 Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here this morning on the 20th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which recognized the importance of women's meaningful participation in security and peace efforts around the world. I look forward today to listening to this distinguished panel talk about the important topic of women, peace and security. In fact, what could be more important? I'm looking forward to learning from them since they are all at the forefront of these issues in their day-to-day work in all different capacities. Before I turn the floor over to them, or Zoom, as I should say, and start this important conversation, I'll offer a few broad framing ways to think about the topic of women, peace and security. First, in a sense, we have a strategic level issue. And that is the nature of societies, about how states set the rules for governance. As the 2017 National Security Strategy noted, societies that empower women to participate fully in civic and economic life tend to be more prosperous and peaceful. There is research that shows that higher levels of gender equality are associated with a lower propensity for conflict, both between and within nations. The bottom line is equal treatment of all individuals in a society matters. Second, as the US 2017 Women in Peace and Security Act pointed out, the inclusion of women at the negotiating table can contribute to the nature of outcomes in conflict resolution negotiations. Women can and do offer different approaches and perspectives. Third, it's not just about seating women at the table, it's about including the interests and concerns of women on an agenda and ensuring that these interests are reflected in the results of what's actually achieved. Agreements that result in more education and opportunities across the society, for instance, or for better healthcare outcomes for rural and poor women who may not traditionally have a voice, create better societies as a whole. Agreements that ensure that security includes a citizen security dimension, so that individuals can participate freely in the economy and their societies without fear of violence and insecurity. Claire Lockhart, the president of the Institute for State Effectiveness, has looked at conflict resolution processes for over 30 years. She has pointed out the importance of the inclusion gap and how harmful it is to exclude a broad swath of society from governance and conflict resolution. Exclusion drives conflict. So as I close my brief remarks, it's easy to look around the world and to find women who've made extraordinary contributions to their societies, examples of women who made huge difference in the lives of their citizens. Margaret Thatcher understood the power of the free market and saved the United Kingdom with her reforms. She recognized the opportunity of Gorbachev to diffuse the Cold War. Golda Meir saved Israel in the 1973 war was certainly a key part of that and part of a generation that created the Jewish state. Angela Merkel is someone who helped to consolidate the unification of Germany by bringing the sides together. Sima Samar from Afghanistan has worked tirelessly for human rights there at great personal risk. These are just handfuls of examples of the thousands and thousands of women who've shaped their countries and continue to inspire. And I'm here today with a handful myself and I'm eager to listen and to learn from you. So let me now introduce the women at our round table today and turn it over to them. First, we have Ambassador Kelly Curry, who was appointed ambassador at large for global women's issues by President Donald Trump in December, 2019. She served simultaneously as the US representative at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Throughout her career-informed policy, Ambassador Curry has specialized in human rights, political reform, development, and humanitarian issues. Ambassador Lana Marks was sworn in as the US ambassador to the Republic of South Africa last October, prior to her appointment, Ambassador Marks was a successful CEO of a major fashion brand, a company which she founded over 30 years ago. A longtime advocate of women's empowerment, Ambassador Marks has served on a variety of women's leadership boards and councils. Ambassador, another Lana, Nusebi, serves as the ambassador and permanent representative of the United Arab Emirates to the United Nations in New York. She serves on numerous reform councils at the United Nations and has served in many high-level foreign policy positions for her government. In 2017, she was awarded the UAE Prime Minister's Government Excellence Award, the UAE Medal of Pride. Ambassador Roya Ramani is an Afghan diplomat and the first female Afghan ambassador to the United States. She's also the designated non-resident ambassador to Argentina, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia. She is very busy. In her role as ambassador to the United States, Roya has focused on highlighting the success of the Afghan-American partnership and often the unheard stories of Afghans' everyday life and a steady progression toward peace. She has said, if I can stop even one bomb from going off, my goal in life will be achieved. And then we have Haiti Galo Santos, who is a lawyer from the National University of Colombia with a specialization in economics. She is the counselor for women's equality. She has studied in leadership and global competitiveness from Georgetown University in Washington in the United States. She has more than 15 years of professional experience at the national and international level and in the public and private sectors. Her academic training and experience and the design implementation and evaluation of public policies has been fundamental in leading a strategy of empowerment in Colombia. So I'm so happy to welcome everyone this morning and to listen to everyone today. Ambassador Currie, I think you are going first and we'll start off with your remarks. