 Hello everyone. We're just going to wait a few minutes for more people to join and then we will start moving. So hello everyone and welcome to the feminist leadership in disarmament. On today's webinar we'll be focusing on grassroots activism and its role in providing feminist perspectives to disarmament. And a very big welcome to our amazing speakers who I will go on to introduce later. And this webinar is the fourth automatic webinar as part of our broader feminist leadership in disarmament project, which includes a webinar series along with research opinion and blog posts as well as a social media campaign. The project's objectives is to raise awareness on the achievements and contributions of women working in the field with a focus on women from the global south. We also aim to explore the challenges that women face as they enter and progress in the field of disarmament. For this webinar, we aim to develop an understanding of the paramount importance of female activism and feminist parties, feminist perspectives for ensuring sustainable peace in human disarmament. We aim to provide a floor for female feminist activists and politicians from grassroots organizations to share their personal stories and experiences as members of armed groups and as leaders in frontline organizations in different countries. So another view of scrap weapons and what we do at scrap. So scrap weapons is a campaign that suggests adopting legal international agreements as a basis for general and complete global disarmament. At scrap weapons, we are constantly developing research projects about disarmament verification, emerging technologies, and of course feminism in this sector. And we hope to mobilize governmental, non-governmental economic and expert forces in support of the same outcome. So briefly, my name is Vanessa. I am an advocacy advisor at scrap weapons and along with my colleague today, we will be moderating this webinar. Before I hand over to Reem, that we have a particular feature today, which is that of translation, and therefore to be able to hear Reem, you would have to switch the translation button to Spanish. It states Spanish, but in reality is going to be a translation feature from Arabic. Yes, we can hear you. Is it for the speaking or just like, because things are quiet? Vanessa, can you hear me? Vanessa, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Reem, can you hear me? So, I believe we are still having some technical issues here. We still can't hear Sarah speak. Therefore, I would kindly pass the floor to Jaconda. Give her presentation. Thank you. So I did run a floor. Yes, you were Sarah. If you if you available to speak that would be great right now. And then Jaconda can just go after you. Okay, let her go. It looked like she hasn't started, but because I didn't hear anything. Let her go ahead and then I will follow her. Sorry about that. Yes, please. Then Jaconda, please. Thank you. Hi everybody. I'm very glad to be participating in this webinar from for scrap. What I can tell you is my experience was from a long time ago, I have to say that I was involved in the Sandinista Revolution in the 70s. This revolution triumphed in 1979. And a lot of us women were involved in many tasks in this revolution. The first thing I did was to be in the urban resistance. So we used to be able to work on keeping people safe, you know, people who were in safe houses, carrying them from here to there carrying weapons. We had to keep our identity. I was like we used to say a legal person that meant that I was not persecuted yet. And so I had a cover that allowed me to move around to do things that other people were not able to do. It was a good cover up for, you know, keeping the other members who were not who were clandestine informed about things and carrying mail at that time we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have facts, we didn't have computers. And so it was a lot of work to create this line of communication between the clandestine resistance so that we were a lot of women who were working to facilitate those things until we were spotted by the security police. And then we had to go in hiding or we had to go into exile. So in my case I went into exile after I was spotted by the security police. They followed me like for two months constantly. And I wasn't sure what they were going to do. I wasn't sure if they were going to detain me but they didn't detain me. I was able to resist, you know, and it was horrible because I had two kids and I had to, I was always afraid that they will come in barging in the middle of the night to get me. But then I was able to once they caught the person who I was most work closer with, I had to leave the country and I left. I went to Mexico, and I went into Costa Rica. I had gotten some military training so I got more military training. And I was in charge of logistics operations in Costa Rica. I also had civilian responsibilities like be the liaison for the support we got in Costa Rica from diplomats from other countries from the same Costa Rican government. And as I said before I had two kids. So for me it was quite complicated to have two daughters doing all these things plus I had to work to make my living. So I worked during the day, then during the night in Costa Rica I would do all my clandestine affairs and go talk to people. And I had a lot of logistics responsibilities, like I had to bring for example all the weapons for one assault. And I did participate in an assault when I was in Nicaragua. I was in charge of getting all the logistics again for this assault. And that was successful. It was a very successful assault where you know only one people died and it was a guys took a house that were a lot of some of sisters were having a party and we asked for a lot of things to release the hostages. And we asked for, you know, the liberation of all our comrades who were in jail and playing and a million dollars, and they finally had to, to, to agree to all of these things. And it was not, it was a bloodless a command or action. That was in 74. And then you know, then in 78, the revolution triumphed in 79, we were able to create a very strong presence internationally. We were able to also supply our troops with a lot of materials with a lot of weapons, a lot of neat things that were needed, because it was a very strong armed struggle. So most I had a, you know, a regular army and we were a guerrilla army. So, you know, at some point with, we had a place near Costa Rica where we did have a kind of regular struggle regular with regular weapons, what is called a war of positions, not a war of, not a guerrilla affair but inside the country there was a lot of guerrilla affairs going on. And the women mostly wearing support rose, there were a lot of women fighting inside the country. The first, in fact, the first liberated city in Nicaragua during that