 Welcome. My name is Joe Hewitt. I am the Vice President of Policy, Learning, and Strategy here at USIP and I'd like to welcome you all to USIP for an important conversation about constitutionally protected gender equality, particularly in those nations emerging from conflict. I want to take a moment to thank our partners from UN women who have been tremendous leaders in advancing the rights of women and girls around the world. As many of you know, USIP was founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible. Practical and essential for US and global security. We pursue this vision of a world without violent conflict by working on the ground with local partners. We provide people, organizations, and governments with the tools, knowledge, and training to manage conflict so it doesn't become violent and resolve it when it does. This topic is central to realizing that vision. There is increasing agreement that the treatment of women is predictive of peace. Research shows that the higher the level of violence against women, the less peacefully the nation state will behave in the international system. An analysis of the push and pull factors of radicalization show that women have a distinct and substantial role in preventing and disrupting these factors. This is why the development of democratic and gender inclusive constitutions are so critical to the stability and resilience of a nation. As countries transition from violent conflict, a constitution becomes the bedrock of civic life and can be key to addressing root causes of conflict. We have seen tremendous advancement in the constitutional protection of women and girls over the years. 90% of constitutions adopted since 2005 have constitutionally protected girls' rights to equality in education. But so often, constitutions will guarantee general equality without mentioning gender, providing only limited grounds for legal and political actions to promote gender equality. USIP has been working to promote inclusive approaches and the integration of gender at all levels of peace building. We have worked in Colombia where women made up one-third of peace table participants during the peace process, providing support to local women mediators who bring unique perspectives and skills when resolving conflicts. We have supported women's political participation in advance of the 2014 Afghan presidential election and have been witness to some truly extraordinary women who have been risking their lives to encourage their fellow women to engage in politics and civil society. We know that women's participation at all levels of society is critical to building more resilient communities. We have seen how women can disrupt the push-pull radicalization and we have measured how their inclusion on peace processes increased the probability of lasting agreements, which is why it is so important to build constitutionally constitutional equitable societies from the very beginning. Today's discussion will discuss exactly this. How to ensure women's rights are protected and women's voices heard in the constitutional reform process. Experts will highlight practical approaches that they have seen across the globe that enshrine global equality in the fabric of constitutions. But before we begin this conversation, it is my great pleasure to introduce Susan Della Ross, who will moderate this afternoon's panel discussion. Susan is professor of law at Georgetown Law, where she is also director of the International Women's Human Rights Clinic. The clinic advances women's human rights through litigation, legislation, and human rights reporting in partnership with women's NGOs and many developing countries, especially in Africa. She has served as reporter to the Uniform Laws Commission's drafting committee for a Uniform Act on Prevention of and Remedies for Human Trafficking. And she's the co-chair of the special committee on gender for the DC Circa Task Force on Gender, Race, and Ethnic Bias, among others. Please join me in welcoming Susan and all of our panel participants. Well, it's my great pleasure to be here and to be with all of you who are working so intensely on the very important issues of gender equality in constitutions. I'd like to talk about how you can use the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women as one of the building blocks in getting constitutions that truly give equality to women. Article 2A, so the very first subsection of Article 2 of the convention requires that states implement the principle of equality of men and women and put it in their constitution. And they must also ensure the practical realization of that principle, which means essentially people suing using their constitution in their local domestic courts to get rid of discriminatory laws that remain on the books even after a new gender equal constitution is passed or ratification of a treaty happens. The committee takes very, that oversees the CEDOC treaty, takes very seriously the issue of are the constitutions truly given women equality? As recently as March of 2016, they recommended to both the United Republic of Tanzania and Vanuatu that they have to comprehensively review their constitutional provisions and ensure that it has definitions of equality that are required by the convention. Now, many countries have responded to the committee's urgings over the years. And I want to give a couple of examples that have responded. For example, until 1995, Uganda had in its constitution a provision that said you were protected against sex discrimination except in family law, in marriage law, in divorce law, in inheritance law. So, everything that affected women most profoundly was accepted from the prohibition on sex discrimination. But in 1995, they came together and enacted a new constitution that gives women equal rights and does it in very concrete terms in many different provisions. The same thing happened in Kenya in 2010. But that doesn't mean all the countries have changed. For example, Botswana still has that very same kind of constitution that Uganda used to have. And in Tanzania, a country where I've done some work with a partner there, the courts are refusing to comply with the constitution and so we had to take a case up to the CEDOC committee. But I'm saying all this to show you how you can use human rights law to ensure that you get equal rights, true equal rights for women in constitutions. Now, why is that important? It's because of the link between peace and security in constitutions. First of all, in post-conflict countries, constitutional reforms have often formed part of a three-pronged political reform process that includes peace agreements and electoral reforms. And in Sub-Saharan Africa, countries that experienced major civil conflict in the period following the 90s have witnessed the most significant changes on the continent. These transitions created political openings for women's groups to make demands for change. And in addition, during conflict, women often occupied traditionally male-dominated roles as breadwinners and leaders. And so that too gave them new opportunities to make change in their constitutions. So as a result, as the conflict ended, they started asking for far-reaching gender equality changes as part of the constitutional reform process. And now 94% of post-conflict constitutions contain anti-discriminatory provisions based on sex. And 75 of those constitutions, 75% referenced gender quotas in contrast to 25% of non-post-conflict constitutions. Now I've said that constitutions are very important. Why? Because they're the authoritative expression of state systems of governance and accountability. Let me just give you two examples of how constitutional courts have used their constitutions with very superb gender equality provisions to win equal rights for women in a couple of African countries. For example, in South Africa, the constitutional court struck down the customary inheritance law that said women couldn't inherit, only men could inherit. And as a result of that decision, the parliament eventually passed a new law that implemented the court's order so that women had equal rights to inherit for the first time in that country. In Uganda, similarly, with its new constitution, just last, the summer ago in 2015, the Uganda Supreme Court struck down the customary requirement that in order to get a divorce, a woman's father had to repay the bride price. And it said that violated the constitution. So it shows you how important it can be to have constitutional court decisions striking down