 Welcome to the US Institute of Peace. My name is Kathleen Kinist, and I direct the Gender Strategy and Policy Team here at the Institute. We're very pleased to be co-hosting with the nonprofit organization Inclusive Security. This public event, Securing Their Roles, Women in Constitution Making, is a theme that is actually very in line with the Institute's core principles on partnership. We have learned that our impact is wider and really more enduring when we work with partners on the ground, with governments, multilateral organizations, and civil society around the world. 34 years ago, USIP was founded by Congress as an independent national institution dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, practical, and essential for US and global security. We have learned over the years that when nations make the transition from violent conflict to the rule of law, a new constitution is often a key ingredient for addressing the causes of violence. Drafting a constitution is also a critical time to rethink the rights of all nations' citizens, particularly those of women and girls. Constitutions are indispensable for the reform of gender discriminatory laws. A constitution protects the rights of all stakeholders and is likely to support stability and prove a more durable peace if women and girls are considered. So the panel today is focused on new research that reveals just how few of the 75 countries that have undergone a reform process over a 20-year period of time have actually included women in the drafting of these new constitutions. This research poses key questions, including how do we improve this gap? How do we engage women in all aspects and on the spectrum of constitutional making? So it is my pleasure now to turn the podium over to our moderator today, Rosary Tucci. She directs the Inclusive Society Center here at USIP. Ro will introduce the panelists, get the conversation started, and then she is going to look to all of you for a great Q&A session. So Ro, over to you. Great, thank you. Pleased to be here with our guests today. I'll introduce them real quick, and then we'll go into questions. So the first guest I'd like to introduce is Marie O'Reilly. She leads the Inclusive Security Research Agenda, where they've done groundbreaking work on why women's inclusion matters and how to achieve it. She is the author of the research that we're highlighting here today, how women influence constitutions. So we're excited to hear more about the findings. We really appreciate the strategies and policy recommendations you've provided to the Washington and international community. We also have here today with us Jason Gluck. He's a policy specialist at UNDP, specializing in political dialogues and constitutional processes. Welcome back to USIP, Jason. You've provided great direction in this field while you were here with us. And then we have our own current USIP colleague here with us today, Paul Washa Kakkar, who is a senior program officer in the Religion and Inclusive Society's portfolio. Paul Washa will be discussing your recent research on advancing women's rights in constitutions developed with a religious or Islamic identity. And we will be joined by Amira on Skype while when we get that set up. Amira is a human rights advocate who has been active in the Tunisian community, promoting freedom of speech for the past two decades. She leads a Tunisian NGO that works on getting the parliament and other government agencies to ensure information gets to its citizens in an accessible and transparent way. So when we get that set up, we'll welcome her to the discussion. OK, so we're going to dive right in. We'll do two rounds of questions, and then we'll open it up to the audience to hear your questions. In the first round, I'd like to explore the connections between inclusive peace processes and inclusive constitutional drafting. Because we know that the signing of a peace agreement is just the beginning of efforts to transform conflict. So Marie, let's begin with you. Can you tell us a little bit more about your research and how you see the link between inclusive constitution processes and inclusive peace processes? How do they impact each other? Thanks so much, Rosary. And many thanks to USIT for having us today. I also want to say a huge thanks to my co-author on this research, Nanako Tamaru, who's also with us here in the front row. We decided to undertake this research because, well, inclusive security works a lot with women looking to influence peace processes in their own countries. And what we found was recently more and more women were asking us how to influence the constitution reform initiatives that were very frequently accompanying these peace processes. So as you say, we kind of started out really looking at more traditional peace negotiations. And with all of this feedback, we realized that there was a real demand for more guidance in terms of how to influence the constitution making processes that so often accompany these peace accords. And what we found was there was a lot less research and guidance out there on women's roles in constitution making. And at the same time, there are obviously a lot of very important constitution reform initiatives happening as part and parcel of peace and transition processes right now. So for example, we know that in Syria, constitution reform is one of the pillars of the peace process. And the constitutional committee is currently being assembled. In Libya, we have ongoing constitution reform, Somalia as well. So this is happening in many contexts. And we wanted to know more about how women get access to these processes and when they do, what kind of impact they have. And so we started out by just trying to assess, well, how frequently does this happen? And what we found was that between 1990 and 2015, there were 75 countries that undertook some sort of significant constitution reform in the wake of conflict or unrest. So this is a frequent occurrence. It's not like in the United States where the constitution is a one-off thing. When a country is really disrupted by conflict, this is an opening where very often society decides they want to create a new vision and a new social compact to carry their country forward. What we also found was that women's participation in these processes, in these settings, is just one in five in terms of the core constitution drafting body. So between 1990 and 2015, we found 19% of the constitution drafters were women in conflict, in settings affected by conflict or political transition. Now, that proportion has been increasing over time. So in the early 90s, it was just 13% of women. Between 2010 and 2015, it actually had come up to 24%. So the trend line is increasing. But obviously, by and large, women are still being shut out of these very significant moments for influencing peace and gender equality in their countries going forward. So what impact did women have when they did get involved? We looked at eight case studies, and we found that across the cases, really the most visible evidence of impact that we could point to was women consistently advocated for greater gender equality provisions in these constitutions. As we now know, thanks to research by Valerie Hudson and others, gender equality is a very significant predictor of peace. More so than a country's level of economic wealth, their levels of democracy, or their type of religion. So women are advocating for provisions that will help to create more equal and inclusive societies. And that, in turn, correlates very strongly with prospects for peace in a country going forward. Similarly, we also found in the majority of cases that women were frequently advocating for the inclusion of other marginalized groups, for protections for minorities, focusing on minority rights. Again, exclusion is a significant driver of conflict. So what we were finding was that in terms of influencing the text, the Constitution itself, women were having these indirect effects on prospects for peace and security. But the impact also really was on the process itself before the text. Women were building coalitions to advance these common agendas that they had identified. And these coalitions very often crossed significant racial, cultural, ethnic, religious divides. So, for example, in South Africa, the Women's National Coalition brought together 93 non-governmental organizations, 13 regional coalitions, and included women from the ruling national party as well as from the African National Congress. So what we saw there was really where women obviously, of course being very divided themselves on many political issues, very frequently they came together and sort of modeled what a consensus-building coalition can look like in a very divided context. And at the same time, the calling card of a lot of women's groups in civil society in particular was to broaden societal participation in the constitution-making process, kind of cementing the social compact as it was being created. So if we come back to that South African example, we saw that this national coalition of women's groups, they actually reached out to an estimated 2 million women across all sorts of societal divides and solicited their inputs for what the priorities should be in this new constitution. And that really changed the tenor of the debate in many ways in that the way that people spoke about how gender