The 148th IPU Assembly will be held in Geneva, Switzerland from 23-27 March 2024. This is the first time in almost six years that the IPU’s biannual Assembly will be held in Geneva. Hundreds of parliamentarians from around the world are expected to attend the Assembly to address the theme Parliamentary diplomacy: Building bridges for peace and understanding.
With 56 countries experiencing armed conflict in 2023 – according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – the IPU Assembly will provide a much-needed space for parliamentary dialogue and diplomacy at the global, regional and bilateral levels, as a complement to the United Nations and other multilateral forums.
The Assembly is expected to adopt resolutions on Addressing the social and humanitarian impact of autonomous weapon systems and artificial intelligence and Partnerships for climate action: Promoting access to affordable green energy, and ensuring innovation, responsibility and equity.
#IPU148
https://www.ipu.org
H e e e e e cooperation cooperation between Somalia and the ladies and gentlemen Angelo Angelo e recording in progress e e e e e e e e e e e e e please we we can we start can we start with our work I ask everybody to be seated please
Please take your seats Everybody please sit down in the name of God most graceful most merciful in the name of God most graceful most merciful hello everyone dear colleagues it is a pleasure for me to see you here all today uh I am professori farida I am member of the national people’s assembly from Algeria
Please I ask you to be seated please take your seats please I ask you to take your seats so that we can start with the work today it is indeed a very long day uh please I ask you to be seated so that we can start our work
In the name of God most gracious most merciful dear colleagues it is a pleasure for me to see you all here today my name is Professor faridi IDI I am a member of the national people’s assembly from Algeria and I am a a leader in the biggest party in Algeria
And I am in charge of women’s Affairs I am pleased to preside over this session as the the first vice president of the Bureau of women parliamentarians our colleague Mrs cyia Lopez Castro who was unable to attend this session given her ongoing senatorial elections in which she is a
Candidate in her country Mexico cannot be here and we wish her all the best and success so I welcome you all ladies and gentlemen in this 37th session of The Forum of women parliamentarians I would like to extend a warm welcome to the ipu president Mrs
Dr Tulia axen and to the ipu Secretary General and chairperson of the international gender Champion Mr Martin chong gong hello I learned with great uh sadness that there were a lot of casualties in the Moscow attack last night and I would like to denounce all attacks targeting innocent people we
Would like to extend our condolences to all the families that lost their loved ones it is also a pleasure pleasure for me to have you all with you here uh to have you all here with us today especially ipu President we would like to renew our congratulations on your
Election the floor is yours for your opening remarks Madame President of the ipu I give you the floor Madame vice president of the Bureau of women parliamentarians Mr Secretary General of the ipu dear colleagues dear friends distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen let me um agree with our vice
President with the remarks that she has just made uh in respect first of our own uh president of the uh Bureau of women parliamentarians uh honorable Cynthia Lopez and the good work that she has been doing for women and advancing the causes of ipu in different countries
That she has visited but also the campaign that she’s undergoing and we all wish her all the best and we hope she will be able to join us in the future having won the city of Mexico as the senator so we wish you all the best okay I would
Also like to take this opportunity since I’m addressing you uh for the first time I’d like to take this opportunity first to recognize the efforts that you all took both men and women to make sure this time we would have a female president I’m the one speaking before
You right now so thank you so much for every thank you so much for all the efforts you had put in that race and now we have a female president so I appreciate all that that you have done but also let me take this opportunity to congratulate all the women who won
Elections in the course of last year and I believe we’ll all be working together to make sure we advance uh women issues but also inclusivity of other groups as well uh that said I would also like to register the fact that some parliaments did well and some parliaments didn’t do
So well so we will be working hard to encourage those who did well to do better but also those who didn’t do well uh to also keep an eye on those as ipu to make sure we advance the our strategy of inclusivity and we need to see women
There we need to see women on the decision making table in our world facing multiple Wars and crisis the gender perspective placed at the core of our interparliamentary deliberations by this commendable forum is simply vital for any effective and Sustainable Solutions I look forward to your input from a gender perspective
Into to the timely and crucial theme of this 148th assembly on peace uh with so many ongoing conflicts and wars with such a dangerous and inhibited War narrative that we hear way too often nowadays with such an acceptable cost of war and conflict on women and girls and
On the most vulnerable your perspectives are more important than ever Clash against women’s rights and empowerment generations of girls and young women left out of Education gender based and sexual violence hunger diseases and so many civilian lives lost cannot be and can and continue being the
Cost of conflicts and Wars we need to break the cycle for the good of everyone as our ipu assembly focuses on Pathways to peace through parliamentary diplomacy we can count on this forum to remind all of us that sustainable peace can only be achieved through women’s empowerment and gender
Equality an essential pillar for achieving this is parity between men and women in decision making in all sectors starting in politics and in our Parliament the recently published ipu report on women in Parliament shows that progress is still very low today only 26.9% of parliamentarians worldwide are women this represents an increase of
0.4 percentage points in one year we need to do much better than that and we need to do that faster gender electoral quarters and their bold enforcement Remain the way to go our parliamentary institutions must be gender sensitive and promote the influence and Leadership of their women members social norms that Humper women’s
Equal participation need to be addressed courageously and comprehensively indeed we cannot Advance without elim eliminating gender based discrimination and violence that hold back women and girls all these measures must be backed up by substantial Financial Resources to ensure the effective implementation and to meet the needs of women and
Girls such investment in gender equality will turn current economic losses into future gains for our societies to convince you of this I invite you and your respective delegations including all male members of parliament to take part in the parity debate on eliminating discrimination transforming economic losses into gains that will be held on
Tuesday 26th March 2024 from 11:30 a.m. to 13 hours in the afternoon colleagues and Friends inclusive leadership drives stronger governance better outcomes and more peaceful and fair societies this benefits us all this is why our parliaments must also work to promote the inclusion and Leadership of women everywhere in economies climate change digital
Technologies and the uh the security sector I am delighted that the debate you’ll be having this morning on the draft resolution on autonomous weapons uh systems and artificial intelligence will focus on measures urgently needed to promote gender parity in the military and technological sectors you will also
Be looking at what we can do as parliamentarians to promote measures to counter gender bias in artificial intelligence systems particularly in military AI I look forward to your deliberations and I wish you an excellent session of this forum and a fruitful 148th assembly I thank you so much for your
Attention than you Madame President for these very inspiring remarks Madame President this forum relies on your strong uh participation and uh and your strong support and thank you very much and now I give the floor to Mr Secretary General Martin chong gong thank you very much I give you the
Floor thank you very much um Adam vice president of the Bureau of women parliamentarians ipu president I recognize you good morning uh distinguished uh women parliamentarians gathered here ladies and gentlemen in fact uh I don’t usually come to this forum to speak I come to listen to you and enjoy your wisdom
Because I want to go back and be able to implement our common agenda of gender equality but today my colleagues have insisted that I should say a few words at this opening of your meeting and that is because they want me to share some positive development in our agenda for
Equality I therefore agree to do this uh and also because generally I don’t need to be convinced to speak when it comes to gender equality it’s just part of my D DNA that we can work together to make sure that men and women are sitting at a table and taking
Decisions together and I’m very glad to salute I am very glad to salute the accession of a distinguished lady to the presidency of the ipu in the person of Dr Julia as you can see we are walking the talk uh the ipu has at its home uh a lady
President and a male Secretary General so the gender equality at the leadership of the organization thank you very much as I said I wanted to announce some positive developments and uh first of all I want to say that for the first time we are implementing in an ipu assembly a policy to uh
Prevent harassment sexual harassment in particular and you will remember that in Luanda you adopted this forward looking document so that your organization could be aligned with the practices of other similar organizations in the world so today we are pleased that we can actually begin implementing that policy
Because we want to make sure that our assemblies and other events are platforms where men and women can contribute freely with a spirit of uh uh respect and free from any harassment or violence of any sort so I think that we are making Headway when it comes to
Gender equality not only in terms of representation but actually in terms of the ability to contribute freely to the deliberations of the organization secondly I note that for the first time in the history of the organization we have an executive committee that has gender parity we have equal numbers of
Men and women in our executive committee which is the one of the governing bodies of the organization and this is and this is not something that happened by chance I think it is the result of Decades of hard efforts by all of us to make sure that the governing
Structures of the ipu are gender equality a quot sorry we also have a very important uh mechanism Within the ipu the gender partnership Group which as you know is made up of four uh persons two women two men from the executive committee that monitor participation in the Assemblies of the
Ipu that body has been reconstituted two days ago and has not yet met it’s going to meet on the 26th and that is one of the reasons why I was asked to take the floor here to give you some statistics as to how women are fairing in participation in this assembly So based
