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The Women, Peace, and Security Agenda at the United Nations

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Global Insecurity

Abstract

The UN’s ‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) agenda is founded on Security Council Resolution 1325, which was passed by the Council in 2000 after a period of sustained advocacy by women’s civil society organisations. The agenda is conventionally described as being comprised of four ‘pillars’: prevention (of violence); participation (in peace and security governance); protection (of rights and bodies); and relief and recovery (such that women and girls are able to benefit from and engage in a meaningful way in post-conflict reconstruction). The pillars themselves are derived from the foundational resolution and are addressed in more or less detail in the seven subsequent resolutions that together form the policy architecture of the agenda; the relevant resolutions are UNSCR 1820 (2008), UNSCR 1888 (2009), UNSCR 1889 (2009), UNSCR 1960 (2010), UNSCR 2106 (2013), UNSCR 2122 (2013), and UNSCR 2242 (2015). In this chapter, I examine three dimensions of the WPS agenda at the UN. First, I explore the extent to which the WPS resolutions are integrated into the business of the Security Council, by investigating how and in what ways the WPS resolutions and WPS concerns are referenced in other resolutions. Second, I comment briefly on the development of National Action Plans (NAPs) and Regional Action Plans (RAPs) for the implementation of UNSCR 1325, and the institutional support – or lack thereof – that exists for these at the UN level. Finally, I outline what I consider to be some core obstacles that continue to inhibit the progression of the WPS agenda at the UN and how these obstacles might be overcome.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The PeaceWomen program was founded by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 2000 to work specifically on UNSCR 1325 advocacy and later across the Women, Peace and Security agenda more broadly. PeaceWomen run ‘Resolution Watch’, as part of their ‘Security Council Monitor’ project. The data in this chapter is drawn from the PeaceWomen website (http://www.peacewomen.org/security-council/resolution-watch) and is correct at the time of writing (3 December 2015).

  2. 2.

    Distinctions such as ‘developed’ versus ‘developing’, ‘minority’ versus ‘majority’ world, or ‘North’ versus ‘South’ are all problematic, and obscure more differences than they are able to identify similarities. I choose to use ‘minority’ versus ‘majority’ world as it captures the fact that most of the world’s population lives in the territories of Asia, Africa and Latin America, whereas a minority live in the areas of the world that would be typically identified as ‘wealthy’ or ‘economically developed’ (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Japan, and Europe). ‘Minority’ versus ‘majority’ also avoids deploying an external standard of ‘development’ as an identity category.

  3. 3.

    Regional Action Plans have been developed by the following entities: African Union (2009); European Union (2008); International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) (2004); North Atlantic Treaty Organisation/ Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (NATO/EAPC) (2007); Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) (2004); Pacific Region (2012); South African Development Community (SADC) (2009). These RAPs are not all titled ‘Regional Action Plans’ per se, but all reference UNSCR 1325 and seek to implement the core provisions of this resolution (the Plans themselves are available on the PeaceWomen website at http://www.peacewomen.org/naps/list-of-raps).

  4. 4.

    This data is drawn from the Women in National Parliaments project from the Inter-Parliamentary Union and is available online at http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/world.htm.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences, UNSW Australia, Sydney, Australia

    Laura J. Shepherd

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  1. Laura J. Shepherd
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Correspondence to Laura J. Shepherd .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. UNSW , Canberra, Australia

    Anthony Burke

  2. UNSW , Canberra, Australia

    Rita Parker

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Shepherd, L.J. (2017). The Women, Peace, and Security Agenda at the United Nations. In: Burke, A., Parker, R. (eds) Global Insecurity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95145-1_8

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