equality should feature in the constitution, from that point forward, that became a sort of new norm in terms of what should be included. So triple impact is what we found across these qualitative case studies on the constitution itself in terms of provisions for more equal and inclusive societies. Also on bridging divides within the process and then broadening societal participation as well. Great, thank you. Jason, I'm actually going to turn to you. You've been involved in a number of constitutional processes. Can you help us disaggregate inclusion? Tell us a little bit more about what it means and what it looks like. Sure, I think the way, well, first let me say thank you and it's great to be back home. It really is. I think of inclusion as sort of a three-step inquiry. Who's at the table? What are the processes and mechanisms in place to have their voices heard? And then how do you hear the voices of everyone else who can't be at the table? And if you take them through, I'll try and go through them quickly. So who's at the table? I think it's actually a great example from my own personal experience is through a gender lens and looking at women's inclusion. The first constitutional process I ever had the opportunity to support was Iraq's constitutional review in 2007. And so you'll recall the constitution was adopted in 2005 and at the 11th hour they added a provision that would call for a mandatory comprehensive review shortly after the next parliament was elected in order to try and bring the Sunnis back into the political fold. So this process is being undertaken in 2007. And with the United Nations, we're supporting a new review committee of parliament that's undertaking the review. And of course, like everything else in Iraq, it's broken up largely along the sectarian and ethnic lens. You have groups of Sunni and Shia and Kurds that are undertaking this negotiation. And we at the UN received a lot of submissions for issues particularly related to personal status, marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, things that were of particular importance to women. And so when we would go around to these groups, at least two out of the three were incredibly sympathetic to making reforms to the constitution that would better serve gender equality, gender rights. The problem is that the review committee itself had about 30 members of it on it and only one woman. So you were talking to men engaged in a very high stakes political negotiation. And the response we heard from the two groups that were sympathetic to these changes was sure we would support it, but we can't use our political capital to champion it. And that was the moment that I realized really, I mean, getting women around the table, this first question of inclusion, who has a seat is critically important. You can compare that anecdote to, for example, Liberia, that is in the midst of a constitutional review, but has completed the phase where its commission has gone out and provided recommendations to the president, which have then now been forwarded to the parliament. This commission was chaired by a woman, a former chief justice, a very formidable woman named Gloria Scott. And I don't think it's coincidence that about 20% of all the recommendations that went up to the president's desk on amendments have to do with strengthening gender rights. Or you could look at Kenya, and here I'm gonna steal from inclusive securities fantastic report, and I'm not checking my Facebook. But so the deputy chair of the committee of experts was a woman and she wrote that constitution making, quote, required women to stand together, acknowledge and offer each other sisterhood, listen to each other and work together regardless of party affiliation, ethnic background, and whether or not we like each other. And I think the lesson there is quite clear. When you get women in the room, you have opportunity for caucusing or cross party advocacy, and if they're not in the room, obviously that can't happen. So that's inclusion in terms of getting people to table. In terms of the rules and mechanisms, I mean, it's not enough, obviously you could, just if you had one woman out of 30, that voice is not going to be particularly heard. But you asked a moment ago about sort of this connection between constitution making and peace building. There's a really interesting case study we can look to. Unfortunately, it's quite a sad story, but what's happened in Yemen in the wake of the Arab Spring. So there you had a national dialogue of 565 people and it was incredibly inclusive in terms of getting everyone to seat at the table. Now, if you look at the two minority groups that were most critical in terms of developing this political compact that Marie spoke of a minute ago, it was Southerners who represent about 20% of the population and Houthis who represent about the same maybe a little bit more. Now, when they were designing the national dialogue, they were very conscious of the fact that they needed to negotiate with Southerners as an entity such that they could get their buy-in. And that might require more than 20% of the seats. It might require voting procedures and decision-making rules that ensure that you're going to have their buy-in as the process unfolds. So in this case, Southerners got 50% of the seats in the national dialogue despite the fact that they only represented about 20% of the population. Later on, when some of the Southerners were going to actually pull out of the national dialogue because of the direction it was going, the president created what was called the North South Committee or eight plus eight committee. And here they actually took eight Northerners and eight Southerners, pulled them out of the national dialogue and said there are specific issues that we need to agree on to keep this process on track. And this is a very strategic and deliberate example of how the numbers itself and the inclusion itself may not be enough. You need to get that elite deal. Now, of course, we know how Yemen has unfolded since, but let's look at the Houthi side. The Houthis, who might also be about 20%, 25%, somebody would say 30% of the population received 6% of the seats in the national dialogue. There was no special committee to deal with Houthi issues the way there was with southern issues. The issue that was most existential to the Houthis had to do with the number and the boundaries of regions in the new federal Yemen. And on this, there was a 22-person committee of which Houthis had one seat, maybe two, depending on political affiliation. And they were the only ones who objected to the outcome of this region's committee, which proposed a map that was a red line against Houthi interests. Although they were at the table, those interests were never reflected in any deal. And then when the Constitutional Drafting Committee was formed to put pen to paper and create a constitution out of these agreements that were nominally reached by the national dialogue and this region's committee, Houthis had one of 17 seats. And again, because of the voting procedures and the decision-making mechanisms, when it came time, the Houthis again were the only ones that objected to the draft. And I don't think it's coincidence that it was as the draft was being delivered to the president, the messenger was kidnapped, the draft was taken, and of course, we see Yemen in the horrible state that it's in today. I don't want to draw a direct line of causation, but I do want to underscore this importance that it's not enough just to have people at the table. And this requires a political calculation as well as a design of rules that can accommodate all these different interests and voices. And then lastly, on this question of a bigger picture of participation, you can't have all societal interests around the table. And even if you can have them reflected in one seat here or there, you're still leaving a lot of voices. And so particularly a lot of the work that we did at USIP and is continuing to be emphasized throughout the international community is on the role of public participation in constitution-making. And the benefits there are numerous. There may be a normative or moral argument for it. But at its root, all of this is to get by it on the social compact that Marie referred to. And the more voices, the more buy-in. It can create challenges, certainly. But whether or not you're talking about groups or whether you're talking about society at large, to the extent you can make them feel ownership over this process and the outcome that comes from it, you're in a better state, whether you're peace building in the wake of conflict prevention, whether you're dealing with fragile states and trying to make them more resilient to conflict, whether you're talking about sustainable development, all of this requires this aspect of inclusion. Thanks. Do we have a mirror on Skype that we connected? Great. So let's pick up on that point of public participation. And, Amira, if you can hear us, in your experience, what is the relationship between Tunisian constitution drafting process and building national peace and stability in the aftermath of the Arab Spring? How did public participation in these processes shape Tunisian's future? Couple seconds. Yeah? Maybe we'll give her a little time to connect. We can move to Paul Washa. Let us know once she connects. We'll move to Paul