 in the room. That's always a good sign. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the President of the United States Institute of Peace, and I'm just delighted to welcome everybody here this morning. For those who are here for the first time, USIP is a federal independent organization that was founded 30 years ago with the vision of a world-free, violent conflict and a mission of finding practical solutions and tools and training to enable that to happen. This is an important event because as the world proclaimed 15 years ago with the passage of the UN Security Resolution 1325, we need to tackle violence against women, and that is core to envisioning a world without violent conflict. We're here in the 15th year of the passage of 1325 at a time where there's been significant and important progress on that agenda and raising awareness and tackling violence against women even in very difficult places like the Democratic Republic of Congo. I was speaking earlier this morning with Mrs. Zainab who was telling me some of the stories of progress in the DRC. We had Madame Mabunda here last week, so there is good progress on that front. At the same time, we're seeing this uptick of just terrible violence as we see Boko Haram in Nigeria, we see ISIL in Syria and Iraq, and so we have a whole new set of challenges that we need to get our best thinking around as we're looking at the impact of violent extremism, particularly on women, particularly with the terrible ways in which violent extremism is affecting even targeting women. So the key point of today's event is to bring together the best thinking and a lot of the expertise that has been focused on 1325, preventing and enabling women to deal with sexual violence over the last 15 years, and bringing that together with the energy and the expertise that's focused on countering violent extremism. And we need to bring the thinking and the expertise of these two communities together so that we can really move forward with energy, our best ideas and our best thinking on how to strengthen both the policy response and action around women and countering violent extremism. About a month ago, we had a group of women here from Africa, from Nigeria, Kenya, Mali, and Morocco, who were gathered here to talk about their experiences in countering violent extremism and how they, through some of the programming that's starting to evolve, had really enabled their voices to be more important in their families and in their communities, to have alternative interpretations of the Quran, of speaking out when maybe their sons or daughters began to drift towards extremist behavior. So we know that women can be front and center in countering violent extremism. And we'll hear today from a number of people who have frontline experience and who are working on these issues. And I invite all of you to be thinking about how to bring these strands together. There's just no room for us to operate in separate spheres. And so I'm very delighted to have with us today longtime USIP friends and very important voices on this issue. First of all, Mrs. Zainan Bangura, the special representative to the UN Security General on sexual violence on conflict, who's a big voice on these issues and wonderful to have you here with us. And also to have with us Ambassador Anwarul Choudhury, who's the former UN Under Secretary General and High Representative, who will provide special keynote remarks for us today. This is a partnership with our colleagues from the US government, the State Department, and USAID. And we're delighted to have them here with us today. For those who live in the Twittersphere, we are being webcast today. And I invite you to send your tweets out at hashtag womenCVE and get that dialogue going. And I'm delighted to have a number of key speakers here, including Carla Cappell from USAID, Rob Brzezinski from U.S. Department of State, and Timothy Curry from the U.S. Agency for Homeland Security. And I think that constellation of speakers from across our U.S. government interagency really underscores how important this issue is and how seriously it's being taken. And so with that, I want to note that we have a charting a new course publication for those who are interested to pick up outside. It's about how women are preventing violent extremism. It's also on our website. And it is my great pleasure now to introduce and invite to the podium a good friend and colleague, former colleague from AID, the USAID Associate Administrator, Eric Postal. And Eric has served a number of important senior roles at USAID, including working at E3 and the Africa Bureau, leading the Africa Bureau, and now is serving as the Associate Administrator. And he very clearly understands the critical role that women have to play. He has more than 25 years of private sector experience working in emerging markets, especially in Africa. And he works very closely now with the Africa Bureau to implement key priorities. And he's an extraordinary advocate for making good things happen. So please join me in welcoming Eric to the podium. Good morning, everyone. Got your thinking caps on, I hope? Well, I just hope to make a few introductory comments to maybe help frame this a little and get the creative and innovative juices flowing and then pass off to other speakers. As I get going, I'd like to thank Nancy and Kathleen of USAIP for graciously hosting this event. And I'd like to thank Special Representative of the Secretary General, Bangura, for her tireless efforts to assist survivors of violence all over the world, and also Ambassador Chaudhry, who's been a lifelong advocate of women, peace, and security issues. And we thank all of you for your tireless work. Today, we're obviously at an important intersection on the one hand, 15-year-old mark for 1325. And on the other hand, an issue that's galvanized a lot of current attention, countering the expansion of violent extremism. As many of you know, in February this year, the White House convened a summit on countering violent extremism. The meeting brought together local, federal, and international leaders, including President Obama, to discuss concrete steps the United States and its partners can take to develop community-oriented approaches to counter hateful and destabilizing extremist ideologies that radicalize, recruit, or incite violence. During the summit, the U.S. government focused on the need to address root causes and drivers through community engagement as a key strategy, including four efforts. One was simply building awareness, including widening and deepening research and disseminating information on the drivers and indicators of radicalization and recruitment to violence. Secondly, countering extremist narratives, directly addressing and countering violent extremist recruitment narratives, such as encouraging civil society-led counter narratives online. And if you saw that New York Times article about that young woman in the state of Washington who got recruited, you can see how aggressive some of these extremists are about recruiting each and every single person up to six hours a day they were online with her. Number three, emphasizing community-led interventions, empowering community efforts to disrupt the radicalization processes before an individual engages in criminal activity. And fourth, enabling governments at all levels to address local grievances, to narrow the gap between governments and their citizens. And in some of these countries it is a big gap. Research, personal testimonies, and community feedback demonstrate that women are indeed a pivotal part of this problem. While women are influencers against the issue, on the other hand, they can sympathize with and help mobilize support for violent extremist groups. Women even willingly join terrorist organizations and carry out attacks in the name of violent extremism, as you all know. And it's not a new phenomenon. Women have joined violent movements in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Colombia, and Peru just for a few cases, as well as the violent extremist groups such as Al Qaeda and now Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, ISIS. In fact, the multiplier effect of social media and its ability to reach women and girls has clearly highlighted this fact during the current wave of recruitment of foreign fighters. Social media has helped prompt women and girls to support and join these groups. At the same time, social media has helped women and girls and men and boys to mobilize against joining groups and ideologies that preach violence, hatred, and community instability. There are two lines of effort in which I think your input is absolutely critical, and there's probably even more, but I'd like to talk about two of them. The first concerns the U.S. government's role in creating CVE-related policy and programming. We're going to need to work with you to find ways to ensure that our programming is responsive to the diverse needs of women in this space, especially as we move into international commitments during the UN General Assembly. For example, up to now, we have frequently focused on the at-risk group of young men and boys in our struggle to identify what is driving recruits to violent extremist organizations. Now, we need to turn more and more and look at women and girls. Secondly, we need to generate much more evidence about what really works in the CVE space, both in general and as specifically regards women and girls. I was in Niger two weeks ago, and I saw the challenges up close. And frankly, an awful lot of what people called CVE was basically good old development work, education, jobs, climate-smart agriculture, inclusive dialogue, all with special attention paid to women and girls. This is the often under discussed flip side of what I mentioned earlier, women acting as empowered change agents, moving their communities away from violence as opposed to being involved in violence. We know that women can be further empowered by development programming, that they can mentor others to turn away from recruitment or violence in the direction of new jobs or educational opportunities. And then there were other people in Niger looking at the situation who felt that the traditional Muslim faith in Niger was much less extreme and inclusive, leading those people to encourage that strain of Islam. But here's where it gets complicated, notwithstanding the fact that that conservative branch of Islam is conservative and probably not helpful in terms of moving society forward for women and girls. And so these are some of the challenges. It's a very intellectually challenging situation for all of us to grapple with and figure out what are the best paths forward. But there was little evidence about what is the best path. And that's why I think your ideas about policy responses and also the nuts and bolts of how do we structure randomized control tests, how do we develop evidence, and so forth would be incredibly helpful because we're going to have to try a variety of things, but if we can generate evidence from them, then we can get better and better at this. As we continually strive to ensure our national action plan on women, peace, and security is responding to new or evolving challenges, or as we call on other countries to do the same, it would also be helpful to take stock of what we know about what really works and what the needs of women are, where there is severe cases of violent extremism. We must understand the diverse needs of women as agents of change in their community. Instead of focusing our attention only on women as victims of violent extremism, we need a greater global commitment to delving into the role that women play and the ways in which they engage in violent extremism. The U.S. government has started addressing this issue via assessments that look at the role of women in violent extremism, and we hope that this will lead to better CVE programming and prevention. So I ask you today, as you have this conversation, please help us bridge the gap between policy and practice on both of these critical spheres and make recommendations to help us address these issues in a meaningful and substantive manner. Thank you for your commitment to this important issue and for all that you do. And now it's my pleasure to turn it over to our next speaker. Timothy Curry comes to us from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he is the Deputy Director of Counterterrorism Policy. In this capacity he works on policy topics that include terrorist travel, foreign fighter facilitation, countering violent extremism, human smuggling, trafficking, and other threats as they arise. Prior to working at DHS, he worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Over to you, Timothy. Thank you very much for that kind introduction, and thank you all for taking the time to spend a little bit with us to look at some of these issues. I was initially asked to provide somewhat of an overview of the threat, but I think we just got a pretty good understanding of that. So what I'll try to do is go more into the practical level. Obviously, security is an issue that all of us need to deal with, and with the UN Security Council Resolution that we're celebrating today, women have a much larger role in that process. That's evident when you look at women being in charge of the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, UN representation, national security advisors. So obviously there's a growth in this area, and I think that we can benefit from that and move this path forward. When we look at violent extremism, it's important to note that it manifests itself in a variety of different ways. A few weeks ago, we were talking about Charleston and how that form of ideology had motivated someone to violence. This week, we're talking about what happened in Chattanooga. We also talk about Daesh. We also talk about other forms of violent extremism that people have utilized and promoted to enact their horrific violence, and I think that's important to make sure that this is broad. While we realize that the current threat from Daesh and al-Qaeda is the most pressing thing for the United States, we also have other threats that can manifest themselves. When we look at violent extremism and the role that women play, as noted, women cannot be a very good buffer to this in the homes, in the schools, in society, but women can also be a target. So we only have to look at Maread Ferrell, who is an IRA volunteer who was killed in Gibraltar on an active service trip. We look at Tanya Nimar, who is one of the top people in FARC, and then we look back at Shannon Connolly from Colorado and how she was recruited. We just heard about the woman who was recruited in Washington. So there are a variety of roles