Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to speak for up to 20 minutes.

Leave granted.

In Parliament House on 18 August, Minister Kate Ellis—who, amongst her other titles, is the Minister for the Status of Women—officially launched the consultation draft of the Australian National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. This is part of Australia's commitment to UN Security Council resolution 1325. In launching our plan, Minister Ellis said:

… this government … made a promise.

A promise to protect women and girls around the world from violence, and to break down the barriers that stop them from equal participation.

We made that promise and we intend to see it through, not only here but with other governments.

It is up to all Australians, both men and women to be agents of change and peace.

It has been a long road. The original UN Security Council resolution 1325 was adopted unanimously on 31 October 2000 at the UN. On that day it was stated, 'Peace is inextricably linked to equality between women and men.' Now we know that is true but for the whole of the UN Security Council to make that statement was fulfilling a resolution and agreement that was made in Beijing in 1995, having led on from the International Year for Women many years earlier. So it is an ongoing journey on which our world is travelling. United Nations Security Council resolution 1325, and most of us just call it '1325', called for a range of action, because it was a dynamic commitment.

This is not just a latent policy. This is a dynamic commitment from the nations of the world. What is called for is the adoption of a gender perspective that includes the special needs of women and girls during repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation, reintegration, and post-conflict reconstruction. Resolution 1325 grew out of an increased realisation of the special victim status of many women through war and attack. In particular resolution 1325 calls for:

The participation of women at all levels of decision-making, including:

in national, regional and international institutions;

in mechanisms for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict;

in peace negotiations;

in peace operations—

in all ways as participants—

as soldiers, police and civilians—

so active engagement in peace—

as Special Representatives of the UN Secretary-General.

The protection of women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence, including:

in emergency and humanitarian situations, such as in refugee camps;

We see through the media the special needs that exist in refugee camps across the world. Remember that this statement was made in 2000. We look back today, in 2011, and see the need is greater than ever. We need to, through the development and the delivery of pre-deployment and in-theatre training in all elements of peace operations, ensure that personnel have that knowledge on the rights of women and girls and effective protection measures. The training is an incredibly important element of the whole process, so we need to raise the knowledge level and ensure that people have those skills, amongst all the other skills that are necessary, when going into theatres of war and peacekeeping. This needs to be front of mind, not a tacked-on extra. Resolution 1325 calls for:

The prevention of violence again women through the promotion of women’s rights, accountability and law enforcement, including by:

Prosecuting those responsible for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and other violations of international law;

respecting the civilian and humanitarian nature of refugee camps;

excluding sexual violence crimes from amnesty agreements, as they may amount to crimes against humanity, war crimes or genocide;

strengthening women’s rights under national law;

supporting local women’s peace initiatives and conflict resolution processes.

Again, the focus is on action and commitment. The world's nations, in accepting resolution 1325, agreed to:

The mainstreaming of gender perspectives in peace operations, including by:

appointing Gender Advisors to all UN peace operations—

no matter where they are, and clearly—

considering the specific needs of women and girls in the development and design of policy in all areas;

incorporating the perspectives, contributions and experience of women’s organizations in policy and programme development.

So it is engaging with women's organisations, making this an integral part of policy development and planning. Resolution 1325, in October 2000, was the first formal and legal document from the United Nations Security Council that required parties in a conflict to respect women's rights and to support their participation in peace negotiations and in post-conflict reconstruction. The struggle to achieve this had taken a long time. The women and the men who voted to ensure this was put in place had seen the horror of war across continents for many years. They acknowledged that there needed to be special consideration of women as people who were caught up in this conflict and who had special skills that could end conflict and work at maintaining peace. A series of processes were put in place when 1325 was agreed, including regular reporting. In 2004, the UN Secretary-General's report on the implementation of the UNSCR 1325 called for the development of national action plans to implement national commitment to UNSCR 1325. This call was put out in 2004. You can see that it has taken a while for us to get our national plan there, ready for consultation with our community, but it is now out there.

UNSCR 1325 was not the last resolution that was passed by the Security Council on these important issues. When you make that first important step, what happens so often is that other actions flow and people understand the need for further commitment. This has been exactly the situation with the whole process of women's empowerment and engagement in this area. Since 2000 the UN has continued the establishment of a women's peace and security agenda by passing additional Security Council resolutions. The ones that reflect particularly in this area are resolutions 1820, 1888, 1889 and 1960. Resolutions 1820 and 1888 build on the UNSCR 1325 commitment to eradicate sexual violence against women and end the culture of impunity that surrounded the abuse of women in conflict and post-conflict zones.

Resolution 1889 identifies strategies to increase women's participation in peace talks, not as observers, not as people who are coming to give witness statements, but as clear participants in the process of finding a peaceful solution. Resolution 1960 provides measures aimed at ending impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence. The clear stream of action runs through these various Security Council resolutions. Australia has been deeply engaged in and a leader in all of them, working across international boundaries to achieve these results. I am really pleased to say—and it has always been a position in this place—that UNSCR submissions in this area enjoy a measure of true bipartisan support in this parliament, and that is something of which we can be very proud and something that is noted by the international community.