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Shatla. It is such an honor to have you moderating today's discussion. We deeply appreciate your support for the work that we're doing and your partnership as a leading voice in national security and foreign policy and bringing your expertise and your skills to this discussion today has been a great coup for us to have you here. So thank you for joining us. And for mentioning one of my personal heroes and someone who inspired me to public service and that's Margaret Thatcher. And she really does embody for me what the how women peace and security is before was she embodied women peace and security before it was a thing and before we had a WPS agenda with 1325. But and it's also just incredible to be here with such great colleagues. And these are some, the women that I'm on this panel with today are such day to day role models for me and women who I look to for support and for partnerships on these important issues. I appreciate all of you. I know you're very busy, but I appreciate you taking time out to celebrate the 20th anniversary of UNSCR 1325 with us. And to collectively identify where we are all headed in terms of our actionable change agendas when it comes to 1325. We know that your nations have accomplished tremendous things individually to implement the WPS agenda and that you continue to set standards around the world and at the multilateral level. And we continue to work on strengthening our partnerships with you. In two days, we will mark the actual 20th anniversary of UN Security Council resolution 1325, which recognized for the first time recognize formally the importance of women's meaningful participation in global security and peace efforts. I'm proud to say that this administration has made with the women peace and security agenda a priority. And I have to thank Nadia for her role in that in making sure that women peace and security was part of our national security strategy from the beginning. And this was also evident when President Trump signed into law the bipartisan, the Women Peace and Security Act of 2017, which Nadia mentioned, and which was passed with near unanimous bipartisan support. And I'm really lucky that I get to work on an area that has tremendous bipartisan support here at home in the United States and enjoys broad diverse regional, cross regional support around the world. And I get to work on these issues with such great partners. And here at the State Department we're uniquely positioned to implement this agenda focusing on four key areas, policy, diplomacy, partnerships and innovative programs. We advanced the Women Peace and Security Agenda but we, and we're proud to lead on this but we can't do it alone. So it really does require us to collaborate and cooperate with partners and allies around the globe. Our strategic engagement with other governments including Afghanistan, the UAE, South Africa and Columbia not only strengthens the women peace and security agenda in our own policy implementation but it prevents the efforts of malign actors and those out there who would like to erode the values that are incorporated in the WPS agenda and who would like to restrict the rights of women and undermine the progress that we've made over the past 20 years. It's really, I'm especially pleased to talk about our partnership with Ambassador Rahmani on empowering women and girls in Afghanistan through partnerships, exchange programs as well as by promoting women's meaningful participation in the peace negotiations. Roya, I can't say enough about our partnership and the work that we do together. In our first ever partnership when I talk about bilateral partnerships with women peace and security, Columbia was our first bilateral partnership on women peace and security and Columbia is still a shining example of what can happen when everybody in the government, civil society and across the whole spectrum commits to a women peace and security agenda and what you can really accomplish. They show the connection between women's economic empowerment. I was on a panel or I was watching a panel, I guess I was on it the other day with Hypey. I've been on so many WPS panels the past couple of weeks that I've lost track of them but we were on a discussion together the other day where she was talking about the peace process in Columbia and I'm sure she's going to do some of that today and she emphasized and I was really pleased to hear this that the need to get out into the areas that were most affected by conflict and that continue to suffer the long-term effects of conflict in rural Columbia and work on empowering women economically because when in conflict and fragile context women who are already vulnerable to economic displacement, economic crisis become the first victims of the conflict in all sorts of ways including economically. So we are really working with Columbia across the whole range of issues. Actually, we're working with all of these countries across all these issues and so it's really great to see that. And again, I think this is also maybe the second or third panel I've been on with Lana and the past couple of weeks talking about these issues. And we're so pleased to celebrate with the UAE and with our partners in Israel, the signing of the Abraham Accords and the role that major step forward is going to have in terms of promoting peace and security in a critical region for all of us. And we also are looking forward to partnering with the UAE and Israel on women peace and security issues. They are both great partners that we've had a long-term relationship with over time and now that we can make that triangle connect that's gonna be really exciting for all of us. And then of course, I would be remiss without highlighting the critical role that South Africa has played in promoting the women peace and security agenda from day one. It was South Africa was one of the critical early movers in this and coming out of the anti-apartheid movement and the role of women in that movement in terms of promoting peaceful solutions to the challenges that South Africa faced and in promoting women's political leadership. And so South Africa is still a global leader and I can't tell you how many WPS trainings and when I was working in civil society all over the world, especially all over Asia. And there was always a South African trainer at every 13, 25 training I ever went to over the past 20 years it seems like. And you just have this incredible cadre of women leaders who continue to push through and deal with the current challenges that South Africa faces, whether it's gender-based violence. And so again, Ambassador Marks has been a wonderful partner in that and has been a great, has really helped us to improve the quality of our engagement with the South African government on these issues where we have so much in common. So I didn't really intend to spend so much of my remarks talking about my amazing colleagues because I know they're going to have a chance to talk about themselves and their own work but I think it is indicative of the quality of the partnerships that we have with all of these countries that I'm much more enthusiastic about talking about what we're doing together with them than I am about anything else. But especially now as we face this really serious challenge from trying to recover from the COVID pandemic and we're seeing spikes in gender-based violence. We're seeing real challenges for women who are the first to lose their jobs and livelihoods and who are bearing an increased burden from the stay-at-home orders and other issues with whether it's with care economy or other challenges. So we need to focus though on women do have specific needs and face specific challenges in this environment but women are also drivers of change and recovery and we've seen this across the history of the WPS agenda and it's true now as it ever has been. We need to use this opportunity to make sure that we are building in gender