On the registrations that we have recorded uh up until the 22nd of March that is yesterday we have an overall proportion of close to 36% of participants who are women so the ipu today in this assembly has we have a women participating to the tune of 36% this is a similar ratio when
Compared with the one in Luanda in October last year and I just want to remind you and I think Madame President you did say that we have to keep working at this I have to remind you that the record is 38% so it seems that we are slowing down which
Means that we have to redouble our efforts out of the 145 delegations that are present in this assembly there are 12 that are single MP delegations so of the other 133 delegations that have two or more members there are a total of 12 12 delegations composed only of men not very good
And three composed only of women I think as Madame President said we should do better we surely can do better to make sure that all delegations all multi-member delegations are inclusive of men and women so it is something that I want to point out to you here also I
Want to salute the contribution of women parliamentarians in the exercise that has been launched to overhaul the statutes and rules of the ipu in order to bring us in line with the practices of the 21st century we have received many submissions including from the Bureau of uh women parliamentarians and
A working group is set to meet at this assembly to review all submissions and subsequently present proposals to the entire membership for possible adoption in October uh 20 uh 24 that working group of course includes representative from the for Forum of women parliamentarians and from The Forum of young parliamentarians so your
Voice will continue to uh be heard so uh as I conclude my comments now I want to say that over the decades we have all been very steadfast in promoting gender equality when it comes to representation in particular and we have said that we will not stop until we have
Achieved gender parity we have doing we’ve been doing this work not only by ourselves but we have been counting on support from many other institutions out there that give us some support and I can I would like to mention the Sor committee the committee on the uh elimin
Of all forms of discrimination against women we have the international gender champions of which I am uh the chair of the global board we’ve been working very hard to promote uh gender equality we have generation equality we have un women all these Partners working together with the ipu in order to make
Sure that we can achieve parity across the board so let’s not stop the progress that has been made let’s not slow down let’s not be complacent we just have to be dogged in our efforts to promote what we think is Justice and that Justice is that men and
Women in equal numbers should be sitting at the table to make decisions together thank you very much thank you Mr Martin Chun Kong we appreciate your outstanding support to gender equality and to the work of this forum and we all know how busy your agenda
Is so please feel free free to leave at any time thank you once again Mr Martin Madame chair Madame President if you wish to leave us uh of course Feel Free at any time but you’re also welcome to stay with us dear colleagues let us kick off our work by adopting the agenda
You have before you it was prepared by the Bureau of women parliamentarians in its session in October 2023 in L I would like to call you to adopt it by acclamation no objection thank you thank you dear colleagues the agenda has been adopted and our session today will continue
Until 5:30 p.m. with a lunch break from 100 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. and we’ll be having many interesting subjects on our agenda and I’m sure that we will be having enlightening and interesting discussions we shall move now to the second item of our agenda which focuses on the latest activities to advance gender
Equality allow me to invite Mrs siwani Tian chaun member of the Bureau of women parliamentarians from Thailand to brief you on the work carried out by The Bureau and its celebration at the sessions held in Luanda on the 23rd of October 2023 and here in Geneva this morning Miss San
Chaun you have the floor please it’s it’s great pleasure to brief you on the work that the buau of women parliamentarian carry out last October in Randa and earlier this morning here in genua for an essential part the buau prepared this 37 session of the Forum is
Agreed that the Forum will debate the draft resolution on addressing the social and humanitarian impact on autonomous weapon system and artificial intelligence from a gender perspective with Miss nasib AUP from Egypt as chairperson of the debate and miss know from austalia as lator I hope that you will welcome this
Proposal the buau selected the topic of the panel discussion to take place this afternoon on women peace Builder advancing sustainable peace with this theme we wanted to highlight the important of women’s participation and Leadership for sustainable peace building we want to recognize and play a tribute to the women fighting for peace
And and for the elevation of suffering of the victim of war and conflict all over the world and we want to back up their efforts and initiatives I am very pleased to announce to you that our special guest in this afternoon panel discussion will be the special representative of the UN Secretary
General on sexual violence in Conflict Miss pamila patteron I invite you all to take part in this discussion and look forward to our deliberation on such an important and timely topic another important area we want to check light on is the absolute necessity to continue removing any legal and cultural barrier
To women economics participation and empowerment there are some worrying sides of Reform fatigues but we cannot let this happen the ca of women disempowerment is way too high for our economies with six years to go to reach the cons sustainable development agenda working harder than ever to establish
Equality in all fields and ensure women’s full participation in the economy is key let discuss together and with our male colleagues how to do so in a parity debate on eliminating discrimination transforming economic laws into Gaines to take place during this assembly on Tuesday 26th March from
11:30 to 2 a.m. to 1 p.m. come along in large numbers with the male colleagues in your delegation so that together we can invest in women to improve our economies dear colleagues finally I would like to remind you that the ipu is currently conducting its third Regional study on sexism and violence against
Women in Parliament this time in the Asia Pacific region the study is conduct jointly with the Asian interparliamentary assembly or IA and Commonwealth parliamentary Association of CA as representative of the buau of this region I’m very proud that this study is being conducted and I urge all the women MPS and women parliamentary
Staff from east of the 37 parliament in the Asia Pacific region to participate in this important study interviews are strictly confidential and can Tex PS online or in person including during this assembly so please joy and help making all parment better place for all women I thank you for your attention and
Participation and look forward to our debates today which I’m sure will be extremely interesting thank you again shukan thank you very much for this report full of information and now we move to the item on the work and recommendations of the gender partnership group regarding this item
The committee has not convened yet but Mr Martin has given us all the information related to this item and we would like to thank him once again for everything that he has present presented to us thank you for all the clarifications and the statistics thank you so much dear
Colleagues we move now to the latest activities of the interparliamentary Union as to the gender equality in fact a special report on women in Parliament has been issued in order to commemorate the uh women day and I would like to invite Mrs Zena H head of the gender partnership
Group Affiliated to the ipu to present to us the most important results in the report the floor is yours de um members of parliament dear uh colleagues and distinguished guests I’m very pleased to introduce to you uh the recently published um uh report of the ipu on uh women in Parliament you
May remember I hope that this report is published every year to analyze uh the uh results of elections held uh uh when it comes to uh women’s participation so uh you see on the screen uh the uh title and the first page of this report and you will have
Many copies available for all of you uh to have um let’s see uh What uh uh uh happened in 2023 um in women in in in Parliament uh uh have uh of course made some gains uh today the proportion of uh women in Parliament stands at 26.9 uh% this is up from 26
.5% uh the precedent year it means that there has been a small progress of 0.4 percentage point six countries have uh a parity in uh uh their lower house of parliament uh some of them have more uh uh uh women than men today and uh uh this includes of course
Rwanda that maintained its position as uh uh the uh Parliament with a lower chamber that has the biggest proportion of uh women also we’ve seen some uh good progress in subsaharan African countries after the elections held in 2023 with a jump by 3.9 uh percentage uh
Point now uh on the other side of the coin um uh there have been of course losses that are very uh regretful uh the rate of progress that I told you about of 0.4 percentage uh points uh is actually the same one uh that uh was uh um uh that we found out
Uh uh in 2022 this means that the progress in women’s particip ipation in Parliament has stagnated um and even more worrying is the fact that in the years before 2022 the rate of progress was 0.6 percentage point so in 2022 and 2023 the rate annual rate of progress was
Lower uh than in previous years and this is pretty uh worrying um also what we’ve seen as very worrying uh uh in 2023 is uh several women prominent women in politics quitting their positions and I’m going to tell you a bit more uh later in this presentation about
That now in terms of regional Trends and you will find in the report uh a section for each region of the world um this if we look in regions we can see that in the Americas uh uh there is the highest share of women MPS uh across all regions
So if there was a region that is Champion today it is uh the Americas congratulations definitely with uh 35.1% of uh women in Parliament in the Americas I remind you that the global average is 26.9 so um definitely this is good progress um another good Improvement uh
Is in subsaharan Africa uh uh which has the highest Improvement among all regions in 2023 with a jump by 3.9 uh percentage Point another Applause I think thank you very much and we really hope to see uh more advancements I draw your attention to the Pacific and the uh
Middle East and North Africa where progress has not been uh happening so we very much hope that in the upcoming elections this will uh change if we uh look inside parliaments uh uh now in terms of uh leadership uh by women um there are in uh uh today 23
8% of speakers of parliaments that are uh women and I’m very pleased to recognize many of them here with us today thank you very much for being here um uh the the different speakers present Madame speaker from Zambia Madame speaker from Indonesia Madame uh chairperson uh from usbekistan and I’m
Sure I’m missing uh some Madame arimon from Uruguay and many others thank you very much much you are uh inspiring uh uh leadership uh uh by uh by women uh outside parliaments and inside parliaments so this is a progress uh uh we have 1.1 percentage Point uh
More uh uh women in uh uh leadership positions than in 2022 um in some countries the Bahamas Belgium Biz Germany and Mexico there are a woman speaker in each chamber uh so that’s uh great um uh We’ve also included a data in this report on women’s uh chairpersons of parliamentary
