Ood evening. Its my distinct pleasure to be here for this next panel about women and girls in conflict zones and the participation has been a fantastic afternoon so far, i am frustrated we are still having to say womens rights are human rights particularly when it comes to conflict abroad. We have been focused on the u. S. So far and were going to take you overseas with the extrrdinary panel. I want to help you woke us your minds about what it means to talk about conflict abroad. We could think about faraway complex, but i would think of places where you have complex that biases, gender pay gaps and on top of tha, conflict. The panel we have will help us figure out how we can get practical advice conflict to sod include women in the Peace Process. 0 i will start by introducing te panel. Everyone here has an illustrious ogi will keep it short. We have a cofounder and president of the school of leadership in afghanistan, the first and only boarding school for afghan girls that operated 2016 and 2021. She divides her time. The executive director at the Georgetown Institute was named by president obama as ambassador out large for global womens issues in 2009 which she held, and virtually you can see there in the corner is the president and ceo of the foreign secretary distinguished fellow. Start with you, there is a startling statistic that saysore than 600 million women and girls live in conflict affected countries. A 50 increase. More conflict when it comes to the violence, health and safety. We heard some granular advice and approaches that people are taking to help women participate in the work worse. How do we apply this handson thinking to change the■w reality for women around the world . Its a Perfect Question and one we should be thinking about. Take the three areas you mentioned. You mentioned the caricom he and cara blocks, the extraordinary efforts for women and as most of you know, this to test six are that 75 of women , we really dominate as women. Wouldnt it be wonderful if the world had primary Health Care Clinics everywhere in the world . Isnt this very practical to go to a clinic that could be a few hours away, not days away, get on a bus and have health air. Women tend to be leaders and the main people who take their children to Health Care Clinics. You will save time, effort. You will help their lives. If you can do primary Health Care Clinics all over the world, i know very well that we can focus on health. The secondary is security. Secretary continues an interesting phrase who said women could be agents of peace and we are. In africa, there is silence guns which has prevention of conflict. Lo of young people become peacemakers to prevent conflicts. I know that some of us Work Together but this has enormous possibilities. The third area you mentioned was economics in one of the lessons you had is the number one desire by every girl in the world to have a good education. If you can educate a woman, you just havtohe girls. We have to try to educate, there is a number of initiatives doing it. International trade commissions are extraordinarily warned and then we could be on the same level for being able to learn. You will be part of the market economy but we also need to do somethinglse. We have to get Public Finance to work. I worked on this for 40 years. I dont know its going to happen in my lifetime. If were going to be part of the Economic Driving progress, you have to type public and private funds. There is one last hope that i would have, which is when i first went to unicef i was in south sudan, you can see how many militias and conflict have meant that women and children have run away from the farms and headed to the refugee camp because there is shelter and food and the ability to live a life. Uld be a project, we need to move refugee camps. If we could move them they would have all of the economic vibrancy, health and security and Economic Opportunity for everyone in the community. Did you also face the pushback when youre talking about women and girls . When you are working with young people and children, people dont separate them as much. There are some countries in which the status of women is not a legal customs and country they can keep the girls back. In most if you have found an opportunity ahead of you, so the is they want to look after that group of smart people. Afghanistan is the exception. When the taliban regained power, we saw people fleeing. You relocated the boarding school you founded and you have to adapt the provide Online Education for girls back in afghanistan. Access to internet, safety issues, how many students are in your network . What have you learned from the experience of having to move, and what could we learn from how ur is working at the moment . Absolutely. When we were operating and with that came a lot of responsibilities. Knowing that we could never submit the telegram vision for afghanistan, especially when girls and women dont either. Forced to live under the regime and for us, the opportunity we knew it would be a matter of time before he received way more so we looked at our ■mpriorities and arrived at thre major ones. On so many levels, we talkedabo, we are building camps to accommodate more than doubling our student population in rwanda. We are looking at a time that we would go back to afghanistan. We are for pairing to return one day to afghanistan. We received an application for only 30 spots. You could imagine its not one to brag about, it is one to be incredibly angry about that was emotionally devastating to speak with girls from all over the world and yet, they do not have the financial means. We thought about our second strategy. How can we bring seller to them . Were looking at two different possibilities. What it is is primarily text messaging■w a lot of initiatives, all wellmeaning to r girls in afghanistan if you look at the amazing videos that were prepared and thats because people dont have access to the internet. This is a genius thing, the possibility of■l access, we turn to whatsapp and they previously used whatsapp, so if they wanted to shut it down foru us, so when we launchd this month, the idea solar education will be available so we are targeting girls but the beauty of it is boys, even not traditionally students would have access and we have to be honest about this. Its not a replacement for an in classroom experience. We have to innovate out of necessity that it is about keeping hope alive afghan girls. I was one of the fortunate