Daily Archives: October 11, 2022

NATO, as a political and military alliance, has a robust institutional framework comprised of dedicated civilian and military staff. There are several tools utilised by NATO military staff and Allied armed forces that ensure that gender perspectives are effectively integrated into all analysis, planning, missions and operations.

NATO's Policies on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), Conflict Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) and Prevention and Responses to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA), and their corresponding Military Guidelines, are expressions of this political will and military readiness. Meet two of the people who dedicate their work to integrating the gender perspective on the military side at NATO:

Why should NATO integrate the gender perspective on the military side of NATO?

Lieutenant-Colonel Diana Morais: The increasing complexity of the strategic environment requires an in-depth understanding of how new and more advanced patterns of warfare affect women, men, girls and boys differently. Integrating gender perspectives into the analysis and planning of our operations will give a deeper understanding of the societies in which we operate, as well as the modus operandi used by our adversaries. This will improve the Alliance's ability to recognise and respond to threats and challenges. It is also crucial that the Alliance's armed forces, when recruiting, ensure the full participation of both men and women.

What are NATO forces doing in taking the gender dimension into account at all stages?

Lieutenant-Colonel Diana Morais: We have been providing guidance to the Military Committee in four different lines of effort. First, development of doctrine: making sure we identify the fundamental principles by which the military forces guide their actions. Second, education and training: recognising the need to integrate gender perspectives in all military education and training for all ranks and positions. Third, leadership development: making sure gender perspectives are integrated in the professional development of all military leaders. And fourth, resources: recognising that it requires the adequate resources to accomplish an assigned mission or to integrate gender perspectives across the Alliance.

Lieutenant-Colonel Katherine Prudhoe: NATO has a network of Gender Advisors to ensure that gender perspectives are considered in military planning, from the strategic level to military planning on operations in Kosovo and Iraq. The Nordic Centre for Gender in Military Operations (NCGM) provides training courses on the gender perspective. As the gender perspective is a crosscutting theme, all Centres of Excellence consider gender in relation to their specialisation, for example Counter-Terrorism and Gender, or Hybrid Threats and Gender.

What is the greatest challenge in integrating the gender perspective on the military side of NATO?

Lieutenant-Colonel Katherine Prudhoe: The greatest challenge is making the gender perspective relevant to people who are new to the subject. It needs to be accepted as something that adds value to all military considerations, including the planning and execution of military operations. For those (including me) who attended military training over 20 years ago, the gender perspective was not embedded into traditional military training, so this subject needs to be added at all levels of training to make sure that the gender perspective for all key topics is understood.

What does a typical day in your role look like?

Lieutenant-Colonel Diana Morais: The NCGP normally meets in plenary session three to four times a year. One of these sessions is the NCGP Annual Conference, held at NATO Headquarters, which gathers all of the national delegates and subject matter experts coming from the capitals. The main objective of the annual conference is to prepare recommendations to present to the Military Committee, but the conference also allows for the sharing of best practices and expertise in integrating gender perspectives between member states and partners. This year, we are planning to hold our Annual Conference during the first week of October, where we will be discussing the new Strategic Concept and the integration of gender perspectives in the conflict in Ukraine.

Lieutenant-Colonel Katherine Prudhoe: As I work at the strategic level, my role is to ensure the gender perspective is considered in military guidance for new policies. In order to achieve this, I attend senior leadership meetings and meetings of the military committee in order to flag when the gender perspective needs to be considered. I also work with Allied and partner nations and institutions. For example, I am currently working with the European Union Military Staff on military recommendations of the nexus of climate, gender and security. I work with the NCGP to run the annual conference, and with Centres of Excellence to run deep dive sessions for those involved in policy-making.

What drives you to work on gender in security and defence?

Lieutenant-Colonel Diana Morais: The fundamental thing that drives me to work on gender is the necessity to make the defence sector more effective. Meeting the complex demands of conflict requires a diversity of skills, experiences, perspectives, and approaches and we cannot afford to exclude 50% of the population - women - when recruiting or staffing our missions. Furthermore, differences in gender roles and stereotypes impact everything we do, and our adversaries are capitalising our own misconceptions and biases. What gender perspective means in building or maintaining peace is to challenge the military to adapt their response to the societies they seek to protect, by changing the way we plan and execute our missions and operations.