Committees uh and uh worldwide 27.2% of all committees uh parliamentary committees are chaired by women it’s less than 30% so there’s much more to be done in addition of course there are many more uh gender equality committees Chair by women than there are uh defense committees or Finance committees chaired
By women as you can see the proportions as are pretty uh low and this of course needs to to change um in 2023 women speakers have been elected for the very first time ever in Cambodia and in C divir now let’s turn yeah it’s great and congratulations to these two
Countries for having a woman speaker for the first time uh in terms of Lessons Learned uh of course our uh report this year uh proves again that kotas gender electoral quotas succeed in having more women uh we have a a data point on that uh as we know that in elections held in
2023 countries that applied a quota elected 28.8% of women when countries that did not have a quota in place elected 23.2% so you can see this gap which shows us that electoral quotas are important and they work but to work quotas must be clear welld designed and supported by strong enforcement
Mechanism and measures to be uh really effective or else it doesn’t work uh We’ve noticed as well that uh uh proportional representation and mixed systems uh of election uh enable better representation of women compared to uh first pass the post uh uh systems now of course in 2020 through
Three we’ve also uh uh kept our uh eye on Act of violence against women uh in particular during elections and uh you will see in the report that female candidates were particularly targeted with uh gender-based violence and disinformation in several parliamentary elections including in Liberia in New
Zealand in Poland and also in Thailand um and many uh women MPS uh spoke up uh uh about their experience of harassment uh including in Australia in France or in the United Kingdom as well um on the uh brighter front of things when it comes to uh violence against women in
Politics uh um some parliaments are acknowledging the problem and uh stepping up their action against it including some uh measures taken in Australia in Benin uh in Iceland and also in Ireland in 2024 and we very much hope that each and every Parliament will take very strong
Measures to stop any form of violence against women in Parliament and we are here to support you in this endeavor my last point is going to look at this phenomenon uh that was very strong in 2023 of women quitting uh uh politics uh it’s very um of course
Worrying we here at the ipu you all promote women’s participation if it is to get women into positions where then they are harassed they suffer burnout uh and uh um uh suffer um acts of uh uh violence against women uh then uh maybe this is not the objective uh
That we are all uh pursuing um knowing this the Bureau of women parliamentarians uh has uh invited The Forum of women parliamentarians at its last session in Luanda to have a discussion specifically on uh uh women quitting Politics the title of the discussion was women in politics to stay
Or not to stay and this debate thank you all has provided guidance on what to do what are the solutions to keep women in uh politics um one of such recommendations was uh the importance of uh having peer-to-peer support to build resilience to pass on resilience the need to build more solidarity among
Women across party lines and Border party lines and borders this is including through women caucuses inside parliaments for example and other recommendations in including uh ensuring better representation of women uh uh and adopting codes of Conduct in parliaments to prevent any uh forms of harassment and to adapt parliaments better to both
Men and women uh working in Parliament but also having their other responsibilities such as family responsibilities domestic responsibilities and care responsibilities for the elders and for children on this note I hope this was an interesting presentation for all of you and I invite you to discover the report
If you haven’t done that so thank you very much thank you Mr Zena for this intervention thank you for all the efforts that the empoyed to make our meetings a success and thank you also for all the online workshops this report has presented a deep analysis as to to participation of
Women in Parliament and this is a strong tool to enhance progress this is why I would like to invite you dear colleagues uh to use this report and to publish it in your parliaments and I’d like to tell you also about the latest activities aiming at enhancing uh
Gender equality and i’ would like to invite Mrs veronique won member in the Bureau of women parliamentarians from France to present a report on the Parliamentary meeting as well as other events that have been organized during the 68th session in New York colleagues I’m pleased to report on the
Parliamentary meeting organized by the ipu and un women during the 68th session of the commission on the status of women it’s French is one of the second the one of the two official languages so you will allow me to express myself in French the meeting was held on March the
12th at the UN headquarters in New York it brought together 113 parliamentarians from 38 countries as well as other Stak holders it’s the main principle is to have States and of governments and people from Civil Society uh involved the meeting that we had focused on the role of gender sensitive
Parliaments in eradicating poverty which primarily affects women the meeting kicked off with opening remarks by the ipu president who is here with you today Miss Tulia axon and Sarah Hendrick who is the director of the program policy and intergovernmental Affairs division at un women I had the pleasure of chairing the meeting we
Heard how our Parliament can and must be agents of change and must introduce Innovative policies to meet the needs of women and girls living in poverty this requires us to focus on four areas in particular firstly we must undertake legislative reforms to eliminate discriminatory Tendencies but also analyze laws from agenda
Perspective and assure their implementation sh Z you uh indicated your uh taste for quotas and these are the types of laws that we need to adopt in order to be able to eradicate discrimination secondly we must put in place gender budgeting giving us a framework to ensure that our budgetary
Economic fiscal and social policies are favorable to women thirdly we need to promote gender sensitive parliaments so that our institutions are able to carry out these important reforms this starts with the equal participation of women in decision Mak we need parity laws and we have to implement quotas in parliaments to move
Towards this goal finally gender sensitive parliaments that are able to effectively combat poverty must also involve Grassroots associations and groups of women and girls from Civil Society in all their diversity dear colleagues the ipu organ organized two parallel events at the UN the first focused on the importance of
Par parity in decision making to promote peace and security this event was co-organized with with the CED seedor committee the office of the UN High Commissioner for human rights the Action Coalition on feminist movements and Leadership of the generation equality Forum the International Champions of of equality the gal campaign and several
States the meeting provided an opportunity for experts parliamentarians government representatives and Civil Society representatives to share their experiences in favor of parity and a feminist approach to decision making the ipu data presented on this occasion as well as our work on parity were particularly well received the second Side Event presented a new
Initiative supported by the European Union in the field of women’s leadership under this initiative the ipu will work closely with un women idea International and United cities and local governments to promote a profound change in social norms to achieve real parity once again the partner organizations were able to
Exchange views with a panel of Civil Society Representatives on effective strategies for parity in politics with a particular focus on engaging young women dear colleagues I was particularly pleased to take part in the deliberations and exchanges that took place in New York and to see the impact
Of our organization’s work within the UN bodies dedicated to gender equality and to end I would just like to make a more personal comment about my participation to say that um together with the organization of this uh conference in favor of women’s rights there is also an organization of anti-choice anti
Rights which are trying to restrict women’s rights in the world and that are financed um an invitation to the ipu has worked on the financing of this because today there are organizations who are trying to put back uh women’s rights I thank you very much madame president thank you so much for this
Report uh full of information and congratulations for your excellent work by the committee I’d like to inform you now of a Regional Conference that was uh organized ized by the uh esqua through the online participation and I had U together with Mrs Ida mif a the second vice president of the Bureau of
Women parliamentarians presided this uh reunion and I would like to let you know about the report now dear colleagues I am pleased to brief you on the online Regional Conference held on the 31st January and the first of February 2024 for parliamentarians from Arab states the conference was entitled the role of
Parliamentarians in accelerating the achievement of women’s economic empowerment under sdg5 in the Arab region and focused mainly on care policies it aimed to serve as a catalst for Action inspiring renewed commitment to advancing gend equality and women’s empowerment it was organized in partnership with the United Nations economic and social commission
For Western Asia in collaboration with un women and ILO the conference was opened by the president of the ipu Bureau of women parliamentarians Miss cyia Lopez Castro alongside representatives from the partner organizations that co-organized the meeting I had the honor to chair the first day and our colleague Miss AA
Nasif a the second vice president of the Bureau of women parliamentarians chaired the second day the online meeting gathered 35 parliamentarians 29 of which were women and six men from 18 Arab countries in total and 55 Observers debates focused on ways in which equal care leads to women’s economic
Empowerment finally dear colleagues I would like to thank all of those who have participated and engaged throughout these two fruitful days the ipu unqua ILO and un women stand ready to support you in your important Endeavors to achieve women’s empowerment and genuine equality in Care As parliamentarians We Must Stand United
And our will resolve to overcome challenges seize opportunities and create a more inclusive and Equitable world for all thank you so much I hope this was useful information for you all and now that we will continue working to promote equal care as a means to unlock barriers to women’s full economic
Empowerment I now invite missa nasif a second vice president of the Bureau of women parliamentarians to inform us about the webinar for African parliaments on preventing and responding to violence against women in Parliament the floor is yours Madame President dear colleagues I am pleased to report you to report to you on the
Webinar organized by ipu and the African parliamentary Union concerning preventing and responding to violence against women in African parliaments and that on 22 November 2023 on the occasion of the International Day for the elimination of violence against women the webinar was attended by 88 participants including 50 parliamentarians 41 of which women and