Washa and we could try that again. So Paul Washa, you bring another dimension to this conversation. There were tensions in balancing religion and secular politics in drafting Tunisian's constitution. And one issue that remains critical to the conversation is the role of women and women's rights. Can you tell us more about how you've seen religion and women's rights balance in other countries' constitutional processes and how have women and religious actors managed around that dynamic? Thank you, Rio. And thank you for including me in this conversation. One of the big tensions often in this conversation is between women's rights activists who usually come from a secular viewpoint and religious actors or even political actors who really see the importance of the role of religion in their identity. And so as constitutions are being reformed or drafted, particularly as we were seeing after the Arab Spring, where there was this sense of we need to include a new or different kind of identity in our constitutions, religion played a really important role. And the role of Sharia in the Constitution started to take more and more prominence. So in 2013, USIP decided to have a round table on this issue and included Tunisia, among other countries, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt were also included. Really talk about and hash out what does this mean to have Sharia in the Constitution, particularly as it relates to women's rights. Because as Jason was also mentioning, a lot of the personal status law issues that relate to women's rights often come up as a problem or as an issue in drafting the constitutions, particularly when there is a reference to Sharia or to laws not going against Islam. And so we were looking at this, particularly in the light of Arab Spring and this identity issue. And so what was interesting is that even though a lot of secular women's rights activists were saying there should be no Sharia in the Constitution, it seemed to be inevitable that there was going to be Sharia in a number of these constitutions. And when we did our mapping of the religious landscape in Libya in 2014, it was unanimous. People that we interviewed said, yes, there's going to be Sharia in the Constitution in Libya. In Afghanistan, it was unanimous. People were saying, yes, there's going to be Sharia in the Constitution. So there was an understanding that, okay, Sharia will be in the Constitution now what? What does that mean for women's rights after that? Well, first, the question is, what does it mean? What does Sharia in the Constitution really mean? And so different constitutions have laid it out differently. In Afghanistan, they say no laws can go against the tenants of Islam. In Egypt, it was negotiated that no laws can go against the sources of Islamic Sharia. And in Tunisia, it's interesting. They say there's no Sharia in the Constitution, but Article 136 states that no constitutional amendment shall harm Islam as a religion of the state. So there's all these interesting dynamics between law and tenants of Sharia, sources of Sharia. What does that all mean? And in looking at specific case studies, in Afghanistan, Libya and Egypt, what we found was that there needs to be a clear, concise mechanism and an authority as to who decides what that means in terms of what laws go against Sharia or not. And the issue is that in a lot of Muslim countries, there's people who give fatwas, give religious rulings saying this is a Sharia or this is not Sharia. There's a diversity of opinion in Sharia. Sharia is not one monolithic interpretation or one monolithic body of law. There's lots of interpretations, there's lots of schools of thought. Within schools of thought, there's lots of different interpretations. And it's dynamic and it's changing, it evolves. And so for this reason, in the case studies that we were looking at, what was laid out was that there needs to be a clear authority or a clear mechanism to make the decision in terms of what is or what is and according to Sharia. So in Libya and in Egypt, you have the Supreme Constitutional Court. In Afghanistan, you have these overlapping bodies. So you have an oversight, a constitutional oversight committee. You have a committee in parliament. You have the Supreme Court, which has the Dar-Liftah. And all of them lay claim to the ones to be making the final decision. In the end, they actually don't make the decision, they all have veto power. So clear mechanism really needs to be laid out because if it's not laid out, then it raises a lot of problems. What we also found is that even when there is a mechanism, there are certain protections that need to be put in place. So the problem with the Supreme Constitutional Court in Libya was that they did not have security. So at the point of the gun, when they were threatened, their lives were threatened, they reneged their amendments. Or they changed their decision. And so if there isn't clear security, that's one of the issues. Also that the authority should have both secular, both constitutional legitimacy and religious legitimacy. So you have that kind of legitimacy in both. So that's in terms of how they've been schooled their background as well. But what really is interesting about the constitutional process is not just that this mechanism needs to be laid out, but also that women's rights activists had been advocating for specific constitutional articles. And the reason given is not that, while Sharia doesn't cover all of these issues, there is a diversity of opinion in Sharia as to whether women can be judges or women can't be judges. There's a diversity of opinion in Sharia as to women's political participation and what level of office they can hold and what level they can't hold. So within that diversity of opinion, certain things are laid out clearly in the constitution and that ensures that no matter how much those bodies change in the political will, supporting those mechanisms and authorities change, there are certain things, there are certain red lines that then are not, there's no sliding back on those issues. And so a lot of the countries that we were looking at, Afghanistan, Libya and Egypt are trying to or have laid out specific provisions and articles in their constitution to balance those out. So equal citizenship rights, equal access to healthcare, equal access to education, political participation rights, quotas for women, women's right to work, particularly issues like maternity leave and providing provisions for women in the workspace. All of these are things that some would say, well, you don't need the constitution to be so particular on, but women's rights have been advocating to be particular about these things in the constitution because there is a diversity of opinion in Sharia on these and these are things that they're red lines they don't want to slide back on. So you see this negotiation between both the religious aspects, including religious identity, that is an Islamic identity in a constitution or including some provision that laws can't go against the tenants of Islam or can't go against the sources of Sharia or the principles, but at the same time having very specific provisions that lay out women's rights, or what protections for women's rights very clearly in the constitution. Great, thank you. I'm gonna move to the second round of questions unless we think we have Amir on. Yes, we do, look at that, perfect timing. Amir, let me repeat the question for you and for our audience here. We were trying to pick up on the threat of public participation in constitutional processes and we wanted to know in your experience on the ground what is the relationship between Tunisia's constitutional drafting process and building national peace and stability in the aftermath of the Arab Spring? How did public participation in these processes help to shape Tunisia's future? So first of all, hello. Hello, welcome. I'm happy, I finally am getting you on the phone. So in Tunisia, what happened in the beginning is, so first of all, you need to always imagine how it was. We're a country that has never been under democracy, never experienced that democracy had no idea what it means. So even though we can learn it in books, we had no idea what means human rights, what means, I don't know, equality, et cetera. So, or participation of course, because we went from dictatorship to another dictatorship, to colony, to invasions. This is the history of Tunisia. So we were all in like first grade of democracy and we had no idea how to deal with it. So what we did, in the beginning when we had these elections, but we had quite high turnout, people went and it was very emotional when we elected these 217 people. But at the end, first of all, there was a certain shock when people go on because we were used to all these black guys, somehow nominated by the Ben Ali regime, people who looked like all like bankers. And we ended up having 217 people that looked like any average Tunisian in the street. We had a taxi driver as an MP. We had a woman who never worked as MP. And I mean, we had students, we had everything. So when these people get elected, the first assumption they had was, okay, now that we get elected, we are supposed to write this constitution. And so the participation ends there, and the elections, and if people don't like what we did, they will not elect us next time. And that