Lieutenant-Colonel Katherine Prudhoe: I am motivated to work in this field because I think the gender perspective is essential to understanding modern conflict. Conflict is no longer taking place on a Napoleonic battlefield. Modern conflict is taking place on social media, and in towns and cities among the civilian population. We need to consider how men, women, boys and girls are affected differently both as victims or perpetrators of conflict. Conflict vulnerabilities, such as CRSV, and conflict drivers, such as terrorism or state adversaries, need to be viewed through a gendered lens to understand how to better plan and respond.

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The people behind the policies: integrating gender perspectives into the military - NATO HQ

Todays generation of youth is the largest the world has ever known, and young women and men are often forming the majority of the population in countries affected by violence and armed conflicts. Their input in security is therefore essential.

The Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) Agenda established by the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2250 (2015) and subsequent resolutions UNSCR 2419 (2018) and UNSCR 2535 (2020), recognises the inclusion and participation of young people as a key dimension of building and sustaining peace and security for all. The resolution identifies five pillars for action:

1. Participation Take youths participation and views into account in decision-making processes, from negotiation and prevention of violence to peace agreements.

2. Protection Ensure the protection of young civilians lives and human rights and investigate and prosecute those responsible for crimes perpetrated against them.

3. Prevention Support young people in preventing violence and in promoting a culture of tolerance and intercultural dialogue.

4. Partnership Engage young people during and after conflict when developing peacebuilding strategies along with community actors and United Nations bodies.

5. Disengagement and reintegration Invest in youth affected by armed conflict through employment opportunities, inclusive labour policies, and education promoting a culture of peace.

As indicated in: Global Coalition on Youth, Peace, and Security (2022) Implementing the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda at Country-level: A Guide for Public Officials.

Through the meaningful integration of young people in peace efforts, institutions will recognise their contributions in the present and in the future. Young people carry out important peacebuilding work, including reaching out to peers, working at the community level, maintaining dialogue, and bridging divides in polarised contexts. When youth are given the opportunity to participate in peace processes, they acquire civic skills, and often make lifelong commitments to peace. Therefore, it is also an investment in the future.

NATOs work with youth

NATO engages with young people on several different levels and through different approaches. The Alliance can benefit and learn from fresh perspectives, and at the same time give young people opportunities to get involved and make themselves heard.

NATOs Science for Peace and Security Programme, for instance, is developing more and more projects that offer opportunities and stipends to support and involve young scientists in the early stages of their careers.

Furthermore, as part of the NATO 2030 initiative, NATO has engaged with young leaders to gain their input on how to further strengthen the Alliance to meet the emerging security challenges of the coming decade. The NATO 2030 Young Leaders Group, which was announced at the NATO 2030 Youth Summit, consisted of 14 emerging leaders from across the Alliance that were selected from prominent young leadership programmes. They represent diverse professional fields, from researchers to space engineers and diplomats. On 4 February 2021, the NATO 2030 Young Leaders submitted a report to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg with advice on how to make NATO an even stronger Alliance.

Another major project is the annual NATO Youth Summit. The most recent NATO Youth Summit took place on 28 April 2022. It was entitled Securing Our Shared Future, and was organised in cooperation with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). The Youth Summits panel discussions covered pressing security challenges including climate change, disinformation, humanitarian crises, emerging technologies and gender discrimination.

These are just a few examples, but there are many more ways in which NATO interacts with young people and encourages their participation in all aspects of defence, peace and security.

The future is female (and young)

So how do the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda and YPS fit together? The WPS and the YPS agendas are interlinked and complementary: both agendas advocate for groups that have historically been excluded from decision-making processes. The contributions of both groups build on experiences and knowledge that go far beyond traditional conflict environments, but also include various forms of exclusion and discrimination, organised crime, and sexual and gender-based violence. These different forms of violence are highly gendered, with young women being particularly vulnerable to experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault, abduction, trafficking, torture and forced labour, and other forms of violence.

However, recognising the complementarity between the WPS and YPS agendas does not lump the two groups of women and youth together. This would deny the specific needs and challenges of each of these groups. Instead, policymakers and practitioners must take an intersectional approach that ensures that all policies, programs, and initiatives fully capture age- and gender-based power dynamics.

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Youth, peace and security: What is it and why should we care? - NATO HQ

I have too much respect for our friends and our allies to tell them what they should do, Rama said. We are always very careful to be very humble in our assessments.

