The UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls Speech at the Berlin Process Gender Equality Forum
Source: gov.uk (2025-09-09)

The UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls, Baroness Harriet Harman, delivered the keynote speech at the Berlin Process Gender Equality Forum in Sarajevo.

It is a privilege to join you and speak at your Gender Equality Forum today.

As the UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls, I am here as part of the UK’s role as chair of the Berlin Process and to ensure the interests of women and girls are at the heart of this year’s process.

Thank you to FM Konakovic and the Parliamentary Assembly for hosting us in such a prestigious venue and in your beautiful city and on such an important topic.

Thank you G I Z for designing today’s programme and bringing together all of you such an impressive group of women leaders and activists across countries and sectors.

The Berlin Process framework provides a unique opportunity to challenge ourselves and each other to make real progress on women and girls’ rights.

To make advances on the things that matter most to women in the Western Balkans.

The same things that matter to women in the UK and around the world: to be free from male violence against women, to have equal economic opportunities, and to share in the decisions that affect our lives.

The UK’s vision for the Berlin Process in 2025 is “Security and Growth in partnership”, and is structured around three objectives: improving economic growth, enhancing security and tackling irregular migration.

And women need to be able to play a part in achieving all of these aims.

That is why I am delighted that the needs and voices of women and girls have been embedded throughout the Berlin Process.

Because the Berlin Process, which was initiated in 2014, recognises women as powerful agents of change in a way that the Dayton Agreement failed to 19 years earlier. This is a measure of the progress we have made together to recognise the importance of women’s rights.

Exemplifying this, in a few weeks’ time, together our Foreign Ministers will include the role of women in their efforts on reconciliation, our Interior Ministers will address violence against women, and our Economic Ministers will promote women’s economic empowerment.

In the UK, we have a new Foreign Minister appointed only last week, Yvette Cooper. And you will be seeing her on behalf of the UK on the world stage. I want to tell you just a bit about her.

All her political life, she has fought for women’s rights. It is actually at the heart of her politics and her participation in public service. She has a phenomenal record on this. You will see her as your ally. You can be in no doubt that in her new role she will be there for all of those who struggle for equality for women.

In an insecure world – security is the theme of almost every international summit these days.

But in the past, women’s security and women’s role in ensuring security has been overlooked.

Trailblazing women, in diplomacy, politics and governments, and women peacebuilders and activists, like those of you here today, have striven and have made progress. Yet more progress is needed.

We know that women suffer disproportionately in conflict, with sexual violence, displacement, and impacts on their health and their livelihoods.

Women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence continue to fight for accountability and justice.

In July, the Duchess of Edinburgh visited here to hear first-hand from survivors of conflict-related sexual violence about the impact of stigma and the need for practical support to help survivors cope and recover.

Whilst women have made great strides in the past decades and past century, we do now face a backlash. Misogyny, anti-women’s rights attitudes are on the march, on the streets, on our screens, across social media and in our homes. And we have to resist it together.

Stability in democracy underpins security. But there’s no stability in democracy if half the population, women, are excluded.

In terms of online safety, we must challenge online threats directed at - human rights defenders, women journalists and women politicians, directed at women who dare to say anything. We have become targets of hate speech, disinformation and online misogyny. But we will not be silenced.

But we have to work together on this. Online abuse and misogyny transcends borders – it is a transnational issue that cannot be solved by individual countries alone.

Today’s discussion on online harms is a crucial opportunity to build an effective regional response to identify the problem, speak about it and attack it.

The non-consensual sharing of intimate images of women is one method used to silence and shame women.

I am proud that the UK is supporting victims of non-consensual intimate image abuse in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by providing training to civil society here on how to access a pioneering global platform, called STOP NCII.org. This is a platform that detects and removes non-consensual images from the internet and empowers women to do that. It is at the frontline of technology.

In the UK, we have introduced the Online Safety Act, which is designed specifically to protect people, especially children, from these kinds of harms.

But with the rapid pace at which technology is developing, we need to work faster and more collaboratively to ensure our laws work and stays ahead of the curve.

