Norway today announced that it is relaxing its strict quarantine rules for many European arrivals but only people living in three Swedish regions will be allowed to travel freely between the two countries from the middle of next week.

Trips to and from Kronoberg, Skåne and Blekinge will be unrestricted from July 15th, but the rest of the country, including Värmland along the Norwegian border is still off-limits due to the rate of Covid-19 infection.

Residents of those three regions are also allowed to travel to neighbouring Denmark, as well as residents of Västerbotten, with Skåne residents allowed to cross the Öresund bridge as of tomorrow.

Sweden’s official recommendation against non-essential travel to most countries, including Norway and Denmark, is still in place, but that is due to be reviewed again next week.

Starting 15 July, the Government plans to allow the entry of foreign nationals from countries outside the EU/EEA (referred to as third-country nationals) who have family or an established romantic relationship in Norway. However, no exemptions are to be granted from quarantine duty or from ordinary provisions of the Immigration Act.

‘The Government is constantly working to strike the right balance between controlling infections and opening up. The current infection situation in Norway makes it possible for us to open up a little more. And since the entry restrictions we introduced as a result of the coronavirus have been so hard on families and romantic partners, I am happy we can now ease these a bit more for countries outside the EU and the EEA,’ said Minister of Justice and Public Security Monica Mæland.

‘But we must emphasise,’ she added, ‘that the entry restriction rules are in addition to the ordinary rules of entry contained in the Immigration Act. That means even if the entry restrictions are removed, the usual requirements for travel documents, visas etc. will continue to apply in full.’

The right of entry for foreign nationals moving to Norway as a result of family immigration is now to be fully reintroduced. Accordingly, family members who had been entitled to enter Norway to apply for a residence permit before the entry restrictions were imposed will once again have the opportunity to do so.

Quarantine rules still apply to family members and romantic partners 

‘Romantic partners and family members must obey the general quarantine rules and remain in quarantine for 10 days, just like others who travel into Norway,’ the Minister of Justice and Public Security said. They must also submit documentation stating that they will live continuously at one address for 10 days, or for the period they will be here if that is less than 10 days.

While family members and romantic partners requiring a visa will thus enjoy the same right of entry as before the virus outbreak, it is important to be aware that practical challenges remain in some parts of the world with regard to submitting a visa application. The reason is that application centres abroad may be closed or have reduced capacity due to infection control concerns. The Norwegian authorities have limited or no ability to influence this. In recent weeks, however, more and more application centres have been opening as the countries where the application centres operate gradually relax their national restrictions.

An increase in the number of arrivals from third countries could potentially entail the import of coronavirus cases, causing Norway’s infection situation to deteriorate. The Government will therefore keep a close eye on developments and provide clear information about the responsibility to undergo quarantine and the infection control guidelines in force at any given time.

The changes are as follows:

Foreign nationals planning to move to or visit Norway: 

• The right of entry for foreign nationals who plan to move to Norway as a result of family immigration is to be fully reintroduced. Accordingly, visa-free family members who had been entitled to enter Norway to apply for a residence permit before the entry restrictions were imposed will once again have the opportunity to do so.
• Family members requiring a visa may be granted an entry visa to stay in Norway pending their application review, according to ordinary rules in the Immigration Act and applicable guidelines of the Directorate of Immigration dating from before the COVID-19 outbreak.
• Family visits by close family members are also to be accommodated by the repeal of entry restrictions on visiting third-country nationals who have family members in Norway.
• “Family members” in this context refers to spouses/partners/cohabitants, parents and children under the age of 21, as well as stepfamily.

Entry by partners in a romantic relationship 

• In addition to family members, the Government plans to allow the entry of romantic partners. Parties are required to have met each other physically, and to have been in the relationship for a period of at least nine months.
• The person who lives in Norway must submit a self-declaration which the relationship partner must present on arrival in Norway, confirming that the two requirements have been met.

Next step: General entry from certain countries outside Schengen area/EEA 

Since 17 March the Schengen area, of which Norway is a part, has been temporarily closed for non-essential travel. The Council of the European Union has adopted a recommendation on easing the temporary restrictions and allowing entry from certain countries outside the Schengen area. Norway is following up this recommendation and aims to remove entry restrictions for certain third countries on the EU’s list to the extent the infection situation allows.

‘We are continuing our gradual, controlled opening to travel. The Government wants to build on the experience we gain as travel activities increase in the Nordic region and Europe before we open up to countries outside,’ said Ms Mæland.

Which countries to include initially and the exact time of opening are under consideration, with a decision to be announced at a later date. In accordance with established practice, the assessment of countries will be based on specific criteria, including the infection situation.

Last week the Nordic Foreign Ministers received the report “Nordic Foreign and Security Policy 2020: Climate Change, Hybrid & Cyber Threats and Challenges”.