these discriminatory laws. And how does that help end conflict? It helps end conflict because when women become equal partners because they have equal rights in the family, because they have equal rights in the economy, because they have equal rights to leadership, they are truly valued and they can have a real impact on ending the conflict and transitioning to a peace society. And that brings us to a reminder of the important work of the council here which is preventing war rather than managing crises. And it says the world has lost sight of some of the key demands of the women's movement while seeking resolution 1325, reducing military expenditures, controlling the availability of armaments, and promoting nonviolent forms of conflict resolution and fostering a culture of peace. So if we have truly equal rights for women in all the constitutions and if young leaders like you, the people who are here today and have been studying constitutional reform, if you can go back to your countries and fight for these changes, I think we can see a real opportunity for women to play a much larger role in their countries and in the world as a whole. Now, today I'm also very pleased to introduce you to our distinguished speakers, some of whom have traveled from very far to come and speak with you today, and they all of whom bring a wealth of experience to the subject. The first panelist is Dr. Fumzi Lim Lambo and Kuka, who is a UN Undersecretary General and the Executive Director of UN Women. Prior to that, she was actively involved in the struggle to end apartheid in her home country of South Africa, where she served as Deputy President of South Africa, Minister of Minerals and Energy, Deputy Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry, and a member of Parliament. We're very happy to have her with us today. I'm going to ask her to come up, but I also want to alert you that she has to leave at 4.30 for a meeting in New York. So she'll be coming up in a second, and we'll be leaving early. Now my first question for you, Dr. is how can peace negotiations provide momentum for constitutional and legal reforms that will empower women and girls? Please welcome. Thank you so much for having us and for your for your question as well and your introductory remarks that I think set the stage so well and to my fellow panelists that I look forward to hear from. Let me start by also thanking you for highlighting what is the vision of the very important Security Council resolution dating 25, which really emphasizes the importance of a world with less arms. As a prerequisite for the kind of peace that we aspire for. When we have ends of conflict, when peace is being negotiated in countries, we now know that if we do not engage and involve women, the peace is not as durable and long lasting as it can be. Some of you may be aware that in the year 2000, we evaluated the implementation of resolution dating 25 after 15 years of its existence. And we generated a lot of data and examples that shows that where women have been involved in negotiating peace, that makes a tremendous difference. The fact that for instance, women when they negotiate for peace and for reparations, they will think about communities, they will think about schools, they will think about clinics different from when we are negotiating reparations to pay combatants who are young men. And the benefits go to an individual, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it definitely does not change the dynamics of a community. We have also seen an increase in the consultation of women civil society organizations when peace is being negotiated, but not enough of that is happening and certainly not enough women are sitting at the peace table. But when that has happened, one of the biggest positive factor has been the fact that we've emerged with constitutions that protect women. The benefits of a moment when peace is being negotiated to have women is that a country has an opportunity to start again in a manner that is not possible in peace times. It's almost like a cloud will to silver lining because lots of things are up for negotiations. So we are able to put quotas, we are able to put special measures and countries have to comply. That is why in countries like Afghanistan, and I'm not saying that we need to have war for women to have their rights enshrined in constitution, but we'll grab what we can get. In Afghanistan, we saw the changes and the fact that women emerged to some extent beneficiaries of a better legal dispensation. We have seen even as the world continues even in South Sudan, the constitution of South Sudan notwithstanding the horrific war that we still see there is much better than constitutions of other countries that are in peace. In Colombia, we have seen the process between the FARC and government which for instance enable the addressing of sexual violence against women to be raised as an issue by both women from government and the women from the opposition. And they were able to come to an agreement about the importance of not sweeping under the carpet these violations. We have also, South Africa is also another country where the constitution sets the frame for ensuring that all of the laws that were inherited from apartheid that discriminate against women where it just did one stroke of the constitution made to be non-compliant with the constitution and it kick-started a process by which we were able to amend or repeal all those laws. So there is a definite benefit in having a gender-compliant constitution, but also when sometimes we have a constitution that is not progressive and you are trying to pass laws that are progressive, the constitution can actually sabotage that process. So this law that is the law of the land that is superior to all the laws in most countries is very important to get right and then through it to then proceed and do all you can from national to state to local government and also to challenge even some of the practices and policies in private sector. Thank you. Not so fast. Yes, exactly. We have another question for you. So this one is why are constitutions important to women and in what ways can they be leveraged for advancing women's rights including the reform of discriminatory laws? Okay, I think I've sort of tried to cover everything, but let me just let me continue with just some of the interesting examples that illustrates the point. In Ethiopia, for instance, in Morocco and in Tunisia, the deliberate use of pronouns in constitution is an acknowledgement that constitutional language can reorder and reconfigure society. And we have seen that playing out and creating conditions where in those countries women have been beneficiary with an improved legislative reform. In Rwanda, women's groups also played an important role during extensive constitutional consultation and lobbied for quotas for women in parliament and in public office. We know what has happened to Rwanda. It is one of the countries. It is, I think, the number one country in the world with the highest representation of women in parliament. And positive constitutional reforms can also help to bring about comprehensive legal framework from the promotion of gender equality. Example, following constitutional reform process in Morocco, gender responsive law reform led to changes in the electoral law enabling women to win 6,000, a cool 6,673 seats in municipal council almost twice the number of seats women won in the previous elections. In Bolivia, new post-constitutional reforms, regulations requiring the alteration of male and female candidates on electoral risks resulted in women, women more than half of the seats in the house of representative in 2014. So constitutions trigger legislative and policy change in support of gender equality, especially when you also have watchdogs such as civil society that ensures that there is a follow-up. In Ecuador, national studies on women's time use, the feminization of poverty, domestic chores and unpaid labour helped to promote constitutional provision on unpaid care work. One of the important supports that is needed in this situation also is paying attention to norms, stereotypes and cultural practices. When we were evaluating the impacts of the Beijing declaration over a period of 20 years, we noticed that a number of countries that we evaluated, 165 of them, had done quite a lot in addressing the laws, but they did not touch the norms and the stereotypes that these good laws were supposed to correct. As a result, we had a good law and a bad norm sitting side by side. In many countries, women would not even know that a good law has been passed and that it is important for them. The traditional norms, the cultural practices would continue to oppress women and it is only when you have advocacy and you have activists, you have people like some of the people that you are in this room that would be able to bring these two together. This has actually cost us to pay significant attention to the change of norms, to the change of customs that discriminate against women. We are hoping that those of you who are young lawyers up and coming in your work, you will pay some attention to this issue of norms. Try and bring together both the legal framework and the everyday life of people and the cultural norms. It is however important even as you struggle with the cultural norms to address legislation because while the law cannot force, for instance, someone who is racist and sexist to be good for women, but at least it will give women a recourse to take up the issue when an opportunity arises. So a good law is better than no law at all. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was so interesting. I am so glad you answered that second question. Okay, it is my great pleasure now to introduce Mr. Jason Gluck, who is a policy specialist for the UN development program. He specializes in political dialogues and constitutional processes and prior to that he served as the constitutional focal point for the UN Department of Political Affairs. I am also happy to note that he used to be the director of the Constitution Making Program here at USIP. So if you go up, we have a first question for you and then a second one. So don't go away after you answer the first one. Do you see a link between peace building and constitutional gender equality? Thanks Susan and thank you to all of you into USIP for having me here. I want to say you can come home again or at least it is really nice to come home again. This was a place where I worked for six years and it has been great to spend the day here and it has been great to spend the day with the students in particular. I will confess that I sat in on the morning and afternoon sessions hearing the results of the research and projects that the students are doing and I was compelled to spend my lunch break scribbling and revising my remarks that I want to present to you right now because it has really been absolutely inspiring what you are doing. Just as preliminarily, UNDP provides support for Constitution Making as part of its mandate to strengthen democratic governance and peace building. So in this capacity I help the United Nations develop policy guidance and good practice resources and tools for constitutional assistance and I support countries in the design and implementation of constitutional processes in post-conflict transitional and developmental contexts. And of course before that I did similar things here at USIP. I was thinking about this link between peace building and constitutions and gender equality. I was struck by the fact that the United Nations where I work as the charter starts with we the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. And at USIP its mandate is preventing, mitigating and resolving violent conflict around the world. And of course you are a generation of law students who have come together to share innovative research on gender equality and constitutions. And I was thinking about what does it all have in common? I believe my experience has taught me that peace building inclusion of women in constitutional processes and women's constitutional rights are inextricably linked and we have a lot of data to back this up. You've heard a lot of the data, the statistics, the research already and I don't want to reiterate it. I will say one thing that I found interesting in addition to the higher incidences of peace building, sustainable peace when women are at the table. There's also this indicator, I want to find it here. Gender equality is a better indicator of a state's peacefulness than other factors like democracy, religion or GDP. And similarly gender inequality has been revealed as a predictor of armed conflict in a number of empirical studies whether measuring conflict between states or within. So first, why does it make sense intuitively that there would be this link between inclusion and constitution making? A constitution, I mean we all know that it's the highest legal framework, it's the supreme law of the land, but it's actually something I think even more important than that. It's a social compact. It represents the nature of the state. It's an agreement between citizens and between citizens and state about the state's identity and character, about how it's to be governed, about how power and resources are to be shared in rights and responsibilities. These are the most divisive and existential issues that are often the drivers of violent conflict and so getting them right, it just makes sense, it makes intuitive sense that it's fundamental to good governance and sustaining peace. Now as a social compact, it necessarily has to be an agreement between and among citizens and you can't have an agreement unless you have these people at the table in the first place. As the fundamental legal expression, the social constructions provide gender equality advocates a powerful tool to challenge the historical and continuing experiences of inequality that women experience in the courts, the workplaces, the homes and most aspects of their life, but again this can only happen if their voices can be heard. There is an amazing anecdote from Kenya about the powerful impact of women involved in constitution making and by extension peace building at large. In the 2008 constitutional drafting process which was born out of electoral violence and the failed constitutional process of 2005, women were at first as divided as any other component of Kenyan society along religious, ethnic, socio-economic and geographic lines. To overcome these divisions, women engaged what they called a spitting session where they aired their grievances and engaged in heated debate in order to move forward beyond their differences. Atsango Chisoni who served as the deputy chairperson of the committee of experts in the 2008 constitutional process tells us that these spitting sessions not only brought women together on the constitutional agenda but served a peace building agenda as well. Constitution drafting, she says, required women to stand together, acknowledge and offer each other sisterhood, listen to each other and work together regardless of party affiliation, ethnic background or, she says, whether or not we even liked each other. And so I think it really drives home this link between women's participation in constitution making, gender rights in constitutions and peace building. I think the link is clear but it's also clear that there's a critical developmental component to this link. Beyond peace building, the pursuit of greater gender rights in constitutions is an end into itself. I'm pleased to say while there's much more to be done in this regard, progress is being made. We heard this morning a presentation from our colleague from Malawi about the recent constitutional amendment raising the minimum age for marriage. And it's the early on there's currently before the president a set of recommendations for constitutional amendments that among other things will strengthen equality and anti-discrimination rights for women. This fundamental understanding, this link, is critical for my work. But what got me thinking today is what does it mean for you? A group of international law students grappling with these complex issues and contemplating the roles you might play around them. As a constitutionalist, I'm no doubt biased. But I believe by focusing your research on gender equality in constitutions, you have identified a crucial theme for academic and practitioner-oriented advocacy. In my own career at both USIP and the United Nations, I've worked with civil society activists, officials of constitution making bodies, and many, many others to make the constitution building process more inclusive, transparent, and participatory. And in so doing, seek to strengthen the ability of the constitution to reflect the needs and aspirations of citizens and form this social compact. I've not always been successful. Over the years I've worked on constitutions in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and South Sudan. Countries facing sometimes seemingly insurmountable