 Hi, I am Sanaan Nuragi-Anderlini. I'm the founder and CEO of the International Civil Society Action Network, ICANN. We spearhead the Women's Alliance for Security Leadership, which is a network of women's peace-building organizations in 40 countries. I'm here at the U.S. Institute of Peace for the fifth annual Women, Peace and Security Focal Points Network, which brings together representatives of governments like the United States and civil society, like many of my partners, together to talk about the future of the Women, Peace and Security or WPS agenda. Gosh, if it wasn't for women in civil society, in many of the places where we have conflict, we wouldn't actually have the mediation that's going on. So from my colleague in Sri Lanka, who led a group of mothers into the jungle to talk to the LTE, they were terrorist groups, back in the late 1990s, to my colleagues in Yemen who, during COVID, because of the COVID support that we were able to provide them, ended up having discussions with the Houthis and creating spaces for community security dialogues that have now helped with the truth that is happening. This goes back all the way to the 1990s, which was at the start of this agenda when we learned from the South Africans, for example. In South Africa, it was women from across the political spectrum that were the first ones to come together and talk about peace and talk about inclusion and the vision that they had for South Africa. In Uganda right now, we have colleagues who are working with young people doing youth boot camps on Women, Peace and Security and Youth, Peace and Security to help them avoid violence during elections, to help them foster social cohesion in their communities. I could go on and on with many examples, especially from our networks, yes. At ICANN and through our network, we think about it in three specific ways. The first is actual recognition of women who become peace builders. These are women who run to the problem when others are running away, they risk their own lives, they take the opportunity to just to reach out and speak to different interlocutors, including armed groups. So recognizing the work that they do, hearing about their solutions, their expertise, their analysis is absolutely critical. And of course, what we advocate for is that they should be separate delegations in peace talks, whether it's Sudan today or Afghanistan yesterday. So there's a recognition and the effective participation piece. The second is an issue around protection, that when you have women doing this kind of work, so for example, when in Afghanistan women, local Afghan women were working with the police force or with supporting NATO to engage, they need protection. And unfortunately, we're not doing very well in actually providing the level of protection that peace builders do. We provide protection to militias when they come to peace talks, but we don't provide it to peace builders. And then the third level is effective resourcing. And by that, I mean funding to enable them to do this very difficult peace building work to be able to have the flexibility to adjust to the issues that arise, especially when we're dealing with the state of poly crisis. So when you have a conflict and then an earthquake happens or a flood happens, peace builders are the ones who run to save people. And if they don't fill that gap, other forces, often negative forces, come in extremists, come in gangs, come in. So the peace builders, if they have the resources to be able to do that, they're already trusted in their communities. This enables them to really deepen the reach of their peace work when they're able to respond at a critical time for humanitarian issues as well. So it's recognition, protection, funding, and overlaying that is the whole idea that when you have a conflict, we must talk to the armed actors because we need them to stop the war. But if we don't talk to the peace actors, we will never get sustainable peace. And these are peace actors that we have to recognize. And we have to recognize their expertise and experience.