On 30 October 2019, the foreign ministers of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden decided to task Mr. Björn Bjarnason of Iceland to prepare an independent report with non-binding proposals on how to further develop Nordic cooperation on foreign and security policy. This tasking marked ten years since Mr Thorvald Stoltenberg of Norway drafted a similar report presenting a range of recommendations of which a large share have already been implemented.

In the mandate, delivered to Mr. Bjarnason on 2 December 2019, he was requested to specifically focus on the scope for cooperation in addressing global climate change, addressing hybrid threats and cyber issues, and strengthening and reforming multilateralism and the rule-based international order. The mandate moreover stipulated that the report and the proposals should be ready by mid-year 2020. In his work he enjoyed the support of a reference group of experts and analysts from each of the five Nordic countries.

The Nordic Foreign Ministers express their appreciation to Mr. Bjarnason for his important work and look forward to studying the report’s recommendations. They will formally discuss the concrete proposals at their meeting in Copenhagen in September during Denmark’s presidency of the N5 cooperation.

United States has pledged more than $696 million in humanitarian assistance for vulnerable and conflict-affected Syrians.  This includes over $272 million of humanitarian assistance inside Syria and over $423 million for refugee-hosting countries in the region said Ambassador James Jeffrey, U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement and the Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.  

These funds bring the total United States funding for the Syrian response to more than 11.3 billion in humanitarian assistance and over $1.3 billion in non-humanitarian and stabilization assistance across the region since the conflict began.  This U.S. contribution is our largest single contribution to date.  It will provide lifesaving food, safe drinking water, shelter, education, medical care, mental health and psychosocial support, hygiene supplies, and improved sanitation to assist millions of Syrians in need Ambassador said.

Below is a full rush transcript of the press conference with Ambassador James Jeffrey, U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement and the Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS; Richard Albright, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration; and Matthew Nims, Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau

for Humanitarian Assistance

Ambassador Jeffrey:  I have been participating in the joint European Union-UN-Brussels IV humanitarian assistance to Syria conference virtually.  This morning at the conference, the United States has pledged more than $696 million in humanitarian assistance for vulnerable and conflict-affected Syrians.  This includes over $272 million of humanitarian assistance inside Syria and over $423 million for refugee-hosting countries in the region.  

These funds bring the total United States funding for the Syrian response to more than 11.3 billion in humanitarian assistance and over $1.3 billion in non-humanitarian and stabilization assistance across the region since the conflict began.  This U.S. contribution is our largest single contribution to date.  It will provide lifesaving food, safe drinking water, shelter, education, medical care, mental health and psychosocial support, hygiene supplies, and improved sanitation to assist millions of Syrians in need.

During the conference this morning, not only did I as the American representative but many, many other delegates talked about the sobering circumstances in Syria with more than 11 million people in need of continuing humanitarian assistance.  What again and again delegates argued was that it is absolutely important to ensure humanitarian assistance, that UN Security Council Resolution 2504, which was passed in January and covers cross-border humanitarian assistance, must be renewed for 12 months and authorization must be restored for the UN to ship cross-border into northeast Syria at the al-Yarubiyah crossing, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.  This is critical because that resolution has to be renewed before the 10th of July or cross-border humanitarian assistance, which would be a dramatic disaster for the people inside Syria, would be ended, at least as authorized by the UN.  

In general, what I and many others urged was that the international community support UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen’s call for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria, in particular beginning in Idlib, and support his work to achieve a lasting political solution to the conflict in line with Resolution 2254.  

For more than nine years, the Assad regime has waged a bloody war against the Syrian people and committed innumerable atrocities, some of which rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Therefore, as a side event to the Brussels IV humanitarian conference, on Friday, the U.S. co-hosted with Italy and Belgium an event focused on accountability and civilian protection in Syria, who we heard from the UN commission of inquiry and a number of civil society voices who discussed the scale and severity of the abuses being committed against civilians across Syria.  We also heard people discuss the OPCW special inquiry into the complicity of the Syrian Government at the highest levels in chemical weapons attacks in 2017.  

One conclusion that we have that I think we share with most people participating in this conference is that we are at a critical juncture.  Together, the international community must stand firm and insist that there will be no diplomatic or economic normalization of the Assad regime until there is a political solution to the conflict in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2254.  Thus, it is time for Assad’s needless, brutal war to end.  We will continue to work with our partners and allies to support the Syrian people and work towards a political solution to the conflict.

Question:  Kremlin just said that they will have on Wednesday a virtual conference with Iran and Turkey about the same subject, rebuilding of Syria.  Will Washington cooperate with these countries on this effort?  And if yes, in what capacity?  And if not, why? And second question on press reports about plan of Russians to pay money to Taliban for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan, my question is to Ambassador James Jeffrey:  Were you aware about this information? 