and understanding the way in which that narrative manifests itself is very important. People and recruiters target people specifically to apply to their grievance-based issues. If that's a boy, there's going to be certain issues. If it's a girl, there's going to be certain issues. If it's a woman, there's going to be certain issues. And I think it's important to try to expand our research and understanding so that we can encapsulate all the ways in which the recruiters and which these ideologies manifest in people who then turn to violence as a way to address their grievances and to further their political ideology. Specifically in the United States, I think we need to really look at some of the work that's been done. When we start talking about foreign fighters, which is the topic du jour, this is not a new issue. And that's easy to say because you can look at global examples throughout the world. But if we simply look back to 2007 and 2008, we saw a large, not large, I would say 35 individuals who were mobilized from Minneapolis to go fight on behalf of Al-Shabaab. The first U.S. suicide bomber was an individual who was a student at the University of Minnesota, his name was Shira Ahmed. And so we look at the ways in which people have tried to motivate individuals to travel and to act upon violent extremism. When we started to understand the problem that was occurring in Minneapolis, we tend to think that it came from intelligence or law enforcement or other areas. It really didn't. It came from families. It came from mothers, aunts, sisters, fathers, brothers telling us that their children, sons, daughters, relatives had been mobilized to violence. And it was their abject horror that these individuals had left Somalia looking for a better day. And then their children had been recruited to go back to perpetuate the cycle of violence that has so gripped that country. So when we look at how we can deal with these programs, we at the Department of Homeland Security in partnership with the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the National Counterterrorism Center look for ways that we can strengthen and build up those communities to provide solutions to that issue. If we are trying to arrest our way out of this problem, we are going to fail. So we need the partnerships of those communities. In 2011, President Obama released his strategy on countering violent extremism. The title of that focused on communities, and that's what we need to talk about today. The role that communities play in this, and then particularly for the topic of this morning, the role that women play in those communities, which I think we can attest as a very diverse and valuable resource. If we look at what we've done, some of the things that we focus on when we're asking for particular programming, the Department of Homeland Security in partnership with the National Counterterrorism Center has developed a community awareness brief. Simply put, we go to communities, we go to roundtables, trusted people that we've worked with, and we talk to them about the threat of violent extremism, all manifestations of it. We tend to think that families go home all the time and think about security. They don't. They think about when the next vacation is, they think about when they're going to go grocery shopping, when they have to do back to school shopping, when they're going to just enjoy the company of themselves outside of school, work, and other areas. But in that space, we talk about a variety of different things, whether it's threats from child predators, whether it's threats to the community, whether it's a variety of different things. And in this space, we need to have a conversation about violent extremism, and the community awareness briefing does that. Once the community has understood that, we then expand to a larger discussion with the community resilience exercise. It's basically bringing in law enforcement communities and other people from the federal government to have a discussion, basically to gameplay out a scenario of someone on a pathway towards violent extremism, and what measures and steps we could have. Interestingly, in this process, we flip the communities and the law enforcement so that they can get an understanding of other people's views. Finally, and these are the last points that I'll make, is we also have to work hard on research, as my colleague had mentioned before this. At the Department of Homeland Security, we have a center of excellence called the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, START. It's located at the University of Maryland. That is a innovative academic arena in which we can look at problem-solving solutions through rigorous academic research. We also need to train law enforcement and frontline providers, and we do that through the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, FLETC, which is based in Glencoe, Georgia. These are some of the tools that we try to provide. We need to build on them, we need to expand them, and we need to ensure that they are entrenched in the fabric of our community, which will ultimately be our solution. Thank you very much. And trying to rush off the stage as I look at the timer, I apologize for that. I'm now going to introduce the next speaker, which is Rob Brzezinski, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. Rob currently serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of DRL at the Department of State, where he is responsible for the Bureau's work in Europe and South and Central Asia. Mr. Brzezinski most recently served under Secretary, excuse me, served under Ambassador Samantha Power as the Deputy Director of the U.S. Mission to the U.N. in the Washington office. Prior to joining the U.S. U.N., he served as a special assistant to then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter. Mr. Brzezinski. Number three out of four to talk about the importance of women encountering violent extremism. When I was working at the White House on the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, I would often lead meetings in which I was the only man in the room with 30 female colleagues, so I guess you take it both ways and both are probably progress. It's great to see so many friends and colleagues in one space. Thank you, Kathleen and Nancy, for inviting me. I really appreciate it. Today's conversation couldn't be more timely. Stipulating up front, as we've heard from our two previous speakers, there's still a lot we don't know about the reasons that individuals radicalize and turn to ideologically driven violence. We can be reasonably sure of a few things that make today's discussion so important and necessitate a gendered approach to effectively preventing and countering violent extremism. Most importantly, as a factual matter, we know, as we've heard, that women are victims, perpetrators, supporters, and inhibitors of the forms of violence we are collectively committed to ending. Because the violence inflicted upon men and women and children from groups like Daesh and Boko Haram is so sensational and so terrifying, so horrible, we tend to hear most often of the first of these labels of violence perpetrated against women by extremist groups. We know all too well the stories of Yazidi women and girls that have been captured and sold into slavery, as well as girls kidnapped in Nigeria among many examples. And on the former, for those who haven't seen the recent frontline documentary on the Yazidi women, some of whom have escaped from ISIS control and what the impact of their enslavement has meant, both on them personally and on their communities, I would highly commend it to you as just a very powerful and personal representation of the human stakes of what we're here discussing today. At the State Department, we're committed to helping women who are victimized by Daesh and other extremist groups, both as part of our commitment to countering violent extremism, but also very much under the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security, subsequent to UN Security Council Resolution 1325. That's why, among other projects, our gender-based violence protection initiative has supported women and girls who have escaped, as I mentioned, Daesh captivity with emergency shelter, psychosocial support, and counseling, relocation, and security, and why we continue to make voluntary contributions to UN organizations, such as UNHCR and UNFPA, as they implement gender protection in the field so vital. So these tasks are absolutely essential, but I wanted to spend the bulk of my time today drawing on the lesson of 1325 to speak not about women as victims, but as essential actors in the cause of preventing radicalization. As I think most in this room already know, 15 years ago, the Security Council came together and recognized through 1325 the vital role that women play in promoting peace and security globally, and called upon both member states and the UN system itself to ensure their increased participation in all aspects of conflict prevention, peace building, and conflict resolution. Now, it's worth noting that nowhere in 1325, if memory serves as the word terrorism or the word violent extremism appear, but lexicon aside, I would argue that the motivating idea behind the women, peace, and security agenda is absolutely essential to what the US government and governments and NGOs around the world are seeking to achieve today on countering violent extremism. That essential message is that whether we're talking about making peace agreements more lasting, durable, or seeking to stop radicalization before it begins, addressing root causes and legitimate grievances matters a great deal, and you simply can't address root causes or grievances when you exclude women and more broadly civil society from these discussions. So as the White House CVE Summit follow on action agenda makes clear, and we've heard from our previous speakers, we need more research to fully understand what drives violent extremism in very specific localized, even in many instances, personalized contexts. But the research we do have makes a strong case that the empowerment of women pays off in the CVE context in the same way that we see in terms of economic prosperity and kind of more traditional state on state and interstate conflict prevention and peace building. So a few weeks ago, I spoke at one of the series of regional conferences that followed the White House Summit in Austin, Kazakhstan. I think Tim was there as well. This regional summit included participation from most of the countries in South and Central Asia. And so these are a group of countries that very rightfully have legitimate concerns in terms of regional terrorist groups and the threat those groups face. But also, with some exceptions, are a group in which governments frequently violate rights, freedoms are curtailed, and peaceful social and political groups are all too often repressed under the guise of counterterrorism. At this conference, both the US's head of delegation, our commissioner of customs and border protection, as well as myself, delivered the message that while the concerns of these countries in the region were justified, much of what they were doing to stifle dissent was actually proving counterproductive in terms of our joint interest in countering violent extremism. And that's because what we know about what spurs radicalization is that rights really matter. And that experience of injustice, various forms of injustice, discrimination, corruption, abuses by government security forces are all key drivers of the kinds of political violence that we seek to prevent. Furthermore, restricting space for civil society to operate, a trend that unfortunately is all too common around the world as we see the proliferation of these truly restrictive NGO laws harms our CVE efforts as civil society and women, among others, are often those closest to the group's most vulnerable to extremist recruitment. So that brings me back to the women peace and security agenda and the role of women in preventing violent extremism. At the societal levels, we need to be engaging nations, of course, but also families, religious groups, individuals themselves. We know that women are leaders, communicators, educators and entrepreneurs, as well as mothers, sisters, daughters and wives. And these roles give women valuable access to the localized vulnerabilities to radical messaging. And across the world, in response to this knowledge, we've seen women develop early warning and response networks, build relationships with law enforcement, and bridge divisions across their communities as tools to prevent violence. So I want to give just a few examples of this. First is sisters against violent extremism. SAVE, a group I know has had a relationship with USIP, among others, a nonprofit network training local women leaders on how to identify and address signs of radicalization in their families and neighborhoods through training groups they call mother's schools, which draw on social psychology to provide a countervailing force to the allure of radical recruiters who, as we heard, spend a considerable amount of time investing in recruiting people. Or the Women Without Walls initiative, which connects women across religious, tribal and ethnic lines to address conflict in Nigeria. Or women like Moserat Khadim, a friend I know to many in this room, and someone I had the pleasure of serving on a panel with in Osna, who leads a group called the Paimon Alumni Trust, which works with families, government officials, religious leaders, and teachers in Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas to educate both men and women on the impact of radicalization and turn young people away from violence. So at the State Department, we're committed to empowering women and groups like these around the world and encouraged by the programs I just mentioned as they continue the painstaking work of building resiliency against radicalization whereas needed most at local levels. We're bringing women working on CVE to the United States to engage with U.S. officials and activists doing similar work, including many in this room, and more importantly with each other, and building bridges between women and social media groups to discuss CVE efforts online. We're also making sure that women's perspectives are fully integrated in our counter-messaging efforts and that credible local female voices are amplified around the world. Lastly, as in Astana, we're speaking plainly about the relationship between state repression, injustice, and civil liberties on the one hand and isolation and radicalization on the other as one important factor among many that can drive individuals toward violence. All of this is rooted in the message of