 Well, good morning. Before I begin, I would like to really thank the organizers of this conference, and in particular, Rory Metcliffe and Dr. Sinti Karol for the invitation to come and speak here. And I'm very honored to be here. I also want to express my thanks to Vivian Seitzman for the wonderful arrangements for this conference. And like you, Rory, I thought we had a very inspiring and first day. Now, before I delve into the topic of my talk, allow me to say a few words about women in international security, also known as WISE. WISE is a global membership organization that seeks to advance the role of women in the international peace and security fields. We were established some 30 years ago. And as an organization, one of our main objectives is to promote the role of women in the international peace and security field broadly defined. We are engaged in policy engagement and research activities, mentorship and networking circles, as well as skills and knowledge building programs. Today we have approximately 20 international affiliates across the globe. And I'm very happy to announce that under leadership of Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan, WISE Australia will soon be stepping up outreach and activities. Elizabeth Buchanan is an expert on Russia and the polar region at the European Studies Department here at ANU. And I believe, Elizabeth, you're in the room somewhere. If you are, please wave or stand up. She's out there in the back. So if you want to know more about the activities of WISE Australia, go and see Elizabeth. Now, let me give you a little roadmap of my remarks. In my remarks on women, peace and security, I want to address four issues. First, I want to provide you with a brief overall assessment of where I think we are with the women, peace and security agenda. And henceforth I will refer to this as the WPS agenda. And I recall that tomorrow we actually have to debate on WPS in the Security Council. Then I want to focus on what I see as some of the obstacles to progress, the drivers of progress, and then conclude with some strategies for progress. And I will do this in series of threes. So where are we with the WPS agenda? Is the glass half full or is it half empty? It is undeniable that much progress has been made these last 18 years. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the seven resolutions that followed have firmly embedded the WPS agenda in both national and international policy discourse. These resolutions have firmly established the idea that women should be participating at all decision-making levels of international peace and security efforts. They have prioritized the protection and the prevention of conflict-related sexual violence. And lastly, these resolutions have recognized the importance of integrating a gender perspective in the analysis and implementation of international peace and security issues and acknowledge that peace is inextricably linked to gender equality. Now, regional organizations as diverse as the African Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organization for Security and Corporation in Europe have developed organization-wide policies and action plans to incorporate the principles of 1325 into their deliberations and actions. At the national level, 76 states, approximately 40% of UN member states have developed national action plans to implement and advance the WPS agenda. In 2015, UN member states unanimously adopted a set of sustainable development goals for 2030, including a standalone goal that included an array of commitments to gender equality, the empowerment and participation of women in political and economic affairs, as well as an end to all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls. Now, enunciating these goals has been a very important step forward. Reaffirming these goals through additional international and national proclamations has been very valuable. All this, I think, has been necessary for progress, but it has not been sufficient. Unfortunately, progress has been limited and uneven. Even where progress has been made, many of the gains are vulnerable and often easily reversible. Problems persist. The underrepresentation of women in national and international security deliberations remains glaring. In the Security Council debate last year, the Executive Director of UN Women reported an overall decline in female participation in UN-led peace processes. And you look at the peace talks in 2016 in Myanmar. You look at the peace talks in the Central African peace talks. You look at the peace talks in terms of, or the peace efforts in terms of Syria and Afghanistan. Women have been sidelined in these efforts. Only three out of 11 peace agreements that were signed in 2017 contain gender-sensitive provisions. Gender perspectives are insufficiently integrated into analysis of national and international security challenges. Gender perspectives are often afterthoughts, if they're thought about at all. Many of the National Action Plan ostensibly aimed at implementation of 1325 have no accountability measures. Few of these plans have significant resources attached to them and a considerable number have actually expired. Lastly, prevention and protection of sexual violence in conflict. An issue that has received considerable attention from UN member states. But it doesn't seem to have much progress. Violence against women and girls has continued at horrifying levels, especially in conflict settings. Since the start of the Civil War in South Sudan in 2013, thousands of South Sudanese have been subjected to sexual violence, including rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation, and sexual