the liberation war was liberated by five women. And the first city was a woman that was in charge of the, you know, of the taking of the city. So women had an important position in, you know, in the guerrilla actions inside Nicaragua, when we were at that war, and then we had what was called the Contra war. We had the Contra war, which was the United States decided to, that we were communists and dangerous in Nicaragua. So they armed the Somoza army that had been left from the struggle. They armed them and then we had a nine year war. And there, you know, the Sandinistas, when they came to power, they decided that women should not be in the army. That was one of the things that us women got very mad about. But they said that it was very complicated to have women and men in the barracks and the logistics of having women and men together. And then, you know, so women were in administrative positions in the army. But when we had this Contra war, it was mostly men, men were the ones who went out in the field, we had a military recruitment. That was obligatory. And I lost myself. That was obligatory and then it was very hard to experience war in these terms for me personally with my kids. And I had to, you know, I believe that motherhood is not compatible with war. And like Alberto Moravia, this Italian writer said motherhood is not compatible with the atomic bomb. We are a, we have, we are much better at disarmament. I think we had an experience in Nicaragua when our first women president Violeta Chamorro was the one who won the elections in 1990 against the Sandinistas. And she had a very important role in disarming what was left of the Contras and of that war that we had for many years that was very painful. It cost us like 30,000 people were killed in that war. So we have had this process of disarmament and trying to put into place the ethic of caring for women. That is my personal position. I think we women have a very important role to play in disarmament in trying to stop all these wars in trying to create forms of dialogue and communication. I think women in that regard, we have a very, an experience that is very valuable for, for, sorry, I'm having trouble with this. This is very valuable. And I think I'm glad I am able to come here and tell you about this. It's because we are again having a problem with now this, the guy who was the head of the Sandinistas has become a tyrant. We came back to power. And now we are having another kind of war, not a war precisely but a very repressive regime. And but this time we have decided to be pacifists and not get involved in another war. We have suffered so much from one war after another. So and I think women are playing an important part in keeping this civic outlook going. Thank you. Thank you so much for for that presentation, Jaconda. I particularly loved the emphasis you made on how a feminist perspective or a view of you brought about by by a feminist lens emphasizes the humanization of the disarmament process and how important the civil society is in in the process. So thank you so much for that. I will now go on to introduce our next speaker who it's Sarah. So Sarah was born. Yes, I'm just going to briefly introduce you first and then I'll leave the floor to you Sarah. Sarah was born in an Italian refugee camp in Ethiopia in 1970. She is a mother and a grandmother as well. Sarah joined the armed group in the sedans people liberation movement and army in 1988 and she was a nurse. After returning from training in Cuba, and she served in the bright star campaign and was a leader for female soldiers in the SDLMA. Sarah worked in health centers for refugees in Ethiopia and Kenya, and she founded and is the current director of the gender empowerment for South Sudan organization. Sarah is also a former MP in the upper now states legislative assembly and later as Minister of Social Development in the upper now state. Sarah is also a delegate in the high level revitalization forum for the IGAD led mediation on South Sudan. Sarah, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you rim. And greetings to all South America, the Arab world Europe and Africa, those that are listening. I'm happy to be here and scrap weapons. And today, I am pleased to be with you guys. Yeah, I don't know. Are you able to see me. Yes. My stories as a rim as already Vanessa has already introduced you to be who I was. I think there is really little to even add my genesis as you hear. I was born to a family of liberators mom and dad to the other that is why I ended up being born in Ethiopia refugee camp each time. And the family. I think they're background artists people who believe in liberty, you know you are born liberal and you have to maintain that they don't believe in operation and segregation and marginalization. And I think with this one was socialize in that kind of environment. So I became a very tender age as a child soldier. I was in the farm, which was then the headquarter of the people liberation army people liberation movement in 1985. At that time, I was underage for sure. And we were trained basic trainings, and then on we benefited in the easiest to be in Cuba. And from Cuba, I gained to be trained as an auxiliary nurse, and because of curiosity and desire of continuing. People getting me. Are we together. Yes. Yeah, then I did auxiliary nursing, which I felt that on my tender age, if I come back to the movement, I would contribute, I will contribute to my people, you know, in the struggle. Okay, and we ended up now in the tree headquarter training headquarter, where I further went through training in 1988. Now at least to be a proper soldier, but at the same time saving the forces under the new recruits under training, which was then into father into SAR and so on and so forth. After that, Ethiopian government drug as when it, you know, after Cold War, most of the communism socialist countries in Africa, lost together with Russia. And so Ethiopian government also, which was then a strong supporter of SPL SPLM had to lose. And this force, force us out of Ethiopia. But even before that, I was assigned to brighter star campaign and mostly on in the headquarter where the miners, the young, the younger, the young one are being trained in a place called Demas I went there with my, with my skill to conserve them as a medical cop. So when they're, and one try to, to, to even acquire further studies because of course, I had to do excellent nursing, so that I can contribute in the struggle. I felt they should be need but that they're not, they're not get enough chance. So we ended up in South Sudan soil, where we went through a lot of challenges. You know, the government of Sudan was pursuing us. The current government of Ethiopian which was then oil it was also pursuing us. So we become criminal in two, in two countries. It wasn't that easy. Young age, a girl in in service. It