中央アジアの女性・平和・安全保障に関する平和構築委員会（PBC）大使級会合における志野大使ステートメント

Mr. President,
 
To begin, I would like to express my appreciation to you for convening this important meeting. I also thank the representatives of the Central Asia Women Leaders’ Caucus and the other women and youth CSOs from Central Asia for their briefings.
 
Mr. President,
 
Central Asia has developed greatly in the 30 years since their independence and entered a new era in which　Central Asia is working with various partners in the international community to maintain and strengthen the international order based on the rule of law and to achieve sustainable development. In 2004, Japan launched the "Central Asia + Japan" dialogue to boost regional cooperation. Japan continues to cooperate with the countries of Central Asia as a major reliable partner.
 
Mr. President,
 
Achieving sustainable peace and resilience requires comprehensive, context-specific measures that ensure the human security of every individual. With this in mind, Japan has placed support for women’s participation and leadership at the core of our second national action plan on Women and Peace & Security (WPS), which includes, inter alia, supporting women to participate and to take active leadership roles in both formal and informal peace negotiations and in the decision-making processes of peacebuilding and humanitarian issues.
 
For example, Japan supports a project led by UN-Women in the region to respond to the urgent needs of women and girls, who were put in the most vulnerable and marginalized situations, exacerbated by COVID-19.  In this project, female activists in rural Kyrgyzstan were invited to participate in dialogues for decision-making to define gender-responsive socio-economic priorities for local crisis preparedness plans. Six municipality were successful to include gender perspective into their crisis-response plans, including gender-responsive budgetary allocations.
 
The role of women in the response to climate change is also an important issue to discuss.  We had very active and fruitful discussions on this topic at the meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in March this year, which led us the Agreed Conclusions, aiming to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental, and disaster risk reduction policies and programs. We will continue to play a constructive role in this area.
 
Mr. President,
 
To conclude, I wish to remind you all that Japan is going to host the sixth World Assembly for Women, in short WAW! on 3 December 2022 in Tokyo. We will continue to discuss “Women’s participation in peace and security” as a featured theme of the conference. The World Assembly for Women will also be an excellent opportunity to strengthen partnerships and accelerate actions on shared goals among the Member States, including the countries of Central Asia, and various other stakeholders.
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I am very pleased to listen very constructive and practical experiences from this region, which is contributing better understanding of the situation and women’s roles in Central Asia. Japan would like to assure you for our further cooperation.
 
Thank you, Mr. President.