The discussion inside the Albanian government over triggering Article Five underscores the ongoing debate as to whether a cyberattack will ever be serious enough to truly trigger a full-blown NATO collective defense response which could involve cyber retaliation against the attacking country by all NATO members or crippling sanctions. The provision has only been triggered once, just days after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, and the consequences have not been fully spelled out for a cyberattack. NATO member countries must come to the aid of the nation that invokes Article Five, but each member country can determine the extent of their response.

For Rama, the July attack which forced the country to shut down websites across government used for everything from paying utilities to obtaining drivers licenses walked right up to the line.

Its like bombing a country, Rama said of the cyber strike, which was widely attributed to Iranian hackers. Ninety-five percent of Albanias government services are provided online, meaning daily operations halted at government offices across the country, he said. The hackers also attempted to wipe sensitive government data, he said, but were not successful.

Albania severed diplomatic relations with Iran in response believed to be the first time a nation has taken this step due to a cyberattack. But Rama decided against taking the incident to NATO.

It was too much for us to think about and to get to the decision that we should ask NATO to trigger Article Five, Rama said.

In likely retaliation for the severing of relations, Iranian hackers again attacked Albania in early September, disabling certain systems used in border and customs processing. Rama warned that his nation expects more attacks from Iran, and is working to strengthen cyber defenses.

The line around when a cyberattack could trigger Article Five is unclear. The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence described the application of it to a cyberattack as a blurry but consistent position of NATO, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in 2018 that the level of cyberattack to trigger collective defense must remain purposefully vague.

I am often asked, under what circumstances would NATO trigger Article Five in the case of a cyberattack? My answer is: we will see, Stoltenberg said at the time.

Jim Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said NATO is likely still working through the menu of options it would use to respond to a cyberattack. Its going to be messy for a while until we sort out what you can do short of violence that can have [an] effect.

The Iranian cyberattacks may have caused widespread disruption, but did not lead to any deaths or permanent destruction of systems. These facts, paired with the smaller size of Albania in terms of geography and population, made triggering Article Five even more remote.

If the attack had been more damaging, they might have gotten some support, Lewis said. No one was hurt, so its hard to make the case that its Article Five.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has intensified these discussions, given recent warnings that Russia is preparing to intensify cyberattacks against Ukraine as the winter months approach, and that a cyberattack against Ukraine could spill over into neighboring countries that belong to NATO.

Many NATO members, including Albania, have provided cybersecurity support to Ukraine.

We have done our part, Rama said of Albanias assistance, but whats happened with Iran imposes a different speed.

NATO and its member states did take actions to support Albania after the July strike. NATO released a statement condemning the attack and pledging to provide support to strengthen Albanias cyber defense. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Irans intelligence agency and its leader, and the Justice Department indicted alleged Iranian hackers for widespread attacks against global critical infrastructure.

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a joint advisory in September detailing how the Iranian hackers gained access to the victimized Albanian networks 14 months prior to the attack being carried out, periodically stealing emails associated with the government of Albania. The British government noted in a separate alert that Ramas emails were among those accessed.

Rama pointed to U.S. assistance following the attack, which included providing in-person expertise to investigate the incident, as a big support, and noted that Albania is currently awaiting U.S. financial aid for cyber defense efforts.

Every dollar that will come will be very much appreciated, Rama said. I think they should and they will show that they support us in this situation.

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Albania weighed invoking NATO's Article 5 over Iranian cyberattack - POLITICO

Vladimir Putin. (AFP via Getty/ Sputnik/ MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV).

In a speech following his illegal annexation of Eastern regions of Ukraine,Russian president Vladimir Putin attacked the US and NATO for imposing perversions on children.

At the end of September, Russia announced the annexation of four Ukrainian regions Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson following what has been described as a sham electionpresided over by Russian troops.

After the illegal annexation was announced, Putin gave a victory speech in which he hit out at the US, NATO and the rest of the West, saying: They do not give a damn about the natural right of billions of people, the majority of humanity, to freedom and justice, the right to determine their own future. They have already moved on to the radical denial of moral, religious, and family values.

In the speech, Putin accused Ukraine of starting the war, and said that the people of the four annexed regions had chosen to become our citizens, forever.

Unsurprisingly, the Russian president used anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric to vilify the West, telling his audience: All citizens of Russia: do we want to have here, in our country, in Russia, parent number one, parent number two and parent number three (they have completely lost it!) instead of mother and father?

Do we want our schools to impose on our children, from their earliest days in school, perversions that lead to degradation and extinction? Do we want to drum into their heads the ideas that certain other genders exist along with women and men and to offer them gender reassignment surgery?

