The futures past of the Women, Peace and Security agenda

In October 2015, the United Nations conducted a review process of the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security (WPS). Some 15 years after its adoption, what began as the first UN Security Council resolution on this issue has become the Women, Peace and Security Agenda; a broad action agenda for the inclusion of women and the gender perspective into peacebuilding efforts, made up of eight Security Council resolutions and numerous complementary regional and national instruments. To carry out this review, a comprehensive independent study was produced, coordinated by Radhika Coomaraswamy, and governments held an open debate at the Security Council in which they assessed progress and presented new commitments to continue moving forwards in the implementation of the agenda. For its part, civil society, a key player in this issue, has also carried out its own evaluation process, noting that despite the progress and the recognition achieved by the WPS agenda, the gap between commitments and reality is still too wide for a positive assessment to be made. Women are still absent from peace processes and decision-making areas; gender-based violence within armed conflicts is a flagrant reality that does not receive enough attention; and militarist responses still prevail over those aimed at prevention and above options of a transformational nature directed at overcoming armed conflicts. Women’s organisations initiated the process that led to the adoption of UNSCR 1325, with the aim of strengthening the tools for conflict prevention and peace building so as to bring an end to wars. 15 years later, the range of actors that have joined this agenda is extremely broad, with governments and the United Nations having taken on a visible role. This report reviews the process of the creation and consolidation of the WPS agenda and discusses some of the main challenges that are faced for its full implementation.

Considered the single greatest achievement in ‘engendering’ global security policy, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325) is celebrated as a triumph of women’s peace movements and transnational feminist organizing. My central claim is that SCR 1325 has both over performed and under delivered. The remarkable achievements it catalysed in establishing new international standards have not been fully appreciated, explored, or understood, while its successful utilisation by women rights and peace activists in the context of 'informal peace building' has not fundamentally challenged the workings of the Security Council itself, as feminists had hoped. This has resulted in an overestimation of SCR 1325’s symbolic and practical importance, and an underestimation of the broader institutional and geopolitical factors that shaped SCR 1325’s genesis and continue to drive Security Council decision-making in relation to women and gender issues. I suggest that SCR 1325’s perceived failures have less to do with its oft-criticized textual content than with the institutions, actors, strategies, and processes that have been most central to its implementation. Historically, the geopolitics of UN decision-making on gender issues demonstrate an extreme form of bureaucratic pathology that has circumscribed opportunities for bringing gender issues onto the UN’s peace and security agenda. I introduce the concept of ‘relegation’ to explain why decision-making on women has been extrinsic to the UN mechanisms and entities that have the greatest potential for autonomous action. SCR 1325’s implementation failures also reflect the absence of a collaborative feminist epistemic community of research and praxis in the nascent field of feminist security studies. This has further limited the UN’s ability to internalise, institutionalise, and implement actions that advance, rather than undermine feminist peace building agendas.

Michigan journal of gender & law, 2021

The year 2020 marks the twentieth anniversary of the passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution (“UNSCR”) 1325, the most important moment in the United Nations’ efforts to achieve world peace through gender equality. Over the past several decades, the international community has strengthened its focus on gender, including the relationship between gender and international peace and security. National governments and the United Nations have taken historic steps to elevate the role of women in governance and peacebuilding. The passage of UNSCR 1325 in 2000 foreshadowed what many hoped would be a transformational shift in international law and politics. However, the promise of gender equality has gone largely unrealized, despite the uncontroverted connection between treatment of women and the peacefulness of a nation. This Article argues for the first time that to achieve international peace and security through gender equality, the United Nations Security Council should tran...

Human Rights Documents Online

DIIS policy brief, 2023

Experiences of implementing the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda in African countries indicate a need to focus on engaging civil society and grassroots actors as well as developing adequate reporting systems. Denmark's candidacy for the non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 2025-26 would benefit from a strong position on the implementation of the women, peace and security agenda both nationally and locally by all UN member states. In 2000, the UNSC adopted Resolution 1325 on including women in peacebuilding and peacekeeping.

2018

Less than two decades ago women’s rights issues hardly featured in the peace and security deliberations of the UN Security Council. Today, however, ‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) has become a formal item on the Council’s agenda. This chapter explores the actors involved in making this discursive shift happen. It highlights the pivotal role of women and women’s civil society organisations (CSOs) in drafting and negotiating the texts of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (UNSCR 1325) and subsequent resolutions, as well as their implementation mechanisms. The chapter argues that women’s entry into international peace and security has not only sparked changes in the discourse on peace and security but also diplomatic practices within the UN, and beyond.

Working Paper, Institute for Global and International Studies, 2014

This Working Paper looks at the Women, Peace and Security agenda as laid out in UNSCR 1325 and in six following Security Council Resolutions - UNSCR 1820, 1888, 1889, 1960, 2106 and 2122 (see Boxes 1 and 2) - to assess progress in the past decade and a half since the adoption of UNSCR 1325 in 2000. We conducted an extensive desk study of the existing literature on UNSCR 1325, performed a detailed content analysis of 40 of the 42 existing 1325 NAPs, and offer an update on implementation of Women, Peace, and Security goals more broadly. The Working Paper is addresses three main questions: What does the social science and related literature say about UNSCR 1325 since its adoption in 2000? What does content analysis of National Action Plans (NAPs) in support of UNSCR 1325 reveal about the effectiveness of such plans? What are examples of implementation of 1325 principles with and beyond 1325 NAPs?

In 2015, the UN held a High Level Review and undertook a Global Study on the implementation to United Nations Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (2000): 'Preventing Conflict, Transforming Justice, Securing the Peace'. This article explores three key issues raised in the global study, which are designed as a significant course correction to the UN's peace and conflict work.

In 2019, a year before the 20th anniversary of the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted two more resolutions-UNSCR 2467 and 2493-under the women, peace and security (WPS) thematic agenda. The agenda is considered revolutionary for bringing women's rights and security into the UNSC; however, the WPS agenda reflects the precariousness of the alliance between feminist activists and the Council. During the drafting of UNSCR 2467 and 2493, the US, Russia and China, all permanent members of the UNSC, objected to the inclusion of certain language in the final texts. The US pushed for the deletion of language on sexual and reproductive health from UNSCR 2467, while Russia and China challenged the definition of women human rights defenders in UNSCR 2493. These objections epitomise and further the global pushback on women's rights and security, which foregrounds concerns that the UNSC and feminist activists make for 'strange bedfellows'. In this article, we consider if the UNSC has been used as a forum to damage women's rights and security.

2010

The inclusion of the gender dimension in the international agenda for peace and security has been a long process which now has a history of over four decades. The United Nations, the European Union and other international bodies have gradually been introducing different laws, resolutions and directives which form an extensive regulatory framework in relation to women, conflict and peacebuilding.