Permanent Mission of the Republic of Albania to United Nations

One of the most effective ways to achieve sustainable peace and security is through consistent focus on the strengthened implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, ensuring more inclusive peace processes, gender equality, women’s empowerment and protection of women’s rights.

Albania will champion the Women, Peace and Security Agenda across the full breadth of the Security Council’s work. Putting women and girls at the center of peace and security, is a good investment in longer-lasting and more sustainable peace. We will make WPS a cross-cutting issue and include it in all country-specific discussions and mandates, as well as thematic discourse.

Albania will support the full, equal and meaningful participation of women in all peace and security efforts, from peacemaking to peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and their involvement from the earliest stages in every peace and political process that the United Nations supports.

Albania will use its position in the Security Council to ensure the full implementation of the existing Security Council resolutions on Women Peace and Security, and will request briefers as well as UN leadership to systematically share gender analysis and information about concrete efforts to ensure women’s equal participation in all areas of conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

Albania will advocate for the voice of women’s civil society organizations and human rights defenders to be heard and to be taken into account in relevant Council outcome and deliberations.

At the national level, Albania is committed to the implementation of the UN Security Council resolution 1325. We have adopted a costed and budgeted National Action Plan and have increased the participation of women in the security sector.

AS PART OF THESE EFFORTS, ALBANIA WILL ALSO STRENGTHEN THE COUNCIL’S ACTIONS AND COMMITMENTS TO COMBATING CONFLICT- RELATED SEXUAL VIOLENCE.

The use of sexual violence as a tactic of war and terror continues to be a common element in conflicts around the world. During the last decade of the 20th century our region, the Balkans, has witnessed firsthand sexual violence being used as a weapon of war, as well as the challenges faced by post-conflict societies in dealing with the trauma.

Albania will engage in strengthening the work of the Security Council and our collective response in protecting the rights of the survivors as well as ensuring accountability for perpetrators, including through use of sanctions and ad-hoc justice mechanisms.

In order to promote justice and reconciliation, and to contribute to sustainable peace, Albania will work to strengthen the survivor-centered approach and to better integrate preventive and early warning capacities, as well as accountability measures.