Amidst an Ambition-Reality Gap: The UN’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda

ABSTRACT

Since 2000, the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda has addressed the causes and consequences of sexual violence towards women in conflict scenarios. After two decades of effort, an ambition-reality gap persists. Uneven commitments from UN member states, ongoing instances of conflict-related sexual violence around the globe and the lack of a critical mass of female participants in peace negotiations, security policy and politics in general, suggest that WPS has had limited effects. Despite its under-achievements, WPS objectives remain relevant, especially considering the amplifying effects that the Covid-19 pandemic and its fallout have had for gender inequality and conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• WPS
• UNSCR 1325
• conflict-related sexual violence
• gender

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editors of the journal, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their extremely helpful and detailed comments and advice during the preparation of this article.

Notes

1 CRSV “refers to rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls, or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict. […] The term also encompasses trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual violence or exploitation, when committed in situations of conflict” (UNSC 2018, 1).

2 Hungary's parliament approved a declaration against the country’s ratification of the Convention, and Bulgaria's Constitutional Court judged it to be unconstitutional. The Polish government has threatened to leave the Convention, claiming that it promotes “gender ideology” and homosexuality (Harper 2021).

3 The ICTY was established by the UN Security Council in 1993 in response to the mass atrocities that were taking place in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. ICTY indictments address crimes committed in the period 1991-2001 against members of different ethnic groups in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The mandate of ICTY lasted till 2017 (ICTY 2022a).

4 The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was established by the UN Security Council in 1995 to prosecute persons in charge of the genocide and other grave violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda and neighbouring states in 1994. Before its official closure in 2015, ICTR indicted 93 individuals (ICTR 2022).

5 A NAP is a document specifying the approach and course of action of a national government in terms of implementation practices, programmes, funding and policy in its country (PeaceWomen of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 2022a).

6 Rather than viewing all women as a homogeneous group, an intersectional approach stresses various gendered experiences and the whole spectrum of intersecting identities (race, religion, age, etc.) (Rodríguez Di Eugenio 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Armenuhi Ananyan

Armenuhi Ananyan is Project Coordinator at Youth for Society Development, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia. Email: [email protected]

Kerry Longhurst

Kerry Longhurst is Jean Monnet Professor at Collegium Civitas, Warsaw, Poland.