Greetings from Oxford and from space. My name is Liz Carmichael, and it's my pleasure.
On behalf of all space to welcome you all to this, the 11th annual space conference.
We will be reflecting on 20 years of U.N. Security Council resolution 13, 25 of the year 2000 on women, peace and security.
We have our largest ever conference audience today with over 290 registered.
Thank you for being present. And I particularly want to thank those who helped to create this conference and then to get it off online,
especially Noelle, Tim, Jesse, Richard, Rachel, Marium and Federica.
And thanks to our speakers for all that preparation. We look forward to hearing from you.
Ox Face is the Oxford Network of Peace Studies that exists to promote the study of peace,
peacemaking, peacekeeping and peace building in Oxford and far beyond.
Over the past decade, the study of peace has come into its own in the Academy OKs peace looks to the establishment of posts and courses in Oxford.
If funds can be found, and we are sure there are people who would like to endow posts in peace in Oxford and we'd like to have your help in that,
then we can have a professorial chair and other teaching and research posts.
Please have a look at our YouTube video. Just launched. The details are on your conference invitation.
And on the space Web site, just Google oxtails and you should get the.
Now, it's my great pleasure to introduce our first speaker who would have been giving this keynote at the preconference dinner.
But the great thing is, Tiana, you now have a much bigger audience, far more than we could have fitted into the dining room.
Tiziano Williams is the CEO of Business Plan for Peace.
Tierno worked with U.N. DP for five years and has many years experience as a trainer,
facilitator and consultant on stability and governance in fragile states with a particular interest in Haiti, South Sudan and Papua New Guinea.
A former actress to only believe strongly in the role of the arts and peacebuilding.
She speaks on feminine peace, human security.
Hello, Deanna. Thank you very much. Good morning.
I'm pleased to be part of this event. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak.
I think this event of the really special occasion. It's from the fact that you've chosen to join today,
I think gives us all an opportunity not only to give something to ourselves, but to give something to others.
And so my question to all of you who tuned in to join us is, what will you do with the information that you hear today?
So I will spend a few minutes talking with you, highlighting the necessity for everybody of women's inclusion in conflict prevention,
peace making, peace keeping, peace building, humanitarian affairs, et cetera.
My general journey towards finding sustainable peace. And I place the women peace and security agenda within a human security framework.
And essentially I'll be setting us up for the speakers to come.
So here we are 20 years later following the U.N. Security Council resolution 13 twenty five.
And over those 20 years, of course,
there's been many other U.N. Security Council resolutions and other efforts that have helped formulate the women peace and security, your WPX agenda.
And it's changed the lives for so many women around the world.
And we should acknowledge and celebrate that it enables the participation for so many people who previously
couldn't or didn't know that they could participate in the dialogues to to build peace around the world.
And it's helped women to realise that their priorities and their needs and their rights are of value.
And it's also enabled the bridging of divides and the discussion of common problems together across genders.
And it's done much more than that.
But the WPX agenda has also failed to have an impact on many too many women, even if they are now encouraged, enabled to participate.
They still can't. And this is for many different reasons. It's complex, as we'll begin to explore today.
It might be for far too many women around the world.
It's because of physical insecurity. So many are caught up in violent conflict or they just continue to be intimidated, isolated, abused,
somehow excluded or put to the side or ignored when it comes to the important
discussions that formulate the peace that we gradually build around the world.
So. Today. Who are we? We're predominantly a group of academics, activists, practitioners and policy makers.
Most of us on this call live with a good degree of safety and security.
What matters about today is the millions of women and girls who do not, in fact, let me change.
That is not just the women and girls. It's the boys, men and people of all gender identities,
because what each of us does as a result of today will have an effect on the next generation and beyond.
And I'm particularly thinking of the young women.
There's an increasing number of young women around the world that are choosing, consciously choosing to call themselves peacebuilders.
And these young women are I'm so impressed of them.
I'm so inspired by their story. If they are actively, you know,
taking a huge risk for their own safety and security and actively developing initiatives
in their communities and in their countries that are genuinely building peace.
And they are calling themselves peace builders.
So perhaps today, as we listen, we can please hold these young women in our hearts.
But it's not just about women. This is about human security and women's involvement enables human security by human security.
Women coming from a perspective of prioritising the safety and security of civilians.
It. It's now joining the discourse, the term feminine piece.
And while that might create a false or misleading perception and may lead to people feeling excluded,
I think that term feminine piece is helpful because it calls on the qualities of feminine intelligence,
which underpins all of the work that business plans for peace. The organisation I work for works on.
So feminine peace and those feminine qualities which are by no means exclusive to women.
Qualities of deep listening include liberty, interconnectedness, compassion,
regeneration, so that we're thinking about, you know, the seven generations to come.