challenges. And as these countries have descended into greater and greater turmoil and experienced ever harrowing humanitarian crises, my thoughts turn not to the broken-off negotiations and discarded drafts, but to the individual champions of peace building through constitution making. I think of Ahmed Midmubarak, the head of the secretariat to the Yemeni national dialogue, who I worked with at the start of Yemen's constitution making process, and who's kidnapping while on his way to deliver the constitutional draft to the president further inflame the civil war. I think of members of the Alliance of Iraqi Minorities, a group of Iraqi NGOs I worked with while here at USIP, dedicated to protecting the rights of the ever more perilous existence of minority communities. I think of women, like a woman named Allah from Libya and Asma from Sudan, who are civil society activists who I've seen in a room command a room full of men and take them to task over agenda rights and begin to move these conversations forward in a more progressive direction. And I constantly think of the dozens and dozens of experts from around the world who have gone with me to these far-off places, dedicating their lives to helping others resolve violent conflict and seek to sustain peace through constitutional compact. I hope your research has begun, I hope through your research you begun to appreciate the myriad of ways that you can contribute to peace-building and inclusive sustainable development through constitution making and this constitutional compact. And I hope you find ways to build on your research, perhaps as academics or activists, practitioners or pioneers, some of you might find outlets to work abroad while others of you might fight to reform at home. I take note that many of the students participating in this program come from countries that are in the midst of or just exiting constitutional moments. And given that I'm only aware of four countries in the world without a written constitution, it's noteworthy that many of the students here today are from two of them. But wherever you come from and wherever you go, the need for young minds and live hearts to champion the cause of inclusive rights-based constitution making will deny towards peace-building and sustainable development is compelling and opportunity awaits. I hope you seize it. Thank you. Well, my question, I think you've already answered, but I'm going to ask you if you have any other examples of experience in specific countries that illustrate your theme. I noticed you touched on an awful lot of countries already. Well, yeah, I'm struck, I am immediately taken back to the first constitution that I ever worked on, which was in Iraq in 2007. I wasn't there for the drafting of the Constitution in 2005, but in 2007 there was a comprehensive review of the entire constitution, which was built into the constitutional draft itself as a way to try and bring in the SUNY community to support the Constitution during the first referendum. So I was working with the Constitutional Review Committee, which was a committee of parliament, which had approximately 30 members representing the SUNY, Shia and Kurdish communities. And I believe of the 30 members, 29 were men, and I never met the woman. So this negotiation obviously was men representing communal interests. And as part of the United Nations, we did come in and offer some ideas on where women's rights in the Constitution could be strengthened. And I remember vividly a series of conversations that we had with our Iraqi counterparts, where we went to one of the communities and we said, what do you think of, you know, A, B and C in terms of strengthening gender rights in this constitutional draft? And they said, we support this. But we're fighting for X, Y and Z. As a community, these are the interests that are existential to us, the ones that we absolutely must seek to achieve. And we know that we're going to have to, you know, bargain and wheel and deal and negotiate in order to get them. If we fight for your list, we're using political capital that we're taking it away from the issues that matter most to us. And we heard this from another community as well. And we went through, and I'll tell you what, I truly believe two things from these conversations. One is that our counterparts were being sincere. I truly believe that if they had been called to vote, yes or no, on amendments that would have strengthened gender rights in the Iraq Constitution, they would have voted yes. But I also believe they weren't going to stick their necks out and be the first to broach the issue because it would have weakened their bargaining position in areas that mattered most to them. And the lesson that I took from that is you have to get women in the room. It's not enough to have progressive minds. You have to get people who are going to prioritize these issues and champion these causes. I saw that then play out in Yemen many years later, where the constitutional drafting body was, I think, 20% women, certainly not commiserate with, you know, what it would be proportionally. But these women were the live minds and the live hearts. And they did champion these causes. And we saw them go up, you know, toe to toe with men who came from a more conservative, traditional background, and weren't, and were extremely reluctant. But not only did women have normative arguments to draw upon, they also had the benefit of a national dialogue that had come before, where you had a very significant women's participation. And there, I would just go to a second lesson, a third lesson. I guess if the second lesson is, you know, first lesson is get the women in the room. And the second lesson is see what happens once they're there. It's pretty powerful. The third lesson is there is a role for the international community in all of this. When the United Nations was called to help mediate the national dialogue in Yemen, our special envoy at the time, Jamal Ben Amar, saw that women were being significantly underrepresented in the national dialogue. And how to strike this balance between the desire to bring values and norms to the table, but also respect the national ownership of the national dialogue process or the sovereignty of any constitutional process. And what the special envoy did in this case is said, look, this is a highly sensitive political process for Yemen. And if there is a gender quota for participation in the national dialogue, where different constituencies are able to appoint representatives in a limited fashion, so each political party might get, you know, four seats, and you're forced to then fill half of those seats or some proportion of those seats with women, then there are going to be men who are in traditional leaders within the party who are going to get excluded. I understand that this is a difficult situation to place you at. And I am not going to tell you what you must do, because I respect the sovereignty of this process. On the other hand, you've asked the United Nations to participate. You've asked us to mediate and play a role in this national dialogue. And we come at this with our own values and with our own norms. So while it's up to you to decide, part of your decision should factor in what role you want the UN to play. And women ended up getting 30% of the seats in the national dialogue. I thought that was a very innovative and sensitive way to balance these competing interests. And then the last thing I'll say on this, from my experiences in countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia, both of which, while in Liberia you had a constitutional review committee that was chaired by a woman, in Sierra Leone you had a gender quota on the constitutional review committee, but both processes went way beyond just getting women in the room, women at the table. They made concerted efforts to find women wherever they were, to reach out and consult with women. And so going back to my example from Yemen, once you get women in the room, you want to empower them. You want to have them, whether it's force of norms, information about comparative practice, or the street, the grassroots. And we saw that work effectively in Sierra Leone and Liberia as well. And if I can just give one more example, creativity is necessary as well. So in Sudan, when they were doing popular consultations to get citizens' views on the constitution and ways to change it, the main way that they reached people were through town halls and open forums. And women just wouldn't speak in that environment