was a big part of what Al-Balsala did, is to explain first to these people the fact that they have to make everything open and to let people participate, every Tunisian participate. And then the other side also explained to every Tunisian their right to know what's happening in there, to participate to the discussions, to understand the importance of understanding what is being discussed, and especially to try to let their voice heard. Tunisia, honestly, one thing that played a big role was social media in making the voice of the people actually heard by MPs once they get elected. So I remember, I would always remember this MP who understood that if he wants to get re-elected, he better get a Facebook account and exchange with people, and he came to me and he said, hi, Amira, I really want to have Facebook in my home. And I go like, no, you mean internet. And he goes like, no, no, no, I just need Facebook. You know, these two things are completely, so you need this to get Facebook. And he said, no, I heard internet is very expensive. I'm good with Facebook. This MP, three years after had an iPad and he was like answering people's questions online and answering his emails, okay? So what we went through with three years of, let's say, of education in both sides, I think people get it better than the MPs and understood they're right better than the MPs. And this is why sometimes people ask me if they think Tunisia will go backwards and my answer is always no, not because we don't have attempts, not because, I mean, for me, the actual president, the actual government that we have is a former regime government. They are, these people don't believe in democracy, but still with these people, they cannot bring it backwards because the Tunisians want to let it go. Now, we became way too used to freedom expression and freedom of speech. We became way too used to criticize and insult our politicians. So somehow something was triggered with these three years of participation and it was not just participations, it was actually an education for democracy. Great, thank you. That's wonderful to have the on the ground reflections. So let's move on to the next round of questions where we're gonna take a closer look at the challenges of risks and of course the opportunities related to broadening participation in constitution making. So Marie, let's begin with you again. Why is it so hard for women to earn a role in constitutional making? Can you also illuminate on the risks they face? And while you're at it, talk about the opportunities that they can look for to improve their engagement moving forward. A little bit of everything, if you don't mind. Thanks, well, you know, let's start with a little optimism. Yeah, okay, sure. It's clear that women tend to get more access to these constitution making processes than they do to traditional peace negotiations. We know that women negotiators, female negotiators in formal peace processes are around about 9%. Here, we have about one in five and that proportion is increasing. That being said, four out of five constitution drafters in these settings are men. So we still have a ways to go. And as we know, and as Jason so beautifully illuminated, access does not always translate to influence. And these are two different things that we need to focus on both of them. What we found when interviewing women in these cases was that very often they face this challenge of tokenism. So in Tunisia, for example, even though women had been at the forefront of the revolution played a very visible role that was very widely acknowledged when it came to the next phase, when it came to drafting the constitution, many of the women that our team interviewed reported being perceived as token actors and constantly having to prove their legitimacy at every turn. And similarly along those lines, many women reported facing harassment and threats for getting involved in these processes. And that reflects, as we know, the situation of women in politics around the world. And I think that there are a lot of parallels to be drawn between some of the more straightforward challenges we see in women's political participation and what's happening in these constitutional processes. It does relate back to this wider social norm that women's place is not in politics. That politics is a male-dominated sphere and that that tradition is very hard to break with. This is something that goes back millennia, as we know, from ancient Greek and Roman texts where women's voices in the public sphere were being silenced. But this is also something that's very clear in these constitutional processes in particular where, for example, I'll just come back to Amira for a minute who's being very modest. Amira set up an organization called Albausula in Tunisia which helped to monitor what was going on inside these constitutional committees as the constitution was being drafted. She connected, using the magic of the internet, what was going on inside with what people wanted to know in society more broadly. So who was attending what sessions? What was being discussed in these sessions? What decisions were being made? And even though Amira and her colleagues found that women actually had higher rates of attendance proportionately than men did during these sessions, the social norms played a role in the sense that journalists still far more frequently interviewed men in terms of what just happened in that session, what decisions were made, even when men weren't present in the session in question. So we're seeing from all sorts of angles that this social norm around women's involvement in politics very much came to the fore in these constitutional processes and it's something that needs to be tackled on many different fronts. Beyond that, we also found that there were a lot of challenges in terms of recognizing the multiplicity of women's identities as they participated in these processes. In Tunisia, for example, a lot of women told us that the votes on certain provisions were taking place late at night, 11 p.m., midnight. And women in most societies are the primary caregivers in their homes and that can be a very difficult time to be present and influence those votes. But similarly in terms of bridging divides around ethnic, caste, class divisions in Nepal, for example, women did manage to form a caucus in the constituent assembly and they did manage to advance a lot of very significant gender equality provisions in the constitution. At the same time, they reported later in surveys that they weren't able to build as strong a coalition as they would have wanted because a lot of these class and caste divides prevented them from doing so. That's something that women overcame very clearly in Kenya, for example. They had a very well-facilitated coalition-building process. They had something that became known as the spitting session where they were able to air their grievances with each other and really flesh out some of these very deep conflict divides that, of course, pervaded among women as individuals and between women's groups. At the same time, I think there's also a lot of hope in the sense that if you have a well-facilitated process, if you can bring the right people into the room and really have a lot of that kind of, you know, some trauma healing and reconciliation initiatives, then women are able to overcome those divides and build coalitions and identify a minimum consensus around a common agenda. And typically that relates not only to gender equality, but that's obviously the most visible area where women can achieve that level of basic consensus and come together. A final challenge was around the subordination of so-called women's issues. And that's something that we see also in peace negotiations that are often happening in parallel or have just happened before. We heard a lot previously from both Jason and Paul Wata about personal status codes, family law. These are not very, you know, these are things that are typically considered, oh, that's a social issue or that's a family issue or that's a women's issue. But actually there's a lot of research now that shows that family, the correlation between gender equality and family law and the peacefulness of a society is actually very strong. There's actually a lot of evidence now that shows that these particular kinds of social issues have a very strong impact on prospects for peace and security in a society. So this red herring of women's issues is still being thrown out there and it's something that women still have to find extra hard to overcome. Opportunities, what can women do to have more influence and to gain more access and what can men do to help them also? We did find that when women mobilized early on in the process, this did seem to increase their chances of getting access and having influence. As we know, the selection procedures for a constitution making body are very often set early on in the peace process. So it's when, for example, women were involved in the peace negotiations early on, they very often managed to secure a quota for women's participation in the later constituent assembly but also when women mobilized in civil society from the outset and exerted pressure consistently to keep attention on women's representation, that also really helped there to be more women in the constitution drafting body and to have their interests recognized more