Ms Áine Hearns:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. She is right that the Covid pandemic has sent us backwards in terms of gender inequality, which, as the Deputy said, our own mothers and people across the world fought for. It has shown how universal, foundational and structural gender inequality is, both nationally and internationally. It has also shown us how much we need to redouble our efforts to avoid reversing the gains the Deputy spoke about.

Globally, women were estimated to be 1.8 times more likely than men to lose their jobs as a result of the pandemic and move into poverty. It was also estimated that 47 million women will move into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic. Women overwhelmingly take on the additional burden of care. This was the case before and during the pandemic. It is important we do not reverse the gains we had made. We have also seen an increase in gender-based violence, both nationally and internationally.

On the international scene, UN Women is one of the key partners for Irish Aid. We invest heavily in gender equality and try to respond to the challenges the pandemic presents to women and girls. This year, we increased our funding to UN Women by almost 60% for its efforts to ensure it is able to deal with the Covid pandemic. We fund an organisation, the Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund, which responded very quickly in the Covid-19 pandemic by setting up a rapid response window in its trust fund for women who are affected by Covid-19. We undertook work last year for the 28th anniversary of the WPS agenda in a report called Building Peace from the Grassroots. We looked at women peacebuilders at the grassroots level, in Colombia, Uganda, South Africa and Northern Ireland. Covid had not hit when we started, so when it hit we had to go back and do a smaller consultation process. We were able to see clearly and quickly the impact that Covid had on small civil society organisations. Some of them were unable to access funding or digital media.

On the Security Council and the informal experts group, IEG, we are delighted to be co-chair of the informal experts group with Mexico. As the Deputy will be aware, the UK is the penholder on this. We want to push the WPS agenda on the Security Council. We believe the WPS agenda should be there in all its products. It should be right across the thematics, the countries and the peacekeeping mandate renewals. We are working very strongly to get the narrative in there and out there. In the first six months, we have had some successes and some push-backs, which is the norm. Effectively, we are now being recognised as a leading voice on the WPS. UN Women keeps tabs on who is doing what on this in the Security Council, and we are coming to the fore. The team in New York is doing quite a lot to push this forward.

In May, Ireland, in co-operation with the NGO working group which reports to the IEG, organised a closed briefing for Palestinian women activists, ensuring that women’s voices were heard on the recent conflict in the Middle East. We were able to push those issues. More importantly, on 8 March, which was International Women's Day, we had an Arria-formula meeting, which looked at the UN-led peace processes. Geir Pedersen, the UN special envoy for Syria, attended. The idea was to push the UN on this.

When it leads peace processes, it needs to ensure it leads by example by having women involved at all stages of the process. We are six months in. This is a key theme for us. We are going to continue pushing this agenda so that WPS becomes synonymous with any product that comes out of the Security Council. I will leave it at that.