culturally. It either wasn't acceptable or women restrained themselves. So women leaders decided they would do something what they called tea sessions, where a prominent woman within a village would host a tea session in her home and bring women together where they could have a conversation about the constitution in an environment that was much more conducive and then feed that back to the people that were leading the process. All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that getting women to the table is critically important, empowering women is critically important, and then finding ways to force, to magnify that voice. All of it, to me, are the essential ingredients of my earlier remarks about this link between peace-building, constitution-making, and gender rights. Thanks. Those are inspiring examples. Our third panelist is Habiba Osman. She's currently working as a program specialist at UN Women Malawi and is responsible for the elimination of violence against women and girls program, as well as a constitutional and human rights portfolio. Habiba has been a human rights activist and defender throughout her career. She spearheaded a campaign for the enactment of the Trafficking in Persons Bill into law in 2015 while she was working with Norwegian Church Aid. At UN Women, she has mobilized stakeholders to amend the constitutional age of child, to end the permission for child marriage, and move it to a requirement that all who marry must be at least 18 years old. It used to be 16, so no longer is child marriage permitted. She's a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship, and as a fellow, she obtained a Master's Degree in International Human Rights Law at the Center for Civil and Human Rights at Notre Dame Law School. So it's my pleasure to introduce her to you all. And our first question is, could you tell us what role the UN Women played in the constitutional review in Malawi? What was the review about, and how did UN Women ensure the participation of women? Thank you very much. Thank you, my colleagues from UN Women for putting me on the spot with our ED today. And thank you, my colleagues also from White Voices who are here who work together. I'll be brief. UN Women started the country office in 2013. It's a new agency in Malawi. But one of the critical things that UN Women brought in the UN system was the fact that it could mobilize civil society organizations, as well as women organizations and traditional leaders. Our convening role was very important in 2013, for instance, when the country took steps to amend some of the gender provisions within the laws by enacting a law on Gender Equality Act. Following that, UN Women also engaged other stakeholders by bringing in agencies like UNICEF and UNFPA at the table together with civil society. Our strong mandate of bringing civil society was very critical at the time when the review process started in 2007 and 2010. And all those years, the review process failed. We failed to amend the provision on the edge of the child, and we failed to amend the provision on the edge of marriage. However, bringing in a traditional leader was a game changer. How is it a game changer? In that traditional leaders were the ones who were the custodians of culture in our country, as well as the fact that they're gatekeepers. So no matter what law was there, if the gatekeepers said we want these children to be married before the age of 16 or before the age of 12, it meant that no one paid attention to the law. And as some of you have worked in customary law settings or in countries, you will understand that customary law is very also strong in some countries like ours. So adopting the unconventional approaches like working with traditional leaders was very key because it's sort of like, you know, changed the narrative. It was a bottom-up approach, speaking to the traditional leaders, telling them about the laws, speaking their own language, as well as using the women, the women from civil society to work with the traditional leaders. The time that 2015 came, UN women was also engaging with the parliamentarians, as well as the head of state. And we have in UN women what is known as the Hifoshi movement or Hifoshi campaign. This campaign helped us a lot because one of the things that the male traditional leaders, as well as our head of state, who's the Hifoshi champion, he said he wanted to make sure that the law changes and that the age of marriage would change to 18. So because we had the consensus of the male parliamentarians, as well as other key stakeholders, the momentum was right. And it seemed like we came in at the right time to bring all these stakeholders together using our unconventional approaches of bringing women organizations as well as the traditional leaders. So this is how UN women managed to mobilize stakeholders. But I think on the program side, it was also very important that we work well with other UN agencies. For instance, you know, UNFPA and UNICEF, who have been working in the country for a long time, and they too have a strong mandate to ensure that, you know, early marriages, for instance, are eliminated. So working together, having one theory of change to make sure that we're changing helped us in moving forward the agenda. At the moment, as Hannah had said, we have changed the constitutional age of marriage, but a lot needs to be done. So the work starts now. It doesn't mean that we've succeeded, the work starts now because the implementation has to begin. But at the same time, we have to know what each stakeholder will be doing. But also let's not forget the traditional leaders. We need to sensitize them on these new laws, so they need to also adopt them and make sure that they're using them within their bylaws. Because one of the things that traditional leaders have the power over within our countries is that they can make their own laws. So we also have a role now to bridge the gap, to make sure that the bylaws, as well as the laws that are in the country, are changing. And I'm glad that the ED mentioned about the sabotage. So even though we had progressive laws, because the Constitution remained like that, it was sabotaging all the laws that were there. But now it seems that experts agree that we can move on the process and harmonize all these laws so that the process becomes much easier as well as implementation. Wonderful. Okay, we have a second question. In what ways will the constitutional review influence the reform of gender discriminatory laws and policies in Malawi? That's very easy. I think now, because everyone is agreeing that the constitutional review process will make it easier to harmonize all laws. We also hope that even the policies that had different mandates or different ages of the child will now change. So for instance, you have different laws stating different ages for the child. For employment, it's 14. For the purposes of the criminal law liability, it's 15. So we're hoping that with this reform process, we will map all the laws and harmonize them so that at least they're all speaking to each other. Okay, well, thank you. That's been very inspiring to hear about that change. And now it's my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Robin Lerner. She's a senior advisor and counselor in the Secretary of State's Office of Global Women's Issues. In this position, she serves as a key leader in the office and also as a strategic advisor on adolescent girls' education and empowerment globally. She also works on gender-based violence. She previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Private Sector Exchange at the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. So let's welcome her. Now my first question for you is how can law students, especially women law students, but including men, too, use their law degrees to make meaningful change for women in their countries or in the international legal context? So I get to end with relating to you because it wasn't that long ago that I was a law student. I do remember being in your shoes and being really excited about what I could do with my law degree. And I will say that I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do for a graduate degree. And I actually had the luck to get to intern at the United Nations in Geneva for six months after undergrad. And I got to talk to a lot of people who gave me a lot of advice, solicited and unsolicited. And I heard a lot about how if you really want to do something on human rights, go and get your law degree. And with a law