inclusivity encapsulated in Resolution 1325. And like our work on mainstreaming gender into our foreign policy writ large, I'd argue that we've made a considerable amount of progress, at least within the last eight or so years that I've been working on these issues, but clearly we have a long, long way to go. And that's again why this discussion today is so valuable. So thank you. So with that, I'd like to introduce a gentleman who needs no real introduction, Ambassador Chowdhury, who served from 2002 to 2007 as the Undersecretary General and High Representative of the United Nations responsible for some of the most vulnerable countries in the world. Ambassador Chowdhury is a career diplomat and served as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN from 1996 to 2001. He served as Bangladesh's Ambassador to Chile, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela, as well as Bangladesh's High Commissioner to the Bahamas and Guiana. And most importantly in terms of today, under his leadership and initiative in March of 2000 as President of the Security Council, the Council passed Resolution 1325 on the role of women in peace and security. Ambassador Chowdhury. Good morning to all of you. Thank you, USIP, for inviting me. Five years ago, almost to the date, at a conference for the observance of the 10th anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 at the USIP in the old office. On 27 July, I had asserted that adoption of 1325 opened a much-awaited door of opportunity for women who have shown time and again that they bring a qualitative improvement in structuring peace and in post-conflict architecture. On that day, I had the pleasure of launching what I called doable first-track indicators for realizing the 1325 promises into reality. To trace back 15 years ago, on the International Women's Day in 2000, I had the honor of issuing, on behalf of the United Nations Security Council, in my capacity as its President, a statement that formally brought to global attention the unrecognized, undervalued, and underutilized contribution women have always been making towards the prevention of wars, peacebuilding, and engaging individuals and societies to live in harmony. All 15 members of the Council recognized in that statement that peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men, and affirmed the value of full and equal participation of women in all decision-making levels. That is when the Seed for the Resolution 1325 on Women and Peace and Security was sown. The formal resolution followed this conceptual and political breakthrough on 31 October of the same year, giving this issue the long overdue attention and recognition that it deserved. Like many of you, I am very encouraged that in choosing the three women laureates for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, the citation referred to 1325, saying that, and I quote, it underlined the need for women to become participants on an equal footing with men in peace processes and in peace work in general, end of quote. The Nobel Committee further asserted that, and I quote again, we cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society, end of quote. The main inspiration behind 1325 is not to make war safe for women, but to structure the peace in a way that there is no recurrence of war and conflict. Research and case studies consistently suggest that peace agreements and post-conflict rebuilding have a much higher chance of long-term success when women are involved. That is why women need to be at the peace tables. Women need to be involved in the decision making and in the peacekeeping teams to make a real difference in transitioning from the cult of war to the culture of peace. The driving force behind 1325 is participation in which women can contribute to decision making and ultimately help shape societies where violence in general more so against women is not the norm. 1325 marked the first time that such a proposition was recognized as an objective of the UN Security Council. My own experience, particularly during the last quarter century, has made it clear that participation of women in peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding assures that their experiences, priorities, and solutions contribute to the longer term stability and inclusive governance. Women are the real agents of change in refashioning peace structures ensuring greater sustainability. When women have been included in peace negotiations, they have often brought the views of women to the discussions by ensuring that peace accords address demands for gender equality, human rights, good governance, the rule of law in new constitutional judicial and electoral structures. We would not have to worry about countering extremism if women have equality in decision making enabling them to make to take measures which would prevent such extremism. Ensuring equality and inclusion, mutual respect, and fairness in international relations is essential to weed out the roots of extremism. I recall Eleanor Roosevelt's words saying and I quote her, too often the great decisions are originated and given shape in bodies made up wholly of men or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression. End of quote. It is a reality that politics more so security is a man's world. Unfortunately, the challenges to women's rights and their equality not only continue but all but those also mutate and reappear undermining any hard-earned progress. Of course in the process those challenges become more and more complex, complicated, and more difficult to overcome. We all know about the so-called Arab Spring when a series of uprising swept Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain in 2010 and 2011. Euphoria of women following the fall of their repressive regimes however was short-lived. Targeted and brutal pushback is happening. Widespread sexual and physical violence aimed at women taking part in public life has escalated. Activist women find themselves lost with no pockets of support from society which fail to recognize how in countless ways women hold key to a stable, peaceful, and prosperous Middle East. Unfortunately the emerging male dominated leaderships there seem to forget that democracy without equality in all aspects of the law and full participation of 50 percent of the population is another form of authoritarianism. The ever-increasing militarism and militarization have made this situation even worse. The global patriarchy's encouragement to the voluminous arms trade has made it easier for extremists of all kinds in obtaining the arms to impose on others their extremist worldviews. Ending the arms trade and serious steps towards disarmament should be a part of the prescription for reducing and eliminating extremism and all forms of military violence. Women in every part of the world continue to be largely marginalized from the political sphere. This is unfortunate and unacceptable. Empowering women's political leadership will have ripple effects on every level of society and the global condition when politically empowered women bring important and different skills and perspectives to the policy making table in comparison to their male counterparts. At a recent conference on women in power and decision making building a different world the leading participants emphasized that it is not about men against women but there is evidence to show through research that when you have more women in public decision making you get policies that benefit women children and families in general and as a result benefit the humanity as a whole. Here I would add emphatically that to be true to its own pronouncement I believe it is absolutely high time that it in in its seven decades of existence the United Nations should appoint the first woman as the next sect regional though as a Security Council resolution it has its own intrinsic weight according to the UN Charter the historic and operational value of 1325 has been undercut by the not very encouraging record of its implementation. Now a global study has been commissioned by the UN Secretary General to review 15 years of the implementation of the resolution the study is expected before the Security Council's 15th anniversary summit in October this year. In real terms to me national action plan popularly known as NAP is the engine that would speed up the implementation of resolution 1325 it should be also understood that all countries are obligated as per decisions of the Security Council to prepare the NAP whether they are in a so-called conflict situation or not so far only 48 out of 193 UN member states have prepared their plans what a dismal record after 15 years there are no better ways to get country-level commitment to implement 1325 other than the NAPs I believe very strongly that only NAP can hold the governments accountable there has been an increased and proactive there has to be an increased and proactive engagement of the UN Secretariat leadership to get a meaningfully bigger number of NAPs for example setting a target of getting 100 countries to prepare their national action plan by 2017 2017 sorry next I would say that special attention should be given to building awareness and sensitivity as well as training of the senior officials within the UN system as a whole with regard to 1325 another missing element and this Ambassador Brzezinski referred to is a greater regular genuine participatory involvement of civil society in implementing 1325 both at national and global levels the existing international policies and practices that make women insecure and deny their equality of participation basically as a result of its support of the existing militarized interstate security arrangements is disappointing I am referring to the concept of security based on the current strategic power structures rather than on human security which highlights the security of the people when violence against women happens it is not just against women only it is violence against humanity I believe strongly that gender equality at all decision making levels will reduce violence and its recurrence in a big way and Tinka in her book has articulated that effectively by saying and I quote a more inclusively human way of thinking about our collective future should be a future in which women and men could share equally in the construction of a safer and more just world end of quote today's slogan should be women and men together we have the power to empower we want complete real practical functional operational equality between women and men to end the cycle of all forms of extremism which continue to sabotage humanity's quest for sustainable peace and development thank you sorry to take a little bit longer than time allotted to me now I have the delight and pleasure to introduce the United Nations Secretary General's special representative for sexual violence in conflict Madame Zainab Hawa Bangura Madame Bangura took up this position in September 2012 and in that capacity she serves as chair of the interagency network UN action against sexual violence in conflict Madame Bangura has over 20 years of policy diplomatic practical experience in fields of governance conflict resolution and reconciliation in Africa in her she had been the minister for foreign affairs and international cooperation later on as minister of health and solid sanitation of Sierra Leone and I have now great pleasure in inviting her to make her presentation thank you very much ambassador Charlie for the kind words and introduction what price tag can be put on a human life children from one to nine years of age boys and girls 200 000 dinner approximately 150 US dollars girls called women from 10 to 20 years old 150 000 dinner approximately 120 dollars women between the ages of 20 and 30 100 000 dinner or 80 dollars women 30 to 40 years old 75 000 dinars approximately 50 dollars women from age 40 to age 50 50 000 dinars or 40 dollars this is the translation word for word of a prized list issued by IC last October it sets out the cost of purchasing abducted christen and Yazidi women and children today in the year 2015 women and girls are being sold as sex slaves in open markets we're witnessing nothing less than the revival of the slave trade in our own lives and times a practice more in keeping with the darkest moments of the dark ages than with our supposedly enlightened 21st century distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen I want to thank you sip and you said for inviting me to speak with you today about the devastating use of sexual violence by extremist groups sexual violence has been used as a tactic of war since time immemorial today with the upsurge in violent extremists as Nancy mentioned in a welcome address in countries like Libya Mali Nigeria Somalia Yemen Syria and Iraq we're also seeing a new phenomenon sexual violence being used as a tactic of terror to displace communities and destroy existing family and community structures to strike fear into the heart of civilian population to extract intelligence and to generate revenue for trafficking trading gifting auctioning and ransoming women and girls as part of the currency by which ISIL consolidates its power all of this was confirmed and reconfirmed to me with the with horrific clarity this April when I was in the Middle East on a visit that took me to Damascus in Syria and in Iraq to Baghdad at Bill Duhok and Lalish which is some 50 kilometers from ISIL held Mosul there I met women and girls of the Yazidi community a number of whom had recently escaped ISIL captivity I heard their harrowing stories how they were separated into different categories examines like cattle the pretty and younger ones the virgins were sent to ISIL stronghold in Raka there they were distributed to fighters as part of a strategy to attract and retain recruits or auction off in the slave market using the surprise list I heard of women being battered for cigarettes girls who were cleansed by being doze in petrol set a light if they refused to comply with the will of their so-called owners I also had our women as the pillars of family and society I used to produce children and establish the foundation of what ISIL calls a new Caliphate ISIL understands full well that you cannot bail a state with only male fighters so for the first time in history extremist groups are not only controlling territories and land they're controlling women's physical sexual and reproductive rights in order to give rights to a new generation raised in their own image I promise the girls and women I spoke with that I will be their voice but that is not enough we must all raise our voices in outrage and send a clear and unequivocal message to ISIL and all those who use sexual violence to advance their strategic objective