Ambassador Jeffrey:  On the first question, the United States does not see the Astana Group as a particularly helpful way to resolve the Syrian conflict.  It has worked out a number of ceasefire agreements and all, but Idlib – those ceasefire agreements have been totally trashed and Assad’s forces have gone in, so we don’t see it being a contribution there.  It has, at times, attempted to seize the initiative on finding a peaceful resolution from the UN, from Geir Pedersen, the current UN envoy, and his predecessors.  We’re opposed to that as well.

We, of course, cooperate very closely with Turkey on various aspects of the situation in Syria, and we have frequent discussions with the Russians on a possible way to end the conflict.  But we don’t deal with the Astana group as an entity, and, of course, we have nothing to do with Iran.  Our whole policy in Syria is predicated upon, among other things, all Iranian-commanded forces withdrawing from the country.  

Question:  Is the situation in Syria safe and stable enough for Western countries to begin repatriating refugees?  Also, when it happens without the active participation of the refugees in question?

Ambassador Jeffrey:  First of all, no repatriation should occur without the active participation of the refugees in question.  Secondly, we rely on the UNHCR to – and the guidelines that the UNHCR has laid out that all repatriations should be voluntary, should be safe, and should be dignified.  The UNHCR is not in the business of certifying areas for refugee return per se, but it watches the situation in Syria very, very closely.  We, the United States, do not think that the situation in most parts of Syria is conducive for people going back right now.  But let me ask Rich Albright from our PRM Bureau to discuss further this question.  Rich.

DAS Albright:  It’s not – we don’t consider conditions safe, and then we’re not seeing any significant returns of population into Syrian government-controlled areas.  So, it’s really up to the Syrians themselves to make these decisions for themselves free of coercion and to make a decision on where they choose to go.  And so far, we’re not seeing any significant movement into regime-controlled areas. 

Ambassador Jeffrey:  There has been some movement back to areas that the Turkish Government or its allies and the Syrian opposition control.  The Turkish foreign minister this morning claimed 400,000 have returned from Turkey of the some 3 million-plus that are in Turkey, refugees.  That may be a little bit high, but I’m just putting it out because that’s what we heard. 

Question:  How can the political process be pushed to end the Syrian crisis, which will not be solved with aid but by returning Syrians to their homeland and starting the reconstruction process? 

Ambassador Jeffrey:  That’s why we support Geir Pedersen’s call for a nationwide ceasefire.  That’s why we support the ceasefire in Idlib.  That’s why we worked for essentially a ceasefire with the Turks in the northeast back in October.  That’s why we deconflict movements on the ground and in the air with the Russians, all to try to limit the military dimension of this conflict. 

Secondly, there has to be a political process that will allow the people who have fled Assad; that is, 12 million people have left Assad’s controlled areas of Syria either to cross the border into Turkey, Jordan, or Lebanon, or to go into areas where Assad’s brutal forces do not hold sway.  Until there is a different relationship between the Assad regime or some successor regime and the Syrian people, you’re not going to get people to return, and you’re not going to get a resolution of this conflict, which is not only between Assad and most of his population, it’s also pulled in various outside countries – Turkey obviously, Iran, Russia, the United States, and the Defeat ISIS Coalition, and although we don’t confirm it officially, Israel at times has indicated that it has conducted operations in there to defend itself as well.  

So it’s a very complicated geostrategic problem as well as a humanitarian and an internal conflict problem.  And it all has to be resolved in a comprehensive way for any of the good things that we all want to happen to happen; that is, a restoration of the country to normalcy, the return of the population, peace, and prosperity.  

Question:  What is your first assessment for the first batch of sanctions on Syria based on the Caesar law?  And when should we expect the second batch? 

Ambassador Jeffrey:  We are working very hard to come up with additional packages that we can announce.  I can’t give you a date, but as I said, we are working very hard.  We believe it’s very important to keep the pressure on the regime.  Again, it’s hard to measure the specific impact of these sanctions because what they do is they inhibit the individuals or the entities we sanction from having access to the dollar-denominated international banking system as well as the banking system in the United States, and we block people from traveling to the United States.  

But there’s a psychological impact of such sanctions on the individuals that you target.  Thus, we have chosen people in top leadership positions in the Assad family, in the military leadership.  And there’s also a secondary impact on the regime’s ability to fund its war against its own people because there are concerns that the banking system internationally has when you’re dealing with a country whose leaders are themselves personally under sanction. 

So those are secondary effects.  But while it’s hard to pin them down in a concrete fashion, we believe that they have a quite substantial, over time, impact on the regime’s calculus. 

Question:  United States does take initiatives. Even in Korea, you did it right now, or recently in the Middle East.  You do it elsewhere.  Why the mightiest country does not take the initiative to seek, at least to look for a solution in the Security Council of the UN?  Instead, you are concerned about Iran and others do and Russia and so forth.  Why isn’t it – there is no initiative of the U.S.? 