torture. In one survey, 72% of women at UN protection sites reported that they have been raped since the onset of conflict. According to the survivors, sexual violence was used as a weapon of war. Individuals were often targeted based on their ethnicity or perceived political allegiance. In 2017, rape was used as a weapon by the Myanmar military in its forced expulsion campaigns against the country's Rohingya minority. By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize this year to Dr. Dennis Mugwege and Nadia Murad, the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee reminded us that conflict-related sexual violence as a weapon of war is a grave violation of international law and efforts to stop this atrocity need to be stepped up. But in addition, while sexual violence in conflict stands out, scholars, including some here in the room and I look at Jackie True, have also emphasized that sexual violence is not limited to conflict settings but embedded in structural gender inequalities. They have highlighted that gender-based violence takes many forms and is best seen as on a continuum. That said, the continuum of violence is an issue rarely discussed at the policy level. So what are the reasons for this suboptimal policy record of the WPS agenda? And I would say more generally the gender equality agenda. So let me single out three obstacles. The first, I think, has to do with the national and international security policy establishments. While the importance of gender balance and gender equality have been integrated in policy declarations of international institutions, national policy makers, and we have seen that yesterday and today, the reality is that most of these policies, particularly those pertaining to national and international security, have not integrated these concepts in practice. I mean, one of the obstacles to progress on the WPS agenda is due in large part to the fact that the national and international security policy establishments are mostly composed of men and run by men. Now we did a little survey this summer looking at the gender balance of Washington DC think tanks, which are very important for policy development. And so we looked at these think tanks that work on international affairs and security studies. And our survey showed considerable gender gaps at the level of experts, as well as great gaps at the level of governing bodies of these institutions. And I think that Washington is not unique in this regard. Most security policy establishments look at national and international security issues in traditional ways. They focus on traditional security threats that are analyzed through traditional lenses and familiar policy frameworks. For many states, despite the rhetorical declaration of support for the WPS agenda, WPS issues have not been a top policy priority. The second obstacle is related and is analytical and conceptual. Most security policy establishments have actually little understanding of the importance of gender or the impact of gender on national and international security. For members of the traditional security community, matters of war and peace are about power, chiefly military and economic power. Many in this community tend to equate gender with women and they often mistakenly use these terms interchangeably. For many in this community, if they heard about the WPS agenda at all, they tend to equate it with protecting women. They do not think about the broader gender agenda. The traditional security community continues to see gender as a peripheral issue if it's in their field of vision at all. Again, there was a survey done by the New America Foundation last year and it found that the majority of U.S. national security policy makers had little knowledge or understanding of gender. Most policy makers equated gender with women and were not familiar with the WPS agenda. The majority of these policy makers believe that add women and stir approach would be sufficient. Lastly and most importantly, most policy makers in the survey believe that gender is relevant only for a handful of subjects such as sex trafficking, sexual violence and sex slavery in ISIS. They did not believe that gender was relevant to subjects such as economics, trade or issues related to defence. This lack of understanding of the role of gender in international affairs and insecurity policies is widespread and again I think not restricted to U.S. policy makers. The third obstacle I'd like to single out is a policy framing issue. It is related to the way the WPS agenda has been framed. Now choices about how to define and present issues to capture public attention are key to effective agenda setting and policy making. The framing obstacle for the WPS agenda is to some extent a self-inflicted problem because the WPS agenda has been explicitly and formally framed as a women's issue. Now I think this has helped to highlight the important roles that women play in security issues but it has also made it easier for the traditional security establishment to pigeonhole the WPS agenda as a women's agenda and treat it as a secondary or tertiary priority in national or international security policy. This in turn has reinforced the establishment's prevailing tendency to think of women in passive and protective terms and when you think about the pillars of the WPS agenda participation, protection, prevention and relief and recovery three out of those four pillars are actually very passive pillar. The one active pillar, the participation pillar has received little attention. In addition, U.N. Security Council resolutions and national political leaders have repeatedly conflated the WPS agenda with women and