Negotiations. These intergenerational Capacity Building programs have really worked in these types of situations and theyve also shown that when women decide that they want a new role in society, it happens really fast. Now, the main challenge that i would like to highlight, and maybe we can all answer this question together is how do we make sure that the progress that are made at the grass roots level also translate at the regional level and at the National Level . Because in these countries like mali, for example you have very interesting progress at the grass roots level. But you have 34 government ministers and there is not there is not no one woman. Or if there is one, this woman is in charge of Womens Affairs or social issues or fishery. Not that i have anything against fishery. But, i think that if you want women to basically take a leadership role, then you need to give them a substantive portfolio. Looking forward to discussion. Thank you very much. [ applause ] madame ambassador. Thank you. I think my colleagues have addressed many aspects that im not going to repeat. One other thing i you know, once again, maybe because you asked also to use examples that we know of. The first thing is the mind set. The mindset is to see women as agents not as soldiers, regardless of any kind of policy we can put in place if the women are not empowered enough to take into the hand so that Women Empowerment is definitely the biggest thing. The second i can maybe think of for discussion purposes once again because youve addressed some of the agenda and so on, so forth, is that women have to be included in all the levels where you want to change anything. You cant talk about ending violence. You cant talk about ending anything without women being present. So it means that if we need to put people in peacekeeping, women have to be there and be represented. If we are talking about ending family violence, women have to be totally diverse, whether we talk about the doctors who are going to see the women, the policeman who is going to see the women and everybody else who are connected to the case. Because representation is big. Thats the bottom line. Without representation, people speak about you, they empower you, but you are not empowered yourself. So for me thats where i can say, maybe, if i talk about where i think weve been successful because women are a part of the agenda, women are setting the course of the next 20 years, 30 years, and so on, and so forth. So i leave it there and im open to questions. Thats very helpful. Thank you very much. [ applause ] ive been reminded and i should have said at the beginning, for those who tweet, you can tweet today. And the hashtag is africa day 2015. So tweet freely. And now, jackie. Thank you. Good afternoon. I also dont want to repeat what other colleagues said but thought i could just wrap up this part of the conversation by sharing with you five things that we as an organization have learned through working with African Women. Im always sensitive, as you are, to lump all of africa, this whole continent together at the risk of oversimplifying but ill share some examples from africa but lessons that also relate to women around the world. If i might start by thinking, members of ambassador levin mentioned the women waging peace network, which is a group we support, and you are a member of others. Others will i hope join as well. When i wrote to several of them and mentioned id be on this panel and asked for input, i got a lot of great suggestions. One of my favorite emails that came back said, finally said, dont worry, jackie, everything will be fine. Ambassador lightman is an honorary african woman. So hell know what to say. So very much earned your stripes to be speaking on this day. So five things weve learned from African Women. First, we shouldnt be waiting until a crisis to invest in womens leadership. Its not a project and it shouldnt be projectized. It is a longterm investment strategy. We saw a great example of this come through in a report that the u. S. Government released a couple weeks ago around the u. S. National action plan discussing the fact that they had been supporting through u. S. N. A. P. , a group of women in sierra leone to focus on womens leadership and development skills. The intention was not in any way to address the ebola crisis. This was much before the ebola crisis struck. They were focusing on womens leadership and womens leadership in communities. When the crisis hit, this was one of the groups best connected to do things that were absolutely essential at the time. They were connecting people from communities with health care workers, they were providing information to the National Government like womens roles in burial processes and tracking family members and et cetera. So the idea of creating a Womens Network and building capacity and ensuring women felt empowered after a crisis like ebola hits just simply isnt realistic. But the idea of investing in women and womens leadership in times beyond times of crisis is essential. Secondly, we need to be very clear that we need when we are providing funding or support from an outside organization that we need to ensure that African Womens groups set their own agenda and set their priorities. And credit to the state department in this regard where credit is due. Weve been working with a group of women from sudan and south sudan for about ten years, in part through state department funding, and as you can imagine, about four years ago the situation between the two countries looked very different. And the state department provided funding for work related to the separation of the two countries. Women from both countries talking about how they would separate peacefully, the terms of the agreement, et cetera. When the crisis broke out in the south, as you can imagine, everything changed significantly. And as a funder, the government was very willing and open to say, all right, women in south sudan were able to focus on what they wanted to focus on. Cessation of hostilities