Ambassador Jeffrey:  Well, there is an initiative of the U.S.  The U.S. was one of the sponsors of the relevant Resolution 2254, passed in December of 2015.  The problem since then has been that the Damascus regime under Assad, supported by Russia and Iran, have refused to adhere to the provisions of that resolution that call for a nationwide ceasefire, that call for a constitutional committee to work assiduously to put together a new constitution that would reflect the needs of the people and UN-sponsored nationwide elections.  

That was the agenda five years ago in 2015.  That is the agenda of the Security Council.  That is the agenda of the United States.  What we’re seeing is a refusal of one side to adhere to that.  Therefore, we’re using sanctions.  We’re using other measures to try to pressure Assad and his supporters to return to the one political process that is universally recognized internationally.  That’s what we’re doing. 

Women’s suffrage campaign material produced in the USA as part of the historical Washington suffrage procession which took place on 3 March 1913, indicates that US women considered Norway as the most advanced country in the world in terms of women’s suffrage.

The Washington procession in 1913 is considered to be a turning point of the US suffrage movement for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1920, granting women the right to vote.

The campaign material entitled “Official Program-Woman Suffrage Procession, Washington, D.C. March 3, 1913” listed four countries under the heading “Countries Where Women Have Full Suffrage”. It listed them from top to bottom in the order of Norway, Finland, New Zealand and Australia.

It is noteworthy that Norway was listed at the top of the list because it is widely thought in the world today that New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote.

The list did not explicitly state that Norway had achieved women’s suffrage first among the four countries. It seems that the order was decided by the totality of their history of women’s suffrage, not just by the year in which the right to vote was granted to women.

The compilers of the list must have taken such factors as to whether or not a country was a sovereign state, the year in which universal suffrage was adopted for all municipal elections, the year when women obtained the right to stand for election to  Parliament (Stortinget in Norway), and the year in which women actually sat in Parliament.

The decision to list Norway at the top must have involved Alice Paul as she was the main figure who organised the Washington procession. She was described by former US president Barack Obama in his Presidential Proclamation 9423 as “the most prominent figure in the final phase of the battle for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution”. She was highly educated, and obtained her Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1912 by submitting a thesis entitled “The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania”.

The campaign material has been found among the prints of the digital archives of the US Library of Congress by Dr Hisashi Nakamura, a Japanese author who has just published a book in Japanese entitled “The Women who Changed the Constitution: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party”. 

He says “It is significant that the suffragettes in the USA were aware of the suffrage movements in the world in detail and more than a hundred years ago realised that Norway was a forerunner of the movement. The Official Program-Woman Suffrage Procession paid homage to the women of Norway. They should be proud of their historical achievement. The Norwegian women who achieved this should be more widely recognised worldwide.”

( Written by Hisashi Nakamura )

Today, Norway was elected as a member of the UN Security Council for the period 2021–2022. ‘We would like to thank the UN member states for the confidence they have shown in us.  The world needs more international cooperation to promote peace and security. We will make use of our seat on the Security Council to strengthen this work,’ said Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

The UN General Assembly in New York today elected new members to the UN Security Council for the period 2021–2022. Norway, Ireland and Canada put forward their candidatures for the two seats available for the Western European and Others Group. Norway was elected with 130 votes. Ireland was elected with 128 votes.

‘I congratulate Ireland, India and Mexico on their successful election to the Security Council today. We look forward to cooperating closely in the Council. Serving on the Council is one of the most demanding responsibilities a country can shoulder in international politics’, Ms. Solberg said.

‘We were three very strong candidates competing for two seats on the Security Council. Canada and Ireland are close partners of Norway in international cooperation. We will strive to maintain our strong relationship with both countries in the time ahead, both within and outside the UN Security Council’, Ms Solberg said.

The Government will give priority in the Security Council to areas where Norway has particular experience and expertise. We will use the experience gained from many years of engagement in peace and reconciliation efforts to build bridges and seek solutions to the seemingly intractable conflicts that appear on the Security Council’s agenda. International law and human rights will form the basis for our efforts. Norway will cooperate closely with all members of the Security Council and will promote constructive cooperation. Norway will give special priority to efforts to strengthen the protection of civilians, including children, and to promote women’s role and participation in international peace and security work.

In addition, Norway will work to ensure that the Security Council devotes more attention to considering how climate change affects international peace and security.

‘I would like to thank everyone who has helped to promote Norway and Norwegian foreign policy since we first launched our candidature in 2007. This includes our Nordic neighbours, in particular Sweden. It is important that small countries like Norway also take on the responsibility of sitting on the Security Council at regular intervals. As a small country with an open economy, we are dependent on effective international cooperation and good relations between UN member states. The result of today’s election shows that Norway enjoys broad confidence within the international community. This gives us a good starting point as we take on this challenging job,’ said Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Eriksen Søreide.

