WILPF International Board Meeting Seminar:
21 November 2008, Palais des Nations Room XXIII, Geneva        

                Welcoming remarks by Tim Caughley

Director, Geneva  Branch
Office for Disarmament Affairs, United Nations  Office at Geneva 

Welcome to the United Nations Office for Geneva. I am grateful to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom for inviting me to this international board seminar to address the critical issue of women and peace and security. This year’s seminar focuses on Security Council resolution 1325 and global military expenditures, fundamental and highly topical issues.

Promoting security for women

Since WILPF invited me to speak at the International Women’s Day seminar last March, there has been some progress in promoting women’s security, measured in terms of attention by the Security Council. On 19 June, the Council adopted resolution 1820, a landmark decision on sexual violence, following debate on the critical issue of ending the use of rape and other forms of sexual violence as instruments of warfare. In adopting the resolution, the Council emphasised that sexual violence as a tactic of war can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict. It demanded that all parties immediately protect civilians from all forms of sexual violence. The Security Council also requested the Secretary-General to develop guidelines to enhance the ability of peacekeeping operations to protect civilians from sexual violence and to systematically include recommendations in written reports to the Council. A report is to be submitted by 30 June 2009 with information on the systematic use of sexual violence in conflict areas together with strategies to minimize the prevalence of such acts and benchmarks for measuring progress.

Following the adoption of resolution 1820, the Security Council passed seven resolutions cross-referencing this resolution, and most significantly, it demanded in resolution 1826 on Sudan that the parties to the conflict immediately take appropriate measures to protect women and children from all forms of sexual violence in line with resolution 1820. Also, UN Peace missions round the world have since been making a difference in monitoring sexual abuses, assisting with legislation to eradicate violence against women, helping the victims and advocating an end to impunity. As Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted in his remarks during the Security Council open debate last June, the adoption by the Council of resolutions with strong language on sexual and gender-based violence strengthens in turn the ability of the United Nations Organisation to respond more forcefully. The Secretary-General himself has reaffirmed and continued the policy of zero tolerance of sexual exploitation and abuse in UN peacekeeping operations, and last February launched the global campaign, "UNite to End Violence against Women". On Monday, the Secretary General appointed South African actress Charlize Theron as Messenger of Peace with a special focus on ending violence against women.

There has been progress, too, in the promotion of women’s participation, which is a central pillar in integrating a gender perspective into peace and security issues. As you know, in resolution 1325, the Security Council declared that the full participation of women in peace processes can significantly contribute to the promotion and maintenance of international peace and security. In its first four operative paragraphs, the Council urged Member States to ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making levels in national, regional and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict; it encouraged the Secretary-General to implement his strategic plan of action calling for an increase in the participation of women at decision-making levels in conflict resolution and peace processes; it urged him to appoint more women as special representatives and envoys and to seek to expand the role and contribution of women in the UN field-based operations. The Secretary-Genenal appointed Margrethe Loj of Denmark to be Special Representative for Liberia, who became the eight woman to hold the post of Special Representative of the Secretary-General.

Integrating a Gender Perspective in the Disarmament-Development nexus

While progress has been made in these key areas, especially with regard to issues before the Security Council, gender and women perspectives are still woefully missing in disarmament issues, particularly in the context of the relationship disarmament has with development. With regard to so-called “micro-disarmament”, the term used by former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to describe the problems arising from the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, there has been growing recognition of the important role of women in peacebuilding and economic and social development. In resolution 1325, the Security Council encouraged all those involved in the planning of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration to consider the different needs of female and male ex-combatants and to take into account the needs of their dependents. Human security perspectives have also reinforced gender perspectives, as they focus on the protection of civilians, particularly women and children.

However, in the traditional work of disarmament – reducing and eliminating armaments or in UN jargon, “complete and general disarmament” – the reflection of gender and women perspectives has been patently inadequate. Almost half the world's population lives on less than 1 dollar per day, that is, their GNP per capita is less than $365. Yet sky-rocketing global expenditures on arms, which the 2008 SIPRI Yearbook estimated at $1,339 billion in 2007, continue to deprive the world of badly needed resources for social and economic development. Military spending in 2007 represented 2.5 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP) and amounted to $202 per capita. The staggering opportunity cost is simply overlooked or ignored in the pursuit of armaments.

