WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, yesterday hosted a roundtable discussion with Ivanka Trump, advisor to President Donald Trump, on the U.S. strategy for implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security Act, which was authored by Senators Capito and Shaheen and signed into law by President Trump in October 2017.
“By giving women the same tools and same opportunities to participate in the global promotion of peace, I believe we can accomplish three critical goals: improving the diplomatic and peacemaking process, helping to promote stability abroad, and laying the groundwork for a more secure future here at home,” Senator Capito said. “I appreciate the administration’s efforts to carefully create an implementation strategy that will help accomplish these goals—which Senator Shaheen and I laid out in the Women, Peace, and Security Act—and I’m confident that, once implemented, the United States will help pave the way for women across the world to join peace negotiations and other diplomatic efforts in ways they haven’t been able to in the past.”
“The prioritization of women across the United States’ security structures and diplomatic efforts is fundamental to preventing conflict and forging a durable peace worldwide. We need female representation on the world stage to accurately reflect the makeup of communities directly impacted by violence and armed conflict,” Senator Shaheen said. “I’m proud that the Women, Peace and Security Act was a bipartisan effort, and that the accompanying strategy was crafted and released in the same spirit of cooperation. I look forward to working with the White House, the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security as well as USAID on next steps, particularly as we work towards implementation.”
“It is common knowledge that during conflict, women disproportionally shoulder the burden of societies,” Senator Risch said. “Women are the backbone of any healthy and productive society, and we should do all we can to empower them. I was glad to bring together such an esteemed group of intergovernmental, bipartisan leaders to discuss the path forward for this important strategy.”
“Approaching the 20th anniversary of UN resolution 1325, the United States is proudly the first country in the world with a comprehensive law on Women, Peace and Security,” Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump said. “This bipartisan legislation, signed by President Trump and implemented via the W-GDP initiative and today's comprehensive, all-of-government WPS Strategy, recognizes that women's participation and empowerment are essential to good defense policy, conflict resolution and post-conflict peace building efforts."
The United States Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security was released today and focuses both on increasing women’s participation in political, civic, and security endeavors to prevent and resolve conflicts and on creating conditions for long-term peace around the world. The strategy aims to ensure women are no longer absent from, or overlooked at, the negotiating table, and it modernizes international programs to improve equality for, and the empowerment of, women.
Senators Capito, Shaheen, and Risch and Trump were also joined in discussion by Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.); John Sullivan, U.S. deputy secretary of state; Mark Green, USAID administrator; Lisa Hershman, acting chief management officer of the Department of Defense; and Representative Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