was never easy because I was still a girl. I was separated from my parents. So they are in a place called Pakok. A clinic was set. We have very limited resources. And we had a lot of cases of sickness of incident of, you know, all those, and you had to deal with them one way or the other. I remember when a ICF, a French, a French organization, how to come in and I think this is when I understood the importance of these international relief and humanitarian respawn agencies. We came at the right time that the ICRC also came in and we were forced to clear airstrip. You know, he didn't have tools but we have to use all that we have to survive. And I remember a great biscuit, which they call BB five, save a lot of lives, trust me. So from there we move on later on because the government was recapturing places that we capture earlier. We were dealing also at this time with the within the movement and this became the worst of all, you know, the internal now added even to already suffering population, and particularly the young ones, the more, you know, furthering the suffering, but we have to deal with it. Now, my experience, while we were in, I'm taking us a little bit back. As in the training. One of the things that remember a challenge really that one went through is that we were trained had there was nothing like you are young know you have to go through whatever Nadal goes. And what different would be, you know, when when when we're practicing operating and shooting off of guns is where you will, you will have a different because you know they are those weapons that are requiring certain weight and capacity and physical strength for you to shoot, but otherwise any other any other weapon that fit with your age and and your body size and muscles. We were, but any other training. Trust me, we have gone through it all. We went through it all. This one find it a little bit hard because there was no consideration with age factor. It's not about about girl but rather each we felt the would have been consideration about each you know there's certain thing you have to know this person body wise as you know, an atom wise as not yet, you know fully grown to that to that level of kind of training, but we went through. The other thing is that the always for us who are younger, we tend to be abuse in so many ways. We went through a lot of physical abuse you are came for nothing you are, you know, we went through all that and which was not even part of training but it looked like some. I used to see them like the cowards who can talk to their fellow men, they come and resort into a busy as the weak one. They want to come and show how much it would be. The other thing is that which I felt was not right is that we were never given any leadership empowerment, you know, like you are given a skill so that you become a decision maker. You can analyze you know analytical capacity where as people who need to survive who were denied those were denied those and it was like as if there was a program to hold you hostage of your ignorance of certain things, and it was done by design. So what they, they feel much feed you with, you know, the hatred of the current regime, you are fed, you are fed up, you can kill them, you know, there is no compromise and all that you are being brainwashed basically. And good thing is that because one has been in Cuba. That sometimes you would be like, you know, little education we go again in Cuba would cause you to reason a little bit like, wow, should this be that shouldn't be any different. You know, if I'm being trained to be a capable, you know, soldier, there should be maybe an element that should be added or as an element that should not have been included. Because this become like we are just being mulled into this kind of pathetic kind of soldiers, which to me, you know, I remember there is this song, a great song that is well known in the SPL that even your own father you can kill. So the question would be if your father or your mother you can kill, then whom are you liberating, you know. This is a question I always ask myself, if I'm being told to kill my own, then who is this that the liberation is turning for a question even up to today I've not gotten an answer to it. So, in those training, there was nothing like a consideration that God has created us differently. There was nothing like that. The only difference is that girls they have their rooms or rather their compound or their dormitories and boys. But beside that there is nothing like when we talk about, you know, the necessities that God made us to be women. There was nothing like that, you know, and we know that the movement has a way to survive here and there. But because in the missions where the movement is selling it ideas and acquiring resources, it never considered that within our forces we have got female. We should have a special consideration, not because of anything special, but because the way God has made them to be women. It was lacking. It was zero percent. And this subject some of us into, you know, like you are there and you are constantly being reminded of being women, especially when you are having that special time in the month, you know, where you may need to be considered that you are not that so well because others come with cramp or others come heavy and they needed, you know, not to be humiliated in the forces, especially when there is activities to be done. There was nothing like that. There was absolutely 100% nothing like that. And so we were also facing some psychological torture within within the forces, you know, as many soldiers. The other thing is that there was also no capacity building much in upgrading the girls. Like giving ranks, they are the least we are being trained and and the worst part, especially when they see you like you should be there as a cook. You know, you go through this other training, but you are good to the cooking aspect of things. You know, you are being reminded, by the way, even if you could be an officer to steal your place should be where women are. If other things are being done, you are not being given those concentration. So there was an element of abuse. There was an element of abuse. Now, coming to women perspective in the army. Much of it was the negative part, not the positive part that women would have added value, you know, the level of intelligence, the talent that could be promoted. It has never haven't seen it in our forces during the liberation. Neither was our contribution promoted to be let to know that yes, even the generalize of the marginalized are women and I SPLA agenda is also to see to it that the world should be aware within our forces we have good women. And if there is any knowledge that extra knowledge that others have this experience could be adapted to improve female cadres. And in the movement, there was nothing like that. So our agenda