focus from the ground up as we recover and that we are engaging and enabling and empowering women to fully participate in all of the decisions that affect their lives whether it is in the area of women peace and security or economic decision-making or all of the decisions that women's perspectives need to be heard. We continue to monitor global data and I don't know, especially concerned as I mentioned before about the surges and gender-based violence and we're working together with the U.S. Agency for International Development to move forward large significant aid packages that we prioritize $1.3 billion to date in international health, humanitarian and economic assistance that prioritize those in greatest need and you can be assured that this is being done in partnership with our WGDP or Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative as well as with the women peace and security lens across all of these investments. So I really, one thing that I think that we're struggling with as we look ahead and look at the future is I think we've developed great tools for, we still have a long way to go, don't get me wrong and I know Roy will speak to some of this as well, Heidi, but on women's political participation, women's participation in negotiations, the kinds of training that we need to do, the kinds of resources that we need to put in those things, how women can serve as peace builders, how women can serve as leaders of reconstruction and rehabilitation and how women lead on issues of accountability for crimes and atrocities. But what I think we are now grappling with as we begin the third decade of this agenda is a new kind of threat and that is the threat from the line actors who aren't doing the traditional, we still have all the same threats that we have of conflict related gender-based violence, of the kinds of basic day to day, if you will, conflict related challenges that come up in the women peace and security agenda. But on top of that, layered on top of that, we're also dealing with a world where certain malign actors are using these agendas in very interesting ways. And I'll use that word interesting since I'm trying to be diplomatic today. That they're looking at how they can create divisions within our strong coalition on these issues, trying to water down the standards on women peace and security by just ever so slightly tweaking language around civil society participation, for instance, or just ever so slightly making changes that say, well, we need to put poverty alleviation ahead of justice and accountability instead of looking at those things as activities that have to move together on same tracks and have to be integrated in an approach. And so we're really concerned about how countries that do not respect the rights of their women at home and then target their own women for ill treatment and for abuse, what the effect of their activities beyond their borders is on this important agenda. And so we are really attuned to that challenge. A couple of examples come to mind that we've been really, really thinking about deeply in our office and how we counteract this. And we have very specific interventions in Yemen, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in all of these countries in Lebanon where we're working with women's organizations, working with survivor groups, all kinds of engagements that we're doing to try to strengthen women's participation in those fragile and conflict-affected contexts. And yet we see that there is an undercurrent running behind all of these conflicts that ends up back in Tehran. And we know that the theocratic regime in Tehran, for instance, is not particularly respectful of women's rights. This is not a surprise to anybody. But where we see their malign influence across areas where they are involved in creating conflict and creating chaos and in supporting actors who are, who embrace policies and activities that are inimicable to the rights of women and undermine their peace and security. So we see that as one prime example. Another prime example that we're really working on trying to figure out how we respond to this new kind of threat is what we're seeing with the Chinese Communist Party's repression, the scale and depth of the repression in Xinjiang, and the particular focus on breaking down the family and how that targets women. And what the challenges that this creates for us when a very powerful, technologically advanced, economically influential, influential, politically influential regime decides to engage in this sort of behavior, to turn its power against a vulnerable, I think a religious minority, and to do it in a way that is really attacking the family structure, attacking cultural transmission and going at things that are really critical and undermine women's roles and undermine the units of the cohesion of the society in a way that's very dangerous and then conflating that with counter-terrorism. And one of our main areas of work here with Women, Peace and Security is on countering violent extremism and working with women and girls who are at risk of violent extremism. And I know this is an issue that some of our other partners work on quite a bit. And when we see this trend of this attack on culture and religion and the family as a tool being portrayed as a tool of either counter-terrorism or even in some cases, poverty alleviation, we find it very worrying and alarming about what it pretends for the future of Women, Peace and Security. So those are some of the trends that we're working on, looking out in the out years for this third decade. And I really look forward to being able to talk to our colleagues and in the discussion time, think about how we can address some of these more novel challenges while continuing to work across the main agenda points. Thanks. Oh, now I'm going to turn it over to my friend, Roya Rachmani. So Ambassador Rachmani, over to you. Can you hear me? Yes. Good morning. What a pleasure to be once again sitting alongside this very distinguished panel and specially hosted by our dear friend and colleague, Ambassador Kelly Curry. Thank you so much. Asalaamu alaikum, may peace be upon you. I am so delighted to be here today to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution, 1325, alongside such an esteemed panel. And once again, thank you, my very good friend, for everything that you are doing, Ambassador Curry. I also would like to thank Dr. Shadlow for moderating this panel. And also thanks to everybody who is sparing some brain space to pay attention to this very important issue in the midst of a lot of other competing issue for your attention. I want to start by saying that I love the topic of this panel, looking to the future. This topic is critical. There is a lot to be said about the progress of women in my country, Afghanistan, over the past two decades. Once women regain their agency and mobility in 2001, they slowly but steadily reintegrated into society as equal citizens, helping