Nine men from 25 African countries it focused on followup to the 2021 study published by the ipu and a pu entitled sexism harassment and violence against women in parliaments in Africa the participants highlighted the negative impact of gender-based violence in politics on women’s participation in political life and on achieving inclusive parliaments and
Democracy they shared experiences of the forms of violence against women and their impact in their parliaments and this discussed Solutions I am very proud to say that 12 African parliaments and four interparliamentary organizations have reported on actions and measures taken by parliaments to prevent and respond to gender-based
Violence in their institutions and that since the publication of the ipu Apu Regional study such actions and measures include included putting in place policies and codes of conduct that deal explicitly with sexism and harassment in uh parliamentary premises as well as procedures for supporting victims handling complaints and imposing sanctions on perpetrators the
Discussions also highlighted the role of focuses of women parliamentarians and parliamentary staff as platforms to exchange experiences Provide support and solidarity in the search for solutions to eradicate violence against women in politics I hope that this movement will continue and further extend to all African parliamentarians thank you for your kind attention thank
You thank you very much Miss nasif for this presentation I am pleased to see that many parliamentarians are seeking Solutions legal solutions to combat violence against women in their parliaments dear colleagues as we go into item three of our agenda we will now turn to the contribution of the Forum to the work
Work of this 148 assembly with a view to providing input from a gender perspective this is a key role of the Forum so let’s make every uh input count we will discuss the draft resolution on the agenda of this 148 assembly entitled addressing the social and humanitarian impact of autonomous weapon systems and
Artificial intelligence which is exam by the standing committee on peace and International Security our purpose today is to discuss this draft resolution from a gender perspective so that amendments can be drawn to make the draft more gender focused responsive and inclusive to the needs and interests of women and
Girls this will lead to concrete recommendations on gender related amendments ments to be submitted by The Forum to the standing committee short presentations on the draft resolution and on a gender related impacts of autonomous weapon systems and artificial intelligence will be delivered after that we will debate in plenary dear
Colleagues the Bureau of women parliamentarians has nominated A chairperson and A rapporter forour debate on the resolution to address the social and humanitarian impact of autonomous weapon systems and artificial intelligence missa nasif a from Egypt was nominated as chair and Miss Linda rolds from Australia was nominated as
Rapporter I kindly invite you to approve these nominations by acclamation I see no objection so I would like to thank you dear colleagues and I would like to thank as well the chairperson and the rapporter for taking up these tasks I welcome Miss nasif
A and I am pleased as as well to welcome Miss kxel on behalf on Miss staler from Argentina and Mr Kristoff laqua from Belgium whom have accepted our invitation to present uh a presentation related uh to addressing the social and humanitarian impact of autonomous weapon system and artificial intelligence I am
Also pleased to welcome Miss Shimona moan associate researcher on gender and disarmament security and Technology at the United Nations Institute for disarmament research who will give us information on gender-based bias and discrimination in artificial intelligence system Miss kxel and Mr laca the floor is yours miss kxel the floor is yours uh
Good morning to all of you present thank you very much for the invitation I am here in representation for margarita pitza who is from the Argentinian Parliament the deputy along with the MP Mr Lara in the 146th assembly in Bahrain they presented um to the standing committee on peace and International
Security an important res resolution for world peace and it’s about the lethal autonomous weapon system this topic was uh presented with another topic on militarized uh children and in the end this topic was chosen the laws lethal autonomous weapon weapon systems were chosen the uh International intelligent artificial intelligence
Should be applied for the benefit of humanity and it shouldn’t be used in perverse ways that uh put at risk uh International Peace and uh Humanity so tomorrow in the uh committee we will be speaking about the resolution and tackling all of the Amendments that have been presented we would encourage you to
Participate with your comments and I will hand the floor to to Mr Lara who has been carrying out this tremendous work over the past year with many different meetings with experts attending different fora and uh trying to create this framework to be able to then legislate in our countries
Uh to create this legal framework and to prevent uh the world from falling into the risks that’s posed by the these systems so I hand you the floor Mr laqua thank you very much I will speak in French it is an honor for me to speak
Before you and to speak at this uh Forum of women parliamentarians because in these lethal autonomous Weapons Systems in the the automation uh due to artificial intelligence one thing that we have been made aware of is that artificial intelligence can or could select human targets and with no intervention from a
Person from a man or a woman can decide to attack the target so artificial intelligence could create a world in which a machine based on an algorithm can destroy the life of a human being we have seen much research that has shown that algorithms are what we call
Black boxes that can’t be explained that are can’t aren’t understood by parliamentarians or by citizens and it’s really uh technological or militarized use use and when we find out more about them we find that they are biased and they are uh the creations of uh men and women
Who have who repeat the discriminations that are um they have in their real lives so a system of lethal autonomous weapon systems if they select a target of an armed man there could be a gender discrimination here based on the uh on being a man on the other hand
You could also be uh targeted by this Auto autonomous uh weap weapon system because the system it may be a lethal system and it can provoke sexist violence violence a gender based violence and so in this women could be targeted by these Weapons Systems we may imagine in um a worst
Case scenario that weapons could be uh used um by in artificial intelligence to carry out a uh violation or rape um of uh women and uh girls so we are working on this topic in the committee the standing commit that and we have this gender Dimension that we need to tackle within the
Resolution some uh resolutions have been proposed um by different countries who want to take out this gender Dimension from the resolution so our role will be to provide in this committee and in this draft resolution the legality of uh the treatment of women and to make sure that this aspect of
Gender is kept within the resolution uh because we have many different uh things that may happen uh that will concern women and uh Girls by these lethal autonomous weapon systems to finish I want to say that on one hand we have the in artificial intelligence in
Militarized uh uses or Aras they have a patriarchal systems and they include a gender discriminations from the start but also these systems these AI systems they may be an efficient in war but they are um is a system that needs to provoke emotions and uh we need to uh
Call on the parliaments from around the world to adopt uh decisions on this uh on the uh lethal autonomous weapon systems and to put in place legislation and I would like to applaud the work also of the Forum of women parliamentarians thank you very much
Thank you Miss chel and Mr laa for this informative presentation we would be very pleased if you could stay with us and contribute to the discussions to take place soon before I give the floor to miss Mohan we will watch a short video on chender and Military AI intelligent trained constrained
Biased artificial intelligence is the result of human and machine interaction humans are not neutral machines are not neutral thus AI is not neutral AI depends on the human capacity to generate algorithms introduced Data evaluat Systems and other actions that can reinforce gender norms and bias the limitations of modeling particular
People as universal can be seen in applications of AI as diverse as voice recognition image detection and machine translation all of these applications currently recognize men at higher rates than women but gender bias does not refer only to bias against women the existing Norms of War mean that
Algorithmic models might be less likely to identify civilian men as non-combatants raising concerns about bias against men as well un’s new report does military AI have gender uncovers the impact that gender Norms have on the development and deployment of AI for military purposes the report addresses gender bias in data collection algorithms and
Computer processing it also proposes a gender-based approach to human machine interactions by adopting gender mainstreaming policies for military AI strategies developing specific measures to assess how military AI systems represent and respond to gender and by including diverse experts in discussions on Military AI systems such as Scholars of gender race and
Ability learn more and download our report here automated intelligent trained constrained biased artificial intelligence is the result of human and machine interaction humans are not neutral machines are not neutral thus AI is not neutral AI depends on the human capacity to generate algorithms introduce data evaluate systems and other actions that
Can reinforce gender norms and bias the limitations of modeling particular people as universal can can be seen in applications of AI as diverse as voice recognition image detection and machine translation all of these applications currently recognize men at higher rates than women but gender bias does not
Refer only to bias against women the existing no data collection algorithms and computer processing I give now the floor to miss Mohan you have the floor thank you very much um good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you to the interparliamentary union for having me my name is Shimona Mohan I’m
An associate researcher at the United Nations Institute for disarmament research um and also voiced the video that you just saw from Unity um allow me to start with a very short background around the gender military and Technology Nexus so that it can put in context my uh my remarks going forward
Um so across militaries there is a rampant idea of militarized masculinities that is the idea that real men um are real soldiers and anybody else is not and this militarized masculinity then becomes masculinized militaries which is military cultures that regurgitate and repeat the notion of military equals mail through their
Structures and processes apart from this we also know now that while AI may appear to be so it is not neutral and and can internalize and then catastrophically enhance gender biases across societies and program them into AI systems or ignore them in outputs um so adding to this is also the
Overarching issue of the specific and marked death of women in stem uh which is Science Tech uh engineering and Mathematics and icts as well which makes it difficult to mainstream gender specific issues across Tech when we speak about numbers only about 8% of software professionals are women um only
