Thank you very much.
I can only echo my colleague's statement in appreciating the opportunity to be here in front of you today. I would also mention how much of a pleasure it was to have the Prime Minister here, showing so much leadership on the issue. We both happen to be Canadians before you, so we have a bit of a dual allegiance here.
Let me begin my remarks with some background on the work of UNDP, because my remarks will be contextualized in the type of work we do. I will give you a bit of a global overview of what we're seeing going on in the field.
UNDP is the main development arm of the United Nations. We work in nearly 170 countries and territories around the world. Our mandate spans the full range of development challenges, from those related to sustainable growth and development, to those related to governance and peace-building, and to those that relate to climate and disaster resilience. We also are the main arm of the United Nations when it comes to recovery from conflict or disaster.
We're engaged around the world helping countries to conduct free and fair elections, undertake constitutional political processes as well as legal reforms, and we're quite engaged in working with other parts of the UN, including UN Women, to strengthen the rule of law and build judicial institutions in crisis and in non-crisis countries.
Putting that in context, when we look at what we do on gender equality and women's empowerment, these are very central features of all the work we do. By and large the strongest aspect of our work related to the women, peace, and security agenda relates to the participation pillar of the agenda, and specifically to efforts to promote women's participation in post-crisis and transitional governance processes. This means ensuring that women participate in constitution-making, in elections, and in public administration.
We know that post-conflict transitions provide unique opportunities to jump-start women's progress on women's political participation. We have seen this realized in countries across the world. I would argue that if we look at the Resolution 1325 agenda, this is the area where we've seen some progress—not enough, but progress.
Unfortunately, as Nahla was pointing out, there has been less progress when we look at women's role in formal peace processes. I won't go into the statistics, which we already heard. We do see a little bit of progress in recent peace processes in Colombia and the Philippines, but this is really an area where I think global attention needs to be focused going forward.
Canada, along with other member states, can use a number of diplomatic channels, including bilateral and multilateral channels, and play an important role in urging parties to negotiations to include women in their delegations, identifying and supporting women leaders, and demanding that internationally sponsored negotiations create and finance processes for women's engagement.
I'd like to address the issue of sexual violence in conflict. Today we do have a much more comprehensive normative and international legal framework for addressing sexual violence. Organizations like the United Nations are certainly doing more to provide comprehensive services for victims and to build the structures we need to end impunity, including training police and military in countries, supporting investigations, and supporting transitional justice mechanisms. However, despite the increased global attention, prosecutions are way outpaced by violations. The wheels of justice are taking decades instead of years.
What I really want to call for is that we redouble our efforts and invest more in preventative action. While a prevention agenda requires greater investments in early warning systems and preventative diplomacy, above all else we require greater investments in addressing the structural and underlying inequalities that are the root causes that drive conflict. This demands intensified investments in basic gender equality programming in not only fragile and conflict-affected contexts but in stable contexts as well.
We know that when women are educated, when they have access to resources and opportunities, and when their political, economic, and social rights are secured, they are less vulnerable to violence in all its forms.
There is a growing body of research showing that the security of women is one of the most reliable indicators of the peacefulness of a state. We have heard that already; it's a view included in the global study. Therefore, a key component of conflict prevention itself is greater investment in women's and girl's empowerment. We have to see that link as essential.
These are areas in which Canada has some of the best global expertise to offer, working on bread-and-butter gender equality work around the world, on reproductive health and rights, on education, on economic and political empowerment. This type of bread-and-butter gender equality support is still underfunded. We continue to see a lack of investments in women's empowerment in all areas.
I would now like to reflect upon some of these new contextual challenges, which my colleague mentioned, that have really come to the fore in recent years.
First, crises, whether resulting from conflict or climate-related events, are causing profound and lasting displacements and migration trends that threaten to stall and even reverse progress for women and girls in communities. If we take the Syrian crisis, for example, we see early marriage rising from 12%, I believe the estimates were, in 2011, until by 2014 the number was as high as 32%. We can safely assume the rate has gone up and that their number is probably underestimated.
We know that more than two million Syrian children are out of school and that in many host countries, Syrian women and girls do not have papers to access services or employment. Ensuring that these women and girls are educated, employed, and able to participate in the decisions that affect their daily lives is vital to building their resilience and reducing their vulnerabilities to violence.
We need to look at violence from the point of view not only of protection and response, but of how we reduce the vulnerabilities. It is also vital to invest in these women and girls if we are going to have future leaders or a future society upon which to build a future Syria. If we want to bridge the humanitarian nexus, which is the focus of the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit, we must focus on investing in what I call development in humanitarian contexts. This is not what is going on at the moment. Other challenges that must be addressed include the rise and spread of violent extremism, which was mentioned, the proliferation of non-state actors to conflict, and the protracted nature of conflict and recovery.
We must recognize that groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram, and others use sexual violence as deliberate and central tactics to repress populations and destroy the social foundations upon which any recovery must be built. It is hard when we look at these conflicts to envisage how long it's going to take, even if we have a cessation of violence. The progression from conflict to cessation of hostilities to peacemaking and peace-building is not at all linear any more, if it ever was. We need to recognize that preventing sexual violence must be a fundamental and priority component of countering violent extremism and conflict prevention.
What can Canada do? Canada can use the development of its next national action plan to think broadly about conflict prevention in this new context and put gender equality at the centre of strategies. The broader agenda on conflict prevention must be centred around the question of how we build inclusive societies based on social, political, economic, and cultural rights. Canada is a great example of an inclusive society.
When I asked actors on the ground what they would like me to convey to you today, they told me time and again that Canada's leadership is needed more than ever to provide alternatives to what are now primarily militarized responses to bring about peaceful societies. People are looking to Canada to speak up, to engage in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy through formal and informal channels, to promote a human security and human dignity agenda that is backed by investments in the full range of human rights. They are looking for governments like Canada's to find a way to halt the alarming trend of violations against human rights defenders, who are being silenced via actual or threatened violence.
We have seen high-profile murders in countries like Libya and Honduras recently. It is not only this, but women face violence when they try to run for office or when they try to expose corruption in their communities. This is a real issue that is silencing the ability of local actors to bring about change in their communities.
Finally, let me underscore that advancing this sort of agenda requires supporting and partnering with civil society organizations working on the ground. These are the organizations at the front line of countering radicalization and providing alternatives for youth and vulnerable groups in identifying and capacitating the leaders who we want to engage in decision-making.
Whenever we have seen women participate effectively in democratic processes, it's because of these civil society groups. Yet, as we heard earlier, the funding is way insufficient for them to really operate and have any meaningful impact.
Let me conclude by saying that I'm not sure if from Ottawa you can see the change that the Government of Canada recently has had in terms of setting a tone with a new gender-balanced government, with the participation of the Prime Minister in the CSW. There's tremendous enthusiasm around the world. People everywhere are looking towards our country to play a leadership role on an agenda for women, peace, and security, and gender equality more broadly.
I think this new action plan is a fantastic opportunity for Canada to meet these expectations, to put the commitments into action, but it requires an integration of an approach towards women, peace, and security that brings this together with the development and foreign policy agenda of the government.
Thank you very much.