children, women and girls, women and youth. I believe this infantilizes women. It reinforces the idea that women have no agency and it bolsters the prevailing pattern that excludes women from participating in national and international security policy making. Again I think too little attention has been paid to the underlying structural factors gender norms and gender hierarchies that entrench inequalities and fuel conflict and I think this is a fundamental deficiency that inhibits advancement of the WPS agenda. Now despite these obstacles we've seen some progress. So what have been some of the drivers of progress? As was the obstacle, let me identify three drivers. First is the policies, the laws, the regulations. They're obvious drivers of progress. Well I argue that we have and when I say we, the international community have not made enough progress, the fact is that policies, laws and regulations that promote a WPS agenda, that promote a gender equality agenda, they have been developed. We have eight U.N. Security Council resolutions. 76 states have developed national action plans. In 2014 Sweden was the first country to adopt an explicitly feminist foreign policy. Australia followed for a little while and actually continues a little bit in that spirit when I listened to the statements of policy makers yesterday. In 2017 the Republican U.S. Congress adopted a WPS act that mandates the U.S. government to develop a WPS strategy in the same way it develops a national security strategy. The 2018 policy and action plan on WPS elaborated by NATO and its partners including Australia is an extremely ambitious plan and extremely progressive. As I said the adoption of the SDGs has been an important milestone. So I think these international and national commitments are extremely important and they are necessary first steps for progress. The second driver is the establishment. So the security establishment is both an obstacle but also a driver of progress. The establishment will make changes if it thinks it's necessary. For instance the U.S. military made changes to the lineup of its personnel and allowed women to occupy combat positions when it realized it made its operations more effective. I think General Campbell said the same thing earlier this morning. Humanitarian actors have similarly adjusted their operations in times of crisis and emergencies. In states such as India or the UAE policy establishment will drive a gender equality agenda because they have understood that the growth of their economies require more female participation in the workforce. I mean there have been these studies by McKinsey that has calculated that advancing women's equality can add 12 trillion U.S. dollars to global GDP by 2025. This is a very powerful argument in favor of gender equality. Well norm based arguments are not always very effective. Interest and effectiveness arguments can sway policy establishment. Lastly civil society without the tireless efforts of civil society activists and civil society organizations we would not even be talking about the WPS agenda. So where does that leave us and what does it suggest in terms of strategies for progress. First I think it is key that the international community states civil society actors continue to support and develop national and international policy frameworks on gender and security support and develop policy frameworks that recognize gender equality as a core principle of human rights and international law. I think it is crucially important that these actors continue to encourage the development of 1325 national action plans make sure that these plans are regularly reviewed incorporate accountability measures and be given the resources for implementation. Second we need to support civil society actors. This is particularly important in an era where the space for civil society actors is under constant attack and shrinking. As I said before the WPS agenda would not have seen the day of light were it not for the activism of civil society actors. And when I say civil society I also want to include academic and experts. I think they have greatly helped advance our understanding of the gender dimensions of international peace and security issues. Third and lastly we need to reframe the WPS agenda from a WPS to a WPS plus GPS agenda. That means from a women peace and security agenda to a women peace and security and gender peace and security agenda. And we can do this because ultimately the implementation of this agenda rests with UN member states. For the WPS agenda to progress it needs to be reframed and expanded into this broader WPS plus GPS formulation. This expanded formulation is based on the idea that a focus on women in peace and security affairs is necessary but not sufficient. The focus must be expanded to include gender as the central concept in the equation. Conceptually and analytically our focus has to include women and men and indeed all people regardless of their gender or gender identity. Instead of focusing on half of humanity we need to focus on all of humanity. Focusing on gender will also highlight the importance of power and the gendered nature of power in human relations including the gendered nature of many security problems that are on the global agenda. Gender structures power in every arena. It does so at every level and gender structures power through multiple mechanisms through the family, through society, through culture and other institutions. I believe that a focus on gender places power at the center of analysis and this I think should also make it harder for the traditional security community to brush off gender as a women's issue. The expanded WPS plus GPS