Many of you in this room like me, will have direct experience of being harassed and targeted.

But instead of being silenced we will press for more progress.

Those who oppose our agenda for supporting women’s rights and making further progress, they are organised, they are coordinated, they are professional and they work multi-nationally.

So we have to too.

All this will be turbocharged, our resistance to the backlash, will be turbocharged by the network of women diplomats, the new regional network which I am delighted to see being launched.

Women’s grass roots organisations are vital. That’s why I think it’s so important that the UK is continuing our support to Kvinna Till Kvinna – a leading women’s rights foundation in the region since the 1990s – with £1 million this year.

There are now, in parliaments around the world, women committed to make positive change for women and girls in their own countries – this is a very different picture from when I started in parliament over 40 years ago when in the UK I was one of only 3% of women MPs and many parliaments had no women, now there are many.

We need to seize this newly available diplomatic channel for international cooperation.

And though women lead this fight, we need men to step up to support us and to play a part. But we need to map out the role for male allies, what is it to be a male ally and we need to identify men who will actively back us in this fight. I have already identified FM Konakovic as a male ally and if I may say an honorary sister.

Because equality for women is not just important for every woman and girl. It is crucial for democracy, for society, for every economy.

On the economy, only half of women in the Western Balkans are in the labour force – women’s work contributes to their family budgets, to innovation and enterprise and it is estimated that their exclusion undermines growth by up to 20%. We too in the UK, we came from a position where there was very low participation of women in the labour force, this has grown with the extension of childcare and maternity leave rights. So we know what it is like to be on the journey you are on.

Women in the region face serious and systemic barriers to economic participation: workplace discrimination , and also women undertaking the lion’s share of unpaid work in the home, family responsibilities and a lack of access to opportunities. An unequal sharing of home responsibilities.

And a big price is paid with talented young women leaving your region to look for opportunities. Some of them come back. But many of them don’t.

Women need fair working conditions, childcare, maternity rights and support for their economic advance.

So I am delighted to see this region’s engagement with UN Women’s Transform Care Initiative which challenges the unequal share between men and women of care of their children and older relatives.

In the UK we still have an unequal division of labour in the home where men do not play an equal part in looking after their children or older relatives, indeed women often look after their partner’s older relatives as well as their own.

Championing women entrepreneurs is necessary – especially for stemming the brain drain – when fewer than one in 3 business owners in this region are women.

To unlock women’s entrepreneurial potential they need also have access to investment.

I am pleased to see regional engagement with the World Bank’s Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative which mobilises public and private sector resources to close financing gaps for women entrepreneurs, providing access to capital, mentorship, and market linkages across developing economies.

The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative is inspired by a UK initiative which identified that woman-led businesses deliver 35% higher returns than male businesses, despite receiving just 2% of venture capital funding.

Women’s participation turbocharges the economy as well as turbocharging our economic processes.

The growth potential is clear and today’s discussion on the creative industries and brain drain will provide a great opportunity to explore innovative ways to support women’s economic empowerment as we look to enhance regional stability, governance, and economic growth.

Our final session today is on regional cooperation and the crucial role of the region’s women’s equality agencies in working together and steering through positive change.

The challenges facing us today can only be addressed through collective ambition and mobilising public support.

Both leadership but also mobilising public support as well.

Time and again, women have come together to drive progress in the Western Balkans, mediating between their communities and paving the way for reconciliation across this region. And I salute the work they have done on that and pay tribute to it.

Stability and security can only be achieved if women are fully, meaningfully and safely participating across politics, security and defence. It is easy to say that, but all of you in this room know it is a struggle to do it, but a struggle I know you are all determined to do.

As we look back on 25 years of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, the UK remains committed to achieving that goal, including through the Berlin Process.

It is a real pleasure to be here with you today and I can feel the dynamism and sense of purpose in this room. And I look forward to learning from the expertise in this room– I look forward to following up and to seeing what progress we’ve made over the next year, tangible outcomes, tangible progress, as we fight together for women and girls in the Western Balkans, in the UK and the rest of the world.

Thank you.