was not being sold. We only have to benefit, maybe outside the red army, because we were at army so when the word go out of red army then you identify because we're done, but there was nothing official about you as a woman, because of how God created you. Now, when it come to disarmament by the time we are coming to get out is mostly life for me it is true marriage and is what also I saw from most of my male comrades. We all left to lay down because of marriage. You are married and then you ended up in a mother of course and that you know like my, my sister my previous speaker mentioned that you know any other way, but there is nothing like, okay, this is a time you can be given. You know, like a program or a strategy to say when our female cadres has to be you know when it reached. A strategy for them now to transit from being active soldiers or officer or cadres to when they become families and, and if they have to continue for example, how do they need to continue there was nothing like that. It would be you to use your national national instinct to see whether it is right time for you to move on otherwise you can always be just there and they will take pleasure in doing whatever. And the saddest thing was like we didn't have a female soldier I mean a female officer in all that my assignment I never come across a female officer that would be my line leader. I never seen that I've always been under the male counterpart leaders who do as they wish, and I'm always the, you know, the subordinate or the junior to be dealt with in the harsh way possible. Thank you so much for that Sarah. I really, really do love the emphasis that you just made on the last part on the importance of having female mentors for for young girls who who are engaged in disarmament I really loved the emphasis you made on leadership training of mentoring. And in that respect, we actually have a webinar on the 28th of April that will be focused solely on that topic therefore will provide the link so that if anyone is interested in furthering topic they can register and learn more about how training and mentorship programs work for female young women who are engaged in disarmament. At this point I would love to pass the floor to our third speaker who is not yet. That is currently a PhD student in psychology and social issues facing the free refugees in the UK. She has national women movement in Sudan, and she is a co founder of women for peace and security in Sudan, and also a member in the coordination committee of Sudanese women in civic and political groups. Now you have to join the armed group, the Sudan people liberation movement or army in 2002, and she is the deputy head of the movement's office in cartoon state. Now yet also negotiated on the movements behalf in the Judah platform and was responsible for the IDPS and the refugee file for the party during the negotiations. The floor is yours may ask thank you. Sorry everyone due to logistical issues I'm going to be speaking and then I'll be translating after her because we just couldn't make the simultaneous translation work we apologize for that again. Peace be upon you all. How are you doing? How are you doing? I am Najas Reyman Mustafa, I am from the north of Darfur region. My name is Ambarou, and I am from the north of Darfur region. I am a citizen of the East. I am a citizen of the East. I am going to be translating after her. Okay, she just wants to, she just said hello to everyone and she's very pleased to be here with her fellow comrades. And this is Najas, she is from north Darfur. She is from, like her village is Ambarou, which is very close to the border between Sudan and Chad, and she is going to now talk about her experience. This is the first thing I would like to apologize for being a citizen of Sudan. I was very young in middle school, and I always heard that there was a war in the south of Sudan. This is why I am in Darfur. We are the Sudanese army, the south of us, and we were the ones who killed the people in Sudan. 90% of the people of Darfur were from the south of Sudan. I would like to remind you of the young doctor who was also in Darfur. She just wanted to apologize to Sarah because basically the war on south Sudan, most of the soldiers in the Sudanese army So she knew about the war from a very young age when she was in school and she heard about it. And one of her brothers died in the war actually because she feels that he was brainwashed. So she said that I mean from the very beginning she was against what was going on in south Sudan, the war on south Sudan, and that was being done in the name of religion. Of course, Darfur is back in the country. The Sudanese forces, of course, we were the ones who killed 56 people in the year of destruction. But in the name of Europe and Islam, I mean, it saved me in the name of religion. I am not speaking, I am saying that you are a Muslim, and these are the people of Darfur. And they have goals, and Israel is inside with them. I don't know America, but we are important in the brainwashing of religion. And as for Darfur, we have a number of important movements. I know Darfur in the Red Army from the time of the British. There are a lot of revolutionaries, and the Sunni in Niala, and Dawood in Heboilat. There was also a group of people who were killed in the mountains. These are all the revolutionaries that were important. But the same revolutionaries and the same people, they were in power at the time. It was really a power, but the idea was like a battle. The idea was alive, the idea of the revolution was alive. And there were people who gathered before 2002. The people gathered, and the people were in the battle, the second movement, they were in official rule. The first movement was organized by a group of Germans, who are in the number of groups, who are from here, from the regime. And the movement of Tahrir-e-Soudan, of course, they are a group of young people, the so-called Red Army. They came up with this idea, and some of them were in the mountains, they were in the role of Abdul Wahid Noor. And some of them were in the role of Abdul Wahid Noor, in the role of Abdul Wahid Noor, in the role of Abdul Wahid Noor, in the role of Abdul Wahid Noor, in 19-year-old groups, some of them were not even from the Army, some of them were all from the army, and their last name was the armed forces. So Da'furo has always been marginalized, you know, to the independence. They were always told to be quiet and not to show any kind of resistance. Different conflicts were kind of raged against them of religion. And she said that for a long time people were brainwashed and some began organizing and they began organizing kind of in a revolutionary way but unfortunately they were killed off as individuals or as groups by the government so but she said that ideas don't die and at the end of the day the ideas kept moving forward