 I'm delighted to welcome you here this morning for our fourth annual Sheikah Fatima lecture. Today we have an opportunity to explore and discuss and celebrate the critical role that women have played in building peaceful and inclusive societies. We already know that women's peace and security is improved by women's engagement because otherwise the peace agreement becomes much more about power sharing. It's so important that women are not confined to the sidelines during peace building and far too often, in fact more often than not, they are not part of the final decision making. Women actually bring to the negotiating table different styles, different perspectives, different life experiences. And if you don't have half the population in mind, you're really going to have half of a peace process. Women and girls are at risk both in violent conflicts as well as dear natural disasters. They are huge victims of violent conflict, but they also play very instrumental roles in reproducing notions of the other or of hatred. In societies where there's often a deep norm of abuse, sexual violence, it's as if it gets heightened. It changes all the social contracts and so there is an opportunity to rewrite the social contract. The question is how do you do that without creating a backlash? Words on paper are essential, but they're not sufficient. So let's get as many words on paper as we can and then there's a standard for the work that we're doing. More than half the peace agreements end in the first five years of the ink going on the agreement pages. And that abrogation takes place and what we see more often than not are recurring conflicts in the same place. A significant reason is that women are not included. Those peace agreements have to be sold back in the community. So who has the most credibility? Warlords who are putting their AK-47s under the table and saying, I'll take the timber, you can have the lumber. Do they have the credibility back in the community? No. In our judiciary, for example, having female judges has an enormous effect on how justice is administered in the country. It brings a perspective to a number of our laws and court cases that was just missing before, so I think we've seen that impact. We have so much qualitative research and we can give story after story after story. More and more countries stepping up to the plate saying this is truly important. In Northern Ireland, they only got to the table by a guideline that was put together to ensure that others would get to the table and they took advantage of that opportunity to chisel out a space for themselves. In Darfur, which has had so many rounds of peace talks, women got into the talks in round six. The men are arguing about who gets the river, which defines the border. And everyone wants the river. And finally, a woman speaks up and said, you know, that river dried up. She knew it because women fetched the water. So that's not about the maternal instinct. That's just women know different things than the men know because of the social worlds. In Afghanistan, I've met so many amazing women who have come out from the strictures, not just of the Taliban, but really a culture that traditionally did not give women opportunities and have taken a whole new place in the lives of their families, in the lives of their societies. We have a very rich example in the Colombian peace agreement that was just concluded. And I think it set a new benchmark for what happens when women are included at the table. 30% of the FARC combatants were women. So they weren't only victims. They were also perpetrators. And so that more nuanced perspective of understanding women's role in society is so fundamental if a peace is going to be stable and secure and long-lasting. If you have women included significantly, then you have peace agreements lasting for 15 years and more. I think the reason for that when you break it down is essentially that women bring a whole-of-society, 360-degree approach to peace and security rather than a militaristic, power-sharing approach to a peace engagement. So they think about things like education, health, justice, reconciliation. And all of these are critical factors for stable and secure societies. Institution building comes out of a process in post-conflict societies. And the application of a gender lens in those situations is critical. I think from the outset, we're not just talking about token representation. Looking beyond that, we need to understand better what kind of impact they have in our societies when they are engaged in those sectors. We still are not where we need to be by a long stretch. It takes a very holistic, all-of-society approach to peace. And I think that's the essence that women brings to the table. It means that women are able to have that role. The more voices that you have around the table, even though it complicates those talks, the more likely you are to have long-lasting peace and security. If you don't have efforts made with women participating, it's highly unlikely that you're going to address issues so that that society can indeed embrace a better future than what it just came through. And it's not enough to educate girls and women. We have to educate all of us. And I think that's the most important part. It is all of us that can make a difference.