For International Women's Day, let's look back at some of our contributions this year to discussions about gender in disarmament and women's empowerment. The theme of this year's International Women's Day is #balanceforbetter and we know that the outcomes are better when disarmament efforts have gender balance.

In August, we were part of the first ever UN briefing on gender and autonomous weapons at the Convention on Conventional Weapons' Group of Governmental Experts meeting and launched a new briefing note on bias and autonomous weapons. We were so pleased to have the Canadian Ambassador chair the event. 

Canada and the European Union hosted the first ever meeting of Women Foreign Ministers in Montreal and we were there, working with Canadian civil society and our colleagues at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons to highlight humanitarian disarmament.

With the support of the Government of Ireland, we launched our new Mine Action Fellows program at the 17th Meeting of States Parties to the Ottawa Treaty with two of our Fellows addressing a lunch time briefing.

Just last month, our Program Manager presented on gender equality and youth engagement in mine action during a plenary panel at the National Mine Action Directors Meeting in Geneva. 

Humanitarian disarmament is often led by women and the meaningful participation of women from around the world is crucial to making progress towards a safer, more peaceful world. International Women's Day gives us an opportunity to look back at what we've accomplished and reiterate our commitment to diversity in disarmament.