ones pens my parents have the education, so i ended up attending school for the first time where the majority of my classroom were. For us, we looked at the previous barriers to imagine to make it easier accessible. Each of them can open the page to sign up for a class, to content and after completing the coursework, they receive a certificate of completion that can be verified. The next step for us is to be able to work with International Organizations who focus on providing access, certifications and making sure in the long run that its a way of documenting progress in schools. The other thing were looking at is the possibility of opening communities closer to afghanistan. While we■ have this incredible support, there are girls we bring from refugee communities. We partnered with the governmene communities but we also partner with agencies with many different offices across the world who partner with us to rwanda. Finally, the other we are focusing on is creating an realy robust group of highly educated af women. Right after the regime collapsed , thousands poured back into afghanistan and out of that group emerged a group of leaders. They ended up becoming some of our most prominent leaders in afghanistan. We look at this as a time we cannot waste. We need to rai focused so when the time comes, and i am hopeful it would come in my lifetime, when we go back to afghanistan, there are thousands of afghan women who going to go kim truly inspirational, incredible work. I would like to imagine the education you are providing as a template for other countries where education is interrupted for girlbe conflict in sudan, gaza, other places. Shabana absolutely. We are focused on solutions for afghan girls and afghan women, what we are doing is a model that is incredibly easily replicated. Along the same lines of looking at refugee populations in general, particularly girls and women, we have to be able to look at it not as a bde a wealtf resources that are forced to move. Certainly the case for afghanistan. When i was evacuating our community, at the airport i witnessed the brave power of afghanistan. Not because they wanted to, but because they had to. I knew when i was watching them, they were going to pass the line from being a Rich Resource to crossing the line and immediately being an unwanted group, a refugee. We have to equip them with continued learning, especially in■n higher ads Higher Institution and all institutions at every level have to Work Together and open up a wealth of scholarships and opportunities students from afghanistan and ukraine and there has to be a very comprehensive well thoughtut response so that we can see these young people who are on the move go from place to place and to be a continuity for their hey can easily transition. Kim and return eventually to build peace. David, thank you for joining us virtually. In the irc annual report emergency watchlist you highlight organizations are underfunded and you have rathery 1. 2 of humanitarian financing reaches women led organizations. So not only are women the main recipient of the violence and conflict, the first affected, but when they tried to do good they end up being underfunded as well. What can the International Community do to first take stock of this quickly, and also address it quickly . Because women should not only be half of the economy, but half of the s half of the solution, so how can we adjust this . David thank you. I need to apologize for not being in the room with you. I had to be in the ioc office the f this afternoon. There are three important points to answer your question. First, we are a International Organization for people whose lives were shattered by conflict and we say we cannot be a Successful Organization unless we are also taking seriously the structural inequality that faces women and girls in the communities we work in. And within our sector and sometimes even our own organization. The framing is very important. About the situation in afghanistan, we have 5000 people working in 12 provinces in afghanistan and 2200 of them are ■xwomen despite the taliban bann women working. They are a lifeline for their clients and also for the families each of the them support and the point about whats up, we have evidence from the midd very large early childd Development Program and we use techniques where you can make one years worth of primary progress in 11 weeks of our program so in the right hands, it can work. To your point about the funding and support of women led organizations, if there was a percentage of funding related to the amount of political rhetoric on the issue, funding for gender equality would be through the roof. But essentially what we aresive mismatch between the political speeches and amount of political action. Is all about political leadership, transparency, clarity, consistency. One example, in every crisis response, a humanitarian country team, 80 of them have no plan to reduce gender inequality, despite all the rhetoric about it. That is how you end up in a situation underfunding of local organizations in general and of the women led organizations. In our area this is all about information that is secret and leads to reform, you have to have transparency, targets, leadership role modeling, and then you can make significant progrehiring or financial flowsi hope the idp will make it part of its business to make sure fragile states are not just marginal to the Global Political conversation, but achieved the status they need, because if we know anything, it is the unintended humanitarian crisis that leads to the instability and that is what we are seeing in many parts of the world, and frankly, there are 25 Million People in sudan who are suffering from anxtraordinary military and political crisis and it is impossible to get anyone to Pay Attention to it at all. Kim thank you, david. We are talking about conflict first affected alongsideednd children as well in a suit on, gaza, ukraine, afghanistan, but there is also what happens after the conflict. One could argue perhaps if women had been at the table in the discussion, perhaps better represented, we would have made more progress. Women are often excluded from the process and yet we know they are when they are included, peace is more sustainable and achievable. We have seen examples of that. I think of northern ireland. Tell us a littleut what people are missing when they go into peace negotiations if women are not included. Melanne there is so