What does gender equality mean for peace, justice, and security? At the turn of the 21st century, feminist advocates persuaded the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution that drew attention to this question at the highest levels of international policy deliberations.
Today the Women, Peace and Security agenda is a complex field, relevant to every conceivable dimension of war and peace. This groundbreaking book engages vexed and vexing questions about the future of the agenda, from the legacies of coloniality to the prospects of international law, and from the implications of the global arms trade to the impact of climate change. It balances analysis of emerging trends with specially commissioned reflections from those at the forefront of policy and practice.
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, associated with the United Nations Security Council resolutions of a similar name, is widely recognized as the most significant and wide-reaching global framework for advancing gender equality in military affairs, conflict resolution and security governance. The first of these resolutions, UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, bound the international community to ensure, among other provisions, greater participation of women in decision making in national, regional and international institutions; their further
Key messages Women, Peace and Security policy to date has not sufficiently incorporated the lessons of intersectionality. Gender-just peace processes require the Women, Peace and Security agenda and peacebuilding to complicate gender in policymaking. Intersectionality, as derived from Black feminist theory, goes beyond including those marginalised by ‘difference’. Incorporating intersectionality prevents a single-axis approach, which is greatly needed in responses to conflict-affected communities. Introduction I find I am constantly being
war meant nothing but insecurity and grief for women, especially in a context where rape was systematically used as a weapon of war and an instrument of ethnic cleansing ( Skjelsbaek, 2001 ). Skjelsbaek’s research brings the lesson that there is no single way to understand the relationship between women and the very social construction of gender, peace, security and justice. This chapter represents an attempt to systematize the main issues related to the articulation of women, peace, security and justice, which currently has as its maximum concrete expression the
Key messages The article examines to what extent Women, Peace and Security practices in Myanmar contribute to feminist peace. Feminist peace is theorised as political conditions that allow women’s experiences and priorities to inform peacebuilding. Findings show that Women, Peace and Security support is least likely to benefit the women most affected by war. This is compounded by illiberal government efforts to exclude critical voices. Introduction ‘I think a lot of international [Women, Peace and Security] support has not modelled feminist
monitoring the implementation of UNSCR 1325? RML: EVE Organization was for the first time introduced to UNSCR 1325 in 2008 by a partner organization from Sweden, Operation 1325. This was two years after the formation of EVE Organization and eight years after the landmark resolution was passed by the Security Council. That was a ‘wow’ moment for us. As an organization, we worked with displaced women in Khartoum on leadership, disseminating information about the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and supporting women to repatriate to South Sudan, as well as
Key messages WPS NAPs that discuss CT/CVE tend to represent women as inherently peaceful and men as inherently violent/‘risky’. WPS NAPs that discuss CT/CVE predominantly position women in relation to local/informal politics and in need of capacity building to be able to participate in broader/formal CT/CVE activities. Introduction In October 2015, the United Nations Security Council (hereafter, Council) adopted Resolution 2242, under the thematic agenda item of ‘women and peace and security’. Formally a part of the suite of resolutions that form
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is rooted in international law – notably international humanitarian law, human rights and international criminal law. UNSCR 1325 specifically calls upon states to respect fully the obligations within these laws, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Subsequent WPS resolutions emphasize the need for commitment to women’s human rights and implementation of human rights law, without again referencing CEDAW until Resolution 2467 in April 2019 (UNSCR 2467, para. 18
Technology UK Ltd were accused of frequenting the brothels where women were imprisoned and sexually enslaved (Schulz and Yeung, 2008 , p 5). Although a former DynCorp employee acted as a whistleblower and revealed the abuses, the accused contractors enjoyed immunity as they served a UN mission; they were sent back to their countries of origin, where they were not prosecuted (Sperling, 2015 , p 171). The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda does not include any provisions related to the escalating threat that private contractors hired to provide military and security
From NAPping to sNAPping How does it feel to snap at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, at a meeting taking stock of the progress of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) National Action Planning (NAP)? This auto-ethnographic reflection (Martini and Jauhola 2014 ) on the affective sites of WPS NAPping is a result of a dialogue and writing process between two feminist international relations scholars who share a career trajectory of having been aid intervention project managers, gender experts and advocates for UNSCR 1325 during the two decades of its