broadly. There are also many ways to incentivize participation and that came through, but they vary dramatically in quality. So in many cases, a quota clearly did help women to have more higher levels of participation. In other cases, the quota itself was sort of a token quota and there was a quota for 10% women's participation in Egypt, for example, that's what it was equivalent to and in the end, that kind of incentive just isn't going to make enough of a difference. So we speak about it in terms of opportunities incentivizing participation that really goes beyond tokenism and we also found that where women were able to build strategic alliances, both inside the constitution-making body but also outside building broad coalitions in civil society and when those two were able to speak to each other, that very often meant that women were a much better place to advance this common agenda. So in Colombia, for example, women within the assembly were advocating for marginalized, protections for marginalized groups, but they actually were only 5% of the assembly. That said, women then mobilized outside to create a coalition in civil society and they were instrumental in achieving specific constitutional provisions around women's participation in the public sector and in decision-making in the final constitution. So it really has to be an element of both if those two elements can speak to each other and work together, then even better again. And finally, there's this idea of how the debate is framed and that relates to understanding the process. So we did find, for example, that as we've been saying, gender equality correlates with peace and inclusiveness exclusion drives war and where women were able to frame their demands around gender equality in a way that could resonate with broader portions of society beyond women, they also seem to be more successful. So equal citizenship, for example, in Tunisia rather than focusing exclusively on women's rights for women only. There were examples of this where connecting this agenda to broader goals of peace, security, democracy seemed to help women to achieve their goals in that sense and where women were well-prepared to really understand the process and identify the key actors, they were then able to get creative and push these agendas forward in a way that was more effective. It's interesting, I think one area that we'd love to find out more about is the relationship between what we see in these constitutional processes and what we see in politics more broadly. In Ireland, when we're talking about women's participation in politics, we often say it comes down to the five Cs. The hurdles that they face come down to culture, cash, confidence, candidate selection, and childcare. And what I found was I actually was reminded of this much later after we had completed this research that these are common challenges that women face universally when trying to access politics. And they certainly rang true in these constitutional spaces. The difference is that, as we know, the Constitution is setting the ground rules for politics and many other elements of society moving forward. So this is such a crucial place for women to have access and influence in order to then change the dynamics in terms of women's participation in politics and so many other areas as society moves forward. Great. Thank you for those five Cs. We'll remember those and how to overcome them. Jason, over to you. Based on the constitutions that you've seen and been involved in, speak to some of the challenges you've seen but also some of the strategies you've seen employed by both women and other marginalized groups. Sure, although I have to grouse for a moment because Marie took a lot of the points I want to add. The good news for all of you is that she delivers them backed by data and I only have anecdotal experience. So you're better served by having them from her. You want balls. I would emphasize this connective tissue between getting women in the room and then connecting them to civil society. In my experience, that is the critical factor that determines an outcome that is more generous to gender rights and we've seen in societies that can tick those two boxes stronger provisions and constitutions for equality and rights. So I definitely agree with that. Also the inclusive security in terms of strategy, the report is fantastic in going back and looking through these peace processes and looking at when you get women at the table and the peace talks, then what that means for later constitutional negotiation. So I don't need to belabor those points. I think a lot of the work that I do has to do outside the room as well. So going back to this topic of broader public participation, I have to say that if you just compare, if you look among civil society in any particular country and you don't compare the capacity of that civil society to other countries, but you look at the makeup within that country, women are almost always at the forefront of activity in the civic sphere. And then in terms of strategies for engagement, it really is so context specific. Amira was talking about Tunisia and the use of Facebook. There was a Tunisian civil society, a female activist who said to me, I'm going to my notes again, that Facebook has become the cafe for women who cannot meet in public. And so you look at this and there is no, it's very difficult to say here are the strategies for getting women involved. It depends on what the norms, what the culture, what the opportunities are in that particular country. I did a lot of work in Sudan on what was in effect a quasi constitutional process. And they are like in a lot of societies, women are less likely to speak in public. Let's just put it like that. And so what you saw was some of the elite women within the town, the village, would have what they call tea sessions. And they would gather as many women from the villages they could in any particular time, have them over, drink tea and discuss the constitution or the issues of the day. And then the trick is how you put that in a report and how you get that in front of people who are actually going to be making decisions. And then again you see the connective tissue between what happens in society and what happens in the room. I think the international community can play a role. It's not always positive. As someone who works for the United Nations, I think it's very interesting. We have a secretary general's guidance note on assistance to constitutional processes, that's what it's called. It came out in 2009. And it has a list of principles in it. And one principle is to promote international norms and values. And you can see how gender equality clearly fall under this. And we do, whenever we can, we promote it. Now another principle is ensure national sovereignty. Now my plain reading of those words, I think ensure is a bit stronger than promote. And it shows the really delicate balancing that we have to do as internationals when we come into these very fragile political processes and respect the sovereignty and ownership of the nation that we're there to support. And yet we do come with our own norms and values. And I don't think there, you know, it's much more an art than a science. I do think there are things we can do. I think a great example of doing good in this regard is from the United Nations Special Envoy to Yemen, who at the earliest stages of setting up the national dialogue was confronted with the prospect of very few women being included. And that was because the seats to the national dialogue were divided up among different segments of society. So each political party got the X number of seats or each regional interest got the X number of seats. And there were seats for civil society as well. But the question of women at first was a bit unclear. How do you make sure that you don't just have your token, you know, female quota seats in there, but that it gets mainstream throughout the entire dialogue? So Special Envoy Jamal Ben Amar said to the president and his interlocutors on the Yemen side, he said, look, this is your process. This is your sovereign exercise. And I'm not going to tell you what to do. But you've asked the United Nations to be here. You've asked me to be here. And we come with our own normative values and baggage, so to speak, I don't know if you use that word. And if we're going to be involved, there has to be some respect for those values. And it came out that not only was there a 30% quota for women in the national dialogue, but that all of the different groups that had seats, to a point, had to help contribute to that quota. They weren't just set aside seats for women. And I think that was really important and really profound and just an artful way to go about a very difficult conversation. And it's not without risk. It's not without consequences. And here you can see some of these political parties that were themselves going to be very important to this negotiation, had a few seats to appoint representatives. They have their own hierarchy, which of course is male dominated. And certain men within the party were excluded because they had to find women to fill a certain number of seats. And in an environment where you're trying to create a political compact in a very fragile society, you could see how that political fabric is itself going to be fragile and this dynamic is