>> good evening everybody. my distinct pleasure to be here this evening or this next panel of women and girls in politics zones and their participation. it's been a fantastic afternoon so far. i'm also frustrated that we are still having to say women'sightd human rights or women's rights. when it comes to conflict as well. they've been focused on the u.s. so far in the economy here and how to be more inclusive here and we are going to take you overseas now where this extraordinary panel i will introduce but i want to have you focus your mind on what it means to be going overseas to talk

about conflict abroad. they can be easy to think of them as far away, other would urge you to think of these other places where you have conflict is not exactly the se deal withe issues come for sam's the. >> systemic biases in the same gender pay gaps in conflict. i think the panel we have here will help us figure out how we can get suchre practical advice that we have from secretary raymonda for example of how we can apply that to conflict overseas to include women in the peace os diet by introducing the panel but we have the honorable henrietta holsman-fore the former executive director of unicef and former u.s. icy administrator in also in itp distinguished fellow.

everyone here has no last years documented not keep it for subsequent. shabana basij-rasikh is the co-founder of the school of leadership for afghanistan. also a distinguished fellow. it's the firstrs and only boardg school for african girls upbraided in kabul from 2016 until the evacuation of the takeover by the taliban in the summer of 2021 in its operamotig in rwanda. shabana divides her time between toronto and boston. the executive director of the georgetown institute for women's peace and security melanne verveer named by president obama has ambassador at large for the office of global women's issues at the state department 2009 bu' she during secretary hillary clinton and joining us

virtually is the presidency of the international rescue committee and former uk foreign secretary and also in itp distinguished fellow. i you. there's a startling statistic that we have which is more than 600 million women and girls live in conflict affected countries in 2022. that's a 50% increase since 2017 and that's really shocking but there are two things going on here more conflict and more women being imp women and girls are disproportionately affected when it comes not just to the violence but how it affects their health care economic prosperity and participation. we have heard some very granular approach is that people like the secretary is taking to help

women participate in the workforce in the u.s. fore. example. how do we apply this hands on thinki■ to international organizations and ngos that reality for women everywhere around the world? >> it's a perfect question and one we should all be thinking abt together. i'll take the three areas that youre mentioned. hetarted with health and we have been talking about the care economy and about the extraordinary efforts of w heall over the world. most of you know the statistics are that 75% of the caregivers are we really dominate this so wouldn't it be wonderful if the

world had primary heah ere in t? wouldn't this be something that would be very practical and itha child that he could go to a clinic and it could be just a few hours away and it wouldn't be days away. you could get on the bus and you could have health care. women can be the leaders in their communities in health care. they also tend to be the main people who take children to a health care clinic so would save time which would help their lives and help our. if we could do primary health care clinics all over the world, bilateral funding and we know very well any for countries can be focused on health care so that would be one. the secondary is security andy y interesting phrase. she said that women could be agents of peace and progress and

in fact we are. in africa there's one initiativp called silence the guns that has prevention of conflict in its genes and it's training. they are using lots of women and lots of young people to become peacemakers to an dissipate and to prevent the conflict. i know somebody in the audience have and this has enormous possibilities. the third area get mentioned was economics. one of the things you have coming up with unicef is the number one desire by every girl in the world is to get a good education. if you can educate a woman she will take it from there. theave just got to educate girls as shabana know so well.

we have to educate every child in the world and connect every school to the internet. there are a number of initiatives■. with the international. commission and others extraordinarily important. we should all be on the same level for being able w to learn and if you learn anything get a good education you will start businesses and will be part of the market economy but we also need to do something else. we have a bilateral and multilateral donors. we have to get public-private finance financed to work. we have not doneked on this for0 years. i don't know if it's going to happen in my lifetime that we really need this. women need this. the economics that's driving the progress of our world you have to tie and private funds together and use them. there is one last hope that i would have which is that when i first went to unicef i was in@#

south and when you are in south you will see how the many militias in the conflict have meant that the women and children have just fled. they have run away from their farms and headed to the refugee camps becausthere is shelter and food and ability to live the life. some day and t be a sleeper project karen, some day we need to move refugee camps to new if weul could move them into the new towns they would have all the economic vibrancy and to help the security and economic opportunity for women and girls as well as everyone in the community. >> did you also face this pushback when you are talking about women and girls that