And those qualities have to be brought to our efforts if we are if we stand a chance of reaching any kind of peace.
So perhaps feminine peace and human security can be complementary to the way that we consider the WPX agenda.
So I encourage us at least to engage today with a human security lens.
And why do I say this? Because if we're genuine about our desire for peace, it's imperative, of course,
that we know the full picture of what's causing violence in the first place.
So it's about bringing the full story to our efforts to find peace.
And, of course, that requires that women are part of the discussions and decisions.
And, of course, that means that we need to consider and care about the plight of a young girl as
much as or arguably more than the career prospects of a middle aged political man.
So this is perhaps obvious to many of us on this at this event today.
But the purpose is that we need to use our collective wisdom to keep finding ways to shift these and break these barriers,
whether they're structural or cultural or otherwise, to these barriers to realising an inclusive way of being.
And that's what I believe today offers.
I want to share an experience that I have as a way of illustrating the importance and the possibility for including women more in peace building.
In 2015, I was working in South Sudan. I was an international observer and the humanitarian advisor with the East African
led monitoring and verification mechanism for the peace process in South Sudan.
And I spent some time and then to watch for anyone who knows fast than them, they'll know it.
But others, it's in the north of the country. And I went to spend some time with the team up there.
And the team at the time were all male. East African military individuals.
And so the fact that I was there, I made a particular effort to get to know some of the women,
civilians who had been displaced and fled to a protection site managed by the United Nations.
And if I spoke to these women, I realised they had really important experiences to share,
and they agreed that they wanted to share their experience experiences with me.
And so I carefully set up a meeting where I felt that they would not be at risk and that they would feel safe enough to talk.
And so for me, that meant just the two women and myself.
No men. And so therefore, no other members of the team.
And if they were around why we were meeting that they should not wear their uniforms.
We had uniforms and it was our discretion when we wore them.
So the day of the meeting arrived, seven women turned up.
It was a pleasant surprise. And they said that they wanted to meet our entire team.
So I gathered our team and we met and we had an introduction, a shared introduction.
Unfortunately, everybody but one person on the team was wearing the uniform.
And I highlight that because I think many will appreciate that if the African military men wearing uniform in South Sudan,
while it was still finding its way out of its civil war, that men in uniform have a certain perspective or is perceived in a certain way.
But nonetheless, the women were fine and we introduced ourselves.
And then I asked my male colleagues to leave us so that the women felt able to have a deeper conversation with me.
But one of the women said, no, let them stay.
We need to be able to say what we have to say in front of them.
And they did. And it was an extraordinary meeting.
And what the women showed was an immense amount of courage, trust and openness and sharing what they shared.
And what my male colleagues showed was that the fact that they were brothers from the region and that they really,
truly listened and there was a truly connected connexion that happens.
That meeting changed how the team did its work.
They changed their perspective and ultimately changed the reports that they wrote.
And what that meant was that for the first time,
we had the evidence to call the parties to the conflict to account for the alleged
abuse and human rights violations that they inflicted on these and sadly,
many other women. And that now forms part of the written record of South Sudan's civil war.
That team ended up being the first team to have a woman full time join them, which is something that I'd been working on for a while.
And of course, why is that important? Because it totally facilitated ongoing inclusive monitoring and reporting.
So that experience told me a lot. All I did was create space and then these women took that space and made it what they needed it to be.
Now, I could have shared examples of women who I've worked with who were political actors or bring a particular economic expertise.
But sadly, we can't even get past the fact that women are abused and abused and abused when they are in a conflict environment.
However, be assured that every woman brings her entirety when she participates.
Her story for sure. We'll have all the vital elements that we consider when we're working on peace building for any aspect of developing peace.
So she will bring the political, she'll bring the economic, the social, the technology, the legal, the environmental perspectives.
So let's please get to the stage where we recognise that when a woman joins the conversation,
she allows us the chance to bring a human security picture to what we're doing because she helps us fill that full, full picture.
I mean, you know, when the inclusion is in a track, one negotiation table,
for example, we know that the peace agreement reached will last considerably longer.
We have that evidence now. So to us, it's maybe obvious that some.
What will we do with what we know? So I I'm going to start.
But I invite you to engage in this event with an appreciation that there really is work to be done by all of us,
for each of us can do something more than what we're currently doing.
I urge you to make a commitment to take action as a result of what you learnt today that may be to up
your game if you are an expert in WPX and maybe to study the issues more deeply if you're a student.
For all of us can do something. We can be a leader in this simply by deciding to share what you learnt today with faith.
Three other people,
because knowing that you will pass on key points to others will change how you listen and how you apply yourself throughout this event.
So please sit up and be ready for what you're about to hear.
Thank you.