from Buku Aram to al-Shabaab to al-Qaeda to al-Nusrat Front we must put them on notice that there is no safe even that includes women who support ISIL and play a crucial role in recruitment retention intelligence gathering and online propaganda campaigns social media has converted brutality in a form of propaganda to incite radicalized and attract recruits information is the oxygen of these groups we must suffocate them pursue them relentlessly and eventually we will hold them to account distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen sexual violence has become a key tool in the political economy of terrorism from the time of her capture a woman or girl maybe the object of five or six transactions from her sale on the slave market in Raqqa multiple exchange among fighters to the ransom paid by her family to secure a release this is no different from other forms of terrorist financing on which we are focused like the sale of oil or antiquities the link between stopping sexual violence and cutting the flow of funds and fighters to this group is direct and undeniable yet in our counter terrorism strategies the protection of women from sexual violence remains a collateral consideration rather than a central concern protecting and empowering women must be at the heart of any national regional and global counter terrorism response I had the story of a young girl let us call her Dua forced to marry 15 men in a period of one year some of these so-called marriages lasted only three days the men would either request a virgin or an adult if they wanted a virgin Dua was forced to undergo surgery to reconstruct a hymen each instant of the torture and torment represented financial transaction to eye for eye sale Dua is now thankfully in a shelter receiving psychopsychological and medical support but too many other girls continue to endure the unimaginable torments of sexual slavery and forced marriage we are we also have evidence that official sex trafficking burials so-called marriage burials have been established in areas under eye sale control this is the institutionalization of rape it is not surprising that given the scope of the conflict many girls are pregnant since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011 around 13,000 children have been born in Jordan alone around 5,000 of them without documents those children will likely become part of a new generation of stateless children with no bad record no identity papers and very likely no opportunities other than those offered by the extremist groups themselves we must remember however that extremist group do not have a monopoly on sexual violence in the region since 2011 we have been documenting such violation by the Syrian government which is listed in the sector general's annual report on sexual violence and conflict while the international community focuses on eye sale we must ensure that anyone who commits commands or condone sexual violence and terror is ultimately able to account it is in this content that I I insisted on visiting a detention facility in Damascus in Syria as a condition of my visit in the end the authorities allowed me access to one such facility in the heart of Damascus the notorious Kaffir Suza detention center run by military intelligence to date I'm the only UN official ever to visit the center the commander of the facility brought me and my team three stories on the ground they are in the darkness and quiet I met nine female detainees they could not speak freely to me and I did not dare to ask them any questions as we were watched at every moment but I told them that I see them I told them that from Syria I would travel to the holy motin mecca to perform umrah one of the women asked me to pray for them the rest did not speak but I heard them in the darkness of that dungeon I am resolved to be their voice to do everything in my power to enable regular humanitarian access by the UN to detention facilities in Syria distinguished guest ladies and gentlemen sexual violence is a peace and security imperative a critical consideration for long-term stability in the middle east the crimes I note today are happening on the very front line of our battle against violent extremism and it is a battle that is being waged on the bodies of women and girls such extreme violence required not only political and security responses but also a justice and service delivery response as a former health minister in my own country Sierra Leone I'm especially aware of the necessity and challenges to provide comprehensive medical psychosocial and other critical services for survivors such services are required not only in Iraq and Syria but also in the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey which I visited political commitments is needed at all levels in Syria and Iraq from government to traditional religious leaders civil society actors and real regional stakeholders given the challenges we face in the region financial and technical resources need to be urgently deployed to address conflict related sexual violence in a comprehensive way that is commensurate with the scale of the challenge in action is not an option a comprehensive response must also include accountability for the people who commits command or condone these horrors one of the critical challenges that we as the international committee will face is how to develop a framework to ensure accountability for the estimated 20 to 40,000 ISIL foreign fighters who come from over 100 countries around the world in all of this we must remember to engage with traditionally religious leaders who have demonstrated the power to break the silence and stigma surrounding sexual violence these leaders can play a crucial role in redirecting the blame and shame of sexual violence from the survivors to the perpetrator during my visit in the Middle East I was deeply moved to meet the high priest of the Yazidi community Baba Sheikh who declared that all Yazidi women and girls returning from ISIS should be welcome back with open arms but I also met with leaders of other minority communities who have not yet made such pronouncements in the future we must also engage with those leaders who perpetrate the silence or was still pronounced that women and girls are subject who are subjected to sexual violence are better off dead because of the shame it brings to their families and their communities as the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict I walk both the rim I walk in both the rim of high politics regularly briefing the UN Security Council and its sanction committees and at the grassroots community with people directly affected by armed conflict and forced displacement that includes women and girls men and boys within my office is a team of experts on the rule of law and sexual violence in conflict which supports national authorities to strengthen military and civilian justice systems to response effectively to fighting this coach as you had I chair a broad interagency network known as UN action against sexual violence in conflict which unite 13 UN agencies across the spectrum of peacekeeping political affairs public health humanitarian development we also work closely with regional organizations including the African Union and the League of Arab States who have local experience and knowledge that we can belong and whose efforts we can amplify I appreciate you have a short speech as you had this year marks the 15th anniversary of the unanimous adoption of resolution 1325 on women peace and security in 2008 security council resolution 1820 recognize conflict related sexual violence as a threat to international peace and security these and related resolutions are found that in times of conflict women are more than victims as herics said earlier on the ass survivors advocates leaders and agents of change despite expert extensive work by the security council to develop a legal framework to address sexual violence in conflict most strategies being developed by members state to counter terrorism are gender blind that is why since returning from the middle east my office has been working on a comprehensive multi sectoral strategy to address conflict related sexual violence in the region the strategy will contain six key elements first mobilizing political commitments and support to advance the mandate in the region to deepening the level of information analysis and documentation on the issue of conflict related sexual violence three ensuring that women's role are a central consideration in global regional and national prevention and counter terrorism strategies for promoting accountability through investigation and prosecution of sexual violence crimes five enhancing protection and mitigating sexual violence risk through legislative and policy reforms lastly increasing the services and resources in the region ladies and gentlemen in concluding i want to emphasize that the fight against violent extremism is not just a fight against terrorism the use of sophisticated modern weaponry and communication technology in service of a medieval agenda threatened to reverse centuries of human progress this is therefore a fight for tolerance respect and human rights it is ultimately a fight for our future the value of a mother daughter or sister each unique and irreplaceable can never be mentioned in dollars or dinner whatever price tag isil tries to place on human life we must show through our words and deeds that the rights freedom and future of women and girls are not for sale thank you thank you and i'm going to invite the panelists to the stage and while i'm doing that would you mind taking a stretch standing up say hello to your neighbor behind you beside you but stand up for this is the seventh inning stretch folks our stretch i'll ask you to take your seats good morning my name is kathleen keenest i am the director of gender and peace building here at the u.s. institute of peace and i want to thank madame bangura ambassador chaudry and for our guests from the u.s. government eric post tim curry and robert brashinsky for all of your engaging and inspiring remarks a few months ago my u.s. aid colleague allison cellars and i contemplated the 15th anniversary of 1325 together and she said well where are the gaps and immediately responded that 1325 has not yet really framed the threat the security threat the peace building threat of violent extremism and vice versa the countering violent extremism agenda has not well engaged the gender analytical lens so it is our agenda here over the next hour to really help clarify what that is that gap and how we can bridge the gap i will tell you that we had nearly 500 rsvps for the event today and i would say that that sends a very strong message to governments and civil society alike that we need a more nuanced approach to preventing violent extremism and we do need to engage women in every part of this effort we've invited some civil society leaders here to join us and they reflect actually many of the civil society leaders who played a very key role in the 1325 agenda and so they will also help bridge that experience today you have their bios in front of you so i'm going to only give a very brief statement of who they are we have jacklyn o'neill director of the institute for inclusive security susan hayward director of religion peace building here at usip and shantal do you know udrat president of women in international security otherwise known as wise we are going to be joined by madame bangura and ambassadri who will also be a part of this conversation of how do we take it from policy into inclusive action and so jacky i want to begin with you your work is at the intersection of security sector and gender where you train military police civilians who are serving nato the un and us militaries how large of a gap do we have between security related issues on violent extremism and an inclusive security paradigm thanks i think we still have a very significant gap and i was really encouraged this morning and loved the the conversations that we had in hearing from some very senior officials in the u.s. government in particular talking about the really broad security very broadly defined and i think we also need to remember that that's while we're excited about it and i'm personally encouraged and enthused about it right now it's not necessarily reflective of the broader discourse that is going on out in the world so i wanted to make a couple of comments on that so one is the the particular emphasis on security forces and a quote unquote securitized response to countering violent extremism and i think i want to get across that it's not in congress to think that security forces are essential an essential element of the solution to this problem so they need to be effective they need to be representative they need to serve the entire entirety of the population that they're set out to serve they have to have a broad understanding of what security means they need to experience and undergo training and leadership formation on these issues but we can't do that and focus on that at the expense of the broader set of issues that underlie violent extremism so the more structural patterns of exclusion etc and we hear time and again that women are essential to strengthening security forces to improving their ability to serve men and women in communities and somehow talking about that has been in some ways become synonymous with a securitized or militarized response and i think we need to separate the two and say we need to have women in security forces security forces are an essential element both of the problem of violent extremism and of the solution and that we need to be able to talk about that without and constantly be reminding ourselves that we can't do that at the exclusion of broader issues of extremism and i heard a great speaker here actually at usip a few weeks ago that was talking about that we can't allow ourselves to be radicalized in response to violent extremists and so part of terrorist tactics involves provoking an overreaction and our overreaction can't be to emphasize the broadly security focused response to violent extremism again at the expense of some of the broader structural issues and also heard a very great comment about the term countering violent extremism by man named graham smith at inner peace who said we shouldn't be talking about countering violent extremism the term we should be using is countering violent exclusion because what's violent is the extent of exclusion these dramatic patterns of structural violence that are perpetuating these grievances that robin and others talked about and thinking about the ways that we need to address holistically broader sets or broader ways of bringing people into a truly inclusive society and that's the