 Well, it's my pleasure now to welcome Marie Steele, who's the manager of the Women's Branch in the Australian Government's Office for Women, and also Pippa Nicholson, who's humanitarian manager with the Centre, a nurse with a public health and health science background with international experience, including with the Red Cross and UNICEF, so welcome to both of you. You're going to be part of a panel on women, peace and security. So I want to get a sense from you about where do women fit in this conference that's all about learning lessons in relation to responding to helping communities affected by conflict or by disasters. And the UN Security Council has passed a resolution called 1325 that you're going to be talking about today. What is this resolution and why does it matter? 1325 is a resolution that was adapted by the Security Council at the United Nations in 2000, and it's really about three key issues. The first one is about participation and increasing participation of women in political processes and peacekeeping processes and negotiation to ensure that women's voices are heard in those processes. It's also about prevention, and that's prevention of sexual violence and gender-based violence. And finally it's also about gender mainstreaming, or the issue of actually ensuring that women's and men's voices are equally heard and incorporated across programs and operations, both globally and at a national level for countries. Pippa, you've been on the ground in societies in trouble, so you've had that direct on the ground experience. Why does this matter? Why does it matter if women are involved in decision-making processes? How will that help communities recover from conflict or disaster? I mean, I would see it also, inversely, why would women not be equally involved in political processes of any process, either at a community level or at a government level, but often because of the power structures that exist, because of the way gender roles are perceived and in those countries and different societies, women are often part of the peace-brokering, bring people to the table, but they never actually get the sort of voice around the table and are more often than not excluded from the actual hard-line negotiations. And how does that damage the capacity of a community to have an effective transition back to stability and ordinary life? And that's exactly the key point. But how does it? Why does it? Well, unless you incorporate everybody's voices, again, you're actually going to perpetuate the stereotypes that exclude women from being involved in their own society and community. Can you give me an example of that that you've seen from Europe that proves that? Yeah, I think from really any aspect, so I can think of is my work in Africa where women's key role in this particular example as traditional birth attendants, where they were the primary source of any sort of primary health care or providers of service to both women and men, but also had that role because they were well respected in the community. They were the voice of reason, they were often the elder, they were often the one that experienced many of the sort of complex environments of war and seen their communities through a lot. And yet, as soon as it came to a political process or a transition phase where the actual power-broken was exchanged, these women who are the key role models in their society were completely excluded from their process. As part of these interviews, we've interviewed Sister Lorraine Garrissou, who's a sister of Nazareth in Bougainville, and she has given a very dynamic example of the role of 700 women in building peace in Bougainville, an example of what you're saying. Marie Stilner, you're a senior bureaucrat in the Australian government, and when the Security Council passes a resolution, governments make plans, don't they? And this is your plan, but what is this Australian National Action Plan, and how is it relevant to what we're talking about at this conference? Well, the National Action Plan is obviously linked back to the Resolution 1325, which was passed in 2000, but I think it was 2004, the UN Security Council, sort of, I think, thought to themselves, well, there's not enough action happening across the world on this resolution. We think it's really important. So they were advocating that governments across the world introduce national plans to make it more concrete, to set some sort of targets and actions that are then reported against so that we can demonstrate some actual progress in this area. Well, this conference is full of people in both the Defence Forces and non-government organisations of the world. What are some of the actions that you want them to take that are promoted by this plan? How does it affect their work in responding to disasters and conflict? Well, this is, in the Australian context, we've set up a sort of working group of relevant departments across government, so that's obviously defence, the Australian Federal Police, Foreign Affairs, AusAid and AMC, and ourselves. And each organisation has some actions that they have to sort of pursue at their detail in the plan, but it's like training Federal Police pre-deployment to go to a conflict area and how they manage to deal with the issues that women are particularly facing in these environments. So it's really saying, think about the women, involve the women and you'll get a better result. There's a display at this conference of what's been happening in the Solomon Islands, the Ramsey intervention involving many nations in the Pacific. And there are several huge panels looking at women and children, so in a way it's that sort of focus, isn't it? Think about the women, involve the women. Look, the plan and the resolution itself starts from the very basic premise that women and children are disproportionately affected in conflict and that the statistics are there, it's quite horrifying. So that's the