How can survivors’ strength and agency contribute to finding innovative ways to build peace and inclusive security in the Asia-Pacific? How do we make sure that innovative WPS approaches become legitimate and rights-based? The panel highlights women’s contributions to peace in the Asia-Pacific region, offering insights to help identify new WPS solutions and manage potential dilemmas. This includes addressing technology’s dual nature by safeguarding against its risks while leveraging the opportunities it presents. The WPS innovations identified can support efforts both to strengthen women’s empowerment and to promote sustainable peace in the Asia-Pacific region.
How can we innovate WPS through AI? And how do we apply the WPS principles on participation and protection to ensure responsible AI use for peace and security, considering its gender-specific impacts? At present, our understanding about the implications of AI for WPS is limited. The panel explores the opportunities and risks offered by AI to help design novel WPS solutions in different phases of the conflict cycle and the technological development, including whether and how to utilize this technology in supporting rights-based peace processes and humanitarian action. Moreover, the panel discusses how AI could improve access to information, cross-global learning, and mobilization and how various stakeholders could contribute to human rights-based approaches to AI governance, while addressing how to best manage the risk of technology-facilitated violence.
What do youth see as the key priorities for updating WPS to meet the challenges of the AI era? And how do they envision the role of WPS innovation in addressing their concerns for the future and establishing sustainable peace? Youth are preparing to assume full responsibility for peace and security in the context of the current complex crisis. The panel examines how to promote inter-generational cooperation to ensure that WPS is innovated to address youth’s concerns, such as of rising polarization, climate change, and geopolitical instability. Moreover, being the first ‘online generation’, the panel delves into youth’s perspectives on the role of AI in establishing sustainable peace and the ways to make the best use of rapid technological development and bring WPS innovation.
This session will focus on advancing a survivor-centered approach to conflict-related sexual violence, as emphasized in UN Security Council Resolution 2467 (2019). Panelists will discuss how to ensure that survivors’ rights, agency, and dignity are placed at the center of prevention, recovery, and redress frameworks and how we can fully recognize the survivors’ critical roles as active agents in building more inclusive and sustainable peace. The discussion will cover integrated support systems, including medical, psychological, legal, and economic support, access to justice and accountability mechanisms, and efforts to combat stigma and enable survivor leadership.