The following Blog was written by Alice Ruxton who is the Communications and Advocacy Support Officer at the UNIFEM (part of UN Women) East and Southeast Asia Sub-Regional Office in Bangkok.

Heavily pregnant and having to flee her home and village to escape conflict, resulting in the premature birth of her child – this was the scene that was set last week in Bangkok by Helen Hakena, a peace activist from Bougainville who shared her own personal experience to highlight the importance of including women in issues of peace and security.  Helen, along with other women peace activists, representatives from government, civil-society and UN agencies met in Bangkok over two days to commemorate the 10th anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, and to participate in a capacity development workshop on UNSCR 1325.

UNSCR 1325 was passed in recognition that whilst women remain a minority of combatants and perpetrators of war and conflict, they often suffer the most. Alarmingly, sexual violence is increasingly being used as a deliberate tactic of warfare. Despite all this, women continue to be poorly represented in formal peace processes, although they contribute in many informal ways to conflict resolution.
UNSCR 1325 was a landmark resolution which called for international security institutions to address the different impacts of conflict on women and men, and to engage women fully in conflict resolution, peackeeping and peacebuilding. However, implementation of the resolution has been slow.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the resolution and to highlight how much more work needs to be done, UNIFEM (part of UN Women) East and Southeast Asia Sub-Regional Office in Bangkok was involved in facilitating two activities – the launch of the Asia-Pacific Regional Advisory Group on Women, Peace and Security and the capacity development workshop mentioned above.

Dr. Noeleen Heyzer, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) launched the Asia-Pacific Regional Advisory Group on Women, Peace and Security at a special function held on 6 October 2010 at the UN Conference Centre, Bangkok. The Group - the first regional of its kind - will advise and support Governments, civil society and other relevant players on the effective implementation of UNSCR 1325 in the Asia-Pacific region. The Group is composed of women and men leaders having recognized expertise in advancing the role and interests of women in peace and security processes in the region, such as Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, who will act as an honourable advisor to the Group, Ms. Sima Samar, Head of Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and Ms. Teresita Quinto-Deles, presidential adviser on the peace process in the Philippines.

Not all members of the newly appointed Advisory Group were able to attend the launch, but those who did participated in a roundtable discussion. Bandana Rana, Regional Coordinator of the South Asian Campaign for Gender Equality from Nepal shared how at the Beijing 4th World Conference on Women, the delegates from Nepal felt that the discussions on conflict were not very relevant to them. However, unfortunately 15 years later the reality is much different, and Nepal is now currently in the process of developing its National Action Plan on the implementation of 1325, the first to be developed in South Asia.  An audience member from India spoke about how India has recently sent its first all-women police team to participate in the UN Mission in Liberia. This was in recognition that when all-women police teams were introduced in India, there was an increase in women reporting crimes.

MAKE WOMEN COUNT FOR PEACE – SIGN THE PETITION!
UNIFEM's global campaign to Make Women Count for Peace is quickly growing but needs your support! We have two weeks left before the Security Council High-Level Ministerial meeting in New York focusing on Security Council Resolution 1325.
This is why we are calling on all our supporters to sign the petition before October 21, urging governments to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1325 that ensures women’s participation in peace-building.

You can make a difference!