framework must systematically integrate gender perspectives in the analysis of security challenges and the development of policy responses. Gender perspectives allow us to deepen our knowledge how gender inequalities legitimize violence within states and between states. It will allow us to see how gender based violence including conflict related sexual violence is linked to power inequalities. How violence within states including gender based violence is linked to the aggressiveness of states. Oscar Arya Sanchez the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1987 understood this well before it was theorized. When in his acceptance speech he said a nation that mistreats its own citizen is more likely to mistreat its neighbors. Gender perspectives enhance our understanding of traditional security such as armed conflict and terrorism. Gender perspective also enhance our understanding of non-traditional non-military human security challenges such as migration or climate change. Agender analysis allows us to better understand who is impacted by for example climate change. It allows us to recognize how the categories of men and women are defined in relation to one another and through intersections with other important social differences such as class, ethnicity, etc. and how together gender and these intersectional forms of identity shape vulnerabilities and risks for specific people. Context specific gender analysis also allow us to design better remedial policies. In both traditional and non-traditional security sectors resilience has become the new buzzword. But safeguarding communities from disasters or helping them build back after disaster without a gender analysis will often mean that what we're actually doing is protecting the status quo and reinforcing existing gender inequalities. Lastly a WPS plus GPS approach must place emphasis not just on women's participation but on gender parity. That is equal levels of participation and gender balances in policy deliberation and policy decision making. To advance this goal of 50-50 as enunciated by the Vice Chancellor yesterday it will be important to examine the power structures of policymaking institutions including the gender hierarchies within those institutions. This should include assessments of the mechanisms that keep women out of the halls of power, decision making circles and security institutions. Ideally this will lead to changes that are incentive structures, political cultures and institutions that will lead to equitable, sustainable gender balances. Equality cannot be achieved without equal participation and parity. By the same token good policy cannot be produced by drawing on half of our human capital. Policymakers need to understand that the perpetuation of gender inequality is not just morally wrong, it is counterproductive. The current inequitable state of affairs has a serious negative consequences for national and international security and prosperity. Promoting gender parity in security policy affairs is the right thing to do and as one often say, the smart thing to do. Developing the WPS and GPS agenda is I believe the next step in advancing the WPS agenda, in advancing gender inequality as well as peace and security in the 21st century. Thank you very much. Thank you so much and please stay with us for a few minutes. We have time for a couple of questions after I think those remarks which I found both disturbing and also very motivating. Let's take a few questions from the room and then we'll move to morning tea. We'll begin at the front if we have a microphone handy. Michelle, thank you. Thank you, Chantal. That was an absolutely wonderful and enlightening talk. I guess my question for you is, I completely agree with you that getting men to understand that they are part of the gender framework, right? Not sitting somewhere outside or above it is absolutely critical to advancing both the WPS and the GPS agenda. But my question to you is, how do we get men in the national security framework internationally to begin that work? Because in the end what worries me is that once again women are going to be left with the burden of trying to explain to men what their relationship is and what their position is when in fact the responsibility that we're asking men to take is a slightly different kind and level of responsibility to the responsibility that they think they should be taking on gender relations. So what is the way forward to get men to do the work that we need them to do for themselves? Do you want me to take a few or not? Why don't we take one or two more, is that okay? Yes, we do. Okay, we'll take two more and then that gives you kind of a smorgasbord. So please, here in the middle of the room. Yes, in the white. Thanks very much, Phil. Thank you for your talk this morning. I really appreciate your comments. It's been very enlightening. I work with the very bureaucratic organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency and I'm very interested to hear any comments you may have about how we can push the agenda forward. It's been very challenging and we certainly need people like yourself to be articulate and loud about solutions that we can implement. So I'd appreciate any comments you may have. We'll take one more. We'll come to you in a moment. Any other questions? Look, we might actually take one at the back here. Yes, the gentleman at the back there. That's three, I think. Good morning. Thank you for your presentation. My name's Nathan and I am an Australian Army major. You heard my Chief of Defence Force speak this morning. He spoke a lot about the importance of gender diversity, create capability in the Defence Force. I'll