(MFA-Norway)

The Women, Peace, and Security Strategy implementation is inexorably linked with women’s economic empowerment, and the Department of State’s Women, Peace, and Security Implementation Plan will therefore be consistent with and coordinated across the department’s work on the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, which seeks to advance women’s economic empowerment globally said Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Kelley E. Currie.

Around the world, we’ve seen the results when women are empowered to speak to their own futures. From Afghanistan to Syria, from Sudan to Colombia, today more than ever women are leading change, and we know that when women are involved in these discussions – from local issues in their own communities to a seat at the negotiating table – their countries become more stable, more peaceful, and more prosperous she said.

What we have with the COVID-19 on the face of it is initially a healthcare crisis, but it’s those secondary and tertiary effects which may be with us for quite a while. And certainly what I mean by this is we are concerned about the pandemic’s effects on fragile societies, fragile democracies, and fragile economies. So often what we find is women have over – larger roles in the service economies and informal economies, and what we’re seeing right now is that the pandemic is hitting those economic sectors particularly hard, so we’re very concerned about that as well Ambassador said. 

Below is a full rush transcript of the press conference by Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Kelley E. Currie and USAID Acting Administrator John Barsa.

Ambassador Currie: Thank you so much. It’s my pleasure to be with you. Thank you for calling in. We were really excited to release our implementation plans, the Department of State’s alongside DOD’s, the Department of Homeland Security’s, and USAID, last week, and to be able to talk to you this morning about the U.S. strategy and our implementation plans on women, peace, and security.

As you may know, President Trump signed a women, peace, and security – the Women, Peace, and Security Act into law in 2017, making the United States the first nation to enact a comprehensive women, peace, and security legislative framework. And now we are implementing it worldwide through the implementation plans that we published last week. And this reflects 20 – these plans reflect 20 years of lessons learned through the – starting with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 that passed 20 years ago today, and found that including women in peace – in peace processes, recognizing their unique needs, was good policy and helped to protect international peace and security.

So these plans take us from strategy to action. Around the world we’re working on the ground to empower women and ensure that their rights are respected and their voices are heard. Here at the State Department we’re focused on four areas: policy, diplomacy, programs, and partnership. First, we’re weaving women, peace, and security tenets throughout our foreign policy apparatus to make it part of our DNA. Second, we’re working with our embassies to ensure women have a voice in their communities and governments. Third, we’re ensuring all State Department personnel have the tools and training they need to implement this plan no matter where they are. And fourth, we’re building new partnerships every day to help more and more women.

The guiding principles behind our initiative – behind our implementation plan are that the Department of State is uniquely positioned to reinforce America’s global leadership in promoting the women, peace, and security agenda through these four strains. Through the department’s global presence and skilled workforce, we have a distinct comparative advantage to engage partners on the women, peace, and security agenda, and demonstrate our own commitment through our words and actions. Our priority targets in this effort are partner countries that currently – that are currently experiencing armed conflict, violent extremism, or have a gross systemic – have a history of gross systemic abuses of women and girls, including those emerging from such conflict, violence, or abuse, and for those that are most at risk of such conflict, violence, or abuse. Countries with histories of atrocities, particularly those with severe incidences of sexual violence or systemic and widespread discrimination against women, will be of particular concern as we go forward.

This is all outlined in our Women, Peace, and Security Strategy that we are advancing these principles in every corner of the globe. But it’s not realistic for us to have programs in every place, so we must prioritize our efforts. As with all matters of national security, the United States will continue to engage strategically and in ways that advance America’s national interest.

The Women, Peace, and Security Strategy implementation is inexorably linked with women’s economic empowerment, and the Department of State’s Women, Peace, and Security Implementation Plan will therefore be consistent with and coordinated across the department’s work on the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, which seeks to advance women’s economic empowerment globally.

So as you can see from the implementation plan, women, peace, and security is a priority for the department. Around the world, we’ve seen the results when women are empowered to speak to their own futures. From Afghanistan to Syria, from Sudan to Colombia, today more than ever women are leading change, and we know that when women are involved in these discussions – from local issues in their own communities to a seat at the negotiating table – their countries become more stable, more peaceful, and more prosperous.

So it’s my great honor to introduce my colleague and friend, the Acting Administrator of USAID John Barsa, who works very closely with us on the women, peace, and security agenda.

Acting Administrator Barsa: Thank you for your time. For those of you who have never interacted with me, I’m the Acting Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, and I’m honored to be in this role leading USAID’s efforts to save lives, reduce poverty, and foster prosperity, security, and stability worldwide.