to show the responsibility of shaping a better future. Women now make up 28% of Afghanistan's legislative body, higher than global average. And are in high level decision making positions, to an extent that it is historically unprecedented. Afghanistan has women ministers, generals, ambassadors. And there is over 6,000 women in Afghanistan's national security forces. Mind you, they are all volunteers. Women are now working as artists, athletes, and musicians. They are enriching Afghan culture. And their presence in these fields serve as a symbol of security and a budding culture of peace. We have accomplished all of this. But still, we know that we have a long way to go. Afghanistan's 2015 National Action Plan has allowed us to fulfill some parts outlined in UN Security Resolution 1325. We are working to prevent violence against women and release them from the yoke of oppression. But we cannot forget that the resolution also calls for reaffirming the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts in the peace building and steering the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security. That clause is what Afghans look for our future, women's role in peace at every phase, from peacemaking to peace building to peace maintenance. We know that there can be no durable peace unless that peace is inclusive, just like our moderator said at the beginning of this session. But let's look at that clause in two pieces. Firstly, it speaks of the important role of women in preventing and resolving conflicts. We know that women are excellent peacemakers and peace builders. That's in part due to women's skills in moving decision-making processes forward through their ability to promote consensus, prioritize inclusivity, and increase society-wide support. Women are skilled at engaging at the community level and strengthening civil society. In Afghanistan, women have successfully encouraged local insurgents to participate in peace talks, coordinated with the wives of the insurgents to facilitate several hostages release and worked in schools and civil society organizations to counter extremism. The second half of the clause speaks of the importance of women's equal participation and full involvement in maintaining peace. The importance of this has been clear time and again. When making peace, there is a positive relationship between the strength of women's influence and the likelihood of agreement being both reached and implemented. Additionally, when women are fully empowered to participate in peace processes, they are more likely to prioritize inclusivity, drawing in marginalized groups and ensuring peace processes don't neglect social and humanitarian issues. But how do we make this happen in Afghanistan as we continue the peace negotiations currently in Doha? The most important thing is that we fight to ensure that women are not just treated as a subject of their negotiations, but as a party to them. Women's voices must be heard and heeded. The first phase of this is empowering women to take the places they deserve. The second phase is nurturing women's roles. Clearly, women are not traditional actors. They are not generally the perpetrators of violence and still have much less capital than men, both politically and financially. However, this does not make them less legitimate actors in the peace processes. It just means that they need for their positions to be nurtured more by the international community and domestic actors. This is an investment that is more than worth it. By investing in Afghan women today, you are investing in peace. You are investing in justice. You are investing in more secure tomorrow for Afghanistan, the region, and the world beyond. I'm looking forward to further discussing this alongside this distinguished panel. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Ambassador Amani. That was really illuminating and important. I liked your message of both progress and hopefulness on how much has been achieved, but also the challenges ahead. I'll turn now to Ambassador Lana Nusebi from the United Arab Emirates. Thanks so much, Lana. We look forward to hearing your remarks. Thank you, Dr. Nadia. Let me first begin by thanking the US Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues for organizing this really excellent panel and, of course, you for moderating us and the Hudson Institute. And last but not least, Ambassador Kelly Currie for hosting. We are such fans of yours and we're great colleagues at the UN. I'm really excited to also be here with such a superhero panel in my view on this issue. So today and in the past weeks leading up to this 20th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, there have been plenty of discussions, as Ambassador Kelly has said, where member states and the UN have been reflecting on the past and what has been done to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women. And as you said in your opening remarks, Dr. Nadia, we've come a long way. One of the main achievements of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda has been the promotion of women as agents of change rather than victims or in need of protection as participants of processes, as Ambassador Rahmanis just said. And of course, we can all agree that there have been these groundbreaking moments throughout these past two decades since the adoption of the resolution. But we've also now come to the conclusion that more really needs to be done and there still persists a rather large gap between the vision and the implementation. And I think that's why we're seeing so many of these panels being convened to think about where that gap lies. So for us in the UAE, ensuring that these words are put into action is our approach. It's how we think we go about achieving the full, equal and meaningful participation of women in all aspects of our society. And amplifying the full and effective implementation of the WPS Agenda will also remain a key priority for us during our recently announced candidacy for an elected seat on the UN Security Council for 2022, 2023. And we want to work closely together with all the countries on this panel and other member states, as well as UN agencies towards pushing the needle, pushing the dial towards this goal. Two days ago, the Generation Equality Forum launched its compact for women, peace and security and humanitarian assistance. And we're really honored to be a board member of something that is action-oriented, multi-stakeholder and as a platform that is inclusive. And we really believe that rather than reinventing the wheel, making new promises on this agenda, this compact and others like it will need to harness the current extensive normative framework and put it into practice together with member states, regional organizations, civil society and partners from the private sector who've been underutilized, I think, in this process. So we need to leverage existing accountability mechanisms, work towards narrowing the