Roundtable on Women, Peace, and Security.

Thank you, Special Representative Fellin, and to you Ambassador Gupta, for hosting this event. I cannot imagine a NATO Summit without a good discussion on Women, Peace and Security, and who better to lead us through it than yourselves. And thank you to all participants for their insightful remarks.

My country has always been a staunch advocate of the 1325 Agenda and is now already implementing its 4^th National Action Plan on the question of Women, Peace and Security. This plan has guided our action both nationally and internationally.

It follows a very fundamental principle: women play an important role in de-escalating conflict and in peacebuilding: they should have their seat at the negotiating table if we want to build sustainable peace. Women’s meaningful participation should be taken into account in all aspects related to peace.

This has been demonstrated many times in history. One of the most famous examples happened in 2011 in the Philippines : Muslim women, helped and trained by UN Women, conducted negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Two of them have been integrated into the negotiating team with the Philippine Government. A year later, they managed to put an end to one of the longest conflicts in the world (nearly 40 years).

And more recently, a grandmother-negotiator halted violence and freed hostages in Ituri, DRC, one of Africa’s most war-torn regions. Pétronille Vaweka won last year the “Women building peace award”.

Let me share with you a few words about her method, which was always the same, she said:  She looks belligerents calmly in the eye. She speaks respectfully but firmly to the parts of their psyches that remember traditional values and the voices of their mothers. Do they want to always live in war? How do they expect to build a future for themselves, peace for their own children, with violence that only isolates them further? 

“I begin by seeing these men not as enemies but as human beings. They want to show everyone their strength, but many have become violent out of despair or fears. I listen to their stories.” And in the end, “these men understand that I have taken risks to come speak to them, and they respect me”.

Pétronille has recently worked as a trainer in conflict management in the framework of the efforts by the DRC and the United Nations to stabilize zones of the country ravaged by war. Last year, she founded “Femmes Engagées pour la Paix en Afrique” (Women Engaged for Peace in Africa).

Coming back to the NATO agenda on WPS, I am pleased that NATO’s new Women Peace and Security Policy, which will be adopted by our leaders during this Summit, is an ambitious and actionable document.

We want to stress the importance of full, equal, and meaningful participation of women, of gender-responsive leadership, and of horizontal ownership of this agenda across the entire organization. The main goal now must be to fully integrate this WPS policy across NATO’s three core tasks.

We also need to intensify our outreach towards our partners to make sure they associate themselves with this policy.

And of course, we need a robust action plan that is supported by the necessary financial and human resources. The work on this action plan, which we will start later this year, will be of crucial importance to us. Because without this, our new policy might just remain a set of good intentions.

Our action is even more necessary as I regret to see that women and girls face declining safety and security globally. From Ukraine to Afghanistan, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Myanmar, the prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence, including conflict-related sexual violence demands our attention.

To illustrate our commitment, I would like to share with you some examples of what Belgium does:

We are currently tabling a resolution at the Human Right Council on Technology-facilitated Gender Based Violence. And we trust we can rely on your support in this endeavor.

In the framework of our Presidency of the EU, which we have just concluded, we co-organized a European Union Taskforce dedicated to WPS, with a special focus on the Sahel region.

In Ukraine, we have allocated a voluntary contribution of 1 million euro to the UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict.

We have also supported the UN Humanitarian and Peace Trust Fund, supporting women civil society, with a contribution of 600,000 euro focusing on Ukraine and Moldova.

Across the African continent, our Egmont Institute has been working on women leadership programs for years in countries, such as Niger, Senegal and the DRC. I had the chance to participate actively myself and to attend a very moving graduation ceremony in Kenya.

Through these programs, we contribute to the development of skills and competences of leader women that are working in key sectors, including in the field of peace and security. These are just a few examples to illustrate our commitment.

Before concluding, allow me to briefly tackle the situation in Afghanistan, where women are suffering and disappearing from the public space. Despite its limited results, the recent meeting in Doha should be seen as an opportunity to redraw the attention of the global community on the fate of Afghan women and girls. We cannot let them down.

Since the return of the Taliban, Belgium has resolutely maintained its support to women and girls in the country, through multilateral agencies such as UN Women but also by directly supporting local civil society organizations.

Among other, Belgium has been funding “shelter houses” for women’s rights defenders in Afghanistan, where women activists and their families can find a refuge if they are under attack and where they can start a project of relocation.

Their situation may sometimes seem hopeless, but it is our collective duty to keep acting for them.  

Dear colleagues,

I am convinced that NATO and its partners should take a leading role in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. We hope WPS will keep getting a prominent place at the NATO Summits, with all Allies at the table.

You can count on me to keep working in that direction. Thank you.