Here at USAID, we have long recognized the role and influence women and girls play in a country’s journey to self-reliance. The United States Women, Peace, and Security Initiative, in conjunction with the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity initiative and other efforts to support women’s prosperity, recognizes that societies that empower women economically and politically are far more stable and peaceful. Studies show that when women participate in peace processes, the resulting agreements are far more likely to endure than agreements without the participation of women.

It should come as no surprise that USAID is committed to making the Women, Peace, and Security Strategy a central tenet in our foreign assistance, from policy engagement planning to programming. In the past two years, the agency has invested over $200 million in programming aligned with the WPS strategy. Through this work, we are already seeing the impact of including women in conflict prevention and resolution.

We see women of different ethnic and religious backgrounds working together to raise awareness about the devastating impact of gender-based violence in conflict, and hold perpetrators accountable in Burma. We have seen our efforts to foster deeper collaboration between the Colombian government and civil society lead to new synergies in addressing gender-based violence and women’s economic empowerment. We’ve seen women negotiate effectively to get armed actors out of school and humanitarian aid into their communities in Syria. And in Mali, we have seen young women stepping forward to run for office, and once elected, working across the political spectrum to strengthen national immunity and push for peace.

USAID’s implementation plan advances the WPS strategy through effective, coordinated actions across our development and humanitarian assistance efforts. It lays out concrete steps the agency is taking to expand and strengthen our work to empower women and girls in countries affected by crisis and conflict. USAID’s senior leadership in Washington and in our missions worldwide will elevate and advocate for women, peace, and security objectives in our policies and programs. We will consult with local women leaders, civil society, faith-based organizations, and academia in countries affected by crisis and conflict to incorporate their diverse perspectives into USAID’s peace and security programming. We will break down barriers to women’s participation in peace and political processes.

In Burma, USAID programming addressed common barriers to women’s participation in the formal peace process by providing women with childcare, transportation, training, and other resources needed to enable them to attend and influence the national dialogue peace processes. We’ll integrate women’s and girls’ perspectives into our policies and programs to counter violent extremism. USAID has expanded its programming to address the needs of women and girls affected by violent extremism, and to increase women’s participation in preventing and responding to radicalization in the communities.

In Nigeria, USAID trained 150 widows of security personnel killed in the fight against violent extremist organizations. Women were trained on microbusiness management skills, and provided business startup kits. This multifaceted support sought to empower women who now find themselves the heads of households with limited skills or opportunities for viable livelihoods, rendering them vulnerable to violent extremism organization influence.

We will work to reduce the harmful effects of gender-based violence and increase support for survivors affected by crisis and conflict. We’ve prioritized activities to protect women and girls from violence in humanitarian emergencies. In FY2019, USAID directed approximately $85 million towards lifesaving gender-based violence programs around the world. In Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Venezuela, DRC, Somalia, South Sudan, and Burma, USAID-supported programming includes a core package of assistance to adult and child gender-based violence survivors, such as safety planning and patrols, psychological support, women’s access to justice or legal aid, and mobile-based support to reach populations in remote areas.

In closing, we look forward to continued collaboration with all of our partners, including the private sector, civil society, faith-based organizations, to advance the Women, Peace, and Security Strategy. Through coordinated action, we will empower women and girls, strengthen societies, and improve the prospects for global peace and security. Thank you so very much for your time.

Question: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you square this implementation plan with some of the restrictions on reproductive health that this administration has put into place, given that experts say the ability of a woman to decide if and when she starts a family is a key driver in whether she is able to participate in society ?

Ambassador Currie:  So our bipartisan women, peace, and security agenda is focused on women’s empowerment, to protect – including things like protection from violence and malign actors, to ensuring that women have a voice in their own communities and futures in peace negotiations and in governmental processes. This focus allows us to ensure that fundamental rights for women are respected and integrated into these societies, and by focusing on those areas that we agree where there is consensus, we are able to advance this agenda, rather than focus on areas where we don’t have consensus even within the United States.

Question: I wonder, in the strategies that you are implementing on the continent of Africa, but in Southern Africa in particular, have you considered – and I’m asking this question because I know that if I interview women in Southern Africa, specific questions that they’re going to ask, because they’re mainly supported – a lot of them, millions of them are supported by women in the diaspora who are sending remittances and are basically like a de facto social service or social welfare for people back home. Are you considering how you might include the diaspora women that is already for decades helping the women back home? And are we supposed to now, very shortly, start to see the embassies promote this? Or can people go to the embassies, or are they going to wait for the embassies to put this information out? 

Ambassador Currie:  One of the things that we’ve always considered very important is incorporating Americans who have an interest in the situation of their countries or origin or their – countries that they have a historic link to. That’s always been part of our foreign policy. But I’ll give you a good example, a recent – a good recent example of cooperation that we’re engaged in with an organization called the Five Foundation that works on female genital mutilation and cutting, for instance. And they have a wonderful woman named Nimco Ali, who is a diaspora – a member of an African diaspora community, and is leading and working with women on the ground in African countries to address the challenge of female genital mutilation and cutting.

