I want to commend you and the government of Namibia for being always at the forefront to improve the situation and status of women, especially in peace and security arena. As we can recall, it is here in Namibia, over 20 years ago that the ground breaking resolution 1325 was conceptualized and later passed by the UN Security Council under Namibia’s presidency in the year 2000. And today, your excellency Dr Mushelega, our chair, we are proud of you, proud of Namibia, that we are here in Swakopmud to celebrate the 20 years of the AU Peace and Security Council by taking stock of how Africa has fared in increasing women’s participation and leadership in the African led peace processes as called by our African born resolution 1325. Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, Indeed in 20 years of the PSC, we have seen progress with the integration of gender perspectives in the work of the council and the department of peace and security at large. Progressive policies and institutional mechanism on gender/women peace and security have been put in place including the institutionalization of Femwise Africa, institutionalization of the annual PSC open session on WPS, passage of the Continental Results framework, which we are using to track performance We commend these efforts by the PSC for they have opened the way for women’s participation and leadership in conflict preventative diplomacy, including women leading AU led election observations missions and mediations efforts. This demonstrates that the absence of women in peace tables is not due to lack of capable women but rather, an issue with how we are designing the peace tables. It is very unfortunate that still, the qualification for who gets a seat at the peace table is in favour of those responsible for creating conflict, those holding the guns. Which structurally excludes those working to prevent and resolve conflict, namely the women! It is thus unsurprising that this structural exclusion of women perpetuates the conflict trap and recurrent civil wars as observed in many parts of the continent. The absence of women at the peace table continues irrespective of the useful contributions they bring to the peace processes, such as • making a peace agreement 64% less likely to fail • And increasing the probability of a peace agreement lasting fifteen years by 35 percent. Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is therefore important that we put in a mechanism, an ecosystem with accountability measures to help us reverse the current status where our peace processes are largely missing the benefits of women’s contribution. To this end I therefore wish to make the following recommendations towards increasing the leadership of women in track 1 peace processes: Embrace a holistic approach to women's inclusion and leadership by: - Setting up a minimum 50% gender target for women participation in peace processes, especially in track one peace processes. - Appointing women as lead mediators and ensuring that the mediation support team includes a gender expert - Deploying femwise members to support mediation teams and women coalition building efforts. - Provide financial and technical support to women consensus-building efforts and development of their common agenda for peace in affected countries - Holding mediation efforts accountable for women’s inclusion - Allocate 30% of the AU Peace funds to facilitate women participation and leadership in peace processes. I thank you for your kind attention.