Remarks by Mr. Michael Moller

United Nations Under-Secretary-General

Acting Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva

Garden Reception on the occasion of the closing of the 2014 CD session

Residence of the Permanent Representative of Japan to the CD

Wednesday, 17 September 2014 at 19:30

Ambassador San and Mrs. Sano

Ms. Racovita

Distinguished Guests:

It is a real pleasure to be with you, and to be able to highlight two of the most important challenges that face all of us today: namely, the empowerment of women and disarmament.

First of all, a warm thank you to Ambassador Sano and Mrs. Sano for the kind invitation to their beautiful home, and of course also for the excellent collaboration in the Conference on Disarmament. Japan continues to be a strong voice for multilateral disarmament. The United Nations greatly appreciates this unwavering commitment to a safer and a better world for all.

Thank you also for linking today’s reception with the World Assembly for Women in Tokyo, thereby giving us an opportunity to call for greater participation of women in the areas of peace and security. I commend this Japanese initiative.

Earlier this week, there was a most interesting story on the UN website, highlighting that currently six of the 15 Ambassadors serving on the Security Council are women. If you have not read it yet, I encourage you to go online to do so. It shows how far we have come since the adoption in the year 2000 of the landmark Security Council Resolution 1325, which reaffirmed the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction – now 14 years later we almost have parity in the body charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Though we can do even better, this is clearly a step forward in bringing in women much more directly into the field of peace and security.

I hope that this will serve as inspiration and that we will soon be able to boast even better numbers among the CD Ambassadors. Because the current level of involvement of women in disarmament in general and in the work of the CD, in particular, is simply not good enough. And maybe with more women serving on the CD, we would actually be moving ahead!

Change does not happen by itself but requires a conscious and sustained effort. Governments need to take female participation seriously, by providing resources for capacity-building and including them much more consistently in delegations.

There can be no doubt that we need to involve civil society in a meaningful way with the CD – also when it comes to women. In the 21^st century, we cannot be discussing such critical issues as disarmament without listening to the views of civil society. It goes without saying that the lone voice, which we are allowed to hear every year on International Women’s Day is woefully insufficient.

As this year’s session of the CD has now come to a close, I take this opportunity to thank all the Members for the excellent collaboration throughout 2014, not least the six Presidents of the year with whom I have been working particularly closely. There can be no doubt that we are not where we should be. We should be negotiating. But we have been building up a cautious momentum, which I hope can be sustained in the inter-sessional period and beyond.

It is a shared responsibility to ensure that the CD remains relevant as an instrument of peace and security. Integrating women and also civil society more broadly will be critical to achieving that objective.

Thank you very much.