About 0.3 to 20% of women form uh militaries around the world and only about 1 fifth of the diplomats in small and specialized disarmament forums around lethal autonomous weapons are women according to Unity research and these high stakes Technologies are thus fundamentally conceived developed deployed and also governed in a gender
Vacuum um we are also seeing that gender is seen as a soft security issue in policy considerations as opposed to hard security deliberations which get more focus and the inclusion of gender and technology is also seen as uh as a last priority and uh is sort of characterized
As an ethical uh concern rather than a core tech one um so to prevent In the database then it presents itself in the output stage a Stanford study of publicly available information across 133 biased AI data sets uh it showed that there is 44% exhibited gender bias and 26% exhibited both gender and racial biases um and then another research by the MIT media lab called gender Shades
Also shows that across most softwares that uh that indulge in facial recognition systems based on AI systems 99% recognize white male faces but only 67% recognize darker female faces so the harmful effects of these are very visible from the civilian example um we’ve seen Apple’s sexist credit card
Algorithm that was revealed to have provided significantly higher credit ratings to men as as compared to their female counterparts with no other plausible differentiating Factor apart from gender since Technologies like AI are dual use and dual purpose in the way that they are designed and employed this
Kind of system when employed on a battlefield can also result in very very harmful uh uh harmful side effects such as Target profiling on the basis of gender and misidentifying civilian women as non-human objects to engage with them in Conflict settings thus we need to ensure that we are in investing in gender
Disaggregated data sets um through several uh pipelines across the the public information system with a focus on public offices like National statistics offices and this should then be followed by employing explainable and responsible AI systems and also getting the human developers and designers of these systems to gender sensitization
Trainings apart from the technological hurdle there’s also a legal hurdle um there are not noticeable gaps in Weapons review processes across the world most of these are conducted under the article 36 of the first additional protocol of the Geneva conventions which does not specifically mention gender however since these weapon review processes are
Largely dependent on how the States per P perceive them and then pursue them um there is uh there is a lot of uh potential for these states to also employ gender sensitive Weapons review processes within their National functioning on a third point on nor normative and policy
Options uh the main Forum where lethal autonomous weapon systems have been discussed has been the group of governmental experts on lethal autonomous weapon systems under the convention on certain Conventional Weapons or the gge law laws for short this uh conversation has been convened since 2017 uh and has continuously mentioned social
Biases and gender biases within its functioning however apart from this particular normative instrument we also have the instrument of an overarching feminist for foreign policy which a lot of countries have now also adopted and this foreign policy can then also play into sensitizing and prioritizing gender issues across the board also in Lethal
Autonomous weapon systems uh and apart from this uh on a last point there is also uh action plans under the women peace and security agendas uh of the UN Security Council 1325 which can also then uh include lethal autonomous weapon systems and gender processes within National policy measures in conclusion it is also
Crucial to ensure that crosscutting measures like interdisciplinary evaluations of these systems and also employing diverse teams is important um I wish the ipu much luck and success on this endeavor within their Ambit thank you thank you Miss moan for this very important pres I now leave the chairpersonship to
Miss nasif a who will preside over the debate the floor is yours Miss Linda rolds dear reporter okay okay dear colleagues it is a great pleasure for me to Pride over the proceedings of this discussion following the proposal of the Bureau of women parliamentarians Miss Reynolds from Australia has been appointed as the
Reporter of our discussion we both very much look forward to our debates today I have no doubt that our discussions will be constructive and fruitful before I make a few in introductory remarks I would like to remind that those wishing to speak and who have not
Yet filled out a form to be put on the speakers list should do so now as a start let me remind you that some documents are available at the documentation desk in the room for you for your use during our proceedings I invite those of you who do not already
Have these documents to pick up copies these are the draft uh resolution of the standing committee on peace and International Security and the amendments to the resolution that will be discussed from Tomorrow onward as you know we will be discussing the subject item before the standing committee on peace and International
Security addressing the social and humanitarian impact of autonomous weapon systems and artificial intelligence our discussion today will aim at considering the agender dimension of this topic the objective is to put together a set of proposed gender amendments to the resolution to be adopted we may also decide to support
Amendments that have already been proposed in case they Echo some of our concerns these amendments will then be considered by the standing committee during its debates in your interventions I invite you to address the following issues what are the most effective actions parliamentarians can take to ensure that AI including AI for military
Purposes does not perpetuate gender bias gender inequalities and other forms of discrimination what can parliamentarians do to uh combat discrimination when it comes to AI especially military AI what are the measures what are the emergency or urgent measures on the local Regional and international levels to ensure
Gender equality in technology and in the military field what are the concrete commitments that the countries need to make uh to ensure gender equality in Regional and international discourse regarding lethal auton autonomous weapon systems and Military AI based on the United Nations security Council resolution for the year 2000
Regarding the women’s agenda and peace and security and how can parliamentarians contribute now I will open the floor for your contributions I will give the floor to anyone who wishes to speak for three minutes given that it is understandable that we can speak until we have the time
To do so and I would also like to encourage you to make sure that this deliberation is active during this discussion I would also like to ask the speakers to mention their names and delegations clearly for recording and now I give the floor to Indonesia to the uh speaker of Indonesia Mrs
Maharani I give you the floor women parliamentarians and chairperson of the Forum of wom women parliamentarians our world is going through turbulence times and many women’s and girls are are being hit hard as digital Technologies races ahead women and girls should not be left behind the development of artifi
Artificial intelligent EI not only present huge opportunities for human progress but also bring enormous challenges I believe that eii should be comprehensively regulated at the national level Indonesia has formulated the national strategy on EI which aim at har har harnessing its potential for the people in addition any effort to promote the
Development of EI must consider consider how to close the digital gaps how to reap the benefits of EI for gral potential for all how to mitigate risk and challenges to bring harm to the people and how to enhance Global digital and EI governance moreover there is specific concern with regard to the development
Of the Lal autonomous weapon systems this is especially because the type of weapon can be used without human control the impact of this weapon to women and children in war zone will be un unimaginable hence there should be an international arrangement to manage this issue major EI power should impose
Self-restraint to limit the spread of Lal autonomous weapons we should also consider to develop legally binding instrument through Pro to to prohib or regulate Leal autonomous weapon system with without such measures the development of this type of weapon will bring ethical humanitarian and security concern furthermore another concern is
The possibility non-state actor to deploy homemade autonomous weapons by changing civilian devices into military purpose distinguished delegates this despite Global effort for women’s empowerment and equality women and children are still the most vulnerable and effective during a conflict War as in in Gaza and Ukraine we have seen in
Gaza recently among those who were brutally attacked killed and targeted by Israel forces 60 67 Force 67% are women and children it is a painful wakeup call for Global Community to invest more on women peace and security agenda women make up he of the world of population therefore women are
Integral part of the solution and effective agent of peace to address this issue we as women leaders must take concrete action we must encourage women’s leadership in the peace Pro process likewise we also must Ensure that women are actively involved in the development of EI and its related
Technology work by doing so women will will understand the impact of EI including autonomous weapon of them themselves as Parliament it is our duty to make sure that women are in the room during peace negotiation to conclude let us work together to Foster women’s leadership to achieve durable peace
Thank you thank you thank you so much Now I give the floor to Japan three minutes please so that everyone who asked for the floor has the opportunity to speak so Japan I give you the floor Japan go ahead you may speak thank you chair okay thank you chair I am Yumi yoswa a member of the House of counselors and
Deputy head of the Japanese delegation since the appointment as parli mentary ADV Minister for foreign affairs in August 2022 I am heading The Bureau for the uh women parliamentarian in ldp the ruling party in Japan so that we can reflect the opinions of women and increase the
Uh positions of women in the society and uh so that the women can uh work in a responsible positions therefore for this women’s parliamentarian Forum I’m uh feeling greatly honored to be able to to speak and address such a great audience and also from August 2022 I have been
Working as the parliamentarian bu Minister for foreign affairs uh being engaged in diplomatic work in the area of disarmament and nonproliferation promoting dialogue and the confidence building among countries well the theme for uh uh this meeting where according to Human Rights Watch laws uh L AWS also known as Killer
Robots would be able to select uh targets without human intervention and this will be developed very soon so the impact of uh these uh uh weapons uh is now igniting uh active discussions uh internationally we at the house of counselor has a investigation committee for diplomacy and security uh for laws
Uh uh La AWS we have been conducting investigation into the impact and implications and these AI weapons uh are said to be uh the third revolution of warfare after gunpowder and nuclear weapons uh this may make Wars even more serious than ever before experts say in light of the situation in Ukraine Gaza