And so we coordinate with thought leaders like Nimco, we especially with the American diaspora. we have an open door here at our office to engage with those communities. We do that everywhere from Pakistan to Africa, so that’s definitely part and parcel of what we’re doing. We recognize the important role that those communities play in helping us to identify local partners and in helping us to be able to get – help fine-tune our messaging to those communities as well.

And so as far as our embassies and our programming, they are fundamental to how we’re doing this implementation plan. They all – we did a bottom-up process for our implementation plan that reached out to posts and asked them to make commitments and identify areas where they can work. And so you will see that in Africa we actually are doing – it is a major focal point for our efforts. There’s also a lot of crossover between the efforts on the – on women, peace, and security and on the women’s economic empowerment agenda. So we are working very closely with not only the individual embassies but through platforms like our African Union mission and some of our more regional efforts as well.

Acting Administrator Barsa: Well, certainly a lot of the work we do, we have bilateral programs – we have specific to countries and we have regional work as well. So this certainly applies to Southern Africa. So in our regional programming in Southern Africa, we work through it’s the political parties development program. we provide $3.5 million to foster broader political party culture and behavior that supports women, youth, and marginalized populations’ participation in identifying party policy and leadership structure. So this regional program, for example, is implemented in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Eswatini, and Zambia. And certainly we have a lot of work with CSOs on the ground, so we’re very proud of the activities we do. It’s part of our culture in terms of our different programming, so what we’re doing is we’re having a greater focus on some of the work we’re already doing.

Ambassador Currie: And if I could just add one little alibi here. One of the other great programs that we have here at the Department of State that helps connect women from local communities in Africa and around the world to communities here in the United States is our International Visitors Leadership Program, and we have a very strong women, peace, and security focus in that program. We’ve had more than 1,800 women participate in WPS-focused visitors’ program activities where they come here to the United States, make connections, and then go back to their communities. And those connections really help them to be able to do their work, find additional resources, and really connect with broader activities. So that’s a really important part of how we build a community of practice and a community of support around these efforts outside of the government. Over.

Question: I’d like to ask the good Ambassador, how has COVID-19 affected women in the most vulnerable sectors, and how do you plan to assist them?

Ambassador Currie: This is such a great question because it’s something we’ve really been focused on the past few months, obviously. During this pandemic, we are seeing women serving on the front line, in fact, in greater numbers than men in many cases, while they’re also experiencing greater risks of violence and higher rates of potential economic vulnerability and having to carry the burdens of unpaid care that have historically fallen to women. Those haven’t changed and, in fact, they’ve dramatically increased in many cases especially under stay-at-home orders and lockdowns. So we’ve seen women really have to step up, as always, and be on the front lines of this crisis and the response to it.

But that said, we’re also really – and what’s really been empowering to me is to see women being the agents of the response and having – and acting to serve as drivers of the recovery. And so it’s really important to us to ensure that the gains that women have made over the past decades are not lost during this time period and, in fact, that we’re able to build on and expand those gains while helping – while these women are helping their families and communities cope with this crisis.

We’re really monitoring a lot of data and trying to understand the full picture here, because a lot of the issues that we would be looking at, it’s an area – these are areas where data is historically very challenging, such as domestic violence and understanding the costs economically for women on things like unpaid care and the burdens that are being placed on them. So we’re doing a lot of studying of the data and working with other agencies on that. But we’re really – our goal coming out of this, and especially if we move toward economic recovery, is to see how we can support women as drivers of that economic recovery and put in place the building blocks now working with our partners, especially our international partners, to make sure that women are able to get off the sidelines when the recovery starts to take off and really contribute to that.

I think that one of the things that’s really important for us is to get that message out. We’re doing it in our own country, but to get that message out to our partners overseas that they’re not going to successfully recover and come back stronger from this crisis unless they empower everybody in their society to fully participate, and that means looking at how they’ve historically held women back from participating and addressing those barriers in the enabling environment that allow women to come in and participate fully in the environment – in the economy.

Acting Administrator Barsa: Absolutely. So from the earliest onset of this pandemic I’ve been concerned that it’s more than just a healthcare crisis. What we have with the COVID-19 on the face of it is initially a healthcare crisis, but it’s those secondary and tertiary effects which may be with us for quite a while. And certainly what I mean by this is we are concerned about the pandemic’s effects on fragile societies, fragile democracies, and fragile economies. So often what we find is women have over – larger roles in the service economies and informal economies, and what we’re seeing right now is that the pandemic is hitting those economic sectors particularly hard, so we’re very concerned about that as well.