much wisdom in what you said and before i make an attempt to address some of it, iant to thank the organizers, this is my second trip appear in a few weeks and these up here in a few weeks and these are profoundly deep and importa conversations there is a construct put in place by the Security Council of the United Nations which focuses on peace and security. The resolution has been strengthened nine times over, realizing how critical it is that women fully participate in peace and security, whether it is in presenting conflict, anticipating in conflict negotiations, whether in relief recovery, restriction comes faster during the transition and also recognizes that women need to be protected. We are talking about ways agency when it comes to the resolution and regrettably the goals of the resolution have been largely unfulfilled. Half the Peace Agreements put in place are aggregated within five many conflicts are occurring. Many genuinely important issues that have to be addressed e and women are not present, as so often we have to plead to be in one important conversation or another that could have made a difference and i think when retrospectives are important res that we have what we had today in afghanistan is the failure to take the challenge of half the population and incorporate it. So what can governments do that they are not doing . This is an evidencebased case. The evidence and data are there that show that wh table, unforty not as much as they should be, and there are case success in columbia Peace Agreement slowly being fully implemented and one of the Peace Processes in the philippines, northern ireland, dealing with the troubles, that there is that tht women put on the table would not be there otherwise. Most of the conversations are between the men on one side or the other or the rebel groups talking to one another and what we have seen is one of the first things they do is give themselves amnesty for what they have done to the women. That is no way to move to a Better Future,■8 clearly. So recognizing the importance of this precipitation participation, reconciliation, human rights, economic issues, bringing communities back together, being an honest broker, those of real tangible input that women bring that have real positive conclusions to them. So recognizing the evidence i think is clearly important. Secondly, understanding the role that women play at the local level. David brilliantly expressed the Critical Role that isplayed and, david, as i often do, really recognizing the centrality of that role at the local level. Ringing community, facilitating dialogue amo■1ng them, understanding the conflict, having central knowledge about what is going on, knowledge that really is going to be an end to the a Better Future has to be incorporated in the discussions. So what you have is a bifurcated process. Track two were track three happening at the lower local level, really important work going on, but it does not inform the formal level, track one. Women are rarely in that level. So there has to be conductivity between one and two and preferably bringing more women to the peace table. Secondly, what david said about womens organizations, they are underfunded. And i agree completely. If we could take all of the wonderful rhetoric about how important this issue is and turn it int tangible, we would have countless women at peace tables on a much more Peaceful World and plenty of resources for these organizations. It is not happening. It needs to happen. And we need more women in positions of responsibility, certainly as negotiators, as mediators, there are very few, 10 of negotiators and even fewer signatories to the agreement. So this recognition of the vital role is another critically important element. The Security Council also said thater adopt National Action plans to take the important work that this represents, implement and therer 100 National Action plans today. Secretary clinton es over the realization for the first time of the United StatesNational Action plan. Some check the box, that is all the government can say, we have an lan and that is all we can say about it. Others, governments revisit year after year to see what they need to better implement the resolution. But there is still a lot of work that still needs to be done. Israel and palestine, for example. No National Action plan. It seems to me to really begin to deal with the dramatic absence of women from a Peace Process over decades, it needs to start soon. It needs to have happened years ago. But one place local peace builders are working on is the National Action plan. T has to be addressed is for this to be real in government. You have a conversation about we have an app, we believe in women peace and security, but it is not connected to the foreign mentioned earlier, kim, where afghan policy needs to be women peace and security. Separate womens issues. Ukraine policy, womens peace and security. Middle east policy, this needs to be mainstream integrated gender perspective participation of women. Only then will we be able to get the kind of effect we need to see. And i think also we increasingly need to bring governments need to come together. In london they have commitment 2025, which is to take some of the resources, some of the commitments, amplify them by them coming together to have greater impacts than going at it one at a time. But in the end, this is■ it is about leadership. It is about power. And it is easier to talk about this than the reality of what is happening and i just want to read this quote to you a former secretary of state you may recognize. She said, the time to change how the world thinks about conflict and how we stop it and prevented , how we think about security and how wef provided, how we think about peace and how to realize it, and it is past time forplace sidebyside with men n the room where people are deciding. Negotiations, to make the piece, and institution to keep the peace. Andomen are still not there in the great numbers that they should be. Kim thank you so much. I am being told we have to wrap up. We could stay here and have a whole session but it is important to remember that just as we, including economies in the west, not looking at the issue of women as just social but also in areas of conflict but as part of the solution about peace and security in having women seeing them victims but also agents of change and empowering them and counting on organizations like davids to find women led. ■ ■w