Explaining the global diffusion of the Women, Peace and Security agenda

Abstract

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) is the most significant international normative framework addressing the gender-specific impacts of conflict on women and girls including protection against sexual and gender-based violence, promoting women’s participation in peace and security and supporting their roles as peace builders in the prevention of conflict. In the decade since 2004 when the UN Secretary-General first called for Women, Peace and Security National Action Plans to implement the 1325 agenda in national-level peace and security institutions and policies, 55 countries have adopted them. This article analyses the global patterns of Women, Peace and Security policy diffusion, especially the effects of conflict, democracy and women in power on the propensity for states to implement Women, Peace and Security National Action Plans. Examining patterns of diffusion enables an assessment of how far the Women, Peace and Security agenda has spread and what the prospects are for the further diffusion of Women, Peace and Security.

Transforming CSDP? Feminist Triangles and Gender Regimes

“…The relationship between formal institutional actors, for example the EEAS gender advisor, and civil society organizations in the area of security is complex and is historically defined by asymmetrical power structures. Yet, in the area of Women, Peace and Security, civil society actors have played an important role in holding states to account for their implementation of the agenda (True, , p. 312). This emerging global gender norm represents an additional way in which gender could be integrated into EU external relations, mapping onto the feminist constellations and providing an additional tool for civil society advocacy given the EU's stated commitment to WPS.…”

Gender and New Wars

“…1325 as the starting point for the discourse around WPS because for the first time in the history of the UNSC conflictrelated gender-based violence was recognised as a security concern -as a threat to international peace and security. Adoption of the resolution was a major achievement for women's rights activists and organisations from around the world who had been pushing for such an acknowledgment for a long time (see Cockburn 2007;True 2016; and Anderlini 2019 for a detailed historical background of Res. 1325).…”

Women, Peace and Security after Europe's ‘refugee crisis’

“…52 The Nordic states also 'see themselves as the leaders of the WPS agenda'. 53 Finland for instance asserts its status as 'a pioneer and expert of gender equality issues'. 54 European states articulate this special expertise as enabling them to lead and advise other countries or international agencies whom they support in the implementation of the WPS agenda and in developing their own action plans.…”