dialogue that we need to be having well thanks for that and we're going to come back around for more conversation and also responses to our distinguished keynotes here this morning susan we know that in certain circles the words religion and violent extremism are often expressed in the same sentence but it seems rarely that women are associated with being religious leaders and still not part of the analytical lens of how they often often can also be messengers of violent extremism can you share further light on these intersections of women cve and religion i'd be happy to and thank you kathleen and to our speakers this morning for bringing this event together and offering such sobering and inspiring reflections we say at usip that conflict is also an opportunity to bring people together across gender religious racial geographic lines in order to address injustices and certainly this moment in the world right now is a moment of extraordinary opportunity for those kinds of efforts so coming at this question from where i'm situated in the field of religious peace building the primary message i want to underscore is exactly what kathleen brought up the importance of women religious leaders as kathleen notes there is a great deal of enthusiasm and insight into the need to engage religious leaders in this work and religious actors in the work to both counter the messages that draw from religion in order to legitimate and fuel exclusionary policies and practices and violence itself um and to address the underlying drivers but just as ambassador choudhury said that the security world is male dominated so too can the religious world be male dominated and so one thing i've been stressing that that even as we seek to engage the religious sector in in this work in important ways we need to ensure that those efforts don't set back the goals of 1325 to include women meaningfully in in peacemaking peace building and violent extremist efforts and so too as the women's rights women's empowerment women's peace building movement seeks to engage with the religious sector recognizing the important role that they play in peace building and women's empowerment and women's protection so too do they need to engage with women religious leaders they tend to kind of fall through the cracks not being engaged by by both sectors but they're playing incredibly important roles on the ground around the world in responding to to the violence and providing psychosocial support in particular to survivors of some of the sexual and gender based violence and reintegrating them into the communities and recognizing radicalization in in youth and working with families in order to recognize and counter that and trying to bridge across interreligious and other divides that often get exacerbated by violent extremism and its impact on communities but what's especially important about the role that the women religious leaders are doing is that just as we speak of how it's important to engage with religious actors because they can counter and transform some of the religious messages and drivers of violence um the the women religious leaders are able to do that but they're also at the same time able to counter some of the religious messages that um disempower women that are being drawn on in order to legitimate some of the violence against women or some of their disempowerment within political and social structures so you get a virtuous cycle you get a twofer and engaging with some of the the women clergy the women faith activists um the women scholars and they're being able to simultaneously that they're addressing the underlying drivers and and responding to the needs of the communities they're also transforming and decrediting some of those religious messages used to to disempower women and to legitimate violence thank you Susan it seems that uh we're going to come back to that conversation because these are actors that are often missed in our strategies on the ground shantal the u.s. national intelligent council and its global trends 2025 report highlighted women as agents of geopolitical change and actually predicted that economic and political empowerment of women of women could transform the global landscape what does this really mean in terms of this cv e arena how are women really transforming the framework of this agenda moving forward is it a fight for the future how do we see it happening well thank you Kathleen and and I have to say congratulations on this event because um that sentence in the the national intelligence council report the uh is the 2030 report really remained a sentence and has not really entered into our dna of how we conduct government and and how we think about policy and I think when we're thinking about uh the current discussion on the role of women in countering violent extremism I have you know three main problems and present speakers excluded this event excluded I think they are the exception but on the whole if you look at the discussions on the role of women encountering violent extremism my three problems are first of all that uh these discussions really ignore the gendered nature of security uh and are oblivious to the relationship between gender inequality and the status of women on the one hand and violent conflict and violent extremism on the other hand my second gripe with these uh discussions is that um a lot of these discussions are based on I would argue a misguided notion of the role and the power of women in many societies so there's this widespread idea that in many societies and cultures women are maybe not very visible in the public sphere uh but they're very powerful in the domestic sphere in the private sphere in their families and because they are so powerful in their families they are actually fantastic agents potential agents in the fight against violent extremism and some of the programs that we have done under the auspices of USIP as well as the programs that was mentioned by Rob on Save and the mother schools actually what these women tell us is that they have no power whatsoever in their families and that their survival strategies within the family is denial of early signs of extremism rather than speaking up and so if we want to do something we really have to work on women's empowerment and gender equality uh and then the third sort of gripe I have with the current discussions and that is very much the theme of of this symposium here of of of these panel discussion is that uh most of these discussions on countering violent extremism and the role of women are not linked to the women peace and security agenda they're not linked to the national action plans now first of all this is maybe because when 1325 was adopted you know violent extremism wasn't really on our radar as much but and I think Ambassador Chaudhry has has said it very eloquently and I couldn't say it any better and I think also Madame Bangura has said it very eloquently this is really about gender equality it is really about our future and gender equality is really at the core of sustainable peace and so I think if we are not linking this discussion about violent extremism encountering violent extremism to the women peace and security agenda then that means that we're not taking the women peace and security agenda really seriously um and that we're not really serious about our commitment to this agenda thank you Shantala Ambassador Chaudhry we're going to just ask for your responses to these initial comments coming forward well I I believe that what Shantala has just said is very relevant countering violent extremism if I use your expression because I always find extremism of any kind is violent so we don't have to reiterate by saying violent extremism so then maybe nonviolent extremism which is not possible and so that that is what we should remember but this is a component of broader women peace and security agenda so that which that agenda focuses on equality and I say again time and again that in WPS we have in WPS we have WPS means again I'm using it as an acronym um uh woman peace and security agenda has we call three peace participation prevention and protection of women in in uh conflict situations but the agenda most important among the three peace is participation if we have equality of participation at all decision making levels it will ease out the need for protection and prevention because women's involvement will create an environment which will make these things uh reduce in a remarkable way and here I would emphasize uh Kathleen the longer term perspective of any policy decision or um uh practical uh steps that we are thinking of because violent extremism or extremism is not an overnight growth it has evolved through societies sometimes expressed in a different way uh so we have to think because the moment we talk about countering that it means that we are physically opposing something so we take what I call the hardware approach of the security that we have guns we have people we have forces to eliminate or counter violent extremism so we have to be very careful when we uh take our policy I believe that um uh over the years I have mentioned very strongly about promoting the the culture of peace which should be a part of your daily existence if children grow up thinking that I can resolve the challenges of my life through nonviolent peaceful means without being aggressive I achieve much more than what I would achieve as a violent person so that is very important this software approach is necessary in in our uh efforts to to stop the growth of violent extremism or extremism as such and extremism of all kinds and I as it has uh you know now somehow we are focusing on two three specific areas and we get daily upset on a daily basis by reading the news headlines but extremism exists in all societies in different kind and the worst expression of that extremism is what Jacqueline said is exclusion you have to be inclusive you have to take everybody in and this is more starkly important because of the exclusion of women and that that is very very important we have to do it in a very very determined forceful way we have paid lip service to women's equality we have many documents of the united nations I carry one always with me this is the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women and but that has not helped us and it has started manifesting because the patriarchal attitude of humanity somehow uh are dominated by people who have who believe in that way has uh set us back time and again so it's I'm very happy that we are talking about this now but we have to talk in a much more comprehensive way thank you thank you ambassador and thank you for also illuminating the choices of words we use to describe our agendas and how they themselves become a part of the problem thank you very much um I I think I sort of agree with all what's my colleagues on the panel have said but a couple of things I just want us to think back I'm very happy when you mention about the issue of the UN with regards to the understanding of gender empowerment I've been in the UN for three years and I have to be extremely honest I'm still shocked you know and I think we have a lot of house cleaning to do ourselves if we really want to make sure we give meaning to the word gender empowerment it's extremely important and urgent for us and I hope that we can take that into consideration but for me I think one of the things that is extremely interesting and I always say this ISIS is a very formidable enemy that we do not understand ISIS has used all the tools everything we have developed we have for us creator to help us be able to function and they're using it to turn against us when you look at the issue of gender empowerment ISIS has a policy to bring very brilliant sharp women into ISIS they have recruited them from all over the world somebody mentioned here think was this robot also said he spent six hours to recruit a woman they understand more than we do that how critical is it to have women smart intelligence because that's what make the machinery of the state function they're very good so they have deployed smart women they have used them to recruit other women which we don't understand we still are gain what percentage we have to have do we put protection of women in counterterrorism strategy we're still talking they're doing it so all of the thoughts the information we have generated over the years ISIS is using it against us that's why they're very formidable at the same time they know that when you target women you destroy society why are they using sexual slavery and all of this because they want to dismantle the structures that they don't like and so they create fears they target the women the daughters the mothers because that's where you break you humiliate and degrade the community when you destroy its female population and the girl child they are smarter than us that's a fact we are running after them so what are we going to do to be able to catch up we don't only have to catch up we have to overtake them that's when we start talking that's we're really fighting ISIS but as we are now that's it's not possible when I give you one example when I after I came back from the Middle East I visited a lot of European capitals and when I went to Sweden I was talking to the ambassador I had a meeting with the ambassador who has been appointed by my god for under counterterrorism and she said to me there's woman whose daughter left so she was determined to get her daughter back she went to to Turkey and what she found in Turkey there are so many mothers there who are so desperate looking for their daughters so she sort of formed this she blended into this network of mothers who who are so desperate because of their daughters and they wanted to get their daughters back while she was there she got this telephone call from her daughter who was in Syria and the daughter said mommy don't come do you know how many mothers are in prison in Raqqa who are ventured into this IC control area to get their children back so those who man decided okay I won't go because I don't want to end up in prison she came back to Sweden and she developed this network of mothers mothers spend more time their their children and I think in part of the counter strategy efforts we need to be able to provide space for those women so because they will tell you what the diagnosis what was wrong the last six months what did I observe we need to build the intelligence to be able to make sure how do we stop these girls going so that the mothers themselves were able to respond so women that's why I said if we can only think out of the box I think we cannot use the tools we have at our disposal to fight ISIS because they've taken it over we have to think out of the box we have to