going to be difficult. And yet if you look at there, if you look at other countries, there's no question that the difficult choices at the front end, I think have paid dividends as processes go along, and I think it's worth it. Great, thank you. Paul Washa, let's pick up a little bit on Jason's point about national sovereignty and international norms. You've done quite a bit of work with advocates, legal professionals, and religious leaders, and that work that you were looking at in Afghanistan, maybe in Egypt in particular. What were some of the challenges that the participants reported, and how did they overcome them? Thank you for that question. So let me take a step a little bit back in that we at USIP advocated for this three pillar approach in that particularly in countries where women's rights issues had a religious dimension or religious opposition to them, we were advocating that women's rights activists work with religious leaders and actors along with illegal advocates, those who know how to draft a law and are working on the laws to work together as a team advocating and working through these mechanisms to develop constitutional articles that would support protection of women's rights in constitutions that it was clear there was gonna be some reference to Sharia. And so we were working with these three pillars. At the outset there has been a lot of distress between the three pillars and so it was very difficult to bring them together in a way that initially sought to develop direct articles that could go into the constitution. So there had to be a lot of trust building between these different pillars, particularly the religious actors and the women's rights activists. The women's rights activists had already been working with legal advocates, those that are working on drafting the laws, the prosecutors, the lawyers, the advocates already in that realm. But the religious actors are really left out of the picture in a lot of these countries. And so bringing them in, we had to do a lot of the trust building, bringing them onto the same page. And in the end it was very interesting because they were all talking about the same thing but from different angles and using their own jargon. And so it was more creating that space, facilitating that space so that they could be talking on the same page or understanding the language, sort of translating between the different languages that they were speaking about protection of women's rights within this framework. So that was some of the challenges. But I did want to touch upon some of the other issues that were raised in that the importance of coalition building and what I was noticing in these three countries. In Egypt and in Afghanistan, it was really important not only to have women in the constitution drafting bodies, but also civil society that supported them. And in Egypt it was very interesting that the Women in Memory Forum had developed a working group on women in the constitution and came up with 14 different articles that they were advocating to be included in the constitution. And so they worked with those that were inside the Constitution Drafting Assembly, not just the women, because in fact there were some women who were against some of those articles, but particularly with men. And so they had some really interesting coalitions formed with men within those bodies that were able to advocate for some of these articles. Then the end, Professor Azakarama told me that there were seven out of the 14 that were actually included in the constitution. So it was quite a high rate that they were very happy with in the Egyptian constitution. In Afghanistan there was civil society, but because Afghanistan was coming out of the war and there was not a lot of civil society on the ground. In Afghanistan they were sort of in the other, in neighboring countries. What was really important was that there was an international community putting pressure as well. So what I heard a lot was that there were these backdoor negotiations, there was a lot of this sort of pressure being put from the international community that yes, okay, women are advocating for these articles, but we need to make sure that they get pushed through and that the international community was supporting in that way. Not in conversations that were with the whole constitutional area, not in public, but more behind the doors and under the table putting pressure. So those were the two things I wanted to add to that. But overall I think what we've seen in these countries is a lot of concern about safety. That when men and women do speak about women's protections, women's rights, and if they're perceived to be anti-religious in some form, if they're perceived as somehow speaking out against Sharia or Islam, even if they are saying this is within an Islamic framework that often puts their lives at risk. And so this has come up over and over again in our conversations as to how do we create these safe spaces where there can be support for the protection of women's rights and talking about it within a religious framework where men and women who are advocating can, their security, their personal safety can be protected. So that's where we're at. Thank you. And Amira, we still have you on the line. So Havir, I want you to go back to her to see if she raised a number of challenges and opportunities in her initial response. But I did want to see if she had any other story she wanted to add to her comments. But I think maybe we'll wrap up there. Let me know when you get her on. She can obviously interject at any point. But at this time, I want to thank the panelists for your comments and we're going to hand it over to the audience to ask questions. So we'll take one at a time. Who would like to begin? Yeah, please go ahead. We have microphones coming. Hold on one second. Here we go, right up here. Thank you. And again, if Amira comes back on, she's welcome to chime in and help answer any of the questions we hear. Thank you. Hello. This is Shakila Barakzei from International Foundation for Electoral System. So my question is that I heard that mostly it's focusing for Afghanistan because I'm from Afghanistan. So we heard that there are a lot of diversity and opinion on religious. So maybe in the challenges that you listed, there is a challenge that I can see that we don't have women scholars, religious. So it is men dominated. So how can we solve that issue if you come with that? Is there any recommendation for that? Is there anything that you find such challenge in your assessment? Yeah. Oh, sure. So that was one of the issues that was raised in terms of not, well, in Afghanistan that there aren't a lot of female religious scholars. There are legal scholars, but in the sense that they haven't studied, I mean, they've studied Sharia and law as is required in Afghanistan, but that they don't come out of the Sharia faculty that they come particularly out of the law school faculty. So that is a challenge that was identified and that has been one of the recommendations that's been made. But the issue here is that in Afghanistan, we have the oversight committee, the Constitutional Oversight Committee, which for example, Ghizal Haris is a part of it. So we have women who are part of this oversight committee. We have women in parliament who are part of the oversight constitutional committee. And then we have the Supreme Court, which we are working on to get a female judge, right? But in the Dar al-Iftah, we don't. However, the Dar al-Iftah in Afghanistan has only the role of providing recommendations. It doesn't make the final say. And in some ways, this is a problem. It is a problem because there are lots of places that can say, well, we'll give our fatwa. We have our opinion versus what the Dar al-Iftah says. Or they will say, we don't agree with the scholars on the Dar al-Iftah. They have not been given that authority. So that's one of the issues is that they don't have that authority. And neither does any of the other committees have the ultimate authority to make the decision. So the oversight committee, the parliament sharing committee, or the Supreme Court, none of them have the final decision. And so because of all of these competing issues, even though women are part of these different committees, we still have a problem. And I agree, and it's been raised many times that there needs to be more women who are scholars. There is an attempt to send more women to different universities around the world to become scholars. As our university has given scholarships, particularly for women in Afghanistan, to come and study there. And we're looking at, there's other universities as well in Malaysia and in Jordan and elsewhere. Yes, religious scholars, particularly to become religious scholars. Great, thank you. Go here, we'll go to the red jacket right there. Sorry, while you're there, and then over. Thank you. I guess my question is sort of around tokenism and also kind of avoiding pigeonholing women, like assuming that, I guess women when they're at the table will advocate for certain issues. Like, I think it's great, obviously, that women tend to try to bring in more rights of other minorities or other marginalized groups. I guess, yeah, I'm wondering if, I guess especially with the personal status laws, like, you know, kind of assuming like, oh, women will always want these, will always have