Commandant Jayne Lawlor:

My name is Commandant Jayne Lawlor and I am the gender equality and diversity officer in the Defence Forces. Ms McManus asked me to come here today to explain what the Defence Forces are doing to implement Resolution 1325 in the Defence Forces.

The national action plan lists 12 specific tasks and the Defence Forces are listed and named in six of those tasks. After the Department of Foreign Affairs, we are the second most heavily tasked organisation in Ireland.

In terms of how we go about implementing these tasks, which was the main objective that fell on my shoulders when I took over this role, I wrote a Defence Forces action plan on the implementation of Resolution 1325. At the time we were only the second military in the world to do that. The action plan outlines in clear, concise format how we will to do it, the reason we are doing it, the timelines and the objectives. It is all set so that at the end of it we can tick the box and say we have done something, or have not, and the area in which we have fallen down.

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the national action plan are built on a number of pillars. The three main pillars that concern the Defence Forces are protection of women and children and the vulnerable; prevention of violence against women and children, particularly sexual violence; and participation. For us that means increasing the number of female personnel in the Defence Forces.

I will give a brief example of the way the Defence Forces can make themselves known and go about our job is in protection and prevention. We had Irish troops stationed in Chad, and one of the main jobs we had to do was the protection of the IDP camps. In terms of what was happening, as the women were leaving the IDP camps to go to the local town-----