And to add on to what Ambassador Kelley was saying, as economies are taking a hit right now, to think that an economy cannot – to think that an economy is going to try to recover without the full participation of about half of its potential workforce is folly. This is absolutely the time to have greater emphasis on full participation by women in all sectors of the economy to help countries rebuild. So this is actually the time where women’s full participation is needed more than ever.

Question: Can you talk a little bit about the plans you are implementing in Latin America, especially in Venezuela and Colombia? 

Ambassador Currie: That’s actually one of our favorite topics here at the Office of Global Women’s Issues, because our first bilateral partnership on women, peace, and security is with the Government of Colombia. We’re helping to support their government in developing a national action plan on women, peace, and security; and to foster deeper collaboration with civil society. So this is one of our – this is one of the first partnerships that we’ve engaged in, and we’re really excited to be working very, very closely with the Colombian government.

Obviously, we’re also doing a lot to support the countries around Venezuela who are receiving the refugees from Venezuela and who are dealing with the overflow of problems. I know John can talk a lot about that. But I just had a wonderful phone call with our partners at the Inter-American Foundation yesterday and heard about some of the incredible work that they’re doing to support women in these communities, in the refugee communities in Brazil, Colombia, and the other countries that have seen a large refugee flow.

We are also working to make platforms available to women in Venezuela who are still there that can help them to survive the catastrophic damage that the Maduro regime has inflicted on the Venezuelan economy. Even before COVID it was obviously in shambles. So we’re working to make entrepreneurship training available to women through a great platform here – in Venezuela through a platform we have here at the State Department called the Advancing Women Entrepreneurs program.

So I know that in Latin America this is a major effort for us. In places like Honduras we’re doing legal services and providing women access to courts and housing and other resources that they need to be able to participate in their community after they’ve been victims of violence, and this is an area that we’re working across the arc of conflict, including post-conflict societies, to work with women. So it’s a great area for us.

Acting Administrator Barsa: Well, absolutely. I mean, so I had the pleasure of being in Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil and seeing a lot of the programs we’re working on firsthand. So when it comes to women and peace and stability and security, so in Colombia, for example, after five decades of civil war, we see firsthand the only way to have a lasting peace is to have full inclusion of women into the peace process and having inclusion into political programs and activities and economies and areas that were previously controlled by the FARC. So I’m very proud to see the many number of programs we have in Colombia, for example, on helping women fully participate in the political process and the economy.

For example, one of the programs we have is we’re providing $170,000 to support women affected by landmines in post-conflict Colombia. Colombia has one of the greatest percentages of landmines in the country. It’s really not well known. And it causes – it has terrible effects. And so we’re proud of our support in helping women deal with psychological support and trauma, healing, and increasing access to dialogue in building political boundaries in Colombia.

And I’ve seen the work we’re doing with women with the Venezuelan diaspora. Of course, with the tyranny in Venezuela with Maduro, we’re not able to get our programming to help not just women but any sector of the economy. It’s a humanitarian disaster, and it’s man-made, which is a tragedy. So while we would love to help the women in Venezuela, we’re doing what we can to help the women, certainly, outside of Venezuela. So certainly their role in the diaspora communities, we are working with them wherever they are throughout the region in terms of helping integrate into these host countries, host communities that are welcoming them, providing them training, and having them the ability to participate.

Of course, our dream, our goal is to help the women inside Venezuela, but unfortunately we’re not able to do that at this point.

Mexico, India, Ireland and Norway have been elected to take up a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council, but a rerun is needed for the contested fifth seat after there was no clear winner.

Neither Kenya nor Djibouti on Wednesday gained the required two-thirds majority to win the Africa seat on the 15-member council, meaning another round of voting is needed on Thursday.

Canada lost out to Ireland and Norway in a hotly contested election in the council’s “Western European and others” group. India and Mexico’s uncontested bids for the Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean seats were approved.

To ensure geographical representation, seats are allocated to regional groups. But even if candidates are running unopposed in their group, they still need to win the support of more than two-thirds of the UN General Assembly.

The new members will start their term on January 1, 2010.

After operating virtually since March amid the coronavirus pandemic, diplomats – wearing masks and social distancing – returned to the General Assembly hall on Wednesday to cast their secret ballots at allotted times.

They also elected – unopposed – Turkish diplomat Volkan Bozkir as the president of the 75th session of the Assembly. He will take up the role later this year.

The Security Council is the only UN body that can make legally binding decisions such as imposing sanctions and authorising the use of force. It has five permanent veto-wielding members – the United States, the UK, France, China and Russia.

African countries have in the past picked their own candidate but were unable to put forward a single country this time, setting the stage for Wednesday’s showdown.

Kenya boasts of enjoying the support of the African Union, but Djibouti said it should have the seat due to Nairobi’s past participation on the Security Council and the principle of rotation.

Both countries are highlighting their roles in seeking peace on the Horn of Africa, as well as their contributions to UN peacekeeping options.