these particular stances on these issues, like childcare or divorce or custody or inheritance or these kinds of issues. Not that it's a bad assumption necessarily, but I guess also it kind of relates to a broader thing of assuming that women are like always nurturing or always inclusive or, you know, potential to be cutthroat and very competitive too. So I just, I mean, this is probably not the most important issue in some of these settings. So I'm just curious, like, if this has come up at all and then you have your work and what your thoughts are on it. Thank you all. Sure thing. And if we do get Amira back, I'd say she had something very interesting to say about that too. Yeah, absolutely. I think this is obviously something that should be avoided. What we did in this, in terms of pigeonholing, as you say, what we found in this research was, of course, women advocate for a variety of constitutional provisions and those vary greatly by context and by individual. And hopefully that should go without saying, but I shall say it now very explicitly. And what we found was that when we're looking comparatively across cases, what is the most visible common element? It is, in fact, that on average, and in every case, women typically advocated for some gender equality provisions. Not every single woman in every case, I'll grant you. But the other element is that, yes, of course, there are divisions around many elements of what these gender equality provisions should look like and what they should and should not entail. And there can be very contentious and deep divides on those issues without a doubt. And Tunisia is a very interesting case in that respect. And even with that being said, the women in Tunisia came together, or enough of them came together, to say, we disagree on many different elements of this. We often disagree on how you get there. What is the means to the end? But actually, we can create a common consensus around some very basic issues regarding gender equality and we want those to be in the Constitution. And that was very interesting to me. So again, but again to highlight, this is what's most visible and women are advocating for many other very important provisions. But this is where they do seem to be able to find some basic common ground, even amid very acute differences without a doubt. I think I'll just add to that. I don't think you necessarily, and I know you weren't doing this, but I don't think you have to make the argument we should have women on a Constitution-making body because it will lead to X, where X is stronger gender rights provisions. I think if you look at a makeup of a Constitution-making body, it's better served by different backgrounds and perspectives, whether that's gender or ethnicity or language or even occupation. You don't want a bunch of lawyers on a Constitutional draft agreement. And women will bring a different background, a different set of perspectives than men and that by itself is enough reason to advocate for greater inclusion. Ezra, you just got it right there. Thank you. My question is also sort of a follow-up to the previous question as well. And Marie, you mentioned the difference between Nepal and Kenya. So even though women sort of managed to form a group within each sort of Constitution-making processes, one of them was more successful than the other one you mentioned. I would like you to elaborate a little bit more on this. Why do you think this was the case? Why do you think in Kenya, I mean they managed to, or it was a more successful case than in Nepal? Sure. So I'd be hesitant to say Kenya was definitely a more successful case than Nepal. Each of them had a lot of successes and drawbacks and just depending on how you're measuring success, obviously. In terms of women's strategy. In terms of the coalition building, right, okay. Yeah, so that's a great question. There was a lot of debate in Kenya that reflected the debate in Nepal actually around, so women formed a particular consultative group that was called, I believe, and there was a lot of debate in terms of can these women really represent poor rural women in Kenya? Can they really represent the diversity of ethnic groups, for example? And there was a lot of debate and discussion over that. And that actually parallels what was going on in Nepal where women had pretty significant representation within the constituent assembly from a variety of caste and class backgrounds. And in this case, in the Nepalese case, there were very significant differences in terms of education levels among the women, really women coming from situations that had a lot less involvement in a process like this before, all the way up to women who were a lot more used to dealing with this kind of process. And there, so in the Kenyan case, I think one element that made a difference was the outside facilitation in a way of Grassemachel. So when our team did this focus group in Kenya with a lot of the women who were in that body, they, many of them, kept referencing back to Grassemachel saying, so this was the outside facilitator in a team with Kofi Annan as the mediators for this process. And Grassemachel came to them and said, if you as women want to see certain provisions in this constitution, you need to come to me united with an agenda. And that kind of was an element to them, kind of a forcing effect in a way to say, we have a lot of acute differences, but if we want to make progress, we need to get over them. And that kind of spurred on the spontaneous spitting session and helped them to air their grievances and see what are the very basic things that we can agree on. And in Nepal, while there were attempts by outside organizations to facilitate the women's caucus, what the research that we drew on in this report, what it said was that in a way, while they were able to overcome a lot of the hurdles and actually in terms of, in the South Asian context, the constitution of Nepal has a lot of very impressive gender equality provisions, even though it also has many shortcomings. But in retrospect, what the women inside the body reported was they could have built a stronger coalition. And I think a lot of that or some of that comes down to facilitation as well, and in terms of overcoming those internal divides on a sufficient number of issues. And that was their own reporting on that. Yeah, please, you and then you in the back. Hello, my name is Stacy Schamber from ICANN. Thank you very much for your remarks this morning. I look forward very much to reading this report. My question is about the challenge of culture, which many of you mentioned, whether it's women getting into a very male-dominated space or challenging religious interpretation, maybe even stepping outside of religious law. And the question is pretty simple. How do you have these conversations with people to try to address gender roles and the challenge of culture? Are there key actors or places, entry points for having these difficult conversations? Thank you. Please, tough point. I can answer for myself. I'm not the person to have that conversation. Wherever I am, I mean, maybe here, but it's a sympathetic audience. No, the strategy is to find national actors who want to champion those positions and then see how you can support and raise up their voice. And it's delicate. I mean, you push too far or you're too out in the open and you can actually do a disservice to the very people who you're trying to help because then they get labeled as international darlings or delegitimized because they're mouthpieces for international community. But in all the places that I've had the most success, it's because you have found a group of national actors wanting to champion, and that's also important, that you can't create, because we can show up with money and create almost any demand that we want. But that's only gonna go so far as the money does and even then it may not be undertaken with a great deal of enthusiasm. So to find people who want to champion these causes and then support them, whether it's in training, whether it's in money, whether it's in materials, whether it's in networking, whether it's in facilitating connections, again, you have to find out what they need. What can they do on their own? Where can you help? But always putting them out front. And if you don't find that voice or that group of voices then I don't think you can succeed. I don't even know how hard you should push. Just to support that, you know, I think that's the best approach is what we've seen too in working with religious actors is that you find people, religious actors themselves, who are already championing these causes and then you work with them to help augment their voices. But like you're saying, it's a delicate balance. You don't wanna de-legitimize them by working with them. So how do you do that behind, you know, in such a way that you're helping them, not hindering them, not putting your logo on things, not saying that you're the one supporting them, that sort of thing. Please. Hi, Rebecca Deming. I'm with the State Department's Africa Bureau. And this question is mostly from Marie, but if the others wanna jump into it, I'd appreciate your insight. When you were talking about the subordination of women's issues and family law and inheritance and those kinds of things, you said that there's actually a strong correlation between peaceful societies and