platform in which 1325 sort of builds up, I think. One of the things I've noticed at the conference is that not everyone's heard of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, even though as you say it was passed in 2000, so that's 12 nearly, you know, going on for 13 years ago. I'm assuming that's why both of you have been involved in these two documents, side-by-side Women, Peace and Security Educational Toolkit and side-by-side Women, Peace and Security. Pipo, in a nutshell, what are these about? So these are really also getting to the point of it's not only about considering women and decisions and operations, it's also about doing something about it. So it's about an active, actual phase of ensuring that that occurs. Side-by-side, and one of the key issues that often defence forces have or peacekeepers have is that this is an area that they see they don't know how to do. And side-by-side is a documentary that looks at, gives you a background on what 1325 is, discusses what gender mainstreaming is, discusses examples of how you incorporate gender perspectives, and also why you need to. Because we are sort of getting past the why you need to phase into how to do it, which is a really important shift of the framework. So this is almost about awareness raising. And this then is about how to do it? Yeah, this is about, because the documentary gets distributed globally, there's recognition obviously that there's different languages and there's different sort of areas that will be deploying and specialities, so side-by-side the toolkit was to accompany the documentary to say this is a step through of what you need to, when you provide teaching. So kind of train the trainer approach. Who do you hope will read this book and use it? Can you give me a nitty-gritty example of how you dream it will be used? Peacekeeping forces should be seeing that documentary and reading that book and applying it to their day-to-day practice at the ground level. You're in the office for women. You're probably working even within the Australian government context to get government agencies to think about the women and children. For example, if they're planning urban infrastructure, public transport, how we design our buildings, so prams as well as people with mobility issues can get in. Even in a country like Australia, affluent with educated equal women, it can be hard. It can be very hard. So in a place like Afghanistan, Boganville, the Solomon Islands, Africa, the places we're talking about at this conference, can this little book and this little film make a difference? I think it can help. And there are now plans being developed in the Pacific on 1325. You talked to Sister Lorraine. I talked to her this morning and the amount of work she does in Boganville. Using whatever. We don't care if it's our material or somebody else's, as long as there is some training and messaging going out there. And within the Australian government context, you're right that we in the office for women are trying to gender mainstream across everything. And this exercise has been particularly helpful and it's been referred to by one of my staff as the Trojan Horse. So we've got access now into Defence and AFP and we're getting this mainstreaming message out, which is really beneficial. Where do you find hope? Because you've worked at the grassroots level. Where do you get hope? I think I find hope in a lot of places, really. Not only in the women that I've worked with on day to day, but absolutely also with the men that see that this is an issue that they can actively participate in to empower communities and to make the communities better places if there's equality. I guess, what would you say to the suggestion or allegation that you're imposing attitudes of Western democracies about the equality of women upon cultures that may not share that value? What I would probably say is what I can't say on camera, but I completely disagree. I mean, I think societies and cultures like anything change and they'll change for the better when they embrace equity across whatever specific aspect it may be, whether it's ethnicity or gender. And I also think that the status quo doesn't change unless you choose to challenge it. And I suppose, if I may add something myself, the United Nations is the forum in which all nations come together to agree on common values for the world. So the fact that the United Nations Security Council, that's the highest body in the UN, has passed a resolution advocating involve the women, think of the women and you'll get better results, gives a kind of universal value to it. I mean, I'm sure everything at the UN is debated, obviously, but this is, I guess, support for involving the women at the highest level, isn't it? Absolutely. And it's a battle, so I guess, saying, it's now a policy. It's now not a choice. It's actually what you are mandated to do as a country that belongs to the United Nations. So it's a major thing in gender rights alone, to say that, and that in itself helps governments to say, here's the National Action Plan, this is what you're supposed to do. A very quick final comment from each of you. You're about to go downstairs and get onto a panel and in front of you will be several hundred military and civil senior people from all over the world, many of them in uniform. What's the single most important message that you hope they'll take away from your panel about women, peace and security? You first, Murray. Take action. Do something. Particularly in the Australian context, I'll be advocating that the key agencies look at the plan, take it seriously and take action. Thank you. Look at ways to increase your operational effectiveness. No country operation can afford to exclude 50% of the valuable insights and intelligent and resources of its own community. So listen to the voices of women as well as men. Thank you very much and good luck with the panel. Thank you.