degree, you are incredibly empowered. You are empowered to make legal change, to work on constitutions in your own country. And if you're lucky enough to get to do it in other contexts as well, it can be very just personally rewarding. You can help individuals resolve life-threatening crises with a law degree, right? You can help them get out of jail. You can help raise awareness of somebody who's been unjustly prosecuted and you can represent them in court. One of the things that I did as a young lawyer, and I thought it was, I learned as much as I tried to contribute, was bring comparative legal norms and ideas and principles in a transitional administration. And I did this in Kosovo, where I actually had the chance. And I think the Madam Director spoke about at those moments when there's a crisis and the law breaks down and you have the chance to build it back up, you get, you have this opportunity to do something very progressive and really big. And sometimes that's the opportunity is so great to do that with a bunch of international lawyers working within the UN context or some other international context. But oftentimes the legal practitioners are not able to keep up with those new ideas. And so you really need to build in legal trainings and judicial trainings and careful reform of the law. But you have the chance to do that with a law degree. So as I said, I worked in Kosovo where I actually got to work on human trafficking. There was a terrible crisis of trafficking after the bombing and we had learned some lessons from Bosnia, but not enough. But we did have the chance to, eyes were on this issue and we created a lot of new legal structures and implementation. And I also did the same thing in Croatia, not on trafficking, but I did get to go in after the legal framework was established through Dayton. And I will tell you what was really interesting in both of those occasions was my ability to work with law students just on sort of almost a peer to peer, but just a recent grad to law students where legal education was not nearly what legal education is in my country. And at that time, they were not building up a cadre of really well skilled lawyers that would be operating in the new changing environment of their country and globally. So the idea of clinical education was not widely known and I was able to work with the American Bar Association where we worked with the law studies department to build in clinical programs. So those are all things that are really interesting and exciting to be able to do. As a lawyer, as you move forward, I would say that you have many paths in front of you, right? You can go into private sector, you can go into work in a firm and you can do corporate law, you can do public interest law, you can work in the government. And right now I don't actually actively utilize my law degree, but having a knowledge of the law has been incredibly helpful in the work that I've done across my career. And the other thing you can do is use your law degree to be an elected official. And one thing we do know is that they're not nearly as many women in elected office as there are men in our own countries and across the world. So the chance to make the most meaningful change for women, we hope would come from women. It doesn't always. We can't take that as a given, but maybe we have a better chance. So I just encourage all of you to think about that as you go forward. Okay, wonderful. And they like that response. Why would engaging young men be important for advancing law reform in women's rights? So engaging men and boys, it's funny because we've been spending so much time working on empowering women that sometimes we forget that we are at times talking to ourselves. And it takes the whole community, as you all know, to really make change in a country or in a society or community. And we believe at the State Department, we believe very much in the engagement of men and boys in the work that we're doing. And unfortunately, it's not always right in the beginning, but it needs to start to be right in the inception of programs where we say, okay, who are we talking to? Who's engaged? And we need to, in everything that we do, when we create new constitutions, when we create the laws to implement them, the law is words on paper without changing social norms. You will not see the implementation. So attitudes have to be changed. Norms have to be changed. Social norms have to be changed. And that takes everybody in a society. And sometimes it's hard because women, groups that are working to empower girls, for example, we're very focused on giving girls the chance to step up because they haven't had that chance. But if you step girls up and you don't engage the boys at the same time, then where's the understanding between them? But you also have to be very aware of the boy that that can create on the other side. So I think one of the things that is incredibly important is for us to think about how we do bring men and boys into women's empowerment and gender equality. It's not always a comfortable place for men in a community. The value proposition to them is not the same as it is to us. And you have to make the value proposition very real, as we know from our, from especially in the work in Malawi, where Habiba is doing a lot of work with a particular chief who's trying to choose changing her bylaws and all the work on the changing of the bylaws. There has to be something in it for everybody. So we have to think about creating a role for men and boys from the beginning to be part of this work. And I just say, do not ever forget that. Because if we're only talking to ourselves, we're not getting anywhere. Thank you so much. Now, I'm delighted to give you some time to ask some questions. You've been sitting listening very patiently. So you can ask it of any or all of the panelists at once. Yes. Could you stand up and maybe come up front? Oh, there's a mic for you. Yeah. So I have a question coming from my experience in Colombia, because we implemented a constitutional reform back in 1991 with the former Peace Accord. And we've been working and pushing for women's rights. And throughout this new Peace Accord that was recently implemented, women's rights were pushed and like a gender perspective was included. But it's been very difficult to generate a real cultural change because even though women in civil society are amazing and they keep on pushing, you can see like at the local level, it's very hard to actually really see women's rights. And it was one of the first votes. I don't know if you're familiar with the peace process, but the first Accord people voted no, actually, because the Accords included a gender perspective. And they think, and many people said no, that's not fair. Why a gender perspective? And so I wonder, I guess my question is like, I wonder how can you pass from constitution and from laws that respect women's rights to having that law and that constitution to be culturally accepted? Okay. Who would like to answer that question? And remember, you've got your individual mics in front of you. You can pick up. Yeah. Go ahead. I can start. I would say that it's not very easy. So as I mentioned, like just giving a typical example of the constitutional review process in Malawi, it was not only for the age of marriage and the age of the child, there were also other issues that have been seen to be discriminatory in the constitution. But the process started long time ago. I mean, I think as far as I remember, you know, the conversations around these issues began in the 1980s. And we've only managed to do so now. Just to give you an example, the Child Care, the Child Care Protection Justice Act, which is a law that comprehensively addresses issues of justice, protection and care for children was only enacted in 2010. 