gap between the aspirations we've heard leaders around the world espouse and these concrete actions we want to see on this agenda globally. Recently, we at the UAE Mission finished a, concluded a panel series with the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, focusing on the role of women in post-conflict reconstruction and peace building. And we'll be shortly launching a UN action plan gathered from those discussions, outlining those very concrete priority actions and reforms by UN agencies that needs to happen as well as member states in order to ensure post-conflict activities are really gender mainstream. So with these action priorities outlined, we really hope to contribute not only to delivering on commitments, but also to amplify the concerted action that we are all taking, because we're really convinced that the achievement of these goals will only be enhanced if we start pooling collectively our resources and our thinking around this. We also strongly believe in my country, and I know that many of you will share this, that a central element of sustainable peace building concerns effective security sector reform, which implies that security institutions are reformed in such a way that they are responsive and representative of society as a whole. And I was reading a recent study by the IPI about the stigmas and the taboo that still remains around women in peacekeeping. So we do have a lot of work to do in this area. It was a critical factor in our decision to pursue a women peace and security training program for women peacekeepers through the Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak Women Peace and Security Initiative with UN Women. And this program, which brings together women from Asia, Africa and the Middle East aims to really increase the number of women in the military and peacekeeping sector. And it's so far equipped over 300 women from those areas with the necessary skills and tools to contribute to peacekeeping, conflict resolution and all aspects of building these peaceful societies that we're seeking. And I remember when my counterpart at the UN, Ambassador Adela Raz came to the UAE, she was very moved to meet with Afghani women who were part of this training program and who had spent some time with us in the UAE. And I think this kind of interconnectedness, this networking between women peacekeepers across continents is really one of those game changing moments that we can contribute to this agenda more substantively and more concretely than in the past. So with this, the UAE wants to try and close some of the gaps related to gender responsive security sector reform. And I'd be really interested in hearing where we're lagging behind in our part of the world. The 20th anniversary of the WPS agenda coincides, of course, with the global pandemic, the COVID-19 crisis. And unfortunately, it offers an accurate reflection as well of the issues that women and girls around the world have been and are still facing. Because worldwide, they make up the majority of first responders, primary caretakers of their family, and as medical staff in delivering frontline healthcare. But due to some of these harmful social norms and gender discrimination, they're also much more vulnerable during these fractured times. And it shows us once again that they're disproportionately affected by crises. And it exposes the vulnerabilities in all of our social and economic systems that needs to be addressed. And if anything, it should have become clear how crucial it is to include women voices. Yet we have again witnessed that they are and remain underrepresented in decision making processes around adequate crisis response and management. And I hope that can be one of the big lessons and takeaways of the COVID-19 pandemic. So I believe and we all believe on this panel that we owe women and girls our greatest effort at this moment to ensure that the gains made since the adoption of UNSCR 1325 20 years ago will not be lost, will be doubled down on, in fact, and that these pre-existing inequalities are not further deepened due to this unprecedented crisis. So I also urge that gender lens on the COVID-19 pandemic and the structural issues it has laid bare once again in societies around the world. And thank you once again. I'm really looking forward to our discussions. Thank you so much. That was fascinating. I now want to turn to Haiti Galo Santos, a counselor for women's equality, to tell us a little bit about what's happening in Colombia. And then I will turn to Ambassador Marks. Thanks so much. Haiti. Thank you, Dr. Chalo, for that question. First of all, I want to thank the US government for convening this event of women's peace and security in commemoration of the 28th anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325. I especially commend the commitment of Ambassador Kelly Cooley and her leadership in placing this issue at the top of our government agendas. I also welcome the opportunity to share this panel with ambassadors Ramani, Nusebi, and Marks. I'm very honored to have the opportunity today to present Colombia's experience on women, peace, and security. In Colombia, we know firsthand the contributions and advantages that the participation of women brings to the construction of peace, the strengthening of public policies, and the development of more inclusive and equitable societies. Excellencies. Our strategy to implement Resolution 1325 and the women, peace, and security agenda has five strategic priorities. The first one, under the umbrella of the peace with legality policy, we have the implementation of the 51 gender indicators of the implementation framework plan, which is the policy that establishes the concrete and measurable commitments to comply with the final agreement signed with FARC. We have achieved significant progress. For example, almost 14 of the indicators have been fulfilled completely. 33 of them have made high progress, 25 have medium advances, and just only 29 have low advances. Second, we have the important issues of protection and security measures for women leaders and women human rights defenders. In cooperation with women's organizations, we have developed a comprehensive policy to protect women human rights defenders that places as a high priority creating security policies that guarantee women's participation in public life. We're making progress in the participatory representation mechanism for the SREM, which is the Interagency Committee that assess security risk and recommend security measures exclusively for women in Colombia. We recognize the exercise of the promotion and defense of human rights in Colombia as an essential work in our society. And the role of women in this defense is absolutely critical. Third is the generation of economic opportunities. One of our priorities is the generation of equitable and safe conditions for the agency of women in the construction of peace. We have focused our work on the promotion of legal economic