Verbatim report of proceedings

Tuesday, 12 March 2019 - Strasbourg

10.9. Building EU capacity on conflict prevention and mediation (A8-0075/2019 - Soraya Post)

Oral explanations of vote

  Alex Mayer (S&D). – Madam President, armed conflicts are rarely fought on well—defined battlefields, but in and around communities. Health, education, transport and employment opportunities all suffer. Women are in the middle of this, yet they are excluded in global work on preventing conflict, mediation and peace-building. Indeed, women have made up just 2% of mediators and 5% of witnesses or signatories to major peace processes in the last 30 years.

This report, like UN Resolution 1325, rightly accepts that women experience conflicts differently from men. Take Kashmir, where 8 000 men are unaccounted for since 1989, leaving thousands of half-widows living in poverty, lacking property rights and unable to remarry, pellet guns blinding and maiming and the use of rape as a weapon of war. After 70 years we need some new approaches, and I hope that this report is a step in the right direction.