 This issue very close to my heart, which is gender equality and women's empowerment, which I've been working on actually more or less all my life. I have reached, as I sometimes say, a respectable age. And I have seen a lot of things happening during my lifetime. I've seen a lot of progress when it comes to gender equality and women's empowerment. I started participating in politics in 1982. And I've seen a lot of changes for the better. But I've also seen setbacks, often temporary, but setbacks nonetheless. And sometimes I feel that I'm seeing that actually nowadays, which I find quite concerning. But that's maybe another issue. I'm not going too deep into that. What I'm going to talk a little bit about here is the challenges of new wars that we are experiencing. But in today's conflicts, as we know, they are very different in many ways from conflicts before. We are seeing more transnational networks and movements participating actively in these wars. And they are working with local level and non-state actors. And often these networks are the main perpetrators of violence, not necessarily. It's also government militaries are definitely involved as well. But these are often the main perpetrators nonetheless. The role of the nation state as a foundation of international system is under threat in many countries. And with that, also the traditional rules of war that apply to warfare, that has applied to warfare. And these international laws are regularly violated. Many countries, we see states and their institutions undermined. We see more of fragile states. And I think that is probably one of the most threats to peace is fragile states. Civilians are the main victims in these new wars. And there is often the goal of warring parties to destroy civilian life or destroy communities. Because to really have an impact, that's what they try to do. We see unprecedented cruelty and violation of rights. And sometimes that is used specifically to get attention and to be able to have the states in the international media. The consequences, we all know them. We have the largest number of IDPs and refugees since the World War II. We see humanitarian crisis, new use of slavery in war. And increased incidence of conflict related sexual violence. Slavery in war, we have seen that being used, for example, against the Yazidis in Iraq. But also by Boko Haram in Nigeria. So this is something that is fairly new. Of course, you know, we have had slavery since colonial time. It's not a new phenomenon, but it's used in a different way today. The new wars, they have quite an impact on women. And many of today's warring parties, they use identity politics to gain supporters. And part of this identity is often very conservative or reactionary, shall we say, policies or attitude towards women and their rights. And women are used as part of this identity politics. And women in many countries, many societies, not only Muslim countries, are they used to create identity for the men. And so they are very vulnerable in these connections. We see that new wars are invading women's families and the communities. And there is an attack on women's bodies, on their identity and on their beliefs. And rape is used as a weapon in war. You know, women in many societies are symbolized the honor of the family. So if you really want to attack a man, attack the woman, you get to him through the woman, through his honor, through his identity. Because the woman is simple for his identity. We see many, you know, resolutions that have been adopted on women's peace and security by the Security Council of the UN. Resolution 1325 was adopted in 2000. And since then, there have been seven subsequent resolutions from the Security Council, all in all eight resolutions on women's peace and security. And I think about five of them are specifically focusing on the rise of sexual violence. The last one is a resolution from 2015 that focuses on violent extremism and terrorism. And expresses the concern that conflict-related sexual violence is often a tactic of terrorism. Yet, you know, in spite of this, there is insufficient representation of women in peace talks. And funding of women-related programming and integration of gender in programming is, you know, very little. There's a lot of lip service. Let's say it. Just put it bluntly. There's a lot of lip service to women's inclusion, to women's peace and security in the world, in, you know, member states of the UN and in the UN. But when it comes to really implemented, there is a huge gap. If we look just at the peace processes between 1992 and 2011, only 9% of the negotiators were women. And only 2% of aid that is earmarked for peace and security goes to projects that primarily address gender issues. Only 2%. The Secretary General is calling for this to increase to 15%. But we still need to go from 2 to 15, which is a huge step. And, you know, there are a lot of concerns. One of the newest resolution was addressing violent extremism. But we also see in our global study that was done on the implementation of 1325 that 84% of respondents stated that the emerging issues of concern were violent extremism, but not only violent extremism, but also counter-terrorism. Because counter-terrorism by some government is used to shrink the space for civil society and make it more difficult for, for example, women peace activists to work. So they are not only concerned about the violent extremism, but also counter-terrorism, how that is implemented in many countries. The conflicts that are maybe the most imminent ones for, for at least for Europe nowadays is the Syrian and the Afghan conflicts. And we can see that both are becoming intractable with involvement of myriad of armed groups, state actors, transnational networks and external states. And it's really difficult to understand, you know, who is, you know, how all this comes together. Who is with whom and who is attacking who and trying just to analyze it is quite complicated and difficult. But this is having a devastating effect on civilians, as we can so clearly see in Syria nowadays. Women and girls, they face increased and multiply numbers of violence due to this conflict. Of course, displacement is one, but it's also sexual violence, domestic violence, it's increasing, you know, this kind of conflict. They also increase domestic violence. We see forced and early marriages, slavery, trafficking and honor crimes. If you look at the refugee crisis in numbers, we have heard maybe these numbers all before and also during this conference. We have 65 million people that are forcibly displaced globally. They can be internally displaced in countries, but also as refugees and stateless people. Out of these 21.3 million refugees and they come mainly from Syria, from Afghanistan and Somalia. And the top hosting countries are now Turkey, 2.5, 2.7 million refugees and then comes Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia and Jordan. In Europe, last year or in 2015, over one million came to Europe by sea to the EU. And most of them that have been traveling through Greece were from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. What is maybe concerning when we look at these figures and maybe I should have had it there, but I don't have it. It's how it's divided between men and women, how many of these are women and how many are men. Unfortunately, sometimes we should have it here, but unfortunately we often don't have sex disaggregated data. And I was just thinking when I was listening yesterday that we were talking about