Women Foreign Ministers meeting for the first summit of its kind vowed on Saturday to bring a ‘women’s perspective’ to foreign policy. The two-day meeting, which began on Friday in Montreal and brought together more than half of the world’s top women diplomats, focussed on topics such as conflict prevention, democratic growth and eliminating gender-based violence.
“This meeting represented a historic occasion,” said Canada’s top diplomat Chrystia Freeland, who also took the opportunity to announce the creation of Canada’s first ambassador for women, peace and security. “This is not about creating a pink ghetto. This is quite to the contrary. This is about highlighting the importance and the role and the rights of women and girls in the world,” she said.
The Ministers will share their takeaways from the event during meetings taking place as part of the UN General Assembly in New York in the coming week.
The diplomatic chiefs from 17 countries promised to meet regularly — albeit informally — within the next year. “We planted a seed that will grow into, I believe, a plant with beautiful flowers,” said European Union diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini, who co-led the meeting with Ms. Freeland.
In addition to Ms. Freeland and Ms. Mogherini, the conference brought together Ministers from Andorra, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Namibia, Norway, Panama, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, South Africa and Sweden.
At the end of the summit, a dozen of the participants symbolically placed flowers on headstones erected in a Montreal park to commemorate 14 women killed in 1989 at the Ecole Polytechnique engineering school. The killer, who targeted women in what was classified as a hate crime, wounded 14 others.