And part words uh that the world has experienced including Japan it is clear that the greatest victims will be women and children who are in socially vulnerable positions despite uh recent International attempts to figure out uh La AWS laws definitions attributes and IHL International humanitarian law challenges and the regulatory remarks
Unfortunately countries have yet to resolve wide differences in opinions and oppositions while it is ideal if International Community could secure common understanding and agree on rules broadly among different countries given differences in opinions however it would be very hard to conclude a legally binding document as an effective uh
Framework or rule making anytime soon a more realistic uh opinion well we have to make sure that the rule making has to take uh place without bias to any country and ipu is an important platform and I hope that the ipu will uh play an important role and we Japan would like
To take part in this efforts and work together with other countries thank you very much for your attention now I give the floor to uh the South Africa so to the state of South Africa of autonomous weapons dnam specific needs and vulnerabilities of women ensuring that our approaches to
Technology and conflict resolution are inclusive and effective in this regard we want to propose the following recognizing that autonomous weapon systems may present unique risk to women and marginalized communities in Conflict zones and thus Parliament should actively advocate for the integration of gender based impact assessments when establishing guidelines and regulations
Related to the development and deployment of autonomous weapon systems in order to mitigate potential disproportionate arm to women and marginalized groups encouraging Parliament to emphasize the importance of ensuring women’s meaningful participation in decisionmaking processes related to the development regulation and use of those systems as their insights are vital to
Understanding the Technologies potential impact on communities especially in Conflict settings and the proof legislation that accounts for the gender implications of autonomous weapon systems by integrating these perspectives these gender perspectives our approach to addressing the social and humanitarian impact of autonomous weapon systems will become more comprehensive and Equitable fostering a
Safer and more inclusive environment for all affected by an conflict and I thank you K and thank you for for the state of South Africa and thank you very much for keeping to the time and now I give the floor to China China are you there so is China present
We are using the French interpretation so for the human civilization importance for the participation of women in this decision making today in the National popular assembly we have a 190 women so this is a high percentage it is increasing and is a historic number and we are talking about art ual
Intelligence which should be used for peace and security we want to make sure that AI will serve Humanity we are increasing the environment in China for women’s participation and we are making sure that uh women can participate we have been increasing the skills of women so
That they can take part in uh politics in China this is being supported on uh different uh trainings that we have carried out at different levels to uh increase their skills and women’s capacity to carry out their functions the third practice that we have been carrying out is to uh increase
Communication and we have been working to raise awareness uh gender awareness and to encourage wom women to leave their homes and to carry out uh public affairs we are working for the Development and Construction of our country and thanks to the efforts of uh the women we are creating a better Society
For our people thank you very much thank you thank you for China and now I give the floor to the UAE the UAE I give you the floor ladies and gentlemen I would like to thank you for all these wonderful ideas that you suggested about how us parliamentarians can support the work of
Women in building uh peace and making sure that they are safe including them in in uh our peace processes while making good decisions as parliamentarians I believe that we assume the responsibility to raise awareness regarding the role that women play in maintaining peace and security especially when it comes uh to
Legislative awareness regarding the role of women as peacekeepers here I would like to share with you our experience in the UAE that is uh mainly revolving around the building of the women’s capacities in peace and security she FMA bent Mubarak who is the president of the Women’s Alliance and the higher Council
For uh for Parenthood the mother of the UAE uh the program of FMA Bak for women and peace in collaboration with the United Nations and it aims at promoting the international collaboration to build local Regional and international capacities in the fields of women peace and security and to contribute in empowering Andi to
Building an empowering environment for women and to maintain peace and security on the international levels as well as supporting decision makers in the Arab world and in the international uh community to build the the capacities of women in peace processes thank you very much for your attention thank you for
The UAE and thank you for keeping to the time now I will give the floor to luas Laos excuse me Laos I give the floor to LA not with us so we give the floor now to Cyprus thank uh thank you Mr Mrs president uh it’s Alexandra Talis from
The Republic of cus as conflicts and humanitarian crisis continue to ravage populations and hinder the prosperity of societies in many parts of the world including Cyprus Ukraine Palestine Israel Syria Iraq Afghanistan stand to name a few we must address the dis disproportionate and unique impact of
Armed conflict on women on one hand and on the other we need to push our Executives to guarantee the equal and substantive participation of women in peace processes towards this end the Cyprus House of Representatives adopted a resolution last week stressing the need to further highlight the role of
Women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts as well as in the build peacebuilding processes in addition it welcomes the adoption of the Cyprus National plan for the implementation of the resolution 1325 for cot women parliamentarians this is a crucial issue as this year marks the 50th anniversity of the Turkish
Invasion in Cyprus 50 years of occupation of the northern part of Cyprus 50 years since women from both communities were expelled or obliged to leave their homes and become refugees in their own countries 50 years since they saw their sons and husbands killed 50 years since we are waiting for missing
People to come back or to know what happened to them and we receive little bones for from Mass burial grounds that’s why we are desperate for a resumption of the peace talks that will lead to a just and viable solution a solution that will allow us to build a
Better future for our children that’s why we demand more women from both sides at the negotiating table G dear colleagues is the failure of humanity to rise above hatred and greed it destroys lives the lives of innocent people but most of all the lives of women women
Were used as tools to hurt the opponent women were are raped they are used as Shields but we are not comfortable in this role of victim we are not comfortable in this role we want a place at the negotiating table because we have a dream a dream of
Rebuilding our country a build for peace for our children a a dream that will bring former opponents at the same table for peace and prosperity for our country thank you very much we thank Cyprus and now we give the floor to bahin thank you Madame chair and i’
Would like to thank all the organizers of this Forum of course the autonomous weapons spread a lot of fears because uh we don’t know to which extent the weapons can be bound by the humanitarian international law while decision making processes are on so can we talk about these weapons without discriminating
Between the civilians and the military can it uh distinguish between men and women and can it abolish the conflict if it shows that it has the secondary effects uh on women and on children specifically equipping the systems with autonomous weapons have made the systems of weapons more independent than human
Beings this is why predicting their behaviors has become much more difficult which spread which spreads doubts on how these systems work within the limits of the international law and humanitarian international law and human rights principles and debates on autonomous weapons is not limited to legal issues and technical issues that are very
Complicated it covers as well main issues that are being raised by these weapons as to fears that the data entry into these systems before the war could be based on certain gender bias against women specifically or at least the fact that women are not being protected against these weapons this is why there
Is an urgent need to having an international efficient response to counter the dangers that are raised by the autonomous weapons and the way they work this is why parliaments should enhance legislative Frameworks and legal Frameworks and they should discuss the policies and different mechanisms that are necessary they should continue their
Numerous efforts to push their states to address these issues widely and the objective would be to have more ambitious results and to have more accountability and to work towards prohibiting that civilians would fall victims of armed conflicts especially women and my colleague is going to continue thank you we have some of these
Suggestions that we would like uh to read specifically when it comes to adopting legislations given the difficulty of adopting General legislations in this regard and these legislations are going to be always subject to change this is why there should be a legislative uh decision uh so that there would be
More flexibility so this is why when it comes to sanction sanctions should be more strict if the use does not respect the equality principles parliamentarians should be keen on having a strategy at the national level when it comes to artificial intelligence and that should be coupled with a budget responding to such
Needs furthermore currently in the parliament in Bahrain we are looking into a specific proposal related to artificial intelligence and hopefully with all the experts we shall be able to include some of the very important issues we would like to thank bahin and now dear colleagues we shall
Not give the floor to any further participants uh I give the floor now now to Chile so from now on no one is asked to take the floor hello uh dear president and my fellow um parliamentarians I am here from uh Chile and we need to create this legal framework incorporating the
Experience of of women um we need to add to the information and data that already exists but we can’t um carry on with these biases and gender discrimination uh we have uh women who are being discriminated against in a racialized way as well uh there are many different experien of different women uh
Who have different ways of life and uh how we are working at the moment we are feeding these artificial intelligences with discriminations we have for example um uh women who are attacked for being uh indigenous women who are defending their territories in my area we have uh there should be women
Incorporated into research areas and should be joined to research teams and uh we are increasing this these numbers in um we’re trying to increase this but at the moment in uh developing we only have maybe a 20% of women in these areas there is also efforts to control uh the
