if you look at the campaign, we make a very large meal of our peacekeeping history. It says I'm doing testing and that too now. We look like just the hero of it. So I think historically we do have a track record, but yes, that in terms of current deployments. So just in front of you and then we'll ask the microphone. I see, thanks very much. If you mind if I leave a question and it's possibly been answered in the greatest space of your dial. But in accepting that all of those conflict countries are different and women are not your models. I mean, this room was full of women from those countries. What would they be prioritising? Do we have a sense of that? Or is this all of us? We can't be creating stuff that's really very irrelevant. Thanks just back to that great question over there about, you know, maybe we should focus on monitoring and evaluation so we know what we're going to say. I mean, there is very organized women's civil society in a lot of these countries where the security council and the mandate operation. But for precisely the problem of women not being involved in the peace and security dialogue at high levels, we often don't. So from my perspective, I was just really branding what contemporary women talk about and a lot of contemporary women were very stressed about when the UN left what would happen. And we've had a lot of Afghan women coming through on various delegations, saying exactly the same thing. So there's that kind of, from my lived experience, that was really something. But we don't know that. And I think the Pacific Regional Action Plan is a good indicator. We had the Pacific Island Forum leadership declaration about gender equality recently. We've had, I think a lot of the development agencies have written links to local communities of which they're working with. But maybe not that, I think up to this elite political institution. So that would be a good exercise too. I presume, and this could be a very naive presumption on my part, that DFAT, through its embassies and all its electoral negotiations, might have some sense of that. And I'm hoping that with Penny Williams being the new global Australian Ambassador for Women. She's getting a sense of that in her visits and things. But she's very recent, she's not a big guy in 18 months. And it's the women's peace and security is one of her core issues that she talks about. She goes on visits. I think we'll have a very nascent, very nascent basic. And it will be when it's really well organized for its organizations, like FEMIC. So we're in the absence of that very organized civil society, I don't know if we have, can't we? That's precisely the point that I wouldn't want to presume. I know from Afghan women's organizations that it's very real to them. But I also think it's a splatter issue. Thanks, so it's just me. Just add it to that, just add it to that. I think while there's a bit of sensitivity, obviously within the members of the Pacific Islands Forum, Australia's role there, particularly on the issue of conflict prevention, I think there's a great opportunity for Australia being a member of the Security Council now. Given that last September, the forum leaders, not only agreed to carry on the work of the regional, made the commitment to the regional action plan, but also the conflict prevention human security framework. So with all of that, whether there were ways in which that sort of regional level commitments, sometimes I don't see at the international level within the UN Security Council. So statements are being made about Afghanistan and other areas of the world with due respect, but not about the situations within the, Australia speak back up the Pacific Island countries. So whether building on the statement yesterday, a lot does need to be done with the Security Council around prevention. Maybe there's a real opportunity because specific forum leaders have agreed to that, including the work on human peace and security. Hillary had been a bit of a position to themselves, but they don't tend to like the words human security of the Security Council. Really, do they? That's very traditional security context. But as we can see with the resource extraction and they're talking more and more about narcotic trades and militia gangs and all these types of actors outside traditional armed actors, it's starting to happen because in the country resolutions particularly, the context driven and the context is that these aren't net parcels of issues anymore. But the reaction to the climate change and security debate was, oh, we can't possibly, oh, you know, and that's deeply depressing, really. But I like that too. So that's my idea. If you go back to different say, it's time to give the end a whole of a cloud. Time to put the neighborhood right in the center of the frame. And I like that because no one is ever gonna talk about those issues at the Security Council otherwise. But if we want to be the chairman of small states, well, you know, I'll do that. I think that's a good idea. The question is, will that be relevant enough? Will everyone come, will everyone participate? I think so. Small states in the world. Louie, did you have a comment on the human security issue based on your search? I think so. Take your turn and tell everyone what you want. Oh, no. I think you're exactly right. And I think that the Security Council is so much on its plate that it spends its time triaging a lot of getting rid of the problem and getting rid of the great deal. I mean, one of the citizens who I was just thinking of following on from the Security Council for a call last week, which had that special call that they did, which was fantastic. And it's still a different thing. I think we've had decent security with a wonderful resource. Yeah, this one, we read that also. Yeah, yes, it's really excellent to resolve the huge amount of research in the country. But just starting with what they were exactly in 2011, which was, you know, despite all of this, the Security