until two main armed groups were established in 2002. One is called justice and equality movement led by you know some like professionals and another movement led by young Ben called Sudan Liberation Army and Movement and it was led by different commanders. The two the two prominent ones are Minyamin Naoui and Abdul Wahid Nur. In 2002 she was in Saudi Arabia working at the time there and then when she heard about the movements being established Gem and SLA she decided even without knowing the revision or their objective she decided that if this is a movement that is going to fight for the marginalized people and therefore she's going to join and she announced that she's going to join the SLA and she said even her husband at the time told her that you should join Gem but because she was so frustrated at the government which is which was Islamist and Gem was considered an Islamist movement she decided to join the more progressive SLA and Sudan Liberation Army and Movement and this is how she became a member of SLA. She said that at the time so she's she began finding the members who are in the members from the movement who are in Saudi Arabia she would meet she would go to meetings and then at the time when she when she became like unemployed and not working the minute like she'd wake up in the morning she would start making phone calls recruiting people to the movement calling people into that in Saudi Arabia in different places attracting them to the to the movement and she would even call people in her village and she said that at the time the one of the problems that she was facing is that her family she comes from a family who are part of the native administration or the tribal administration in her area and she had to speak to them and tell them do not stand against this this armed movement you have to even if you don't want to support them do not stand against them and make sure that that you don't share their news and she said that at the time she was able to recruit a lot of people into the movement and especially young people so 2005 she came back to Sudan with her family and then she started working for the favor of the movement so basically she started advocating with her family and with her relatives who at the time were in the IDP camps internally displaced people's camps in Chad and then she started working with university students so every time she would hear about any gathering for students from therefore at the different universities she would go and she would speak to them and she would start recruiting them to join the movement so she said 2004 2005 many youth people joined many youth joined the movement because they really believe that it is the way forward for them and it is going to bring change to therefore so she said that and this was her role and at the time she didn't have a title in the movement but she just really believed in it and its vision and she wanted it to succeed she wanted it to achieve its goals she said that women were very instrumental in the success of the movement so women in the field in different places in therefore they did a lot of logistics women would take food to the to the movement to the army basically component of the movement they would take any food that they could afford any food that they could gather taking even sometimes using their own personal resources to support the movement and they would also take they would transport the guns to the movement so they would take they would get bring wood and they would hide the guns inside the wood and then they would carry it on their head pretending that they're going to collect wood or that they are returning from collection of wood and they would go up the mountain to the movement to their camps and give and and transport the weapons and so on so this is the instrumental role that women would play and there's so many other roles that she wants to talk about So like and there were a lot of young women who studied IT and had knowledge in like you know IT and computer science so they would pretend that they are selling vegetable so they would write their donkeys and take with them a lot of vegetables and go to the market pretending that they are you know vegetable sellers but then they would meet you know men from the movement in the market and they would give them psorias phones and then they would hide it in their vegetables and then they would come back and and fix the psorias phones and return them in the same way so they would do different roles just so just as a cover basically and to make sure that they don't get exposed yes so and she said that women were basically like the security wing of the movement so they were the ones that they would you know watch the government watch the army what they're doing and what is happening in the city analyze the contents and then they would basically rely this information to the movement to make sure that they are giving them security and intelligence information that they could use to make their like to basically to protect themselves so in 2006 there was a peace agreement that was signed between the movement and between the government and the movement was able to come to her tomb especially its leaders but then this is when she saw that women were excluded so there were only two women in the leadership of the of the movement only two of two of them and one of them appeared in the during the negotiations during the negotiation round the sixth round of the negotiations that actually led to the to the signing of the peace agreement so women became once again the thousands of women who were supporting and who were working with the movement and who were supporting them in the field during the the past few years became kind of an accessory an afterthought you know and they were excluded again from the different leadership you know structures of the movement after the peace agreement were signed was signed okay we will stop here to give Shirin a chance to talk and we will return later if there are any questions so much for that Arim and thank you Najat so much for your for your contribution I very much appreciated once again the emphasis that you made on these structures that are designed for men and by men which don't really give the space to women to actually thrive in and therefore they need to to to be changed and I would now pass the mic on to Shirin but before that I would love to to introduce our final speaker for today so Shirin is the global partnership for the prevention of armed conflict and the me she she is the mean originally is an officer apologies for the global partnership for the prevention of armed conflict. Shirin also volunteers as executive member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in the Lebanon section and since 2003 she has been a stop killer but campaigning leader in Lebanon and as mentioned before she is a regional gender