Now that we have our draft plan before us we have acknowledged that it crosses many areas of policy. The drafting of our national action plan will involve a number of government agencies, as well as the community, including the National Security Adviser, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of Defence, AusAID and the Australian Government Office for Women.

The journey has been long, and a very important part of it has been WILPF—the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom—about whom I have spoken many times in this place and of whom I am a very proud member. I joined WILPF in 1994 in the lead-up to the Beijing International Conference for Women. WILPF was a key participant in that wonderful international conference. As a member since then, I am extraordinarily proud of the work, commitment and ongoing passion of the women across the world involved in this organisation. WILPF naturally has had an active interest in UNSCR 1325 since it was drafted and we have a commitment in the WILPF organisation to work diligently to involve women to create and maintain international peace and freedom. In 2004, just after the first report on UNSCR 1325 back to the UN, we started the process through the Australian government of looking to develop our own national plan. In 2004, WILPF received Australian government funding to develop an Australian website promoting the United Nations Security Council Resolution.

We in WILPF also undertook a project in conjunction with many women's nongovernment organisations to provide a report to inform the Australian government about possible steps towards meeting our responsibility to have a plan in this area. We helped national community consultations for the project and there was a wide range of consultations undertaken across the country under the WILPF umbrella. It was a wonderful thing in which to participate. Women, women's organisations and schoolgirls came together to talk about the issues of peace and security in our world. The range of opinions and concerns were pulled together in a report provided by WILPF to the government of the day, in 2009. The project reported unanimous agreement for the development of an Australian national plan to implement UNSCR 1325. That commitment was there in 2009 and it continues to this day. We need to pay appropriate respect to the people who worked on that plan and that consultation. Peacewomen.org is a project of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom United Nations office. The PeaceWomen project promotes the role of women in preventing conflict and the equal and full participation of women in all efforts to create and maintain international peace and security. PeaceWomen monitors the UN Security Council and the UN system and provides a hub of information-sharing on women, peace and security, again making sure that this area is never dropped off the agenda and that we see it as a dynamic action moving forward, not as a simple policy that people can read and forget. The project's website, peacewomen.org, aggregates reliable information and analysis about the impact of armed conflict on women and women's role in peacekeeping. It aims to overcome the absence of formal approaches to collecting and analysing information on women in conflict.

Historically gender issues have not been systematically addressed in political and preventive actions and post-conflict peace building. This is where the plan comes in. We need to ensure that the gender issues are integral in the development of policy in these areas. Consistently this website monitors world events and the impact on women from war and violence. Examples of latest news articles on the website include an international statement about engaging men in the effort to end violence against women, unfortunately an issue that remains current and needs to be consistently reviewed and understood. There is a special report on the website about Somalia, not just the issues about the awful famine that is being felt so tragically in that area but the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war in that area; an overall African assessment of action plan to help women in war zones; and a report from Pakistan women which says that violence against women in that country is increasing. This website actually engages women in the process, shares knowledge and makes sure that we can have that experience on which we can build effective policy. We as countries working together in the UN can make sure that we learn from the experience, establish clear processes to implement the plans around UNSCR 1325 and, most importantly, keep the peace agenda front and centre. When we look at women, peace and security, sometimes the issues around security may be more openly discussed, and we must have a clear commitment to ensure that it is peace that we are seeking and peace that we are working to achieve.

Last year on the 10th anniversary of this resolution 1325, in the standard State of World Population report that the UNFPA puts out every year, the focus was on women in conflict and women in peace. In that report, which was particularly done to coincide with the 10th anniversary, UNFPA looked at women's real experiences across the globe in areas of true conflict—Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, areas of central Africa and also South America. In these real-life examples, talking with women who were the victims of so much direct violence in these areas and the women who are working with men to ensure a postviolence, postwar response, we learnt that the true skills and knowledge which can be developed through the effect of women working together can then be used very effectively to give support to women across the globe. We also looked at women actively involved in peace work. We could see that women were more open about talking about their experiences, telling each other how they could work together and starting the important aspects of healing, which is so important in leading to genuine peace in a community and in self.

It is important that the community now takes up the consultation draft that was launched on Monday the 18th in this place. We have a booklet available on the net and also in hard copy.

What we are doing now is asking for people in the community over the next two months to consider the draft plan put before them, whether it meets their needs, and compare it to the work done by the WILPF organisation in the period 2004-09 so that by the end of this calendar year we will be able to endorse in our country the Australian National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.

This is not the end of the action; this is part of an ongoing dynamic experience for women and men in our country. When we operate together at the UN, when we look at the action we have taken over the years since 2000, we will be able to see that Australia has continued to be a leader in the program, that we bring a true national commitment to the process, and that the women and men of Australia have taken up that promise mentioned by Minister Ellis on Monday—we have made the promise that we as Aust­ralians, both men and women, are going to be agents of true change and peace. In our Australian National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security the issues around UN Security Council resolution 1325 will continue to be important and will have a place in our future.