agreement. Peace negotiations themselves and women were sudan were able to focus on the National Dialogue process. They were saying weve got these beautiful log frames. They dont mean anything anymore. Let us adapt to the situation, reality on the ground. Unfortunately in some cases funders are willing and able to do that. Third point is that the ecosystem in which womens leadership exists matters very much. The idea that there is such a thing as womens issues is something that just blows my mind. I cant understand what a womens issue that isnt also a Community Issue or a security issue. Security sector reform is a womens issue. Corruption is a womens issue. A whole range of issues, access to justice are womens issues. Something i think is a success particularly in your country, ambassador, is the acknowledgement of the issue of land rights and womens access to land and access to inheriting land as core to their ability to participate in public life and participate in security conversations. My most favorite statistic around africa overall, and i think it sums up so much, is that women are responsible for 70 of agricultural production, yet own less than 1 of the land. Thats a huge, huge issue. Agriculture productivity is another issue. If we start to address these things, it is all part of a large ecosystem or chain of events that enables women to participate in different aspects of life. Fourtds, what fourth what weve seen African Women lead on around the world in the last 15 to 20 years has been redefining the term security toward more of a notion toward human security. And in beijing were about the 20th anniversary of the large u. N. Conference in beijing. It was women from rwanda, south africa, a number are countries, women saying we played a significant role in the wars in our country and rebuilding the country. We need to think of ways as an International Community to address these topics. One of the most powerful experiences that i had working with colleagues in sudan and south sudan was around the separation of the two countries. Gathered a group of sudanese and south sudanese women together and talked about petroleum. This was one of the major issues being negotiated by an ambassador and his colleagues. Many people were saying theres no gender dimension to petroleum. The oil agreements. Theres no gender. Maybe there is something around the economy or maybe Something Like that. And so when you break it down withwoman is they were identifying the way that communities interacted with issues. So instead of talking only about protecting Oil Installations or extracting resources or setting prices, they were talking about the environmental impacts of Oil Installations. They were talking about the environmental impacts of transportation routes. They were saying, for example, some of these places, water is heavily polluted. Women are responsible for collecting water. They have to walk further to get to clean water. They and their families are much more vulnerable to being attacked or to drinking polluted water, et cetera. Its all again part of a system that needs to be addressed. Weve seen African Women i think take a massive lead on redefining this term of security. Then fifth, the final thing id say is that we have a ridiculous aversion i think in many parts of the world, including this country, to learning from africa. I think what africa has taught us is that there is a whole lot more that we need to learn. We focus a lot on my organization on National Action plans. Some of the best National Action plans are in africa. Some of the most sophisticated systems of monitoring an evaluation, the most advanced systems of indicator tracking are in africa and theyre actually being implemented. There are a whole range of other really amazing sets of work done around Security Sector reform. My colleagues were just in nigeria last week and met with groups of women that they said were needed to come and give us lectures on how to advocate to our military and police institutions. Just remarkable capacity. And i think many of us many of us have, either through a range of biases, racism, classism, et cetera, this reluctance to learn from africa and from african community. And finally, i also think it is always entertaining this idea of with young people now we talk about the shared economy. So uber and air b and b and all these things and we act as though weve invented the idea of shared economies. But is there anything more african than the concept of collective property and share something property like that. I think there is a whole massive set whole turn in our economy and the way that its shifting that is towards the capacities and skill sets toward a number of african entrepreneurs. That we need to be clueing into. So ill leave it at that as our five things. Thank you. [ applause ] let me ask because camissa raised this whole question you have a lot of women working at the grass roots level and in social reconstruction after a conflict but it doesnt always transfer to the post conflict situation or to the higher levels. In some cases, it has, i found it very hard for them at the Grassroots Level to be able to crack through in the key negotiations of peace and security where the priorities were often wrong on the part of the negotiators because they werent really sensitive to how people were suffering. And it was difficult. Now why is it that in rwanda and mozambique youve come out of a conflict terrible conflicts in both countries, and instituted such strong gender equality in the constitutions, et cetera. May still be challenges, but in both cases i think rwanda and mozambique stand out. How did that happen . Was it because women were pushing at it and demanding it . Did they play a particular role in the conflict and situation . Or was it just enlightenment . Either one, perhaps. Thank you. Let me add another dimension, which is the elections, the participation of women in the election processes. I feel that this is very important. When women participate in this electoral processes, they