societies that have more gender neutral or gender championed laws on stereotypically women's issues. And I was wondering if you have any studies or any anecdotal evidence that would show causation as opposed to just correlation? Yeah, I'll just quickly point you to an article by Valerie Hudson and some of her colleagues. It's in a journal called Prism. And it addresses that question very directly. They found very strong correlations between gender inequity in family law and levels of fragility and insecurity in societies. And I believe they also were able to unpack the causal directions, shall we say, but I'd just refer you to that very directly. It's a great study. Yeah, great. Yeah, go for it if you're right there. Hi, my name's Lauren Jamins. I'm coming from Georgetown's Conflict Resolution Program. This is generally directed towards Jason because you mentioned Yemen a couple different times. So I'm writing a research paper on inclusive peace building in Yemen. And I was kind of wondering, since Yemen is interesting in that you had a constitution then you have a civil conflict. And that the women's consensus kind of have gone into a diaspora. I was wondering how do women build consensus during an ongoing conflict when they're inside and outside the country? Boy, you'd make one comment and all of a sudden you'd just be an expert. This is not fun. I don't have an easy answer for you. I know that there are international actors that are trying to keep constitutional dialogue going among Yemeni actors, pulling them together on a monthly basis to discuss some. And it's not part of any track one mediation. It's not part of a formal peace process. It's an effort to identify Yemenis who can raise up their own knowledge, awareness about these issues and then try and inculcate that back into their own networks whether it's universities or whether it's political parties. In terms of women specifically, I mean there are women participating in those dialogues but what women are doing at a grassroots level or at a political level to try and keep these issues on the table, I really can't say at this point. I think we would all have to concede that with what's going on in Yemen, even the entire constitutional process is secondary to both the violence and the humanitarian disaster that's going on. I would strongly make the case that it's not even the time for real constitutional discussion right now but that doesn't mean people can't use this time to strengthen their own views or become more informed or do the networking, do the advocacy so that hopefully when the day comes and the time is right, people are well suited to continue championing those causes. Thank you, we have a few more minutes. Let's go right here. Then we'll go over to this side. I haven't seen many hands but be ready. Okay. Hi, I'm Basu Kamat from the George Washington University. So I was just wondering if you've had a moment of maybe self-reflection about what some of our well-established constitutions around the world can learn from countries like this because our constitutions are old, have been mostly written by men, but are now facing challenges because of multiculturalism, so anything on that? Fair point, good question, probably not but maybe you take a moment now to reflect and offer some insights. I do think that the time is ripe in this country for debate around a certain constitutional amendment. And I think, listen, I think there is a broader discussion to be had. You're about to have one. In Ireland, there has been a very interesting and quite participatory constitution review process and we are having a referendum this summer on the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution which is around abortion. So there are interesting things going on even in countries where there is not frequent constitutional change. That being said, I think there's an interesting broader question around the value of having a constitution as an extremely static, rarely if ever revised document versus being more open to more frequent conversation around the vision of a society and how the constitution reflects that. Obviously in the wake of conflict and unrest, this is a moment when culture is called into question, when basic norms of the society are called into question, when the way the society has been working until now is called into question to such an extent that there is a logical opportunity in many cases to really rethink the way society works as a whole. Whereas in an established democracy without an overt conflict, that opportunity is less likely to present itself. That being said, countries like France, for example, have gone through many constitutional revisions. They're necessarily having something as huge as a war to shake that up. But I'm curious if anyone else in the room or on the panel has a take on, are we going too far in the other direction? I mean, are there too many constitutional revisions? Are there too many decisions to redraft a constitution in the wake of conflict and unrest? Is that always necessary? I think, and I'll channel Amira a little bit here, I think it really can have a lot of value even where a previous constitutional text, even where the differences between the old text and the new text doesn't change dramatically. The way that Amira speaks about how Tunisia spent three years working out, what does gender equality mean in Tunisia? And they still don't have the answer. They're still debating it. It's a hot and controversial topic. But even just the process itself of revising the constitution opens up a conversation that may not otherwise be had. And it's a very important conversation at a very minimum to help people to channel their conflicted views in a democratic and deliberative way. And to set a structure that will allow for continued contestation and democratic deliberation without the use of violence in a society going forward. There's a study that shows that the average life of a constitution is 19 years. So we do see a lot of turnover. That doesn't mean necessarily that every 19 years a constitution needs to be reviewed. But Thomas Jefferson somewhat famously said that the US constitution should be rewritten every generation because the past generation shouldn't bind the next. I can just tell you as a comparative constitutionalist the principles within the US constitution are ones that have been transported all over the world. But the text is something that's not particularly useful. You do see, sorry, I don't know where the question came from, but more modern constitutions are much better at spelling out some of, particularly on rights, whether it's gender rights but also socioeconomic rights. And they're just much longer, more detailed documents for a number of reasons. Not just because we've become normatively more advanced but because a lot of these constitutions are being written in a context of post-conflict peace building and the actors don't trust each other to leave it to future courts to interpret what equal opportunity or equal protection means under the law. I think there's a lot within the US constitution on whether or not it should be amended or not. Probably goes beyond the scope of the discussion. But the important point is so much of the US constitution isn't actually in the constitution and people writing constitutions today are just not or are much less comfortable with that. If I can add maybe in a different opinion in that in Libya, although the Libyan women's platform for peace did come out with a charter in terms of articles that they were recommending for the new constitution, they along with women's rights groups decided that they would rather go back to the 1961 constitution than have a new constitution and have this constitutional reform because of all the problems of the insecurity and not knowing what's gonna happen in the constitution and actually feeling that women's rights would be more limited with the new constitution. In Afghanistan, there's this option and there's been a lot of discussion around having a constitutional lawyer, Jerga, both to include the Afghanistan CEO but also thinking that well if we have a peace process with the Taliban then we'll open up this process of constitutional reform so that they can also be in on the negotiations of what is the identity of Afghanistan. And for women, this poses a lot of challenges and the women rights activists are saying no, we don't want to go back. We don't wanna go back to the constitution and change what's already in there. Maybe there are some flaws, it can be improved but we don't want backsliding and so there's a lot of concern over these kinds of amendments particularly when it comes to women's rights when things have been drafted in a particular way with a particular negotiation behind it to allow for women's rights and protections where societies are uncomfortable in going back on that feeling that they would be backsliding rather than moving forward. I promised one question over here, is it burning or do you wanna end with your question? No, okay. Be a man. That's your question. Well we are gonna wrap it up because we are at almost 11.35. Just join me in thanking our wonderful panelists. As well as my partner Chelsea and Marie who did help organize this event. So thank you. And please take their reports, they're on the table outside and we can continue the conversation. Thank you. Great.