people would separate the security issue and women's issues? >> when you are working with young people, with children people don't separate them as much. it's interesting but there are some countries, afghanistan being one in which the status of women, what was brought up before, it's not the legal issue the customs of the country. but in most countries if you are young and you have an opportunity the idea of opening it up for girls and boys is very much on everyone's mind and every prime minister and president knows there's going to be a vote after that group a smart young people. unfortunately afghanistan is a big exception at the moment.(r

shabana divan girls from going to school. relocated the boardig school to rawanda and also adopted a model to not only to teach the girls who were there. provide on line education for girls back in afghanistan. lots of barriers to with the internet and it's a safety issue when you are still in afghanistan. how is it working at the moment and in your network and what have you learned from the experience of havingav to move d what can we learn from your experience working at the moment for education for girls? >> when we arrived in rwanda we

were operating as the only legally operating border school for african girls anywhere on earth. with that came a letter for spots ability and knowing that we could never and never under ytances -- especially when girls and women of afghanistan don't either. a lot of peoe are opposed -- a full force to live in africa had regime and for an opportunity to be operating in educating girls for day since they arrived in we knew it would be a matter of time before we would receive applications for the girls to study at the one boarding school so we looked at our strategic priorities and we arrived at

three major ones. one was on so many levels especially talk about imagining refugee camps in the city and so we are building a campus that will accommodate an expansion to more than double ourur student population and knowing that we ■be looking at a time when we will go back to afghanistan. we don't know when exactly that we are prepared to return one day to afghanistan. the second one was, the example is this past year we received 2000 applications from girls were sixth-grade class. you can imagine that 1.5% admission is not one to about.

itcr makes incredibly angry that it's emotionally devastating to speak with girls from all over t afghanistan for an opportunity to come to school and studyyet e to find the opportunity because of where they are and they don't have the right visa they don't have the refugee status and they don't have the financial means. we thought about her second strategy id5■f we cannot bring a how can we bring it to them? we areoo at two different possibilities here. one is an effort called sola act which is supposed to be launed y text messaging opportunity for

initiatives all while looking at on line initiative to let them require high bandwidth. amazing videos are prepared and that's because people don't have access to the internet. the one thing we looked at in the genius of it the possibility of taliban banning access and we turned to what tap because they also used what tap for their day-to-day so if they want to shut it down for us to have to shut it down for themselves.

targeting girls in self-paced clinics learning that boys even non-traditionally students will have access to and we have to be honest about it. it's not a replacement for an inquest from experience. there's no substitution for an inquest from his experience. we have to integrate necessity with the educational band but it's about keeping hope alive for thousands and . fgi grew up under the first taliban regime. i was one of the fortunate■ ones who went to secret underground school. my parents made me one of the very few afghan women in

afghanistan today to have the education that i have. i ended up and tell 2002 attending school for the first t classmates were older than i was and these were girls coming back to school. for us we looked at all of the previous barriers and challenges the girls have infg and solar x. made it accessible for girls and for families who have basic -- that n open a page sign up for class and roll in classes in requesting the content to engage with us and take assessments and after completing the course work and provided that they passed it with completion to have a unique code that can be verified. the next step for work with intl

organizations to focus on providing access in afghanistann certification making sure they in the long run can pass asç a way of supplementing their progress in school. theth other thing that we are looking at is the possibility o2 opening a satellite campus or campuses and communities closer to afghanistan. we have and cripples the port from a rwanda government there are afghan refugee communities close to afghanistan but they don't have the ability to receive it. we partner with the government theyey could travel from those communities to rawanda but we also partner with iom and staff

members from many different offices of vaio m. across the world who partnered with us in chaperoning every single one of these afghan girls to be able td then finally get the thing we are focused on and focusing on right now is creating a really y educated afghan women. a network of afghan women. after the taliban collapse in 2000 when thousands of afghan refugees poured back in to afghanistan and out of that group emerged a group of afghan women who were leaders in public te-sector and these are afghan women who have the opportunity while they were themselves as refugees able to professional women in the

community and it ended up being some of our most prominent leaders.en we look at this is time we cannot wait to get to continue to focus and remain lase on eduo when that time comes and i'm hopeful it will come during my lifetime, we will go back to afghanistan and there are thousands of in the community here going to go country. >> is truly inspirational and incredible work shabana but i would imagine the education you are providing is a template for other countries where education may not be banned for girls but it's interrupted because of conflict whether it's gaza or other places so definitely something to look at. >> absoly.

