A year before the 20th anniversary of Resolution 1325, the open debate in the UN Security Council on 29 October is an important benchmark as regards evaluating what has been achieved and what still needs to be done.
We must continue striving together to strengthen the women, peace and security agenda and to preserve what we have also been able to achieve with the adoption of Resolution 2467 in April 2019. Its implementation is one of our main priorities in the United Nations.
The unanimous adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security on 31 October 2000 was certainly a milestone in the Security Council’s work.
However, it will now also become clear that we have yet to face a large number of challenges together, as we remain a long way off from complete implementation of the UN agenda on women, peace and security, even 19 years after the adoption of Resolution 1325.
Women and girls continue to experience gender-specific discrimination and violence in all societies. Changing this is one of the objectives that the international community wants to achieve by 2030.
Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights.
Political ownership and the protection of women, particularly in conflicts, are thus a major component of German foreign policy.
Women, peace and security must therefore be addressed by all Security Council units to an even greater extent than before.
We are playing a role in this. The German Government has made this very clear in the first year of Germany’s Security Council membership.
For example, at the urging of Germany, the UK and UN Women, and under the chairmanship of Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, over 75 countries and UN organisations pledged their support for more than 400 concrete voluntary commitments in April in order to do more to achieve the objectives of Resolution 1325 by its 20th anniversary.
Under the chairmanship of Foreign Minister Maas, the Security Council also adopted Resolution 2467 on combating sexual violence in conflicts.
Germany has been instrumental in ensuring that women’s participation in peace processes and their protection against sexual violence have been made important components of almost all resolutions adopted by the Security Council this year.
During our chairmanship of the Security Council, we also furthered the active involvement of civil society and included a record-breaking number of women in Security Council discussions. We want to continue pursuing this path.
We firmly believe that women’s equal participation at all decision-making levels is a key element in creating security, stability and lasting peace in the world.
I am very much looking forward to this and to my talks with representatives of the UN member countries and civil society.