think out of the box and understand and appreciate that we have an opponent we don't understand who is faster than us think faster than us and move faster than us and has used the tools we have developed for ourselves using those tools to fight us because they don't allow anybody in their territory angels are not their UN agents so we don't know what they're doing but they are in our midst so every day we talk trust me I'm sure they're even watching this on the webcast you know that's the challenge so you fight an enemy you don't see you don't understand you don't appreciate but who has an edge over you so I think and the best way we can do it is to go with the women I believe in my job and when people tell me how successful you are there's no man who wants his daughter to be rape no way there's no man who so obviously every single man who is there who is fighting has a respect for women how do you use that respect to get them to move on the other edge and that's the challenge you have so we have a lot of power and I agree with you we don't know how to use it women she doesn't need to be a chairman of an organization in ISIS not to know the secret of ISIS all she has to do is to marry to the commander or to the leader she gets all the information you know she uses that information to process it so how do you get all of that so it's not about women religious leaders or women leaders but women who has influence with those leaders we have to target them so that's why I say we have to think out of the box to be able to see how do we move in I do believe that we have a lot of power I do believe we're not using the power you know because we look at power in the traditional sense of the word that's our definition of power then we have to look it on the other way around because at the end of the day that's why we need to succeed thank you I know there's some responses I think one of the key things that keeps us in the box is the terminology that we're using I think if you asked all of us all 500 people who responded what CVE means you get 500 different definitions if you ask 500 people what women peace and security definition means you get 500 different responses and I think we sometimes use this jargon as a way of excluding people from the conversation I mean the woman that you're speaking of and her mother I guarantee they've never used the term countering violent extremism in their day-to-day life but what they're doing is the work that we need to be paying attention to and I think we're not only excluding people when we use too much jargon in this and when we use these broad-reaching terms but we're also preventing ourselves from learning lessons from experiences that we already have because you know I think I think this is a driver of why we're not applying the lens of 1325 to countering violent extremism because as you mentioned ambassador extremism or terrorism wasn't in 1325 and so I always found it striking when the question emerged should we be linking these two agendas I mean what does that even really mean the spirit of 1325 was that everyone who thinks at all about preventing or ending violent conflict should think about the role of women period that's what it means so when we think about countering violent extremism should we be thinking about that obviously so should they be linked obviously is my take on that one and then your point about the Chantel as well about women and their influence I think the idea of women's involvement in countering violent extremism has been dramatically oversimplified to the idea that women can be buffers of extremist narratives or they can be early warning signals possibly you know I think that's an important element of it I think it's overexaggerated in some places and under emphasized in others but that's one part of it and what special envoy Bangora was talking about is the highly sophisticated understanding of gender dynamics and that's where we need to be going so ISIS is recruiting disaffected young men promising them control over women that relates to gender dynamics they're using mass rape as a form of forced cohesion they're building solidarity among men through their joint oppression and violence committed against women they're also recruiting young women and other women appealing to their sense of agency appealing for their desire to build something broader this Islamic state they're not delivering on it of course but they're appealing to them as adults as decision makers and they're tapping into sense feelings of repression and exclusion and that's a highly sophisticated understanding of gender which is something that I think we need to be countering in our own policy so if we're if we're taking this really de minimis look at women and CVE as women are the buffers against radicalization and that's it then we're also missing the boat is what in the way that special envoy was talking about so our responses need to be as sophisticated in their understanding as ISIS and other extremist groups are showing that they have yeah I mean I couldn't agree more with you I think indeed what is lacking in a lot of these discussions is a real realization of the gender dynamics in these societies that is about the distribution of power and influence within societies and I think ISIS has been very clever in using that we know that it has very retrograde regressive notions of gender norms of the relationship between men and women yet at the same time they are playing into this agency for for young women but that results basically in them destroying themselves it appears and I don't know if it's true but they last attack in in Suruk in the Turkish border town that was possibly a female suicide bomber and I wouldn't be surprised if ISIS is going to increasingly use female suicide bombers because that's actually a very easy way to deal with the issue of women's agency even though it's a very tragic one we know this with Boko Haram there was just an announcement of the upsurge of Boko Haram using women and children as suicide bombers Susan one quick point you know we often have this problem in the peacebuilding world and I see it reflected in the conversations about countering violent extremism as well as the kitchen sink problem where when you begin to to dig a little deeper and see all of the underlying drivers of violent extremism it can be a little bit paralyzing to understand how to begin to navigate and to both understand and seek to transform the political the economic the social the religious the psychological all of these elements that are fueling and creating the conditions so what you know we talk about inclusive processes and when we do so we mean rightfully bringing together people across different religious and gender divisions in order to address this work which is crucial but we also need to be thinking about inclusive processes in the sense of more of a systems approach that can take into account these various factors and not try to do an approach where we're addressing the media in one initiative social media addressing some of the psychological and sexual violence issues in another but to try to as much as possible see how these drivers intersect and feel one another and try to transform turn that mutual impact on one another in ways that can that can propel peacebuilding and it's it's challenging but one tool I know that has been useful to us and some of the conversations on religion and countering violent extremism is one that comes from the women in preventing extremist violence project that Kathleen and her shop have been involved in which maps out all of the various drivers that lead young people to be involved in violent extremist movements and then begins to understand how they intersect and connect with one another so as we plan interventions we can seek as much as possible to address them simultaneously and of course this is particularly pertinent when we're talking about the role of women because too often just like the role of engaging the religion and peacebuilding and so on these these are both sectors that have been marginalized in the past for mainstream peacebuilding efforts but in then creating these these efforts of women's peacebuilding movement and a religious peacebuilding movement in order to address this marginalization of the past they've at times become ghettoized and rather than mainstream so again that's sort of the perennial and ongoing problem but it although we've recognized it for a long time it's not a new one we still see it manifesting in some of these conversations about cde response um i i just want to give an example imagine a young lady i don't call nationality very religious comes the father is a professional work sixteen eighteen hours the mother is a housewife and she comes from school she goes straight into her bedroom she's not allowed to mix up to go into places she sees a teenage girl her colleagues going into nightclub joining clubs and everything she comes from of school she's locked up in our room and she has a computer internet 24 hours you know we all been young girls she wants adventure you know i want to contribute i want i i i i i i need self confidence i need to be seen that i'm doing something so that has been a lot of the time these are the girls who are recruited because they are very lonely they are caught up in two walls their fathers their family want to keep them in the hole all and they so it is important for us when we look at the roots causes why is it that we're having girls coming from very good background educated joining what's the missing link because these are young people they want adventure and that's what isis has promised them the disney land builds a thing that you can contribute this is what you're going to do this is who you're going to be and all of a sudden they see this glorious then they see themselves as part of that magic country in which i have a voice i have a say i'm going to be the spossing you know even the ones who are recruited to recruit other people see themselves their role and i think this is what we have been talking about that's what we need to think about so that's why i like when you talk about the gender passwords we have to look it deeper how do we stop the recruitment because it's like the oxygen if we stop them recruiting you know even men who are being recruited are recruited because they promise them you can marry four five wives you just have to look some of their website and they go there and that's these are all the things that that's why i say we have to think out of the box we cannot and that's what's said to the security to the security council members we cannot use the tools we have developed to fight violence when i like this concept and certainly of a much more complex and nuanced understanding of gender dynamics but sometimes we forget age and generational dynamics i'm the mother of twin 14 year olds it is another language they speak it it's i might as well be trying to learn another language and i don't when you say out of the box i also think we need to understand the world in which young people look for a right of passage into that agency and i really want to amplify what you said earlier about how ices and other groups are using the best of our tools we have talked about agency engaging youth they are taking our playbook and bringing action to it there you have it yes ambas yeah i i was listening to what was being said here but we we need to always if we and particularly united nations international community we should not forget that when we focus our attention on what is happening now as extreme violent extremism there are you know millions of women in other parts of the world suffering being excluded being marginalized every day and their challenge of life is fighting poverty how to come out of this increasing feminization of poverty and that is a big challenge so unless we also attend to that i think these pockets of violent extremism might spread in other parts of the world and that is a very important challenge to us we should address this immediate issue but broader longer term more pervasive issue of poverty and exclusion is to be addressed otherwise we will solve maybe or contain ices and there will be another monster coming up somewhere else so we need a much more integrated overview of solving all problems on this planet yeah i just want to react to something that i believe jackie said and and you know excuse me if i misquote you but you said something like you know i'm not sure why we're actually discussing this the linkage of the uh countering or preventing violent extremism debate and the women peace and security debate and it is actually an issue because there are two different communities who deal with this issue terrorism is a community of people policymakers and academics uh that are totally separated from the people and the community who deal with the women peace and security agenda and we need to get those two communities together uh it's interesting and ironic that of course also the whole terrorism community is mostly a male community while the women peace and security agenda is mostly a female community but we need to get them together because ultimately this is about security but in in a very sort of holistic sense in a in a human security sense and that's why the naps are so important the national action plans because in the nap we can actually try to overcome some of these distinctions between what is happening domestically within a country and what is happening internationally and the naps i think would be actually very powerful instruments to try to bridge that divide absolutely i agree with shanta 100 percent i think that is the way to get the national level commitment both of the governments and of the other partners to to see to the to see to it that their society has become inclusive and that's very important thank you shanta oh we're gonna get one more response here but i want to let you know that we want to uh have some q and a with all of you so i hope you get your questions ready you had anyone else had a response please you know um i have to i i still find it extremely difficult that this is 2015 we still have to talk to people who are dealing with security issue to understand when you talk about security issue you're not talking about men you're talking about people and people is 52 percent women and 48 percent men and we will never succeed that's the biggest challenge we have and i think this is what i'm saying isis and the terrorists have moved faster than us you know you still talk about these issues we're struggling in the un every time there's a new resolution you have to get people to understand you have to put this thing about protection of women you have to give the wording we're still trying to convince