focal point for various international boards. I would love to pass the mic on to you Shirin now the floor is yours thank you. Thank you so much Vanessa I was enjoying every second of the talk of the previous speakers thank you so much Najat Sarah and Uganda for the wonderful experiences that you have lived and which makes my work so relevant to say that I will work and I feel that my work is something that your children will not have to live what you have lived. What I do mainly is I do grassroots activism so that we can push forward the agendas of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in terms of the Women's Peace and Security and the ATT and the POA Plan of Action but let me start with my presentation I was really like just flowing with the with the presentations thank you so much let me go back now to Mena to talk about the some of the root causes of conflict and the MENA region include the ongoing militarization of societies, reprisals against peace builders and women peace builders and activists, social and gender inequalities, high number of refugees and IGPs, high rates of unemployment poverty and illiteracy even before the consequences of COVID-19 and patriarchal stereotypes missed opportunities of development throughout a long history along the MDGs and SDGs. This is a background that we need to know about the MENA and the Arab world that we that I'm going to focus on. The Arab world presents only five percent of the world population at the same time the region receives 36 percent of the world's armed trade five of the top 10 arms importing countries also belong to this region. We know that small arms like weapons are further used to facilitate sexual and gender-based violence, increase number of child soldiers as we heard now Sarah and reinforces violent gender patriarchal masculine social norms. So what if all these factors are not do not have regulated they do not have regulations of any meaningfully implemented laws by absence of national mechanisms and regional mechanisms. This is also a question that we need to see within the Arab region. I will divide my talk into two parts. The first part I will cover my work within WOLF, a project that we were working on and the second part will be on the work that I do with CHIPAC. Within the work that I've done with WOLF 11 and section we had a small project last year in 2020 to talk about the misuse and use of a small arms and light weapon and the GBV. The project was a result of certain recommendations of a UPR on Lebanon that we also submitted with WOLF Secretariat. Lebanon definitely has many issues that we can cover. First if we look at now also Najat was talking about the war at the end of war the peace processes GDR and the role of women and like what happens after world war. In Lebanon we did not have a GDR. We did not have a transitional justice and hence issues are very much complicated. Between 2007 and 2007 we had almost 750,000 small arms light weapon. In 2017 we had 1,927,000 small arms light weapon while we had only 30,000 license in general 135 of which were allocated to women. So just with this picture we can see what kind of gender imbalance we have, what kind even of violations to the national laws of Lebanon where the weapons and ammunition law does not approve of acquisition of arms outside the military security official forces. Second thing Lebanon became a state party of the ATT in 2019. Lebanon had its first national action plan of 1325 also in 2019. Lebanon was passing through a revolution in 2019 where it set the issues of state building and definitely issues of arms, issues of equality, issues of state building and the rule of law. So these were all factors that led us to do this study. The study had objectives in terms of how much women are aware of the national laws, how much they're aware of the international laws and how we wanted to know how did the NGOs who work on GBV do trainings or capacity building to their staff or to women to be able to report cases and violations of usages and misusages of small arms and light weapon. One more point is that the Lebanese national action plan had at its second strategic priority the issue of small arms, light weapon in terms of its prevention lens. I think the Lebanese national action plan is one of the best national action plans in terms of prevention lens. This is not to talk about implementation. I'm talking in general about the nap itself. So during the implementation of the project we had many challenges differently. COVID was a challenge and one of the most important challenges was the Lebanon explosion that you were all most probably aware of. This explosion by itself is something we need also to see. Like how come a 34.7 azod ammonia nitrate product were present in Lebanon for such a long time with no kind of like monitoring or like how to deal with it within the official military institutions. So within this or this background we can see the kind of work that we're dealing with and definitely of the findings that we had because of the political confessional system that we have in Lebanon because of the lack of representation of women in the decision making level because of the inability for rotation of power in within the Lebanese context. We can see that corruption and inability to have a management for conflict or crisis were prevailing in Lebanon. Second thing we saw that there were no documentation of gender segregated data on the survivor of all victims of violence especially or like connotation of whether this kind of violence was a result of weapons or was it a result of any kind of method that there was no mention at all. We had also like to see what kind of training the NGO related to GBV had to work on and one of the most important things that the findings of the study will tackle is the missed opportunity that the National Action Plan could have had in the sense that the NAP though it included the small arms light weapon as one of its strategic priorities yet it was unable to to have as civil society as implementers or participants of this indicator and this brings us to our first challenge that we have in terms of the Lebanese system which is the politicization of the small arms light weapon. It's time for us to humanize it. It's time for us to look at small arms light weapon that kills people that kills people whether at home whether at the street in an unlawful way not in a politicized way not in the way that politicians have been able to survive the system through maybe giving license to people without taking into account records or criminal records and such. So this is in general I want to sum up the small arms light weapon survey. I want to also hear to mention I will put it later on in that chat there was a song lately after the new year by a lady talking about small arms light weapon and the implications of these small arms weapon how they're