2010 to have a law for children, but it took a long time. So it doesn't, it's not a process that takes, you know, five years. It can take more. But I think what is very important, you know, during the process of trying to review or to reform laws, what you need to do is, at each and every stage, identify key players. Who are the key players? And also the conversation has to be, has to be shared widely in schools to the young people and many others. So I think in that respect, we have managed to sort of like, you know, push the cultural, you know, narrative, the conversation. As I said, they failed in 2007, they failed in 2010. But now the conversation was like, okay, maybe lawyers are talking to one another. Maybe we are just speaking to one another legal jargon. Let's see what the people want. So using the bottom-up approach, reaching, you know, reaching, reaching out to the grassroots and to the people that didn't understand the law. But if you try to make sense and, you know, speak about, you know, the women's rights as well as the fact that, you know, women's, women's rights are human's rights and then we should not violate children's rights. It started sinking in, in the traditional leaders who, by the way, were the perpetrators themselves and who were also very resistant for the communities to change. So I think, I will not speak about your context, but I think in our context, it was very important that each and every stage we identify who were the key players. Would it be the religious leaders? Could it be the chiefs? Or could it be, you know, other people within the community and making them champions for change? This is what happened in Malawi. But it was a process that took a lot of time. I just want to add this importance of capacity building. Because, you know, I lived in Egypt from 05 to 07 when there was this idea that there would be a change in the democratic sort of context there. And then New Taqir happened. And people there did not have the opportunity to build a strong civil society. That is the core in having any kind of massive change, a legal change be actually implemented and just creating a social change. So the grassroots is really important. And I can talk about not on the peace process, but I just, I want to raise that the State Department and in our office, we're working a lot on female general mutilation and cutting. And this is, there may not be any other issue that illustrates more how, you know, a law can be enacted and nothing changes. Nothing changes at all. So we have a program to really focus on grassroots engagement. Very, very grassroots. Not even grass tops, really. Grass roots. And Guinea. And then we're expanding it to other countries in West Africa and Asia to get the communities themselves to shun the practice. It's a community by community. UN Women and UNFPA do this even more than we do. But, you know, that's how these things stick. And so it's the two things, right? It's the acceptance in a community. And then people having the skills and the confidence to actually do this work. And this is why sometimes quotas don't work, right? Because when I was in Kosovo, they established this 30% quota for their parliament or whatever it was at the time of women. And everyone was running around trying to find a woman that would be on their list. And, you know, these women are sort of overworked. Their, you know, lives are changing as a transitional environment. And then they're supposed to do something they've never done before. So we have to be thinking long term. Thank you. You had something, too. Well, I agree with everything that's been said. I thought maybe I'll just offer an example, an illustration of how this works in the context of constitution making itself. In 1996, South Africa was the first constitution in the world to explicitly include sexual orientation as one of the characteristics upon which there's equality and anti-discrimination guaranteed. And over the ensuing, I'm terrible at math, 25, 30 years, unfortunately, there has not been this transformative effect. You have not seen the fact that this very progressive idea that's been constitutionalized occultrate into society at large. And I'm sorry to say that at least it's been reported to me that South Africa continues to this day to have one of the highest incidences of what's called corrective rape. On the other hand, Ireland last year passed a constitutional amendment for same-sex marriage. And when I was speaking with the head of the civil society grassroots effort that brought about this successful reform, it came out that years earlier, they had petitioned the courts to overturn this aspect of Irish law on the basis that it violated equality, which is also a guaranteed constitutional right. And their petition had been rejected. And they had gone through the legislature and they asked the legislature to pass a constitutional amendment and the legislature had demurred. And they were forced to go door to door over the course of this grassroots campaign convincing their fellow countrymen and women to vote at a referendum to legalize same-sex marriage. And at the end of it, in no small part because they were successful, this activist reflected in tears over on the one hand the humiliation of having to beg fellow citizens for what is a fundamental right. But on the other hand, the gratification of knowing that this wasn't just the law now. This was something that she knew her fellow countrymen and women recognized what this meant and the impact of the moment. It was incredibly powerful. And so I think the idea of dialogue as a component of constitution making itself is incredibly important and incredibly powerful. I just want to add one thing which I think is the importance of working in coalitions and also of involving journalists getting as much media coverage as you can in order to build and change the climate. That's always been a very important feature of moving forward with law. It's not enough just to have lawyers working on it but also to bring in these other aspects. And also just to remember it takes a long time to change but change does happen. Maybe an easy example in the United States is that we have a law that says you cannot discriminate in employment based on sex. And we got a Supreme Court ruling in the 80s saying that covered sexual harassment. That doesn't mean sexual harassment stopped right away. And we've just heard that about that on Fox News recently. So it's still going strong but there are more protections in place now. It's more possible to do something about it now than there was. There's a gradual process of educating the whole public. And so I think lawyers can also do a lot in terms of educating the general public about what their rights are and trying to get other people to understand. So I just wanted to add that. And now let's do we have another question? Yes, in the black jacket. Yeah. I'm from Yemen and thank you for your speech and I have been thinking about what you have said because Yemen is right now going to a conflict situation where we have political negotiations and also local dialogue. Women are not participating that much in the dialogue and they're not really planning for their future. So I was wondering how to put the woman's right in the top of the agenda in conflict areas, especially when the conflict is going on and people are not using to it. The first one year of conflict in Yemen, people were neglecting women's right and they were fighting because of personal interest or political interest. So women's rights were neglected for like two years until now but they start realizing that they have to protect their rights. So you and women starts to do some initiatives or program but that's even too late. I mean how to make sure from the beginning of a conflict to make sure that women's right are being protected. This is the first question and the second question is what are the real program to enhance women in conflict areas and to empower them politically to participate in both at political negotiations at the top level and also in the second track which is local dialogue. I want to take a little bit of the second one. I mean your first one is like the question. So just to say I mean I can give you an anecdote which was not going to make you feel better but you know what I used to work in the Senate and here in the United States Senate and you know when Afghanistan was hot we would say what are you doing about women and you would always get the response. Let us get security first and then we'll talk about the women. So you know and I don't actually necessarily blame that perspective because we're not training. The military is now getting much better training on how to reach out to women and make women part of their operations right their security operations or the stabilization operations. They're getting better at it. They just put women you know they now have women soldiers who go in to engage with women you know and that's that's definitely a step forward. We have this problem in the foreign and with our diplomats right at the State Department in our Office of Global Women's Issues and I see a colleague of mine here and this is our job is to train our diplomats who are in every you know and the embassies all