Data we need to make sure we can’t we don’t perpetrate uh these stigmas and biases to pass on into military areas we are um this will lead to the death of innocent people based on erroneous data dear president parity the inclusion of women and uh our experiences and um skills are really key
To make sure that we don’t go backwards in history thank you thank you Chile so much for having respected the time given to you I give the floor now to Malaysia the floor is yours my name is z I’m from Malaysia a Senor in the Upper House autonomous weapons and AI are the
Systems that by Nature Select and engage targets without meaningful human control their lack of human control causes significant afan humanitarian consequences widen the acts of gender-based violence and increase inequality as a result of algorithmic bias or Target profiling emerging Technologies like facial and vocal recognition have the tendency to have
Higher failure rates in recognizing women people of color and persons with disabilities the use of autonomous weapons that rely on these Technologies would highly result in higher risk for these vulnerable groups and anyone who does not fit within the norm determined by the program laws should prohibit Pro prohibit the development production and
Use of anonomous weapons that Target People based on profiling dehumanize the use of force and lead to discrimination in essence the law should also include regulations to ensure all other autonomous weapons syst systems are never used without meaningful human control autonomous weapon systems are a grave problem that can impact in any
Country in the world all AI must be used for peace and security and women must have a seat at the table to ensure good decisions are made this is crucial to to ensure peace and stability is achieved finally Malaysia affirms it commit its commitment to ensure that women and
Girls are given a space and opportunity to participate in the development process thank you we thank Malaysia and thank you for having committed to the time given to you and now we give the floor to Thailand the Tor of plal autonomous weapon system or autonomous weapon is
That generative AI can be programmed to be sensitive of respond to women Voice or fresher recogniz recognition especially women faal structure from this example it is expent seen that the use of laws can affect the Safety and Security of women to live their life hence opposing the de development and
The use of AWS is crucial for the protection of Human Rights and dignity including from gender based violations also Thailand support Clause 12 that measure to ensure gender perspective based on United Nations security Council resolution 1325 as a landmark resolution for women peace and soci security shall be adopted
Apart from the Urgent needs for preemptive National laws to retain meaningful human control over the use of false National Parliament should urge their governments to work with other state to conclude a new legally biding International instrument prohibiting fully autonomous weapon system in compliance with the international humanitarian law finally the education
On stem for women and girl should be promoted to bridge the gap in this field between male and female student as UNESCO has indicate in one of its research cracking the court G and women’s education in stem that sdg includes specific Target for countries to enhance access to stem education and
Technologies and to reduce gender disparity to comply with the expectation of the set result for women and girls to have equal opportunities to contribute to and benefit from stem Thailand would like to suggest Parliament to engage women in managing the impact and risk of the robotic Automation and AI on their
Life and livelihood thank you so much Thailand I’d like to thank Thailand and now I give the floor to the Netherlands I am Gina Shakur from the Netherlands representation matters when we look around today we see countless women who serve as shining examples for many girls and boys inspiring inspiring
Them to believe that they too can make a difference in the world it is true diverse representation that we can ring about meaningful change and address the needs and concerns of all members of society and still I stand before you today deeply troubled by concerning development within our country the
Netherlands it just has come to light that on on popular pornographic website images of dozens of well-known Dutch women also parliamentarian are being used in fake pornography videos created using AI techn technology these so-called deep fakes superimpose the faces of victims into the bodies of foreign actresses of Despicable Act of manipulation and
Violation this AI weapon is not only morally condemnable but also illegal in our country the Dutch government is moving to address this issue with legislation on sexual offenses being approved in the Senate to combat this uh heinous practice we cannot allow women to continue to be systematically
Victimized by the abuse of I technology the creation and distri distribtion of these deep fake videos not only violate the dignity and privacy of the individual involved but also uh harmful stereotypes and undermine the Integrity of our society we must take a stand against such exploitation and manipulation how can we condemn these
Actions how can you reject the mission of II technology to manipulate and undermine women particularly those in position of power and influence thank you uh we would like to thank the Netherlands I give the floor now to Mexico thank you very much my greetings to all in terms of the artificial
Intelligence and the new technologies these can uh we need to guarantee the benefits of this technology for all so that we don’t aggravate uh inequalities and in terms of military use in Mexico we don’t have a national policy on artificial intelligence and gender perspective so about the different uh
Making sure that there is gender equality in the use of this tool this space is very important and it is a great opportunity to hear from countries who have legislated on the topic of artificial intelligence it’s interesting to hear how you’ve made Advan on this topic and how Mexico could tackle this
Topic one of the key uh difficulties is uh the use of artificial intelligence and the the creation of precarity in the labor market this artificial intelligence can also widen the gap between women and men and gender inqu inequality we have a digital agenda that’s been worked on
Been worked on over the last few years but we don’t have uh one on the uh violence that is created through artificial intelligence and we need to tackle this from schools for example we have uh we need to work on this around the world thank you very
Much thank you Mexico for respecting the time I give the floor to Ghana chair the my name is Patricia p i the women of caucus of the parliament of Ghana like all parliamentary bodies holds a crucial role in recognizing and addressing the implication of artificial intelligence on Democracy human rights
And the rule of law Parliament can contribute to shaping policies that strike a balance between leveraging the benefits of artificial intelligence and mitigating its societal impacts in this regard some of the measures which the parliament of Ghana has adopted in this direction in includes legislative Frameworks and regulations oversight of
Parliamentary committees and agencies public awareness and engagement programs and collaborations with stakeholders and international organizations Ghana’s Ministry of communication and digitalization in collaboration with smart Africa GIS Fair forward and the future Society has formulated a comprehensive policy document to regulate the usage of artificial intelligence within Ghana entitled the
Republic of Ghana national artificial intelligence strategy 2023 to 2033 this document is slated for the presentation of cabinet in the near future although there is no existing legislative framework around AI in Ghana strides have been made to lay down a legal regime that can regulate the deployment and use of artificial intelligence in a manner that respects
Human rights democracy and the rule of law the 1992 constitution of the Republic of Ghana has some Provisions including the article 12 and 33 which guarantee the fundamental rights and Provisions and freedoms of citizens including the rights and freedom associated with effective use of M and
Misuse of AI or any AI activity that results in the breach of Human Rights the Parliamentary select committee on communication oversees the implementation of the national cyber security policy and strategy through cyber security Authority there’s also a parliamentary select committee on defense and interior which has oversight over both internal and external Security
In Ghana it is a expected that these committees will address most of the security challenges associated with the use of artificial intelligence in the near future Madam chair also members of parliament actively employ social media platforms and engage with the public in person to enhance awareness facilitating dialogue and obtain feedback on
Legislative measures related to AI the m pleas strive to equip with knowledge to that in conclusion mam chair the impact of artificial intelligence or democracy human rights and the is complex thank you for Gana I give now the floor to Oman today I’m also grateful for all the
Efforts that been made to come with this agenda and the topic but I’m most encouraged by the opening speech of the Secretary General today he said and I quote your voice will be heard I would like to keep my voice to humanity as anything else comes second
The world today is watching a historic moment and as we meet today the record says 31,000 people been killed in Gaza 70% are women and children so I would like to call this woman Parliament the woman Parliament today to join one voice for fair resolution of the people of Gaza thank you
Thank you so much for the state of ran I give now the floor to Benin I am total ADI I’m from the bureau from the National Assembly of benang we would like to express our deepest thanks and admiration to the president of the ipu and of all the people involved in
The organization of this 148th assembly to which we wish a great success we would like to give you some information about the Journey of banan in terms of representation of the women seven women in 2019 we now have 29 women and that is the fruit of our political will of the president of
Benam the commitment of the mes which has been materialized by the vote imposing the position of a women on the list of Elections legislative elections and we have to say that this woman was was elected thanks to the results of the party that carried out most
Suffrage and so the 29 women are now have a caucus and it is organized around lobbying in order to be able to encourage uh women from benan our young sisters to be interested in social and political life in the country we must say that we would like to take advantage
Of this opportunity to thank the people from the National Assembly and and and we’d like to also express our commitment to continue to raise awareness amongst all our young sisters and also to sh to look for ways of of increasing representation of women in decision making in benan thank you so much
Thank you so much I give the floor now to loto your Excellency I wish to appreciate the presentation made by the researcher which has really highlighted that what we see what we hear and participate in in influences are thinking my name is Honorable tan I’m the deputy speaker in
The parliament of the National Assembly the kingdom of Lou in light with the debate this morning my contribution on the involvement of women in AI for military purposes contains a few elements for one um just as in other artificial intelligence Fields women do offer diverse perspectives in military AI development leading to more