are part, they are prepared the processes and they campaign to be voted or to elect other women to the positions. Power positions. And in mozambique we have the experience which is successful, the quota system. I know that in other parts the quota system is not applied because there are people who think that that is a kind of mans marginalization. But in mozambique it works and it has worked. Thats why we have reached such total of women enrolled in decision positions. Yes, women participant. We have conflict. And since women are the most affected, they are much more easily are able its true that its not always they are seated at the table the decision table to solve the conflicts or even after the conflicts. But they are there, and they are the grassroots organizations, and they help build the society. And they help to sustain the societies. So i think that we have to work much more in terms of empowering women to be able, themselves to defend themselves, to defend their rights in the society. Thank you. Madam ambassador . Your thoughts . There are a few things, if i can say why it is happening. And you mentioned the history also. You have a very tiny country with a Million People dying in three months. And you either die or you resurrect. So what happened was that the first thing that was able to revive our country and also comprehensively include women is that we needed to harness all the efforts of everybody in the country to be alive. And women had are the ones who kept the fabric of the country going. Given the incredible challenges when you are looking at people who a society that has been reduced in ashes. But so there are three things. One is leadership. You have to set a vision that this is what you want. You have to have intentionality. Theres intention. And then you really have to marry policy and practices. So it means that in our particular situation, we created what we call home grown initiatives. Socioeconomic initiatives give toward empowerment of women. So for instance we say like what does it mean to give a cow to poor women so they are able to organize themselves. Or community work, cooperatives, where they put people together, they are able to get microfinance and they can start business. So im talking about intention. Intention has to be there. Principles have to be translated into practices. So you really have to create that kind of pathway and thats what we did. Thank you. Im going to open it up now to the audience. But you know, i once asked a revolutionary leader in africa who had come to power but i was raising with him sort of a problem of gender discrimination in parts of the country. And he said, well, then the women just have to organize and fight for what they want. Now it was a little bit selfserving comment, but theres some truth to it, it seems to me, that its not just organization, its willingness to demand inclusion and rights. I assume that that was also part of the experience in your country. Kamissa, you worked with a lot of organizations. I worked with a lot of organizations. And really, and ive said it during my short presentation, is that you have these grassroots Women Leaders who have nobody to look up to. There is nobody in the government who will actually represent them and who will make sure that their voices are heard or that their interests are served in the government, at the National Level, and at the regional level. And maybe because were talking about the au here i wonder how we can talk about womens leadership in african when the au has never, ever sent a woman as an international mediator. In africa over the past i dont know, i would say over the past ten years, for example, in west africa, weve had conflicts in liberia, in mali, in sierra leone, and not even once was there a woman who was sent as a mediator. It was only this longserving president s. Im sure there are qualified women out there. So when you said marrying policy and practices, i like it. Its really thats the issue. So its nice to be talking about womens participation. But how do you make it happen. Good comment. I think youve provoked a good set of questions. I think people should go to the microphone and then well take them in order. Please. Good afternoon. My name is allison shapira. I teach public speaking and presentation skills with a special focus on helping women around the world find their voice and their courage to speak up. And so my question for the panel is, what specific skills do you think women need to learn in the process of being empowered in order to drive are the region forward . Thank you. Jackie, you work a lot on that. You want to start on that . You know, i confidence isnt a skill but it is confidence thats needed most. Ive actually never liked the word empowerment. To me, its the idea of someone can give you power. I think what we see is that women have power if they choose to use it and to exercise it. So we do a lot of work with Women Leaders. Our premise is always you know what you need and you know what your community needs, and all we need to do is work on packaging how you say it. I think thats the Biggest Issue, the single Biggest IssueHolding Women back is the idea that their knowledge or their experiences are somehow less than those of their male colleagues. Constantly, were in workshops where people say, you know, were too illiterate. Were not literate enough. We need to make sure that maybe nextgeneration or in ten or twenty years we can read then well be able to run for office or something. The most important answer is do you have a vision for your community . Do you know what the issues are . Do you know what you want to change . If so, then go for it and the rest its not like all of your male colleagues have all of these skills. Women have a perception that everyone else has the skills and they dont. Were often getting requests from women we need Capacity Building, Capacity Building. Our answer is often, no, you dont. You actually dont. You have everything you need. Well work with you to maybe shorten your responses or you