unemployment among migrants or refugees. And it was unemployment, but not how many women, how many men are unemployed. We were talking about people, refugees or migrants that are married to or intra-marriage. We didn't define between men and women how many men are married to Swedish girls, how many women are married to Swedish men. How can we need to look at this always from both a man and women's perspective because the realities are so different. We cannot just put all refugees into one clamp and say these are the refugees. You and women did a gender assessment of the refugee and migration crisis in Serbia and Macedonia last year. And what we found out from this is that women are disproportionately at risk when it comes to sexual and gender-based violence. It can be from fellow travelers, merciless, it can be from security forces, criminals or just strangers that they meet on the way. But not only that, women also have unequal access to information, to services, to legal aid and they don't have the same authority as men to decide about the future. And why am I saying this? Well, I'm saying it because often it's families that come together and it's the man that speaks on behalf of the family when they come to meet the first responders. Also, sometimes the refugees, they come in groups, they maybe come from the same neighborhood, so they come in groups. And they have then often one that speaks on behalf of the group and it's not a woman that speaks on behalf of the group. So their realities and their needs are not well reflected when they are on the move. And also they have insufficient access to safe, secure and clean spaces where women can regain a sense of dignity. That we saw in Macedonian Serbia was lacking. And even spaces for pregnant women or women with breastfeeding that they didn't have access to separate space. And also what we saw that neither international or governmental responders are following humanitarian best practice on integrating gender concerns. Not because they don't want to do that, but because they don't know often how to address women and their needs. In Serbia and Macedonia what we are trying to do is to provide better service to women on the move in Macedonia and Serbia. We are now, we'll be starting to work in hopefully in Greece, but we didn't do that before because Greece is part of the European Union. We have not been as you and women working in EU countries. So that's why we were not working there. What we are trying to do is to provide them with gender sensitive hygiene and clothing kits, better access to reproductive health in well-being areas in Macedonia. Also ability to build up their resilience in women's friendly space where they could be on their own and not with men. We need to give them separate rooms. Also support them to tell their own stories and just so they were able to be vocal and be listened to. And also providing capacity to public officials and CSOs, civil society organizations to identify and respond to the need of displaced women. So we are trying to build that up and train them in doing this. And same kind of assessment are we going to carry out now in Turkey. We'll start hopefully next month to work on that in Turkey to see how is the responses that women, the services that women get in Turkey. Almost coming to an end. And I really need to mention here a thing that is quite important I think. It's about gender sensitive asylum. Because it's really important that women that are on the move, they need asylum in safe countries. And when we look at the international conventions, then the convention on refugees is from 1951 and the protocol is from 1967. And it doesn't mention gender. It doesn't mention sexual violence or violence against women as an issue of persecution. It's nothing about that in these conventions. They are from 1951 and 1967. Just imagine how much has happened since they were approved by the international community. But it doesn't mean that there couldn't be a gender sensitive asylum policy in countries. Because both UNHCR have issued a handbook for the protection of women and girls. SIDA has made a general recommendation, number 32 from 2014. And also the Istanbul Convention on Domestic Violence, they all mentioned these things. The importance of having a gender sensitive asylum policy in each and every country. But this is optional. Countries don't have to have that. And I am afraid, I haven't looked at all the legislation for example in Europe. But I doubt that they are very gender sensitive. The legislation on asylum seekers. And why do I say this? Yes, I say this because as you heard here, I'm from Iceland. And I was just when I was preparing for this. I looked at a new legislation that was approved in Iceland. Iceland is rated number one when it comes to gender equality in the world. It has been on that list for quite a long time. This legislation was adopted this spring. There is nothing there about gender. There is nothing about sexuality. Or you can't be persecuted because of your sexuality. And there is nothing about gender. So because they just use the convention from 51 and the protocol from 67. And because it's not in Iceland, I doubt there is much even in the Nordic legislation. Because Iceland usually very much reflects what is in other Nordic countries. So that tells me that they look at it as optional. And this creates, can create a lot of problems. Because it can be very difficult for a woman or applicant to prove that she faces a well-founded fear of persecution. And that she cannot be guaranteed state protection. Let's say a woman that comes from Afghanistan. I've worked in Afghanistan. I know that a woman, for example, that had to go from home, that has been a victim of domestic violence, went to a shelter. She cannot move out of the shelter if her family is not willing to accept her again. Her father and her mother. She cannot go anywhere. She's stuck in the shelter. Because if she cannot live alone, a woman that lives alone is not accepted in Afghanistan. If several women live together, they are seen more as a brothel. They can be under attack. So where can they actually go? And the state, of course, a lot of things have happened in Afghanistan. And the state is trying to safeguard or secure these women. But they are not there. They have a long way to go before they are there. But how can you prove that you are not prosecuted? That you are, this is not just a crime that you were victim of. But that this is a persecution. This is really difficult for women to prove that. Because the state is not a perpetrator. There are individuals that are the perpetrators. So these cases are really complicated and difficult. And difficult for women to get asylum based on domestic violence. Or being victims of sexual-based violence. The European Parliament has proposed, on the 8th of March this year, that the entered forms of violence and discrimination should be valid for obtaining asylum called for more sensitive credibility assessments. But EU has not a system-wide guidance on refugee status, on asylum and reception. So we are still not there. We have still a long way to go about both legislations, that the gender-sensitive also respond mechanism to women that are victims of sexual and based violence. But we are working on it. And let's hope that we will make some improvements in the nearest future. There were other issues I was going to touch upon. But I think I'll stop here. And I think actually this is maybe the most relevant part of what I was going to say anyhow. Thank you so much.