Can abortion rights be integrated into the Women, Peace and Security agenda?

ABSTRACT

Reproductive rights are an under-theorised aspect of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, most clearly typified in United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 1325 and successive resolutions. Yet reproductive rights are central to women’s security, health and human rights. Although they feature in the 2015 Global Study on 1325, there is less reference to reproductive rights, and to abortion specifically, in the suite of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions themselves, nor in the National Action Plans (NAPs, policy documents created by individual countries to outline their implementation plans for 1325). Through content analysis of all resolutions and NAPs produced to date, this article asks where abortion is in the WPS agenda. It argues that the growing centrality of the WPS agenda to women’s rights in transitioning societies means that a lack of focus on abortion will marginalize the topic and stifle the development of liberal legalization.

KEYWORDS:

• Abortion
• UNSCR 1325
• WPS agenda
• reproductive rights
• CEDAW

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments, and to the London School of Economics Centre for Women, Peace and Security who organized the workshop “Women, Peace and Security Post-2015: Concepts, criticisms and challenges” for which this article originated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Thomson is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Bath. Her research, focusing on gender and post-conflict societies, has been published in International Political Science Review, Politics and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

Claire Pierson is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Liverpool. Her research focuses on women, peace and security and reproductive justice, in particular abortion rights, and has been published in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Parliamentary Affairs and Health and Human Rights.

ORCID

Claire Pierson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0961-7157

Notes

1 http://www.peacewomen.org/member-states. Accessed November 21, 2017.

2 https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/facts-abortion-africa, https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/abortion-latin-america-and-caribbean. Accessed November 20, 2017.

3 http://www.genderhealth.org/the_issues/us_foreign_policy/helms/. Accessed November 20, 2017.

4 Global abortion laws are illustrated in this map created by the Center for Reproductive Rights, last accessed January 16, 2017: http://worldabortionlaws.com/.

5 https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N00/720/18/PDF/N0072018.pdf?OpenElement, 2 and 3. Accessed November 21, 2017.

6 http://unscr.com/files/2008/01820.pdf, 2. Accessed November 21, 2017.

7 http://unscr.com/files/2008/01820.pdf, 3.

8 http://www.peacewomen.org/assets/file/BasicWPSDocs/scr1888.pdf, 4. Accessed November 21, 2017.

9 http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/1960, accessed November 21, 2017.

10 http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2106, accessed November 21, 2017.

11 http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2106, 5.

12 http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2122, 6. Accessed November 21, 2017.

13 http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2122, 2.

14 http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2242, 6. Accessed November 21, 2017.

15 All references to this speech are taken for a sound file, available online, which is referenced in the bibliography.

16 This focus is reiterated by countries such as the UK’s attention to sexual violence in their foreign and development policy, largely through the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict initiative.