(Check against delivery)
Statement by H.E. Mr. Hiroshi Minami
Ambassador
Deputy Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations
At the Open Debate of the United Nations Security Council
On Women and Peace and Security
28 October 2014
Thank you, Madam President,
At the outset, I would like to thank Ms. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN-Women for her informative briefing. I also thank and welcome the participation of the Representative of civil society from Iraq.
<Japan's Principle Policy>
I would like to emphasize that the Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Shinzo Abe, places great importance on promotion and protection of women's rights and women's participation. We aim for a society in which women shine. Japan will spare no effort to create a society in which each and every individual woman is empowered to reach her full potential, not only domestically but also globally, including in conflict affected or post-disaster settings.
In order to effectively empower women, we must undertake holistic interventions, which include improving education, enhancing livelihoods, increasing access to reproductive health, and reducing gender-based violence; as laid out in Prime Minister Abe's statement before the General Assembly last month.
(WAW! Tokyo 2014)
In September, Japan hosted the symposium of the "World Assembly for Women: Tokyo 2014 – Towards a Society Where Women Shine (WAW! Tokyo 2014)". I would like to thank the Executive Director of UN-Women and Ms. Zainab Hawa Bangura, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict for their participation and contributions.
We summarized the opinions expressed during the discussions of the Symposium and issued a set of 12 concrete proposals entitled "WAW! To Do" (
A/69/396). In particular, in order to strengthen the role of women in peace and security, the following proposals are included: to make documents on the role that women play in the field of peace and security, to provide survivor-centered support in peacebuilding, and to create mechanisms to ensure the empowerment of and support for women.
<Main Theme of the Debate:"Displaced Women and Girls: Leaders and Survivors">
I would like to express my appreciation to the Madam President for focusing on the situation of refugees, IDPs and stateless women and girls. Japan, in cooperation with UN agencies such as UN-Women and UNHCR as well as various NGOs, has been supporting numerous projects around the globe related to this issue. Today, I would like to showcase some of our efforts.
(Protection)
First, I would like to highlight the story of Hamidah Hassan, who was introduced in our Prime Minister's statement. She is a girl of ten living in the camps for IDPs in Mogadishu. Japan provided the camps with solar lanterns made by a Japanese company, Panasonic, which bank electrical energy generated from sunlight during the day, and convert it to lamp-light at night. A lit tent not only acts as a deterrent to sexual violence, but also under that light Hamidah is now able to work and study later into the evening, and dreams that one day that she will become a doctor.
(Economic Empowerment)
Second, economic independence is critically important to the advancement of the status of women and decreasing violence against them, especially in displaced settings.
Faced with the grave humanitarian crisis in and around Syria, Japan has supported UN-Women's activities toward the economic empowerment of female Syrian refugees and IDPs in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. These include vocational training and cash-for-work programmes for IDPs in Syria and the creation of secure spaces for women at refugee camps in Iraq.
Japan also supported the activities of the Government of Jordan to support Palestinian female refugees in the country. This project instructed refugees in such skills as dressmaking, meeting Japanese quality standards, using donated kimono (a traditional Japanese dress) as instructive materials. It also offered marketing lectures to educate women in the ins and outs of running tailoring businesses.
These two examples are just indicative, but these two represent two important aspects, protection and empowerment. These two aspects are the main pillars of human security, which Japan has been advocating for more than ten years.
<National Action Plan and the High-Level Review of SCR1325 >
Madam President,
I would now like to mention the follow-up of the landmark Resolution 1325.
In the "WAW! To Do" document, we recognized that the following points are essential for the implementation of Resolution 1325 and related resolutions: high-level political leadership and commitment, consultations by the international community with women in civil society and inclusion of the perspectives and participation of women in all stages of peacebuilding and all governmental decision-making. From these perspectives, we suggested bringing key high-level leaders together to make strategies for concrete results.
In this connection, Japan and civil society have been earnestly developing our National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace, and Security through the framework of participation, prevention, protection, relief and recovery, and monitoring and evaluation. It is expected that we will be able to launch it before the end of the year. Japan also wishes to support the development and the implementation of the NAPs of developing countries.
Finally, in July, our Mission held a panel discussion in collaboration with a civil society organization called the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP). We hope the summary of the discussion, together with "WAW! To Do", and most importantly the implementation of our NAP along with more than 100 indicators being established with civil society organizations and relevant public entities in Japan will serve as inputs to the Global Study of Resolution 1325. Through these efforts, Japan hopes to contribute to further building the momentum towards the High-Level Review in October 2015.
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