well we are focused on solutions for afghan girls and afghan women what we are doing with sola model that incredibly easily replicated in context. looking at refugee populations are particularly girls and women. we have to be able to look at them not as a burden coming to us. we have to look at them as a wealth of resources that are on the move that are forced to move and the caseor afghanistan. i ended up spending three days at the airport and i witnessed theirwer of afghanistan we not because they wanted to. because they have to.

that was beyond eye-opening to me to what ms. and i knew where i was wat them they would pass the line. in afghanistan they are the most wanted individuals and resources and people return to the afghan economy leaving innocent as they cross that line to become the most unwanted people on earth. one of the least wanted of the refugees. we have to look at it and we have to start to look at refugees differently. we have to look at these people on the move and equip them with the continuity of learning. institutions of higher learng and -- level have toured together to so the responses to forced migrations are not an ad hock emotional faces and what not a one-off that opens up

fellowships and scholarships. it have to be a comprehensive well-thought-out response so that we can see these young people who are on the move come to a place to be a country so they can easilyar transition. >> david i want to turn you to you and thank you virtually. in the eye or see in your port you highlighted organizations like shabana's are underfunded and have a rather shocking stat in a report that says that only 1.2% of humanitarian is teaching women led organization so not only are women the main

precedence of the violence and first affected try to go to some like shabana data being underfunded as well. what can the international community do to first take stock of this quickly and also address this very quickly because women oupy the economy. half of the solution and they can be so how do we address this? thanks so much for letting me be part of this panel and i need to start with an apology for not being in the room with you.- had to be in the office this afternoon so i apologize for not being with you. there are three important points to get to your question. the first we are an international humanitarian organization focused on people's conflict and disaster.ed we cannot be at successful

humanitarian organization, if we don't take seriously the structure of the structural injaequaliti of the women and within our own organization. so the framing is very important and not come back to that. certainly i do look at the testament that shabana has given on the situation in afghanistan. we have those -- 5000 people working for us in 12 provinces in 2200th of them are women and despite the taliban ban on women workingsp for ngos those women are lifeline they are a lifeline and economic lifeline to the three, four, five, six families that each of them supports through the income that

there's a lot of evidence. we have evidence from the middle east where we run a development program that shows using similar techniques are those that shabana is used you can make a years worth of free primary progress in emotional and social progress and academic learning in just weeks of their program so there's a real potential for an educational solutions and if it ends up in the right hands it can work. your point about the funding of support for one women's organizations if there was the percentage of funding related to the amount of clinical rhetoric on this issue funding for gender equality would be through the roof. what we are dealing with is a massive mismatch between the speeches and amount of political action. this is all about solutions and it's about transparency and it's about clarity and it's about

consistency. there's a team run by the u.n. organization. 18% of humanitarian teams have no plans to rid the reduce gender inequality despite all the rhetoric about it. that's how you end up in a situation of local organizations and the funding of women. our experience is it's all about information that secret that never leads to reform or you could have transparency you got to have targets in leadership roles and you can then make significant progress whether it hiring or financial and i hope that the igp will make sure that it's not just marginal to the global clinical

conversation. achieves the statusch they need. if we know anything it's the humanitarian crisis and that's what we are seeing in many parts of the world. in the middle east which know that we will touch on wherei; frankly there are 25 million people in today who are extraordinarily -- is it possible to get anyone to pay any attention to it at all? >> thank you. i want to turn to you. we are talking about how women are affecte and first affected alongside children by the ukraine or afghanian but there's also what happens after conflict. one could argue that perhaps if

women had been at the table in the discussion in the peace process perhaps we would have made that are progress. women are also excluded from the peace process and yet we know if they are included the pieces more sustainable and more achievablede. the scene examples of that. i'd like to think of northern ireland for sample. tell us a little bit about wha e going to a peace negotiation if the women are not included? >> there s much wisdom in what you said. before i make an attempt to address some of them i want to thank the organizers. again it's my second trip up here in a few weeks and these are profoundly deep and important conrs you know there is a construct

