Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. I think engagement is the way to go. I also think that this is an opportunity, as you engage—if companies are going in to establish a business there—to go in with strong social policies around equal pay, child care for women who work, things like that. If you are going to have women working for you, make sure there is transport, and so forth.

Foreign Affairs committee  I hope it was our report “Killing Them Softly”, which I can produce. I don't know whether there were other reports, but we produced the first report on the impact of sanctions. I have to tell you, I am Iranian by background myself. Now I have lived in Britain and America. One of the things we found is that the impact on ordinary people, civilians, is extraordinary.

Foreign Affairs committee  To be honest with you, I would defer to my Iraqi colleagues, because I think it's important to be talking to them. Having said that, I can tell you about women on the ground—for example, the Iraqi Women Network. They're women's rights activists cutting across all the different ethnic, religious, and geographic lines in Iraq.

Foreign Affairs committee  One of the things I find frustrating is that our international system, the media, the UN, etc.... Everybody talks about the issues, the victimization of the Yazidi girls and the Yazidi women. When you actually look and see what kind of systematic support we are providing, it's really very little.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I want to acknowledge the bravery of my colleagues who have been speaking out about these issues. It's extraordinary what's happening and how ineffective the international responses have been. I think this is actually an indication of how poorly we're doing on this agenda specifically.

Foreign Affairs committee  Perhaps, over a drink, I can tell you the reality of life. I see different things happening. My organization did a study for UNDP last year on the appointment of peace and development advisers. These are P5s, moderately senior people, who are joint UNDP and DPA appointees to conflict areas, where they look at peace building.

Foreign Affairs committee  I would just add that I think there's a certain scope to offer the incentive of jumping the queue as a troop-contributing country if you meet the 20% or 30% target of women. If you think about Nepal, Sri Lanka, and many of the African countries, there are many women who were actually in non-state armed movements, so they have the military training and they would be perfectly capable of being trained as peacekeepers and would welcome those opportunities.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. You'll be hearing from me in a minute, so I'm not going to take up too much of your time. My organization, the International Civil Society Action Network, works with an alliance of independent and locally grounded and founded women-led organizations across many conflict zones.