opportunities for women in areas that have been co-opted by illegal economies, mainly drug trafficking and illegal mining. Much has been said about the impact of violence against women, given the seriousness of sexual violence or the dimensions of forced displacement. But very little has been said about the economic violence suffered by many women in main country, exposed to the illegal armed forces. That is why we insist in Colombia that a commitment to the safety of women requires a solution that empowers women and fosters the economic autonomy. We're working to provide technical assistance aimed at structuring entrepreneurial projects that promote actions for the effective economic participation of women. And indeed, this is more relevant in this current situation of COVID. As a complete action, we have proposed that by December 2020, we will structure almost 600 business plans that have a high participation of women. These plans will be rolled out in five regions or departments in Colombia, where violence against women was exacerbated. Our priority is the financing of these projects that have a gender perspective in which various entities have been working hand in hand with rural women and women's organizations. Of course, the support of the international community will be strategic to achieve this purpose. Fourth is the critical work of cultural and institutional transformation to end violence against women. If we do not change the social and institutional tolerance of gender-based violence, we won't be able to provide security and guarantees of non-repetition for women. For this reason, the three branches of the Colombian states are working guidelines for building protocols for the prevention and care of sexual harassment and gender-based violence. Regarding our armed forces, we are working to stretch equality of women in the military and police force, encourage their promotion into the higher ranks and the recruitment of new women so that Colombia society benefits from their leadership and excellence. And finally, the fifth and final point is the participation of women. The political participation of women. That's why we recently launched the first national political training school to strengthen women leadership and we aim to increase the participation of women in elected positions to 30% in the national parliament. This was just a quick overview of what we are doing across the women, peace and security agenda under the leadership of the Colombian president Ivan Duque and vice president Marta Lucia Ramirez. Colombia hopes that we continue to make tangible progress in our initiatives and commitments to the women, peace and agenda, to the women, peace and agenda security that allows us to be at the forefront to address the new challenges posed by COVID for women in Colombia and in the world. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councillor Santos. I really appreciate those remarks. It was very interesting. And certain themes are coming to me which I'll try to sum up at the end, but I wanna give Ambassador Lana Marks our ambassador to South Africa time for her remarks as well. Ambassador Marks, thanks so much. Good morning and afternoon, distinguished panel, participants and guests. Thank you, Ambassador Kelly Curry for the opportunity to join such an inspiring program today. And to be part of this illustrious panel where we are all tirelessly striving to advance efforts to support women, peace and security across the globe. Yesterday morning, I had the opportunity to visit one of the LEAP schools in a township named Deep Sluit. The name Deep Sluit is of recons for deep ditch, which fairly accurately describes the lives, lots and situation many of its inhabitants find themselves in. Deep Sluit is one of the newer townships in South Africa where parcels of land are divided and subdivided and subdivided again. Until you have dozens of shacks where a single home should be, where running water, electricity, even roads are few and far between. After visiting the school, I had a chance to meet with Cynthia, Cynthia Nkobile, one of the school children's mothers at her home. This home was a former shipping container that had no windows and a bear curtain for a door. The bed which mother and daughter shared took up nearly half of this home. We spoke about her life, about how she had trained to be a teacher and how COVID-19 had removed so many opportunities that we as a mission in South Africa had been working towards. Still, there was hope in her eyes as she spoke about her daughter who was a senior in high school and about to take her final exams. She indeed had been a victim of gender-based violence. As this group of leaders in foreign policy gathered to commemorate the 20th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, highlighting once again the highly valuable role that women play in international peace and security, I urge all of you to consider what immediate steps we as a group can take to further these efforts. Empowering women and girls is not only a cause dear to my heart, it is also a critical part of championing American values. Women's rights are human rights and we must do everything within our power to guarantee that women have a place at the table, wherever that table may be. And anyone who has made me knows, I want to see action, not just talk. But before we can focus on equality and equity, we must ensure that our mothers and our sisters are free from fear and abuse. The critical issue of gender-based violence. For more than a decade, the US mission to South Africa has partnered with the government of South Africa to counter gender-based violence. Thus far our mission has spent more than eight million US dollars on initiatives and programs to combat gender-based violence in our 2020 fiscal year. The challenge of GBV is one that we face globally. And I look forward to working with the international community in advance of 16 days of activism against gender-based violence in November, December to see how we can combine our efforts to take a stand. I've had conversations with UN women on this issue and welcome more. We must also emphasize the importance of continued outreach to youth. What I found heartening as a part of my trip yesterday at the school in Dipschert was the discussion we had prompted by the school children about what they can do and how they can strive every day and in every way to combat GBV. Through mentoring and peer groups, these teenagers had developed forward thinking on the violence that is all too prevalent in South Africa today. In our mission through the US Presence Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, we engage adolescent girls and young women in the dreams program, which aims to reduce new HIV infections and develops girls into determined, resilient, empowered, AIDS-free, mentored, and safe women. Despite considerable progress in the HIV response in South Africa, young women aged 15 to 24 remain highly vulnerable to