that's been put in place by the se the united nations which focuses on peace and security. resolution 1325 and the resolution has been strengthened nine times over realizing how critical it is that women fully participate in peace and security whether participating in the kinds of negotiations kim addressed, whether in relief recovery and reconstruction in what comes after in the transitional recogs a tool of war and women need to bepr protected. what we are talking about is agency when it comes to this resolution. and regrettably the gfgely unfulfilled. half the peace agreements that arent put in place are abrogatee

recurring. many of the genuinely important issues that have to be addressed are not address not present as so often we have to plead to the afghan women to be in one important organization or another that could have made a difference with all the retrospectives that are written. one of theiv reasons is, one of the most important reasons that we have but we have today in afghanistan is a failure to take half the population and incorporated. what can government do that they are not doing? t of all we have an evidence-based case. the evidence and data are there to show that when women are at the table unfortunately not as much as they should be

and there are cases of success t that slowly being fully implemented in one of the peace processes in the philippinesnd in northern ireland dealing with the troubles that there is solid evidence that the issues that women put on the table would not be there otherwise. most of the conversations are between the man on one side or the other of the rebel groups talking to each other and what we see is one o things they do is give themselves amnesty for what they have done for the women. that's no way to rule toict clearly. so recognizing the importance of this participation on issues like reconciliation, human rights, economic issues,

bringing communities back together, being an honest broker. those are the kinds of real tangible input women bring that haveosions to them. so recognizing the evidence i think is clearly important. undt women play a bit table. david expressed the critical world that's being played and stealing from you data as i often do you really recognizing the centrality of that role at that level. bringing communities, facilitating dialogue, understandingflict having central knowledge about what'sin going on, knowledge tht really is going to be an end to the conflict and a better future have to be inc. in the discussion.

so what you have is a bifurcated process. you have whatfr call a track two, track very happening at the local level really important work going on but it doesn't track one. women are rarely in that level so one of the critical things thatn have to happen is there have to be connectivity between two and one and preferably bringing more those women to tht peace table itself to negotiate. secondly what david said about women's organizations and what shabana exemplifies is that they are underfunded. i agree completely. if wede could take all of the wonderful rhetoric about how important thisis issue is and tn it into something tangible we have countless women at the peace table. we would have plenty of resources for vital organizations. that isn't happening. that needs to happen and we need

more women in positions of. certainly as negotiators and mediators. there are very very few negotiators and even fewer agreements. so the recognition of the vital role is a critically important element. the security council also said governments should adapt national action plans to take the important work that this represents, implement it and realize it and there are over 100 national action plans today. secretary clinton presided over the realization for the first time that the united states national action plan. some are check the box. that's all the government can say is i checked the box. we have a national action fund

and we don't really do anything goanabout it.rnments really revr after year what they need to do toto better implement the resolution. butt there is a lot of work that still needs to be done. israel or example no refen natin plan. it seems to me to really begin to deal with the dramatically -- the dramatic absence of women from a peace process for over a decade, it needs to start soon. and needs to have happened year ago but one place peacebuilders are working on is a national action plan. another area that have to be is you have a conversation about we have a nap and we believe in women's peace and security but it's not

connected to the foreign-policy and it's something you mentioned earlier were there have to be afghan policy needs to include peace and security and not silo into a separate women's issues. the ukraine policy, women's peace and security.en this needs to be mainstream integrated gender progressive participation of women. okay then will we begin to get the kind that we need to see. also increasingly need to bring government together. commitment 2025 is to take some of the resources, some of the commitmentseir coming together e greater impacts and going at it one at a time. but in the end this is about political will. it's about leadership. it's about power and it's easier

to talk about this than the reality of what's happening. just want to read this "back to you from former secretary clinton and you may recognize it. at times have changed how the world ■thin about conflict we stop the end prevent it. and the security to provide it and how we realize it is past time for rightful place side-by-side with men that in rooms where the space is where things are decided to makere the peace and the institutions to keep the peace. women are still not there in the great numbers that they should be. and i thank you so much.

i'm being told we up. we have -- we could have a whole session just about that. if you are remembering just as fwe discussed the inclusivity nt looking at the issue of women is just a social issue also in areas of conflict the part of the solution of peacear and security and having women not just seeing them as victims. agents of change and empowering them in organizations like david's organization to fund women's organizations. thank you very much and thank uo the panelists. thank you. [applause]

in the weeks ahead as the television series and for the famous and influential men of women who occupy the seats are going to have a lot to say about friedman's view of society and his solutions for the ills of our time.

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