Ambassador’s Opening remarks for Women Peace and Security Regional Workshop

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"Dr. Maxime Houinato, UN Women Regional Director East and Southern Africa, Colleagues, Your Excellency Huang Xia, Special envoy of the Secretary General for the Great Lakes Region, Hodan Addou, UN Women Country Representative, Representatives from the Government, from CSOs, partners and friends.

All protocol observed.

Habari za asubuhi. Good morning, all!

Thank you for giving me the floor and for the opportunity to share a few words on behalf of Denmark. I am very happy to be here today.

First of all, thank you to UN Women’s East and South African regional office and not least the UN Women Office here in Tanzania for bringing us all together at this important event.

Even though the Women, Peace and Security agenda should be pushed forward every day of the year, it is very timely to use the opportunity of International Peace Day to discuss good practices and lessons learned, when it comes to making WPS national action plans impactful.

The country hosting us today, Tanzania is in the process of developing its first National Action Plan – its first NAP. Denmark has supported this process from the start. And it has been truly inspiring to witness the much increased interest across the board, since President Samia’s government took over 1.5 years ago. I understand that the Taskforce will hand over the draft NAP to the Government in December. We are immensely proud have been part of that journey.

Today, I will be talking about three things: Context changing over time; the incredibly important issue of implementation; and about knowledge sharing. In reality, I will mostly be talking about one: Implementation, having a go at it from three different angles. Hope you will bear with me!

Firstly on the agenda and its context. We have a lot to learn from each other, when we develop our NAPs, fully respecting of course that all contexts are different. Accepting that one size does not fit all. Denmark is now on its fourth NAP, learning as we go along, from our own successes and shortcomings and with inspiration from others.

The Danish approach is overall a rights-based approach. Our fourth NAP[1] (2021-2024) aims to:

• Use Denmark’s influence as a security policy actor to further the WPS agenda globally. Denmark is working to ensure that all the relevant international organisations in which we participate deliver relevant concrete results in relation to WPS.
  
  
• Increase women’s participation in peace and security efforts. Women’s participation is an end in itself. Their participation in building and sustaining peace is first and foremost a matter of their right to participate. Denmark is focusing on increasing the participation of both local women and Danish women in peace and security efforts.
  
  
• Prevent and respond to gender-based violence in conflict situations and improve efforts against sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment. Preventing and responding to gender based violence is an integral part of Denmark’s efforts in conflict prevention, management, stabilisation and peacebuilding. Denmark is committed to a zero-tolerance policy in relation to sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment both among partners and within its own ranks.

We have adjusted our focus areas over time, which is only natural. But the most remarkable change in our latest NAP, however, is its focus on implementation. On setting up a structure that seeks to ensure that we deliver on our promises. Seeks to ensure that we will see tangible results of our efforts.

We see systematic competence development as an integral part of the plan. We insist on individual implementation plans for all authorities involved – MFA, MoD, MoJ and National Police. We have established a working group to monitor implementation. Annual fora to set strategic and overall goals. Ongoing follow-up, annual evaluation and agile implementation. And we have committed ourselves to make sure that the WPS agenda is discussed with civil society on a regular basis.

While this all sounds like quite the bureaucratic nightmare, it all stems from one of the hardest lessons learned from the first three NAPs. That implementation is hard and by no means a given! If there is any one message we want to send today, it is: Do not underestimate how much focus is needed on implementation!

So what we are saying is that it may be hard to engage all stakeholders, to draft and agree on everything. But it is certainly our experience that writing a NAP on Women Peace and Security is much, much easier than implementing it.

We know this from years of experience. In 2005, Denmark was the first country in the world to adopt a NAP on UN Security Council Resolution 1325. We are currently implementing our fourth, as I mentioned earlier.

The NAP is a vital tool in effectively translating the Women Peace and Security framework into a holistic inclusion of women. By adopting a NAP, you keep your nation accountable, you apply the resolution to the context and you increase the ownership of the agenda.

A written document is a first step, but it is not enough. The activities need to be costed, a solid plan for implementation is needed, as is monitoring and evaluation. Also an important learning evaluating our three previous NAPs.

Did we see good results of the first three NAPs? Yes, but we also learned that the results came about not so much because of the NAP, but due to individual engagement in the agenda.

The more systematic, strategic and broad inclusion of the agenda in our programs were absent. Thus, this has also been the focus in the development of our newest fourth NAP from 2020.

To help other countries be successful in implementing their NAPs, NAP-experienced countries like my country Denmark owes it to everybody else to honestly and truthfully share difficulties and successes.

Luckily, in the room today, we have several years of experience with developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating National Action Plans on Women Peace and Security.

Also from Denmark. I am glad that we can bring some of our experience to the table with Bjarne Askholm, Police Adviser in the Eastern Africa Standby Force, and Line Brylle, Global Peacebuilding Advisor from the Danish Refugee Council. Two concrete experiences that we hope can help increase our knowledge on actual implementation.

Before I conclude let me mention one very last thing: Successful implementation of the WPS agenda within the very organ that gave birth the agenda with the adoption of UN Security Council resolution 1325 would go a long way in getting us where we want to go. This was a key priority, when Denmark last was a member of the Council in 2005-2006. It will be a key priority during our membership of the UN Peacebuilding Commission in 2023-2024 . And it will certainly also be key priority, if we manage to get elected to a seat the UNSC in 2025-2026. As a matter of fact just tomorrow, we will be launching Denmark’s candidature in New York, and we will work hard to get there.

Thank you again for listening.

I wish you all a constructive and fruitful couple of days.

Asante sana. Thank you very much."

[1] https://www.fmn.dk/globalassets/fmn/dokumenter/nyheder/2020/-danish-national-action-plan-on-wps-.pdf