Your Excellencies, Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, it is an honour to be here.

I would like to acknowledge the ancestral lands of the First Nations; the 110,000 men and women currently deployed on UN peacekeeping operations; and the families of all those peacekeepers who have been killed in the line of duty.

And I thank the Canadian government for hosting this event and for their leadership on women, peace and security.

We meet at a time when peace is in short supply, with armed conflict in Myanmar, Syria, Iraq and Yemen – to name but a few of the worst examples – with over 65 million refugees and displaced people worldwide, and UN peacekeepers deployed on an unprecedented 15 operations.

The protection of civilians has been at the heart of the laws of warfare since the Geneva conventions, which state that in any conflict, “the civilian population…shall not be the object of attack.”

Yet women and children make up the vast majority of all casualties in armed conflict today.

Laws prohibiting attacks on schools and hospitals are routinely breached, for instance, in Syria.

Laws prohibiting…excuse me…laws prohibiting the denial of aid relief to civilians are repeatedly ignored, whether in Rakhine State or in Myanmar today, or in Yemen…in Yemen where millions of people are facing death from starvation.

And despite being prohibited by law, sexual violence continues to be employed as a tactic of war in 19 countries. It includes mass rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, and rape as a form of torture, ethnic cleansing and terrorism.

It has been 68 years since the Geneva Convention Fourth Protocol, which said, “women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor, in particular, against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault”.

It has been 21 years since the UN first promised to address sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers, and to increase the numbers of women deployed on operations – yet the exploitation of defenseless civilians still takes place, and still less than 4% of all peacekeepers are female.

It has been 19 years since the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, stating that mass atrocities including rape and sexual slavery would not go unpunished, and yet justice for survivors of rape is still the exception.

It has been 17 years since UN Security Council Resolution 1325 called for an end to the exclusion of women from peace negotiations, for special protection for women and girls against sexual violence, and for an end to impunity.

So we have to ask, how is it, after all these years, all these laws and all these resolutions and all the horrors endured, women still have to ask for this most basic of all entitlements: the right to a life free from violence?

Sexual violence is everywhere – in the industry where I work, in business, in universities, in policies, politicians, military across the world. It affects men as well as women.

However, it is recognized by the UN as one of the prime reasons why women remain in a subordinate position in relation to men in parts of the world, and as a critical obstacle to achieving women’s equality and our full human rights.

Ending gender-based violence is therefore a vital issue of social justice in all nations. And confronting its use in its most extreme form, as a weapon of war, is essential for future peace and security.

I want to address three myths that I believe go to the heart of why these crimes still occur, that we have to overcome together.