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CGO Director, Patricia Deyton, attended the International Colloquium on Women's Empowerment
CGO Director, Patricia Deyton, attended the International Colloquium on Women’s Empowerment, Leadership Development, International Peace and Security, in Monrovia, Liberia in March, 2009.
The Colloquium, convened by H.E. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia and H.E. Tarja Halonen, President of Finland, drew over 800 women leaders from Africa and around the world to Liberia to celebrate and draw strength form women’s leadership at all levels.
The Colloquium stood in the tradition and spirit of significant international women’s conferences over the past two decades and reaffirmed the work done at those conferences as exemplified in the Beijing Platform of Action and the Commission to Eliminate Discrimination against Women. The great strides that women have made were honored, along with the clear recognition that much work remains to be done.
Specific issues addressed at the Colloquium included the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, calling for the engagement of women in peacekeeping, , UN Security Council Resolution1820, opposing sexual violence as a tactic of war, the empowerment of women to participate full and on fair terms in economic life, the right to decent work opportunities, the necessity of women’s voices in the debates concerning climate change, better protect of women and girls who are displaced, to uphold the dignity of migrant, and the critical need to advance the leadership development of young people. A stellar group of leaders convened the Colloquium sessions on these issues, including H.E. Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland.
Deyton attended and managed the Council of Women World Leaders meeting that was held in Monrovia on the occasion of the Colloquium. The Council members are the women who hold or have held the positions of presidents and prime ministers of their countries. Chaired by President Robinson and hosted at the Executive Mansion by President Johnson Sirleaf, the Council meeting was attended by five Council members and a number of notable guests, including the President of Rwanda, vice-presidents of Spain, The Gambia and the European Union.. In response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in The Sudan at the time, the Council passed a unanimous declaration calling on the UN, the African Union Commission and the President of The Sudan to allow the continuation of the work of humanitarian agencies in the country.
At the Council meeting, Prime Minister Luisa Dios Diogo of Mozambique gave an inspiring account of the work underway in her country on behalf of the empowerment of women and girls, including the importance of the use of data to prove the inequities and create a platform for change. President Halonen assumed the role of Chair of the Council at the meeting.
A significant lasting outcome of the Colloquium was the launch of the Angie Brooks International Center on Women’s Empowerment, Leadership Development, International Peace and Security as a mechanism of follow-up action to the Colloquium.
Leadership occurs in all places and in all times. At the Simmons School of Management, we pay attention to how women lead and hold up the paradigm of Principled Leadership that includes ethics, sustainability and stakeholder considerations, as the standard to which we aspire and to which we encourage our students to aspire. In the realm of the Colloquium, Principled Leadership was the rule, not the exception. Our sisters in Africa and around the world fully understand and embrace the concepts and fully act upon them. What is difference from our realities are the focal points to which Principled Leadership is directed: peace keeping, outlawing sexual crimes, basic human dignity for immigrants and internally displaced people, recognition of the value to the economy by market women, the wisdom of indigenous women in caring for the environment.
The calls that came from the Colloquium will hold a brighter future for everyone if they are met with action. The Colloquium provided the latest platform for calls to action and an opportunity to study and learn from the cross-cultural application of the leadership of women in situations that are unthinkable to most women in the US. Facing circumstances that were no longer tolerable, women have “leap-frogged” into leadership roles in both positions and numbers that remain closed to women in much of the developed world.