people that we matter that will exist and until they come to realize that the world is 52 percent women and we talk about people it means it's 52 percent women and 48 percent men we never move forward so ideally why should we talk to people men who are sitting in a room to do counter terrorism to tell them you have to have a gender perspective into this so it means we will always be reacting for me it's the most difficult issue you know that we're still finding space within the discussions we're still asking people to be on the table that's the biggest challenge and then they will continue will continue when people come from outside they say you know women are important you know we have to get them to recruit we have to have them to be participate we have to get them this so they move faster than us so I think it is it's difficult it's painful but that's why we have so many problems around the world that's why we've not been able to solve the problems in the world we've not been able to look for solutions because the solutions are one-sided we still believe the issue of women is a second-class issue it's an afterthought issue when the war is over when the war is over that's the problem and I give you one interesting experience I was in Havana for the talk between the FARC and the Colombian governments I spoke to both parties this was a time when the government started bombing the FARC and then the the law the FARC came and said we're withdrawing the the ceasefire the unilateral ceasefire so it was a very difficult time in Havana and I spoke to them so and I realized maybe I need to meet the women because there are women leaders and they have the gender commission so we are in the meeting with the women after talking to the men very frustrated tell him about all their frustration everything so we had this meeting with the gender commission and then I came to the table and then they said oh one of my staff came to me and said actually they wanted to sit at the high table so they can sit on both sides I said me he said this as I forget it I called both of us I'm not talking to you as FARC and government I'm talking to you as Colombian women I said so you have to sit opposite me this was the first time they are meeting after the suspension of the ceasefire so I talked to you as Colombian women this was the first time throughout the negotiation in Havana that those women had sat together on one side engaging and I told them about the history the war the challenges of women and everything and you know and when they were responding to me they had to be consulting each other the two leaders were sitting together and their people were sitting around us so every time I ask a question every time I say something they have to consult you know and at the end of the discussion the two women two women leaders both of them came and the impression said thank you very much you know throughout this negotiation we've never been talking the way we're talking I said to them listen these men are useless they are using you to fight their war if you pay attention to them you never have peace in Colombia you have to take this process and move forward because this man will never give you peace it's the same problem we have in the south Sudan unfortunately I've not been able to find two group of women you know because what is the war in south Sudan about it's about two men each one to be the leader the other eights they come so and they've plundered the whole country into disaster two men no other reason that one thing that he'd be a better president and I think this is what we have to realize if we're going to depend on this man we'll never solve the icid problem I'm sorry that is why people say that when men join politics they want to be something when women join politics they want to do something thank you we're going to take questions from the audience I also have some from our other rooms that have viewing access please just raise your hand and if you would keep your remark or statement to three sentences I'm going to keep you to it your name your organization and your question please I'll take three at a time nobody has a question one two three okay very good thank you Karen please take the and please stand because we are on video is Karen Mulhouse here and I'm chair of the United Nations Association here in the USA and I am aware that this is an anniversary not only of the naps and 1325 but also of the Millennium Development Goals and my question is all of this wonderful talk about integration the 17 sustainable development goals that are being considered one of them is regarding gender and the others integrate gender and I wonder how 1325 is being integrated into that thanks Karen and thanks for keeping it brief please stand good morning my name is Marzia I'm from Afghanistan and I work with Feminist Majority Foundation for women who want to work in the background like me and other women who are interested to work on peace in Afghanistan our biggest concern is our own security for example just this month Amola in the village he told the people that the kind of jihad the Taliban are doing is wrong so the next day he was killed and for us we do want to do something and help but I would like to know how in your experience you support those women to be safe at the same time work on that thank you very much David Grant nonviolent peace force the recent UN review on peace operations promoted unarmed civilian protection as one of the methods that should be more widely used I'd like to under I ask you how the in the national action agendas might be encouraged to stimulate the skill skilling up of unarmed civilian peacekeeping especially since there are women's peace teams as well as integrated peace teams in a dozen NGOs being used now thanks David is there one more on this side please hello it was a pleasure listening to you all Abdulmanan for from women for afghan women Michael most of our discussions revolved around ISIS and violent extremist groups I would like to draw your attention to something that happened previous last year in the Islamic Republic of Iran which was the hanging of Rehana Jabari a journalist 26 year old my question is in 10 countries at least in the middle east in some form or the other the courts discriminate against women in the sense that the testimony of a woman is considered to be in weight half of that of a man my question to ambassador Chaudhary specifically is how could diplomatic efforts help in removing this impediment to the manifestation of resolution 1325 when the judicial systems in these 10 countries in the most volatile region in the world do not recognize women as equals in terms of testimony thank you thank you very much and we'll come back to you and your questions I'm going to ask the panelists to also stay your response very briefly so we can get another round and you don't have to answer all of them just pick one ambassador Chaudhary since the last one was addressed to you I'll start with you I think that that is a reality in many countries where the legal system judicial system inheritance laws of inheritance does not treat men and women equally but for that I mean it is not a challenge which can be overcome overnight one has to build up sustainable opposition to these points and then when the national action plans as we are emphasizing include these elements as need as having the need for examination the goal of changing them is very important so that is what I believe the laws which do not recognize the equality between women and men needs to be changed but change does not come so easily so there I think civil society particularly women's organizations have to raise their voice and and to organize in a manner that people understand in many societies women at this day and age even do not understand in my country I can say rural women do not understand that they have human rights they have their individuals they have rights they don't understand that let me also to that add this point which Mr. Grant raised about the nonviolent peace force and unarmed civilian protection which is a very essential thing and in their work and I am familiar with it I find that involvement of women in there in in civilian protection forces or protection groups have brought in tremendous change and their work in South Sudan is really remarkable thank you very much I think during my my address I spoke about having a comprehensive strategy in terms of at least in the countries in which we work the issue of rule of law is extremely important and that's why in my office I have the team we call the team sexual violence and the rule of law there's no way we can move forward without changing the laws and that's what we're doing in a lot of countries and that has helped us and example I can give you one of the biggest example is during my recent visit to the Middle East we realized that you cannot register the birth of a child you know only the father has to do it and so all of those children out of rape and even born in refugee camps cannot be registered and I was I went through an incident of they gave us an instance of a woman who got raped and then the case was investigated the perpetrator was prosecuted he was put in jail this woman wanted to keep the baby she had to go to prison to marry this man so the man could actually get the baby registered so one of the things to identify is that we need to work on the legal system in the Middle East but that's linked to religion so in our office now we're trying to see whether we could have somebody specialized on sharia law because there's no way you can deal with this issue if you don't deal with the law so that's why I mentioned the legislation is very important that's what we've done in a lot of countries extremely important I want to join on what you say the civilian protection you're an armed civilian I saw them in operation in south Sudan I was extremely impressed and the interesting thing I actually had a meeting with them in Beirut they are in Syria their strategy is to build the resilience of the communities to be able to withstand the hardship on the ISIS control area I had a long discussion with them so it's a for me I extremely impressed with what they do because in in juba in the camps protection because most of the people in the protection of civilian camps in the puc in the un compound they are men of the other ethnic group who have to run to save their lives so what's happened the men make a choice because if they leave the camp to go for food to go to anything they will kill them so what they do they prefer their women to go out because they know the women will be raped but the women will come back so they have to make this choice so the the team that is working with this woman is to walk with this woman so that they can go and get the food they need they cannot be raped so it's working out very well and I have to say I'm extremely impressed with them because I've encountered them both in Syria and anything and it's something we have to think about and I have to recommend this women who making the sacrifice living their countries going to this war turn countries trying to do everything to give protection for women especially where women are sexually being abused in in areas thank you thanks your question related to to the courts and I wanted to share an experience that was enlightening for me like recently which is that our organization is working with the U.S. National Defense University to put out a publication next year on inclusive security so inclusion and security very broadly speaking women peace and security effectively and we got a proposal for submission from Valerie Hudson who's a very well known researcher in this field who was the first to indicate that the single biggest predictor of whether a state goes to war either within itself within its own borders or with someone else is how women are treated so she she did this research and she proposed that she do a piece for our publication on family law and we all thought family law that doesn't fit necessarily with this etc so we read it and what she was talking about was that if you dive deeper into how women are treated the biggest the biggest driver of how women are treated relates to the rights that are enshrined in legal systems obviously to many and so she's you know differentiated these elements talking about how you can you can have women members of parliament you can have women in the workforce etc but when women can't pass citizenship onto their children when they can't inherit law or land or property etc they're fundamentally viewed as second-class citizens so the linkage between family law and its enforcement and security is something that we don't often make and linking it back to U.S. national policy I think the single biggest way that diplomatically we can support that is the funding core funding for women-led civil society organizations that are women's rights advocacy groups and this is something that is consistently under attended to we we tend to project ties support for women's groups but support for organizations that are advocates for domestic legal systems domestic legal improvements are a really essential part of the continuum of security and I think our national action plan does recognize that and hopefully in the update we'll continue to do so. Question of security I don't have a magic answer to how to support those who are working on CVE in in the very insecure situations in order to ensure their own personal security but I do just want to recognize that that's an incredibly important question for us to continue to be asking ourselves especially from the U.S. especially from the West as we seek to engage some of these actors and also to recognize what you said about how you're working under the radar in with invisibility in order to to do what you're doing and I think one thing we have to recognize from from the outside as organizations trying to support those who are working for peace is that there are some who want to operate invisibly with in a strategic manner and we need to we need to you know recognize the downside of that in terms of being able to see what they're doing and know how to offer support to them and so on but it's imperative on us to be taking your cues from those on the ground about how best to support them in ways that aren't going to put them at personal risk and then two I'm going to address the court question too just because it's a delicious one that gets at the question of religion and law and political norms and I think acknowledges the relationship between social religious norms and legal norms and political norms and just as I was saying we need to have this kind of integrated approach to this work you can't address the the the issues in the court