Hi, everybody. Thanks very much for joining us for our closing plenary.
We have Francis guy.
He'll be pulling together the different strands of the conference and helping us figure out how he can fit the different pieces together.
And so we are very grateful to her and for helping us with that.
And. Francis guy is currently the UN deep key regional gender adviser based in Amman in Jordan.
She was previously the head of Middle East region at Christian Aid, which was based in London,
and she has worked as the representative of the U.N. women in Iraq.
Between May 2012 and December 2014. Prior to that, Francis was a career diplomat in the British Foreign Service,
where she served as ambassador to Yemen and to Lebanon and had a number of other postings, mostly in the Arab region and in the Horn of Africa.
So we are very grateful to her for joining us. And Francis, I hand over to, you know.
Francis, would you like to start? I will, but I'm still seeing you are okay.
I'm not myself to make sure I was okay. And I just wanted to start by thanking everybody, all the organisers,
for demonstrating that it's possible to have a wonderfully exciting and inspiring conference online.
I've spent my life on Zoome these days,
and this has been one of the most interesting three hours I've spent in the last eight weeks whilst I'm locked down.
So thank you very much for all of that and for proving that it's possible.
And for bringing together such a Wide-Ranging group between academics, practitioners and peace builders.
I think that's very important. I'd like to thank also the panellists for their very thoughtful presentations and for
all the preparation that clearly went into them and to all the participants online.
One of the great things about doing stuff virtually, is that we can have participants from all over the world, literally.
I saw that we have people in Australia online. And so thank you for also for your energetic participation.
And however I summarise, there's no way I can do justice to this.
And I'm feeling a bit guilty because I was one of the ones who said we can't possibly do more than half a day online.
I think it's probably true. And I'm very torn between thinking that it's a shame that we weren't there.
We aren't in Oxford and we're not able to carry on the conversations in the corridors.
But as I said, the counterbalance to that is we've got people joining us from all over.
And that's obviously a big positive and.
One thing I would like to say, because obviously in half a day, you can't cover everything, even if we've covered an awful lot.
Because I know I work for the United Nations Development Programme and there are actually ten of these women, Peace and Security Council resolutions.
Now, as we learnt at the beginning, I'm one key part for me, which often is not really highlighted very much,
which appears specifically in as Kids Council Resolution 1889, but does appear often on sometimes in others,
is about the role of women in economic and political decision making, in the immediate post-conflict recovery process,
which, as others have pointed out, actually has to start right even before world conflict is going on.
But we haven't talked about that very much.
There are opportunities which are often missed because women, while they've been doing all this great work on the ground,
there's a tendency, unfortunately, to return to the the predispositions of power sometimes that existed before the conflict anyway.
And we will have another conference another day, I'm sure. Thank you.
We've had great positive inspiration from the grain, from Sudan and from Afghanistan and also from some of them and from Ed Henry,
who have shown that progress has been made over the last 20 years.
And from Baroness Hell, it is shown that where there's political will, we can make a difference.
Even if she's also hinted that political will might not always be enough and may be brought down to earth by academics
who have shown that if we look at the real nitty gritty of what's in peace treaties and and the results of all of this,
maybe we haven't actually made so much progress. After all, we've had a lot to think about.
And I wanted to just say a few of the takeaways. I will take away and I hope that we can encourage all of you to do so.
We started at the beginning with a reflection on what do we mean by security?
I think now and I think of, you know,
how Jordan started the lockdown with military men trying to think that they could that they could deliver food to the whole population.
Thank goodness they realised very quickly that that was not possible and they weren't going to have to open a few things up.
But, you know, that's what we tend to think of when we think of security.
And we've been reminded right at the beginning that security is something else.
Security is human security. Security is about the qualities of a feminist piece.
And so I think even if there was only one thing we remembered, if we remembered that it would be very important.
We've learnt that when women join peace negotiations at whatever level, at whatever point,
they open the door for others and bring in other people who are excluded.
And we've learnt about the importance to facilitate inclusion that when women are
doing the good work on building the important blocks of peace and informal processes,
that shouldn't be an excuse to exclude them from the more formal processes.
So we need to work better to facilitate joining up those formal and informal processes.
We've heard that it's important to listen to women on the ground.
And yes, we've learnt that it's important to encourage sympathetic women in the military.
I know that a lot of women pacifists would be with, you know, wouldn't maybe be less enthusiastic about that.
But I think Sophie showed demonstrated very clearly what an important role that is and how difficult,
unfortunately, will still be for the UN to meet its own targets.
We've learnt that we can keep pushing for change, but that we need to still remember that that mantra of do no harm.
So don't force people to repeat the trauma that they've had to is very important as well.
And sorry. There was a good piece on the chat that we didn't talk about.
So as well as having more women in the military and somebody raised the importance of bringing more women into the judiciary,
into the court systems as a way of ensuring transitional justice.
I think that's also an angle that could be explored much further. What can we all do as individuals?
What can our 100 participants do? We can all keep amplifying these voices.
I think that's already very important. We can support Sanam and I can in the Sheep Builds piece campaign.
And if I may do a shameless plug, you NDP with UN women with I can.