Comprehensive and effective Solutions their input can help identify potential biases and ensure that AI systems are ethically developed and deployed our intervention Madame chairperson as representatives in our various parliaments need to reflect that diversity from the norm where military is perceived as male Mitigation Of gender bias having women involved in the development
Process of AI systems can help identify and mitigate such biases ensuring that AI Technologies are fair and Equitable this says our Parliament Madame chairperson need to accelerate the mainstreaming of gender on education particularly in Steam areas Madame chair person gendered diversity within military AI systems can lead to better
Decision in making processes by incorporating a wider range of viewpoints and considerations we must work very hard in Rising to leadership in military Spaces by having laws systems and cultural norms that are restrictive that are not rather restrictive to women gearing for leadership in such spaces commonly appreciated for the males women’s
Caucuses in our different parliaments need to play a repres representative role in advocating for women in leadership in the overall Madame chairperson women’s involvement in military AI development can also focus on a on humanitarian consideration such as minimizing civilian casualities as we’ve just heard from um our
Honorable CH lady from woman um the perspectives especially with the national action plans on un 1325 as stated can lead to the development of AI systems not that do not uh that prioritize ethical and humanitarian principles we cannot argue that women as peacekeepers play a critical role representation and inclusivity can be
Accommodated when women are part of the spaces for military purposes in the AI we rarely see women leading parliamentary committees that are presumed to be male and as such are parliaments must be purposeful in having women in committees related to military intervention in lutu Madame chairperson we appreciate the importance of women in
Positions commonly reserved for men where we have a female minister of Science and Technology and we’ve just welcomed a young female to the position of the Comm Commissioner of police who is the second ever in the country and contributing to the overall security of citizens more closely Madame chairperson
To the debate in question we do have 16% females in the military but we now have the first female to be promoted to the major of Major General to the rank of Major General the highest rank in the local Army such changes create room for women
To challenge the norm and I thank you Madame chairperson thank you thank you so much I give now the floor to Canada very much Madame chair um I imagine that lots of women are also I saw that on 2024 there was so much disparity in these uh sessions between men and
Women and what is particularly concerning and I could to talk about this for much longer than three minutes that the for the standing president why we still need to have a standing committee because women have to think about the different disparities that are here and they have to be less partisan and
More productive and that’s but that’s why that justifies why we need to have many more women in different areas when we talk about the peace process and Reconciliation and when we talk about the committee of Foreign Affairs we see that women are used as War weapons in conflicts and we should intervene much
More quickly and we should uh use much more money to combat this problem and we also need to find women to combat against climate change and I could perhaps say that we’ve seen that the draft resolution has contains elements from the security Council from the UN and we should include a gender
Perspective in the debates on the autonomous weapon system and to talk about the possibility of the um artificial intelligence perpetuating discrimination against women and we need to use artificial intelligence to protect all uh spheres of society and and we need to we need to have experts in the government and all countries should
Contribute to uh compiling data and and particularly on the system of autonomous lethal weapons and and and they should not be there need to be more women working on this type of con of this type of technology and we need to work on the emancipation of women in the economical sphere as well
And and this is terribly important and I have a lot more to say about this subject thank you than thank you so much Canada I call a France now thank you my dear colleagues the defense is one of the multiple issues that we need to talk about and which is
Expanded on the function of the the lethal function of machines we need to ask the reports on war and this is about ensuring that intell artificial intelligence is for the for the good of people instead of turning certain spares of society into targets the position of France with regard to lethal autonomous
Weapons is very clear and it’s on based on three principles main principles on the artificial intelligence used for defense respect for international rights and particularly for international humanitarian International rights interaction between people and machines which is used for all arms systems and the permanence of responsibility to be responsible to
Define the validity of reglementation and it’s this position that is defended by France in their International negotiations in Geneva in the Frameworks of conventions of certain classic weapons and and and we would like to have um an effective um legislation to have a greater discussion to be able to guarantee the safety of
The population thank you very much thank you friends I give the floor now to Singapore the delegates for your inspiring speeches I’ve really learned a lot so thank you very much my name is Joan Perera one of the parliamentarians in Singapore I’d like to speak on how AI
Social media technology can be harnessed to bring people together through crisis in June 2021 the constituency that I oversee has many elderly and it was a pandemic cluster it was dark days because many of the vulnerable elderly and disadvantaged families were separated because they had to be
Isolated and the well-being of the Eld was badly affected however through social media through phone calls neighbors comprising men women children both young and old who are neighbors stepped in very readily to distribute food sanitizers masks take them out for vaccine check on their well-being befriend them or just simply check in on
Them by giving them a call and this has really in my view brought the community close together regardless of race language religion culture so in my view what is important is that Tech AI social media can and should complement the good work that we women do it complement the
Personal touch that we women whether we are parliamentarians are not are excellent at so I wish all of us a fruitful session and to all our Muslim brothers and sisters a blessed Ramadan thank you very much thank you to Singapore thank you for keeping to the time now Timor list
Timor list I give you the floor go ahead well thank you chair woman uh ladies and G gentleman um of the ipu my name is Maria Fernand speaker of timour East timour and in my assembly we decided to deepen our work concerning this matter more concretely to Capac give bring capacity
Uh to move to our human resources safeguarding the the legal iCal coherence in cyber security among other matters and especially the impact of usage of artificial intelligence so we appeal to all members of this forum to be clear about the challenges and concerns that are the fishing in
Chalis and springs economy or the the the West weapon system systems are to represent in legal terms but mostly humanitarian terms the imination of human being is must not be the objective of the usage of this type of technology and it’s the responsibility of those who make these weapons and governments to establish
Rules in order to ensure that this weapon system the for prejudicial or anti anti etic manner so it is essential that we have human control on these type of weapons more concrete defining clear criteria for uh military criteria the implementation of accountability systems and the possibility of manual intervention in critical situations this
Approach is fundamental in order to guarantee that artificial intelligence is an ally and not the threat toomy Weapon makes it urgent to need the need for legate at International level this work this this could deal with questions such as accountability transparity and principles of in rights in usage of artificial intell intelligence in the military uh weapons dialogue I think is essential to face the
Challenges in terms of the autonomy of animus and that technology is used in ethical and safe way so the International Community should approach these and face these threats Associated to this new category of weapons which unfortunately can activate itself select its own Target and take human lives ladies and gentlemen an
Algorithm cannot be in control of the decisions that involve kill or bring TR this human beings the principle of human responsibility and accountability by the usage of force or Leal Force should be preserved regardless of the type of C of weapon system involved thank you very Much thank you very much now we give the floor to the Arab Parliament we give you two minutes so the Arab Parliament we give you the floor two minutes please hello everybody I am shef Al I am a member of the Arab Parliament and uh of the parliament of Qatar ladies and
Gentlemen August uh audience I would like to express how happy I am to be participating in this very important meeting representing the Arab Parliament uh the uh draft resolution Drew my attention especially when it comes to a g to a gender P perspective for legal lethal autonomous
Weapon systems and AI in conflicts and Wars especially the uh un resol un security uh Council decision for the year 2000 regarding the special discussion on lethal autonomous weapon systems and AI strategies AI military strategies in fact we of course we agree AG that it is important to regulate lethal autonomous
Weapon systems given their destructive uh repercussions however relying on AI in their designs because they will be targeting a special categories of people such as women this can be uh categorized as discrimination and racial discrimination as parliamentarians we have to pay attention uh to this matter uh here are
Some recommendations that we hope you adopt during this meeting first according to the United Nations the female represent representation regarding disarmament and multilateral meetings are unequal this is why uh women need to participate in these special negotiations through an through a binding International policy and instrument to ban lethal autonomous
Weapons Systems that is to be reached in 2026 according to the Secretary General and uh we hope that the draft resolution will be more detailed thank you thank you very much to the Arab Parliament and now my dear colleagues we have reached the end of
Our work I would like to thank you all for your your contributions and input for your very valuable input that will add a very positive value to the role of women in the ipu and in international parliaments I would like to thank the president of the
Ipu and Mrs Zena for her efforts uh in the ipu and in the work of the Forum of women MPS and now myself and Mrs Ritz will have a very hard task that we will assume by summarizing the main points of this discussion and Mrs rovitz will
Submit a report of our discussions in this afternoon in the Forum of women MPS I remind you that the Forum will resume its activities at exactly 2:30 p.m. I look forward to seeing you again in the afternoon I would like to thank you very much for your participation e