Council's so often itself following its own resolution. So on, for example, the conclusion of doing a decent security peace agreement, which I think is something like four out of the nine of that year that were broke, they just had that. And also involving women in peace because it was there and the figures were, I think that was three out of 11. So I'd like to say just the same on our watch for a little while, we're on the Security Council, we'll try and get the Security Councils itself. The Security Council should do what it says it will do. Just a straightness. Love you, I love you. And actually, that's right. They also said that, you know, the UN has a zero-tolerance approach to sexual violations by its own peacekeepers. And that research basically said that that's not included, in fact, in the mandates of peacekeeping operations in over half of them. So its own policies are not being implemented by the Security Council itself. It's lifted the DPKO, which is, yes. So conflict prevention, it was back who asked about that, I should say, has been given to, part of given to UN women and the Peace, Peacebuilding Support Office, both of which are the two organs of the UN which have the least amount of funding at the moment. So there's an absolute crisis funding, processing funding for what I call the prevention architecture. It's really absolutely shameful. So it's no wonder that it's an undercooked part of the Security Council, because there's no money given to it. So Peacebuilding Commission, which is the poor relation that the UN had to take as well. Yeah, so that's a good one. At least we could do that. One last question. Okay. Hi, Stan from Oxfam. So with not understanding the fact that working methods is really boring, I did have a question about, which really leads to that question of what do women want, which is that kind of very impossible question to ever answer, because we're not all the homogenous group and whatever, but still the point in that is, where are the voices of people who are affected by conflict and violence and insecurity every day and how are they getting to the Security Council? So the RA formula briefing came about because of an ambassador who basically set up a meeting with a bunch of NGOs, including Oxfam, whenever it was, 10 years ago or longer. And that formula has led to, it's expanded and it's there for amnesty. All of the big NGOs have RA formula briefings, as well as academics, and that's led to pretty much the entire thematic explosion of thematic issues on the Security Council, which now, as you say, has led to integrating these new improved approaches into the country resolutions. So that is Security Council reform. And it basically came down to one ambassador deciding to set up a meeting. So I guess my question is, can we not disregard working methods, because working methods is kind of how this all happened. And I guess my question is, what could be the Quinlan method? And how could that engage the Quinlan more with people affected by conflicts because they're the people that we don't hear. And that's one thing that actionated amnesty and Oxfam and anyone else who wants to participate, we're trying to think out about basically how we can pitch an RA formula briefing with Afghan women human rights defenders and civil society representatives who are at the local level, not the INGOs, but actually, and that's happened with DRC, but Afghanistan's much more complex. But I guess there's some other mechanism that would be better for engaging those groups that we can be pitching to the Australian government if they're keen on working methods. Well, that's the thing. Effective RA formula meeting is sort of outside of official working methods. So it's not an official working method, actually. No, it is captured in a formula, but that's an informal procedure. No, it's captured in a security council presidential statement as a method now. Yeah, it is informal, but it's not in the manual. So it's not in the manual. But essentially the value of it has been captured in a very substantial statement. And I think John asked before, what's the value of doing those things? It's because you get them eventually on the agenda 10 years later if you try all these methods. But my instinct would be is that, in fact, RA formula meetings are a step too far for most of the group in five, in many respects. And they're often used by the Nordics and used to be Canada in a very active way, but not a lot of the P5 members. So if we want to get that to be increased to a very local level, I think that would be tricky. But it's worth asking, the Quinlan formula, there's this absolute proliferation of groups of experts in all these country situations. And there's also this absolute proliferation of Secretary-General and Special Representatives on various issues, which were sexual violence and conflict ambassador in one. And the only thing there is that they aren't yet to go and have civil society consultations in country. I think it's really important to have in-country methods because I really think anything based in New York is going to be only, I mean, I'm sorry, but if no one goes to New York, even the RA formula meetings, funny, fancy international NGOs, they're going to get to participate in those. You know, no brass-roofed organization works out to New York on regulating principles and knows how to play that game. It's the big agency that's got New York based offices. That's all they do. So those in-country consultation mechanisms, I think are really important. Maybe that's something that would say that groups of experts appointed by the Security Council should have to conserve civil society in country and they should make sure half their consultations are done well with the girls and something like that. Do you think? Well, maybe do both, and see what steps. Mm-hmm. Hang on. Great. You have to cut off the discussion there before we're actually thrown out of the area. Thank you so much. So, really, thank you very much.