For the past five decades, the UN has documented the economic and social costs of the arms race and military expenditures. It sponsored a number of large-scale studies by groups of scholars and experts on economic and social consequences of military expenditures and the relationship between disarmament and development, including three major reports by the Secretary-General submitted in 1961, 1971 and 1981. Through these studies, there emerged broad recognition of the beneficial relationship between disarmament and development goals. The First Special Session of the General Assembly on Disarmament in 1978 declared that in a world of finite resources, there is a close relationship between expenditure on armaments and economic and social development. Cognizant of this inter-connectedness, the United Nations convened the International Conference on the Relationship between Disarmament and Development in 1987, which adopted an action programme.

Unfortunately, despite the broad recognition of the mutually beneficial relationship between disarmament and development, particularly the contribution to international security and development of a different balance of military and development spending, this relationship has not been translated into national policy. In fact, this link was often ignored on ideological grounds and dismissed as political rhetoric. Although the General Assembly has annually passed a resolution on this subject, the action programme adopted by the 1987 International Conference remains largely unimplemented. The decade-long decline in global military expenditures following the end of the Cold War had a positive effect on economic growth in the 1990s, but paradoxically, it may have diminished the interest in the relationship between disarmament and development. Growing reliance on military strategies in national security policy has led to the stagnation of disarmament efforts, while the ascendance – up until now, at least - of a free market economy contributed to general emphasis on self-reliance in development. Concurrently, the disarmament and development nexus has tended to drift in the international agenda.

Nonetheless, as I noted last March, having repeatedly shouldered the burden of war’s material, societal, environmental and psychological costs, women are only too well aware that armaments come at the cost of security and sustainable economic and social development. Increased military spending has a direct impact on prospects for development, and seriously undermines the welfare of the most vulnerable and marginalized elements of many societies, particularly women and children. In the midst of the current economic downturn, military spending entails an even greater opportunity cost, causing extensive damage across poverty-stricken communities and conflict-ridden societies. Given persistent gender inequalities, it goes without saying that women are likely to fall victim to economic hardships, in addition to acts of violence and their harrowing, lasting damage.

The Secretary-General stressed that gender inequality carries a global cost of hampering progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It is also important to recognize that every resource used for production, trade and purchase of weapons or devoted to the infrastructure for conflict represents diversion from investments in real human security, which in turn perpetuates poverty, death, violence, human rights abuses and crime and corruption in underdeveloped areas. And it is no less important to recognize that the fallout from these perverse priorities affects women most severely, particularly those who have the least access to resources but are expected to maintain the “home front” as primary caretakers responsible for maintaining families and communities. It is this stark reality that highlights the urgent need to integrate gender and women’s perspectives into the disarmament-development nexus, especially regarding the debate on military expenditures.

In this vein, the open debate in the Security Council held on Wednesday at the initiative of Costa Rica on “Strengthening collective security through general regulation and reduction of armaments: the safest road to peace and development” is a noteworthy, encouraging event. In its Presidential statement adopted during the debate, the Council declared that it considered that the regulation and reduction of armaments and armed forces constitute one of the most important measures to promote international peace and security with the least diversion of the world's human and economic resources. The Council also stressed its concern at increasing military expenditures and the importance of appropriate levels of armaments, urging all States to devote as many resources as possible to economic and social development, particularly in the fight against poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The Council further expressed its support for national, regional and multilateral measures adopted by Governments aimed at reducing military expenditures.

This is a landmark policy pronouncement on military expenditures by the Security Council, bringing international attention to the long-forgotten mandate of the Security Council enshrined in Article 26 of the United Nations Charter: “In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources, the Security Council shall be responsible for formulating … plans to be submitted to the Members of the United Nations for the establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments.”

It is our earnest hope that such an initiative will ignite global interest in the issue of disarmament and development, and lead to international recognition that reductions of military expenditure could directly empower women who stand to gain immediate economic and social benefits, realizing enormous gains for development.  Harnessing profound and high level expressions of concern and converting them into making a difference on the ground are challenges that all of us involved in, and concerned by, armed conflict and disarmament issues must take up. I believe that the United Nations Organisation has the determination and the will to do so.

I wish you a very stimulating and productive seminar.