used by cultural and like a traditional way of celebrations or incliners or or even like when a son gets a good grade in school people will just have these bullets everywhere and many people die out of these stray bullets so it's a very very interesting song that I will share shortly. Now I will come to the second part of my talk which is the work that we do in Egypt and here I want to I want to wish also like Najat to to be part of this because we have Sudan also as part of this just I want to note that this work with with wealth was funded by the Secretariat now I'm going to talk about the work that we've done within G Park within the Women, Peace and Security Coalition which was funded in 2020 by the Dutch and till 2020 as well because it was our annual plan and in 2021 it's funded by CEDA so our work and the vision that we have within G Park was within the issue that the trajectory of conflict in Middle East and North Africa does not respect political or territorial boundaries as the majority of security challenges including small arms that weapon circulation are cross-border in nature so we think that the slightest increase in violence and humanitarian instability exerts pressure on and leads to further insecurity in the entire region that's why the proliferation of small arms and light weapon is maintained through patriarchal social belief in the militarized defense so our network of peace builders in MENA have decided to now I'm going to declare something which which I'm glad to to to announce it in here in the this on this panel with this with these marvelous ladies so first I'm going to cover three points first point that we think of and we we think that this is how we want to feminize the issue of disarmament is the transformation towards human security we need to move away from patriarchal idea that defense and militarization come hand in hand with security instead we need to engage with communities to identify and understand and understand the root causes of conflict and support them in preventing conflict and sustaining peace we need to establish early warning early response systems with community monitors in the region who can collect data analyze it and work in multi-stakeholders and gender and age inclusive manner to find the solutions at GPAC we have been setting the networks capable of gathering and analyzing this data through both of like our youth peace and security coalition and our work that we do within the YPS network where we came up to to think that a community activist together to inspire local ownership people centered approach and inclusive decision making through a regional coalition that we have named a small arms light weapon in manna region with an objective to end a small arms light weapon violations in terms of gender and youth perspective so this is something that we are doing at a regional level with the with 16 countries that we have within menna part second is the focus on building national capacities to implement its disarmament obligation and stop conflicts from arising or prevent their continuation so this includes promoting disarmament as a critical peace building priority second to support capacities of member states to regulate arms and establish early warning mechanisms third to ensure that security sector reform and ddr programs as components of peace processes and not as a post-agreement undertaking just as sarah was complaining now in this sense this armament effort needs to take into consideration not only gender impact on women but also needs to generate data about how many women have access and use arms third and final point is the shift of focus towards development countries in menna region are lacking behind in their sdg implementation because of the conflict however the implementation of the sdgs provides a platform for integrating peace building into national development plans and cooperation frameworks ensuring that resources are allocated to efforts dedicated to addressing risks and sustaining peace building strong societies and institutions combating corruption reducing inequality and vulnerabilities are all components critical for advancing peace building sustaining peace at the national level so what i'm saying it's not a revolutionary recommendations based on something that we do not know however gaining political will and encouraging accountability for the implementation of international legal and policy frameworks remain a challenge once more shift that we can do is allowing local peace builders young women young men young people women refugees to be part of the dialogue give them an active role build their sense of ownership and trust and trust them and becoming a meaningful and intentional partners partners at all spheres of society from this armament to social development to defense these are mainly my messages for today thank you back to you valessa thank you so much for that shreen i see for a lot of your presentation and i really really did love the emphasis you made on the importance of civil society the importance of the people who must most of times we are advocating on behalf for therefore i would love to now move on to the q&a session due to time constraints i would love to just ask one question directed to the whole panel and then we will end our webinar here so the question i would love to know is you all in one way or the other talked about the importance of civil society you talked about the importance of mentorship and the importance of leadership as well as the role that international organizations can play in terms of building building these movements and actually making it easier to actually for for these movements to thrive and therefore the question that i would love to ask is what would be the one advice that you could give to an international organization that wants to help address and tackle the issues that feminist leaders in their organizations or feminist leaders in disarmament are feeling to whoever would like to to start and then you just pass the mic on thank you anyone coming back yes please sarah well my message that i could leave with everyone is that um based on my experience one thing i've known is that ignorance is the biggest we're on economic is the second like currently in south sudan even though we have an independent country you would know the number of refugees that has gone to the nearby countries is greater than than when we were fighting as sudan you know and and the whole issue is the ignorant label it is a big problem that need to be fought because it is about the citizen if the citizen doesn't know how or his own right it can be exploited second is about the economic today this flourishing of a slight weapon or even the medium weapons is becoming a business okay it become a business and those who buy it they don't use it to to intimidate or go and loot others like you can hear there is a