Is that what we want for our country and our children? This is all unacceptable to us. We have a different future of our own.

Putin added that the fighting would continue for the great historical Russia, for future generations, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, because: We must protect them against enslavement and monstrous experiments that are designed to cripple their minds and souls.

In a bizarre effort to stop people fleeing Russia since the country cruelly invaded Ukraine, Putins regime released a video this month saying that Russians would be forced to respect LGBTQ+ and Black people if they were to leave suggesting that should be a deterrent.

The video was circulated shortlyafter Putin announced that he would be instituting a draft to aid the countrys war against Ukraine, prompting more Russian citizens to flee to safety.

Read more:
Putin says US and NATO want to 'impose perversions' on kids - PinkNews

People in Moscow celebrate the occupation of Ukrainian territories, September 30

This was reported by several Telegram channels, including pro-Russian ones, which posted photos and videos from the site of the rally.

Read also: Biden bans the exchange of special borrowing rights with Russia and Belarus

According to Russian news outlet RIA-Novosti, the rally was organized by an organization called the National Liberation Movement. The demonstrators rallied outside the U.S. Embassy carrying orange and black striped flags styled after the St. Georges Ribbon Soviet military symbol, which is widely used by Russian ultra-nationalists.

The demonstrators also led by the hand a person dressed in a costume supposedly representing one of Russias new RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile. The person, whose black-gloved hands protruded from the black cylindrical costume, was apparently unable to see out of it.

Read also: Crimean bridge hit, fuel train on fire, road section downed

The protesters accused the United States of provoking a nuclear war and demanded that the U.S. president resign. They also demand that NATO withdraw troops from post-Soviet states and former Warsaw Pact countries.

Many of these countries are in fact members of the NATO defensive alliance.

Read also: Arrests of military personnel going on in Moscow, claims Ukrainian intelligence

The demonstrators also held posters with the slogans USA world evil, Russia defender of the world, US hegemony is collapsing, and The attack on the Crimean bridge was ordered by the CIA.

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

Continued here:
Moscow demonstrators demand Bidens resignation and withdrawal of NATO troops from post-Soviet countries - Yahoo News

A number of navy ships are currently off the coast of Devon - and they're heading to Cornwall. According to VesselFinder, the warships include vessels from Germany, Canada and France and they're here as part of the Royal Navy's 'Exercise Joint Warrior' which has been dubbed the biggest military exercise in the UK.

According to Dorset Live, the exercise started in late-September and has seen naval forces from across NATO grapple with attacks from above, on and below the waves during Britains long-standing test of it and international military by land, sea and air. The exercise will see 'more than 11,000 sailors, soldiers and aircrew wage a 12-day war around the British Isles.'

More than 20 ships and a handful of submarines, led by seven Royal Navy warships, including destroyer HMS Diamond and three frigates (Kent, Northumberland and Somerset), plus a couple of Royal Fleet Auxiliary tankers are participating. They are joined by vessels from the US, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, France and Latvia.

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According to the Royal Navy's website, Commanding Officer of the Portsmouth-based frigate, Commander Jez Brettell said: "Exercise Joint Warrior is a fantastic opportunity to fully demonstrate HMS Kents wide-ranging capabilities in close consort with other Royal Navy units, ground units, air assets and multinational forces.

"Having recently proven ourselves at Operational Sea Training, the exercise is ideally timed to consolidate our training at the very start of our deployment so that we are ready for anything that may follow."

More than 30 aircraft, including RAF Typhoon fighters and long-range maritime patrol aircraft will be committed, as well as drone technology and exercise planners intend to use virtual aerial assets alongside live ones to test the response of participants. Anti-submarine ships, aircraft and helicopters will hunt down live submarines, while land forces dealing with foes will include the gunners of 29 Commando Royal and elements of the US Marine Corps.

Joint Warrior is typically run from Clyde Naval Base, with the action mostly focused in north-west Scotland and adjacent waters.

This latest exercise, however, casts its net across the British Isles. Naval task groups will face each other down in both the North Sea off the coast of Scotland and the north-east coast of England, then again in the western Channel off Cornwall and Devon.

As a result, the exercise which is due to end on October 12 will be directed from RAF St Mawgan, near Newquay in Cornwall.

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Royal Navy ships heading towards Cornwall in NATO training operation - Cornwall Live