note that you spoke briefly about the effect on GDP if we have gender diversity. It bothers me that we have to sell gender diversity as a capability issue and defence solely sells gender diversity as a capability issue. Where do you think a Defence Force needs to stop selling capability and meet the social obligation of gender diversity as a fundamental human right? Okay. Let me start maybe with the question about the International Atomic Energy Agency and how do you increase gender balance within these organisations? I think the Atomic Energy Agency has two problems. It has a regular problem that it is a traditionally very male dominated arena in part because what the Atomic Energy Agency is working on. So it's a lot of scientific stem areas and so that has been traditionally difficult because we don't have that many or up until recently we didn't have that many women interested in these areas. So I think for an agency like the Atomic Energy Agency it is extremely important to hold leaders accountable when they say we want to increase gender diversity hold them accountable to that put down benchmarks etc. I think the other important thing is to showcase to young women or older women that there are actually jobs available and that you not necessarily need to be a nuclear physicist to work at the International Atomic Energy Agency. So I think there is both an outreach effort by the agency as well as holding the leaders of the agency accountable and I think the staff as such has a real important role there and they can lean on all the international policy frameworks within the UN system etc. Then in terms of the how do you get men involved basically or how do we and I want to take this together with the other question. So many establishment particularly military establishment and security establishment they can be drivers of progress if they see that there's actually it's in their interest to do so. And so I think we have to develop the research evidence base that show that actually your decisions are more effective. We're doing this in the corporate sector where there are now tons of studies by McKinsey and others who tell that you know if you have a more diverse board you're actually doing better in terms of your company. So we need more research that also shows this for international and national security issues. The other thing I think it is really important that we need to build bridges. So whenever we have an event about women then the majority or gender the majority of people in the room are women. So how do we get around that and how do we actually integrate you know men and women when we are talking about gender issues. And I think we have to come up with more innovative strategies to do that. And we have to be more explicit about wanting to build bridges and we can do that through research projects we're in a university setting here through panels through journals. We talked about that yesterday. So I think there are ways to do that and we really have to do that and I think it behooves all of us to think of ways. Sometimes what I do is I hide the gender in a title of an event and sort of I trick people into coming. But this brings me back to the norms versus intra-based argument. And particularly in the military whenever we go to military institutions they tell us you have to show us that it's really increasing our capabilities and our effectiveness. And normally we should not be able to have to do that. The gender equality is a basic human rights that has been recognized in foundational legal arguments documents since 45 the UN Charter the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many, many states have subscribed to these documents. But I think we have to be a little bit pragmatic in this sense if we really want to advance the agenda we have to understand that different audiences are tingled with different types of arguments and it doesn't mean that if you only go with an interest-based argument that you have to completely forget about the norms-based argument or vice versa. But my advice and I've come, you know, I've struggled with this question actually quite a bit and I come down on the side that I want to see progress on this agenda and if that means that I have to be a little bit pragmatic and use different types of arguments with different types of audiences then I'll do so so that would be my answer to you. That's been, I think that's been a really useful set of responses and I think thank you for sharing a few of your trade secrets your pragmatism in a good cause as well but I think that there's a lot more questions that we could take on this and there'll be an opportunity to engage with some colleagues in the break. I want to thank you again also for launching our journal yesterday because that's very special to us and it gives something enduring out of the conference. Look it just is left with me, I would say to do two things. Firstly in a moment to ask you to join me in thanking the speaker but also just to update you on one or two other points don't forget to keep track of some of the speeches that are now online in the conference so far. The speech by Francis Adamson yesterday the Secretary of Foreign Affairs is now on our website and that's a really I think that's a gift that we'll keep on giving that speech. It's something that she crafted very much for us. Also don't forget to tune into the podcasts that we're producing as my colleague Chris Farnham moves around the conference but look with that I'm going to ask you all to join me in thanking Dr Duyonga Udrat for the fantastic speech here today and really to wish you all the very best with your work into the future. Thank you.