new HIV infections. In 2020, adolescent girls and young women are nearly four times more likely to be infected with HIV than their male peers with over 850 new infections each week. Dreams is implemented in close partnership with South African Departments of Health, Education, and Social Development, and it currently operates in four districts. This program, run by USAID, has been wildly successful and based on the continuing critical needs, we are significantly expanding Dreams this year, tripling our funding and introducing the program into 20 new districts. We have a lot of work to do together, but with these efforts, we can ensure that Cynthia Nkobile and her daughter indeed, that all the daughters and mothers and grandmothers can look forward to a future free from fear and want, where they can have the same socioeconomic opportunities, the same justice, the same rights, equality, and equity, no matter what the gender, race, creed, religion, or sexuality. This should always be our goal. I look forward to working closely with the government of South Africa and with the peoples of South Africa and with you as close partners in these essential efforts. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ambassador Marks. Now we have a challenge this morning because this program is ending in about five minutes, literally, which I don't think is going to give us enough time for questions and answers and the kind of discussion that we would love to have, especially if we were all here in person, around a table, having the kinds of discussions that are, I think, best suited often to being around each other in person. I would like to sort of summarize a sense of the main, some of the main themes that I think everyone spoke about today. One, essentially, is that I saw a main theme as being the role of broader institutions and connections around the world, sort of the external pressure that's important for the women, peace, and security agenda and the specific country-specific, culturally-specific efforts that are needed as well. And I think the panelists did a really good job of describing both of those efforts that need to happen simultaneously. So Ambassador Nusebi spoke eloquently about the need to connect women peacekeepers around the world and the external connections of that and how important that is. Ambassador Curry spoke about the need to continue to increase pressure on the CCP in terms of its campaign against the Uyghurs. And again, that's an international campaign of pressure. But equally, the specific measures in terms of what needs to happen in individual countries, we heard just heard from Ambassador Marks on that, Councillor Santos, Ambassador Romani, speaking about the changes that need to happen in their societies. And I think that interwoven nature of the problem set, both the country-specific and the international role is a constant theme in this area. Now, because we don't have time to ask questions and answer them, I would like to just give everyone a brief one minute so we can end on time. I'll start at the beginning with Ambassador Curry because she spoke first to make a final comment as we wrap up this roundtable. Thanks so much, Ambassador Curry. Thanks, Nadia. And we do have a little bit, they gave us a little bit of variance. So we have about 10 more minutes actually before they pulled the plug on our stream. So I think we can have maybe two minutes. So that's good. I really loved what Lana said about how we need to secure, I'm sorry, Lana Nusebe. I keep having to specify since we have the two Launas today. What, I mean, all of the panelists were just amazing. But one thing that really stuck with me is this idea that we really have to secure the normative framework. And I think that, you know, despite all the progress we've made over the past two decades, this is what does concern me the most as I look ahead and around the corner. We still have so much to do to just secure the baseline, as she said, and to make sure that we are really putting action behind the words of 1325 and bringing it alive in our own policies and in all of our, in every way that we should be doing. And we're doing this at a time when that normative framework is actually under threat. And, you know, even right now, as I speak to you in the Security Council, we're fighting to preserve the baseline from 1325 and subsequent resolutions in the Security Council that have laid out this and created this strong normative framework. And it's under attack from those who are trying to weak it, whether it's in the area of civil society participation or the right space approach that underpins 1325 or the, as I said before, the linkages of between conflict resolution, peace building and economic recovery. And so we're really concerned right now about that. But what has given us some confidence and hope is that there are nine countries cross diverse, cross regional group of nine countries, including at least one South Africa for sure is also joining in this effort with us to push back on these efforts to weaken the normative framework and to undermine it. What worries me though is that I'm seeing this across so many different platforms. I'm seeing it in the East Asia Summit. We're seeing it in the G20. We're seeing it not just at the UN but across a whole range of multilateral frameworks where those who want to weaken and put little cracks into this normative framework are trying to work their will. And a lot of countries don't necessarily see it because they're not looking across all of these things and seeing it come up as much as they do. And what worries me is that there's a potential there for the countries that are doing these malign activities to try to use them to create divisions within our strong coalition. And so I think, you know, they always say the first step is when you see something say something. So we're starting to really see it. And so we're really trying to talk about it, put a name on it, label it as a problem, and then we can start to build out solutions. But at the end of the day, countries have to be, countries are gonna have to face tough decisions about whether they're willing to jeopardize their cooperation with some of these malign actors in order to preserve these normative frameworks. And that's gonna be a big challenge for everybody. So we're prepared for it and we're starting to lay out a plan of action around that. But it is, that's our, when I think about the future that's where I, that we've gotta preserve the Citadel as Ambassador Nusebe said, we've gotta hold on to what we've got and protect it and then make it more real every day. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Ambassador Curry. So Ambassador Nusebe, since you were mentioned several times, why don't we take two minutes for your closing remarks now, thanks. Thank you. Well, just to pick up on what Ambassador Kelly Curry said in her opening remarks about the moments of optimism and hope and how we can try and move that dial forward. We also believe that the recent peace agreement between Israel and the UAE supported by the United States so effectively is really going to be aimed at this benefiting of women and girls in our region, our shared region, but also around the world. And we know it's so pivotal for this sort of stable peace that we're all seeking. And I just wanted to touch on that in my closing remarks because sometimes with all the negativity and the sort of insurmountable challenges we feel we're facing, this was a moment of hope, I think, for others who also promote the equal integration of women into their society, into business, into academia. And I think that one of the ways this agreement will do that is by providing women in the region greater economic opportunity. So according to the IMF, the losses to an economy from economic disempowerment of women is estimated at the range of 10% of GDP in advanced economies and more than 30% of GDP in South Asia and the MENA region. So we're already seeing the development of partnerships between Emirati and Israeli women that I think is so inspiring just recently, business women met as part of the Gulf Israel Women's Forum. And so I think for creating that people to people grassroots peace building, this is really going to be an essential component of that. And more recently, the governments of the UAE, Israel and the US have just announced the creation of a $3 billion investment fund called the Abraham Fund that's going to seek to promote investment and development in the West Bank, in Israel, in the MENA region, and hopefully bring up women in that program as well. So I hope that is seen as a positive sign for what can be done in the region when we change our dynamic and our mindset. Thank you so much, Lana. I'd like to go to Ambassador Ramini. Thank you. I echo what has been said by all the panelists. So I want to emphasize on three points that are essential moving forward. Number one is preservation of the framework which Ambassador Currie eloquently spoke about. And for Afghanistan, that framework is our constitution or a framework that preserves the rights of women in a very explicit and ambiguous way. We cannot just leave it to some sort of a clauses or alternate to whether it is based on a faith or it is based on people's preferences or ambiguous clauses to be determined in the future. That framework is absolutely required for a durable peace to find its place and also a sort of peace that would be acceptable. What kind of peace would be acceptable to the whole of society, particularly women, is the one that would honor their dignity and freedom and treat them as equal citizens. So that's number one. Number two is as Ambassador Nasiba said very well regarding the action. Like it's not to have words in place, but we need to follow that with action. And with that action, we have to be very specific and determine phases, milestones, and resources that are required to put that in place. And for both of these, we have to also be realistic. We have to know that what's at stake. The reality is that right now, all over the world, we are not where we would like to be in regards to women's rights and equality. We are way behind. And in order to make this realistically happen, whether it's the implementation of a framework or actions on the ground, we need to empower women become real shareholders. How do we do that? Not only by securing place around the table to have them sit there, but to ensure that they have the right amount of share and safe for getting the decisions being made at the political level, their involvement at the security decisions being made, the notion of security is different for men and women. And this is something that we all know. There is numerous empirical examples of that. And then also in terms of their economic share and political share, as long as they remain secondary in terms of their share and less significant in that role, they would be always marginalized and their perspective not fully taken into consideration. So I echo that, yes, we have a lot more work to do. And it's eminent because if we don't move with the new world that we are facing, but the changing world that the COVID is unveiling the tip of it, that iceberg for us, we will be faced with the situation that we wouldn't know how to deal with. Thank you. Thank you so much, Roya. Councillor Santos, Heidi? I'm not sure. Maybe Heidi dropped or Heidi, are you on mute? OK, why don't we turn to Ambassador Marks for some final closing remarks. Thank you so much, Ambassador Marks. Thank you. I may I emphasize again, please, women's rights are human rights. When these rights are met and advanced, it will add exponentially and sustain the economies of Africa and the global economy and women's peace and security across the world. That's a perfect note to end on, Ambassador Marks. One that progress is being made, but certainly progress needs to continue. We need, as many of you spoke about, the codification of this progress in constitutions and governments and the way that they operate so that governance can ensure that individuals are treated equally in all societies. And I particularly like that the end, we could have spoken more and more on this point of the economic empowerment of women and how important that is for countries around the world. So I think a final theme that we talked about today is implementation. The focus on implementation, words are good and they're aspirational and goals are important and strategies are important. But I think all of you made the point that the expectations now are implementation on the key initiatives in all of your countries as well as internationally. So it's been a real pleasure getting to know you a little bit as much as possible through these mediums. We got Nadia, we did get Heidi back, so maybe she can wrap us up. Okay. All right, Heidi. Why don't we have a couple of remarks, a couple of minutes wrap up and then we'll end on your points. Thanks, Heidi. Thank you. I'm experienced off internet in problems. So Columbia will continue to support the Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security and to continue to advance the agenda while strengthening the normative framework. And also we would like to say that women's economic empowerment is an area that has not been developed in the women, peace and security agenda enough. And we believe that the promotion of legal economic opportunities for women in areas that have been co-opted by legal economies and like in Columbia is happening. It's critical to advance the participation in political process and to advance inequality gender. So thank you so much for this invitation. Thank you so much to everyone and especially Ambassador Curry who took the initiative of bringing us all together. It's been a wonderful morning and stay well everyone and best wishes. Thank you so much. Bye everybody, thanks. Thanks, friends. Have a great day. Good to see you. Bye. Have a great day.