over the world how to be comfortable promoting gender equality in a way that makes sense when they don't know how and they didn't study it this is they that wasn't in their tradecraft training so everything is a like 10 pronged approach and that's one of those but I'll let my other panelists speak but I'm the second question was something I wanted to talk about local dialogue I forgot well I mean simple answer is you have to have the commitment to including women and if you have it then then they'll be included and if you don't I mean there's no magic bullet to this I will say that you know the idea that first we'll deal with security and then we'll deal with women I think is one that you you hear throughout the halls of you know State Departments of Foreign Ministries around the world and and in mediation teams as well but we the data is becoming conclusive that dealing with women deals with peace and security I mean one of the statistics is that when women and civil society are included in peace talks peace is 54 percent more likely to be sustained so I feel like we're past or at least that argument has lost out that doesn't mean we've won in terms of getting women to the table I think what's left are the power structures the fact that men are typically speak on behalf of political parties or tribes or armed groups and so however you are trying to bring together the actors to conflict they are first and for most traditionally represented by men now in terms of creative ways to get women to the table you know there there are there are a number of different options and they get progressively less appealing in terms of the nature of inclusion first and foremost is to have delegations to peace talks you know include women beyond that you know the special envoy in Syria was for a while this was a couple years ago I don't know what's happening now but during the shuttle diplomacy was meeting women's groups as as as a contingent that would speak on behalf of the different parties to the conflict from a women's perspective now that might have been in addition to whatever women were represented on the delegations themselves but I can tell you that even when women were represented on the delegations they weren't speaking now further down the list of appealing options you can you can have diplomacy that includes civil society at large and trying to widen the tent even further in terms of the voices that are heard but if you're talking about you know how do you get women in the position of decision-making and negotiator I don't think there's a substitute from either you know insisting on it or imposing one thing is um is you talked about um I mentioned before about the value proposition and see we're still at this place where there's a zero sum game mentality in these negotiations right and so to give up a little bit you don't you're not gonna you don't it has to be seen in the interest of the parties that are there so you just have to keep working on that narrative and and the evidence is there but we all have to keep ensuring that we're speaking about the same we have the same value proposition about including women but I did want to talk about you you said um the the dialogue um and women how do we get women to be part of dialogues and one of the things that we try to do and I think a lot of international players do is we try to give a platform to local women players right so that they're not they're not in obscurity but we we find them and we give them this sort of international stage so that they're known and they have support and protection and we just had an award we do an annual award called the international international women of courage award and we're just one of many organizations that does this kind of thing but it's incredibly important to put women on an international stage it can be dangerous so it has to be done in the right way of course but that can be one way of of protecting those women and giving them a voice that they would not have from within their own societies I just wanted to add you spoke earlier about run for office well also think about becoming a judge becoming a member of the executive branch because they're all those are all places from which you can have some influence including in resolutions of conflict so just think high in terms of where you're going with your careers do we have another question yes thank you I wanted to address the recent cuts to UNFPA and how these cuts will limit or constrict the current work of UN women other women programs internationally and how perhaps can we as young professionals not all of us being lawyers contribute to civil society in a way to help fill that gap in light of these cuts that's a very tricky one but a very good good observation and I've also seen that I think UNFPA has come up with you know some statements to that effect but I think what we are saying for instance those who are working in the country offices you know is to make sure that you know we capitalize on the resources that we have to make sure that we maximize you know on whatever work we're doing so for instance just to give you an example for UN women UNICEF and UNFPA at the country office they've come up with a strategy of working together you know like delivering as one for instance in certain programs like you know gender-based violence so that we if we notice that there's a gap for another agency we can fill that up in but at the same time I think also working with other organizations not within the UN but outside the UN is also very critical so targeting you know organizations you know international organizations like Oxfam or others like Plan International and others we are we are sort of like making some progress with the CEDO for instance when we were reporting on certain issues for the CEDO what we did is to mobilize other organizations local organizations other international organizations to come up with strategies on how we can implement together so whilst the other one is weak you know that the other one will lift you up so I think working together is very critical but at the same time not forgetting to you know bring in other you know non-traditional maybe actors who are very interested in also funding the issues so we've heard about these cuts but we know that you know there are other you know organizations that are interested for instance in Europe coming to work in Africa to help organizations like foundations as well so it's very important that you know we leverage on others who are willing to work with us but at the same time if we cannot manage to address the problems we know that there are other organizations that can carry the work forward okay are there any other questions all right I'm going to ask if Dr. Kathleen Kunast was able to come back yes well it's my pleasure to introduce you she's the director of gender policy and strategy at USIP and she's also a member of the council on foreign relations as a social cultural anthropologist she has focused on the different gendered impacts of violence and conflict on both men and women she's been a part of the international vanguard of introducing the concept of engaging men and conflict countries in the championing of women's rights thank you and I am first of all I want to welcome you all to USIP and also if you will join me for a moment and thanking this fabulous panel this has been a really rich discussion actually all day first with the graduate students and their professors and then for this forum today and I have to admit I'm not a lawyer I'm a social cultural anthropologist and so I actually wanted to end the day with a quote from one of my favorite anthropologists because it really brings true to what we're all doing together here and that's what I think the real value of bringing academia policy shapers and policy makers and international organizations together and practitioners to literally and figuratively shake hands exchange ideas learn from one another because Margaret Mead said never doubt what a group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world indeed it's the only thing that has ever worked so we are here changing the world thank you very much for your participation your attention and your great kindness to our panel today have a safe journey home tonight and thank you again to our partners UN women UNDP Georgetown and our own state department neighbor thank you very much on closing we all I just I feel very badly that I've alienated the non-law students in the audience so all my advice goes to all of you great thank you