or the issues in the law about women's rights without simultaneously addressing some of those religious norms and some of the political norms around that and so at USIP we've been doing this this project that brings together religious scholars male and female along with legal advocates and political women's rights activists in order in order recognizing the relationship between those three arenas and trying to push for greater protection and advancement of of women's rights in places where women's rights are being obstructed on religious grounds that I think can apply for minority rights and others it was actually based interestingly on the marriage equality movement on the US and how that was able to achieve significant change so quickly thank you just two very brief comments I think indeed you know the women who take up the call to action politically are extremely courageous and security is a real problem as Susie mentioned and then in terms of the peace the peacekeeping operation review that was revealed just a few weeks ago I think in the in the study it is recognized that the principles of 1325 apply to peace operations but if you look at military operations or peace operations in general they are genderblind and the training of military personnel is really quite quite limited let's put it that way and so I think we need to if we really want to implement this we need to do better in terms of training of military personnel in terms of of gender dynamics of those types of operations thank you yes I think we didn't respond to the president of the U.S.A. about her question on connecting the sustainable development goals which are now getting ready to be adapted in September 17 goals yes we tried there is a self-standing goal goal five which addresses the question of women's equality and empowerment but it was not possible politically in an inter governmental negotiation to include 1325 as needing integration with that goal because there is this inherent even is one body but there are wins within wills sdgs sustainable development goals are seen as a general assembly process while 1325 is seen as a security council process which is a limited body of 15 countries 15 members so there is this any inherent tension between the working of these two key bodies of the united nations one has the authority because the as I said in my speech article 25 of the charter of the U.N. says that all member states accept to comply with the decisions of the security council this is a charter obligation so 1325 is a charter obligation of the member states while sdgs or millennium development goals may not be they are only a general assembly decision so that is the difference and that is sometimes what is resisted by the broader membership because of security council being dominated by the permanent members because we have you know I mean rest be honest if we are going to negotiate some of the advances that we have made in terms of women empowerment and protection you put it on the table today you'll never get them to be accepted that's a fact because at that time some of the people who are the most difficult advocate today did not have their voices so they their voices have become much stronger they have resources they have capacity and they are fighting back so this is the reason even with bgm plus 20 everybody said don't open it up just review because if we open up anything we're going to lose all of the things all of the gains we've made in terms of women empowerment that's the reality I don't we have a reality in front of us I have been paying attention to this magic clock in front of me and they're about five minute difference between my clock and the floor clock and we have with us today Carla Cappell who's going to offer closing remarks on this remarkable session but before I turn the floor over to Carla I would like just I know that could have been the last word but I know you each probably have one last word and I am going to just say one word or two sentences you're good I really think humble it just I think it's important for us to know that we're living in a very difficult world with ISIS ISIS is a formidable extremist they walk together they understand us we think separately and we don't understand them if we're going to win this battle we really have to walk together and we have to move far ahead of them well as has been always my point that national action plan is the only way to make governments accountable and respecting the agenda of women peace and security so national action plan national action plan thank you ambassador Susan I'll just reiterate what I said at the beginning which is that an extraordinary moment of violent extremism violent conflict is also an extraordinary opportunity for really pushing us to think outside the box to collaborate and integrate in ways that we haven't previously and I'm heartened to see some of that taking place I would say we need both action and understanding and I would like to take up the previous speakers who emphasize the need for more research in this arena wonderful thank you all and I hope you will join me in thanking the panelists and I'm going to ask you just to stay true Carla I don't envy you're you're now job to try to bring us all together on what we've heard this morning and the way forward but if anybody can help us do this Carla Cappell who is the chief strategy officer at the US agency of international development prior to that she was a civil society leader of inclusive security and has many other wonderful contributions to add to the story today please I'm going to ask you to take the podium the panelists will stay seated here and thank you very much Carla for joining us good morning or almost afternoon first of all I want to thank you Kathleen and Nancy Lindborg for hosting this incredibly important conversation I need a salute Zena Bessar as G Bangura for her tireless efforts and for her friendship Ambassador Chowdhury is the father of 1325 we should always tip our hats to you and refer back to national action plans I want to thank my colleagues at USAID particularly Kristen Cordell Jennifer Hawkins Allison Sallier Julia Billings and Russell Porter for their help putting this together and to the Department of State for years and years of partnership around advancing women peace and security along with USAID it's an unenviable challenge to be following such a brilliant capable eloquent group of experts and speakers and to be assigned to summarize without repeating boring dulling or otherwise elongating unnecessarily a great conversation I will do my best and I beg for your forbearance 2015 as has been mentioned and was alluded to in the panel is really a critical year it's the 15th anniversary of 1325 it's our first opportunity within the U.S. government to review and update the national action plan on women peace and security it provides a chance for us to evaluate and build on our progress integrating women peace and security objectives across the full spectrum of crisis and conflict prevention response recovery and transition efforts and to learn collectively from our successes and challenges and to address key developments that have evolved since the nap was adopted in 2011 in initial consultations on the intersections of countering violent extremism and women peace and security have been a central topic and front and center not only in the minds of those in government but those in civil society in part that's because the world has evolved extremely rapidly and new preeminent challenges have emerged in part it's because the national action plan actually provides a perfect entry point for thinking about gender and women's issues as they relate to countering violent extremism and for sharpening the focus of the U.S. plan on the issues related to countering violent extremism the U.S. national action plan is one of the most critical policies we have to support women's leadership and participation in efforts to combat reduce and prevent terrorism and violent extremism even if it wasn't crafted as explicitly as it might have been in addressing these challenges Eric Postel spoke earlier today about the U.S. CVE strategy and he mentioned that it focuses in part in large measure on addressing the root causes of extremism through awareness raising through countering extremist narratives through emphasizing community led interventions and through enabling attention to local grievances and as Rob Brzezinski told us and I think was echoed in the remarks of the panel such a strategy must involve women to be successful it is a strategy that is tailor-made for their engagement and plays to their strengths and their role in societies around the world it's clear that women have critical traditional and contemporary roles that make their involvement and inclusion essential whether you look at the role of mothers and female community members in Pakistan who can either be involved in de-radicalizing young people or in helping drive and fund extremist recruitment efforts or you look at the ways the Hakama singers in Sudan have incited conflict and now are being engaged to promote peace you look at how Rwandan women have used traditional authority to stem violence or you explore the influence of Central American women in encouraging or discouraging young people to join criminal gangs and commit crime at the same time today we know that gender and women's issues encountering violent extremism are multi-dimensional and I mentioned this not because it hasn't been said but simply to draw all of these threads together females join radical groups and perpetrate attacks but the reasons they join can be different from those of males and the path to de-radicalization must be unique women and girls can have critical roles in preventing or encouraging recruitment and radicalization as well as de-radicalization and reintegration of former members of extremist groups and women and girls are terribly brutalized by extremist groups and often that brutalization is a calling card and a trademark of those radical groups across religions and regions a common thread of extremist groups is that in almost every incident their advances have been coupled with attacks on the rights of women and girls as SRSG Bangura noted today a battle is being waged on the bodies of women and girls it's clear that women and girls are essential players who must be engaged and involved and whose unique needs must be addressed in any effort to counter violent insurgency as ambassador Choudhury noted today both men and women have the power to empower the international community continues to grapple with a thoughtful response to the gendered dimensions in countering violent extremism as Chantal alluded to it's clear we must consistently demonstrate steadfast support for the promotion of gender equality and women's rights for the protection of vulnerable populations for women's voice and role in all peacebuilding efforts and for a better understanding of women's diverse roles and agency in combating violent extremism at the same time the approach and modalities must be refined and applied more consistently USAID is really striving to sharpen and strengthen its efforts for example in african and middle east we're examining how our targeted investments in women peace and security can counter violent extremism by strengthening the role of women and youth in political and peace processes by enabling them to engage on priority development and reconciliation needs by advocating for equitable access to justice productive resources and peace dividends and reducing vulnerability to violence trafficking and recruitment by armed groups but those are just initial steps there's much more to do and there's a great deal more to learn that's why the conversation this morning has been so incredibly important it offers us some important takeaways as we move forward among them the international community building on srsg bangura's eloquent and impassioned message must developed and adopt new and expanded and more effective strategies for providing protection and support to women and girls who are vulnerable to and victims of insurgent movements and extremist groups second we need to better enable and expand counter insurgent networks among women and youth third it is critical that we invest in and expand the research base as a means for identifying promising engagement and protection strategies as well as approaches to promoting consistent female and engagement those must be strategies to hinder recruitment and radicalization to enable women's inclusion in early warning systems and to enable de-radicalization and reintegration of former extremists fourth as tim curry reminds us we need to focus on ensuring domestically that women's leaders and voices are elevated and that the narrative is gender sensitive and attentive to the differentiated needs and roles of women and men fifth as jackie o'neill tells us we need to better address the needs of and involve women in the security sector and sixth as Eric postell noted we must more extensively and better leverage social media to combat extremism and to counterbalance the extremist narrate being promulgated online right now we're not winning that battle there are many other lessons and takeaways we could draw from the conversations that have happened today there were an enormous number of important points that we should carry forward today is one important piece of a broader conversation and i hope that the synthesis i'm providing at least gives us a sense of some of the important threads that emerge from the conversation i want to speak on behalf of not only a id but the department of state and usip in thanking you and asking that you carry the conversation forward we really really appreciate the fact that so many people took time out of busy schedules to do a deep dive into an issue that cross cuts work and unfortunately creates devastating international headlines every single day we look forward to continuing the collaboration we invite the discussion and we welcome your ideas have a wonderful afternoon thank you carla well done i want to just take this minute and also recognize the collaboration that usip us aid and state department our colleague christian cordell and julia billings as well as alison cellar who isn't here and you all know that it is in the details that these things happen and so my hat off to nicoleta barbera danielle robertson steve steiner kailey tweedy and all the volunteers of usip who came forward today to be a part of this special event thank you very much for those of you who are watching in other rooms thank you for standing by and for those who are watching around the world we hope you're a part of this effort moving forward thank you very much we hope to see you soon