lot of reading um if these two can be given a priority and women are encouraged to really take their place because one thing uh by the way let me not say that when i was a soldier i just went out as as as a as a vulnerable today my voice amongst us to the news woman i am proud and i didn't i didn't i didn't uh devolve this resilient out of blue from my pain i went through it i actually build resilience i can understand and and i feel that i own and i have right like any other man and i think this is also something that should be encouraged among women that they whether the decision is being made they should have representative they don't need to beg they need to go and say this is our problem our space they have to create their own place they shouldn't expect others to create for them what we need from our other sisters other sisters can hold our hand to help us reach out where we want to reach for example give us the knowledge that we needed and give us the the skill that to reach there so that we know well when i don't you are there you are out there that i can phone and you can say okay where is your hand i can i can actually pull you up to here but you have to climb yourself like like you can hear about bilateral trilateral these are guys doing this lateral where are the women lateral when are women are going to have this bilateral and trilateral we need also to to to to to establish you know or create that platform where women they have to identify and just go not just by voice by by action this is all i can say thank you thank you so much for that sarah um shreen would you like to go after yeah thank you so much sarah for that thank you venosa for that question definitely i would say first listen to us we are not numbers we don't die in numbers we die in names and we're dying lately so much and everywhere in the world it's time not only to listen to us listen to us and act accordingly i think programs like the secretary general was calling about the meaningful participation of women to cease fire so these are all like calls that we need to to refer to and to make the international community donors the member states accountable for that accountability is major in here what we need at the national level we need to have knowledge generation we need women in rural areas women everywhere to know about the rights about the international mechanisms that go to this armament about the right to live in peace i mean like it's it's not easy for somebody to to be living with somebody who has the pistol everywhere at home without taking into into account i mean like in the first place there's no need to have this weapon but if so there are certain regulations that we need to follow for us as the grassroots and the regional networks i think a long-term flexible funding is very important for us to have holistic and really impactful work we do lots of work we do lots of work sometimes it's it's gone unrecognized we need also to to raise the issue of the role that the peace builders work and to try to support them what is needed is gender aggregated data collections this is a must last i think the international community has to abide by even if they are state party or not with the ATT it's something we need to to abide by we need to look at the international at the development of the artificial intelligence and we need to stop any kind of development in terms of the killer robots and to have a treaty a binding treaty where a human control is there we need to name and change the countries that send weapons to states such as alibia or yemen or syria or iraq or lebanon or i mean like when you're sending weapons do you expect it like to be a flower when you're sending weapons to a conflict area where where you have no mechanisms of the rule of law where you have this conflict this weapon is going to kill people last thing i want also like the grassroots organizations in the countries that that have these weapon industry also to hold their governments accountable we need to to work together i mean it's it's two ways like they need to help us and they we we need also to give them information to give them information we need to collect data we need to be working we need to work and we need to utilize the social media maybe through scarf maybe through control arms maybe through the killer robots campaign through wealth richly critical wealth through g-packs networks so we have all these international networks that that have their grassroots activism that we need to support thank you vanessa thank you so much syrian for for the answer unfortunately joconda had to leave us due to time constraints therefore um the last person addressing this question will be nijat negat side She is saying that there are two important things, the first thing is that international organizations should support in the implementation of the Juba peace agreement for peace with Sudan that was signed last year and her movement is actually part of the signatories to the Juba peace agreement. So this agreement is very important for her and she feels that it should be supported by the international organizations and the international community especially the part on security arrangements because this is where the peace process materializes on the ground. Another thing she was saying is that SSR is very important and so far women have not been part of any conversation on SSR so women should be integrated on the top on SSR because there were so many female combatants who fought in the field for so long and the female combatants should be integrated into the SSR and into the security arrangement processes. Another thing is Sudan has a national action plan on resolution 1325 so it should also be implemented because it's going to solve a lot of issues related to protection and security for women and this is a priority and a lot of technical like help is needed to make sure that it's implemented. Thank you so much for that answer. Najat and thank you so much to all our speakers today. I truly appreciate the fact that you found time to be with us despite your busy schedules so our webinar is now coming to an end. Our next webinar in the series is scheduled for the 28th of April and it's going to be on funding training and mentoring opportunities and obstacles for women in disarmament and that is a topic that we did touch on quite a bit in this webinar therefore if you're interested please find more information on our websites or on our social media platforms or by using the link in the chat box. Thank you so much to all our panelists and to everyone who attended today. We hope that you enjoyed it and had a good time and please keep an eye on our social media outlets for more information. Thank you so much to everyone. Thank you so much Vanessa and thank you Najat. Sorry it's acceptable, apology acceptable. Love you all guys and thank you again on 28th and happy