And we. The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom are launching a six week online discussion on Tuesday about some of this,
about women in political decision making, about women in economic decision making in post-conflict,
and about the lessons we can learn from women in peacebuilding to help us deal better to respond to the pandemic crisis of today.
So I hope we can encourage you all to join that and to spread the word and get other people to join that conversation.
A practical reason that we hope to distil some recommendations that we can take to the 20th anniversary of 13.
Twenty five. And because the practitioners amongst us and including in this particular context, you,
NVP, want to take away something that we can really change in our own programming.
And if that's another message we can take from today is that all of us who are
practitioners on the ground can also do something to make sure all these voices are heard.
Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Francis, we really appreciate that.
I think that was a fantastic overview of what was a very interesting conference.
I can only echo France, what Francis said about just how fantastically well all of our panellists had
prepared and what a treat it was to listen to everything that you had to say.
As he mentioned, we now have a couple of minutes to get sort of 30 second interventions that were a couple of questions that weren't answered.
And some of the panellists might like to respond to those questions or to have a sort of final 30 second statement.
So if we can meet the panellists, then if anyone has anything that they would like to to make as a final comment.
I don't want to put anybody on the spot. And now is your chance.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
From somebody. Oh, yeah. There's a silly idea. Sorry.
Please do. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you. And to you.
Thank you very much for this listing presentations. And to be honest, I just, you know, some of it.
What is going on about submission as a peacekeeping mission that really is this just missions?
Do they just come to maintain peace and to keep peace?
Or should they be more engaged with the society and communities and especially this woman to understand what is going on,
films, a woman as himself and also to engage with them and how does come deliver?
There were, of course, 100 questions out there. You know, this kind of engagement between the community and peace forces.
So I would like really to see that seeing this really, you know,
taken into consideration a peace mission that when they come is just to engage with a community that is unguessed to come on.
Got some work in isolation forms. A step shows.
Look at this option so far or form in the area.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Mousel, we really appreciate that.
Is there anybody else who might like to have a final word? Me and my company.
Yes, please get the set up in response to a question that was posed from online video around sort of
the gender equality and finding peace and security and how I want peace and security issues.
Our. I signed up and I think that's that's one of the big challenges that I see, that even in countries where you do have peace and security,
national action plans, where you have these forums where the military is Mr. Defence, the police can meet with women's rights organisations,
for example, when there is a quote unquote real security issue,
then oftentimes these peace and security mechanisms are completely sidelined and
are not used by those who who are dealing with the so-called real security issue.
And it is something we can, for example, policy in Ukraine with the war in the east or in Kyrgyzstan,
where I was looking at the National Action Plan and one piece of security, even though these mechanisms exist.
Women's voices are often sidelined by those key actors when it comes to a real crisis or real perceived security threat.
So I think that's us where there's a lot more that needs to be done to make sure
that these existing mechanisms are taken seriously by the different actors.
And thank you so much, John. An important and important point and a reference to what a couple of people have said about
political will and the importance for these things to really be taken seriously by the leaders.
We have a couple more minutes, I think. Would anybody else like to make a final comment?
No, soon as we can, we can sort of draw to a national close there.
So thank you very much. I'm going to hand over now to Liz and to to thank everyone.
And thank you to our panellists who have made those interventions very interesting.
I just want to be sure that Richard did get a chance to answer that question like.
Yes. Did you? I'm not sure that this is getting.
Oh, Richard, sorry.
Or a question to me is, what was that one wrote on Q&A that you wanted to answer a question?
Life. Oh, no, no, sorry. That's an error.
OK. Thank you. Well, I think what we've shown this this morning, morning as it is in Oxford,
is that resolution 13 25 has represented a an important benchmark and reference point for action, for measuring progress.
And it still continues to do so.
And another thing that seems to have come out quite clearly is the importance of training of as as tuna put it at the beginning.
Knowledge is fine, but what are we going to do with it? And sometimes that does involves training.
So training of women and men so that women can take a full part in peace making at every level.
And another thing that came out was the importance of the local level.
And at every level, at national and international level, as well as local and in socio economic reconstruction and development afterwards as well.
And training of women as members of peacekeeping forces and training of investigators in the field of sexual violence.
To be sensitive. And the ongoing training and sharing between women and everyday peacebuilding all over the world.
So please do look for the podcast.
We hope that the recording has worked and that the files will be able to be uploaded and you can find that via the peace Web site.
You can just Google orks piece and you'll come to lots of network of peace studies and you will come straight
to our page on which you should find a link to talks from previous conferences or something like that,
which will take you to the podcast for this conference. When we have got it uploaded, give us a little time to do that.
And please watch our video on your piece video,
which is about box peace and about the hopes for posts and particularly a professorial chair in Oxford.
And please do send us in your contacts to millionaires who will be able to endow those posts.
To be on the space mail list, please, just you can e-mail me and several people have.
Thanks very much. That's my addresses. Also on the Web site.
So thanks immensely to everybody who's taken part to the organisers again.
And until we meet again. Stay well. And our very best wishes from space.
Thank you for taking part. And I declare the conference ended.