Time to Push for Next Step on Women, Peace and Security: Ensuring Positive Impact for Women in Conflict

A group of women celebrating International Women's Day in Dhaka, Bangladesh March 8, 2021. (Photo by Kazi Salahuddin Razu/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Next year marks 25 years since the adoption of landmark United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS). A persistent question in preparing for this event is how Security Council members that support WPS can make sure their efforts lead to changes on the ground. This is central in an era of pushback against women’s rights and gender equality in many parts of the world.

Since 2015, WPS supporters have focused on the critical task of strengthening the processes and language that enable the implementation of Council resolutions. But the process of translating WPS language into tangible outcomes is far from clear, providing an opportunity for member states to do more than promote that action is possible. They can push for the next step: ensuring that the difficult work of implementing WPS results in concrete and positive impact in the lives of women in conflict-affected areas.

This may be difficult with a Council that is deeply entrenched in geopolitical power struggles. Yet, our research shows that by building on established WPS language and processes, standardized expectations of actions on the ground could be developed through coordination among elected member states in the Council. These standards can be informed by deep conversations with national and grassroots stakeholders and the UN system. A standardized approach to accountability can also hold implementing actors accountable for the delivery of more explicit expected outcomes.

The Foundation of Standardization: Promoting WPS in the Security Council

Since the landmark resolution, a large number of states and civil society organizations have collectively  built WPSinto a substantive and detailed normative policy framework and promote processes that improve implementation. These include Namibia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Ireland, South Africa, Uruguay, Mexico, Kenya, Spain, Indonesia, Norway, and Switzerland, to mention just a very few, along with numerous civil society organizations around the globe. Their vast contributions have increased visibility and understanding of the problems faced by WPS; created and strengthened the normative framework; improved the working methods of the Council; and integrated WPS in regular core processes and decisions to enable implementation (see Table 1).

In fact, if WPS is meant to contribute to actual change on the ground, then the objectives outlined in Table 1 can be thought of as “progressive,” meaning they capture components that are important for actual change, from forming the basis of the normative framework to realizing it in conflict settings. For example, in the early efforts by Bangladesh to recognize International Women’s Day and by Namibia to arrange the first open debate on WPS, they focused on mobilizing joint understanding and support. These efforts laid the foundation for the adoption of the first presidential statement and the first thematic WPS resolution in the Council in 2000. Since then, we have seen the continued use of mobilization of joint understanding and championing of thematic resolutions in the formation of a framework, promoted by a range of states and now incapsulating a broad range of different issues and subthemes.

Notably, while visibility efforts have sometimes been criticized for being mainly symbolic, the work to mobilize support and understanding through arranging events and debates remains a cornerstone of member state WPS efforts to this day. These efforts serve to mobilize political will and form collaborative platforms. Furthermore, symbolic action can push a larger number of states in the Council to take positions on core WPS elements and could be used to limit the instrumentalization and over-politicization of WPS.

Still, actions to raise visibility and knowledge, along with normative efforts to champion the adoption of resolutions, are unlikely to be sufficient for producing change on the ground in conflict areas. For change to happen, visibility, understanding, and norms need to be connected to processes that enable implementation. Security Council members need to promote Council decisions that connect WPS to country- or mission-specific situations explicitly.

This came into focus around the 15th anniversary of UNSC Resolution 1325. States pushing WPS naturally must ensure that their delegation has the capacity to work on WPS. However, member states can also ensure that Council processes continuously improve by seeking to modify its working methods and processes. For instance, Spain promoted the institutionalization of inviting women briefers and women civil society briefers and the creation of the Informal Expert Group on WPS in 2015. These changes in working methods and processes sought to obtain more diverse voices and access high-quality information from conflict areas with the aim to strengthen the quality of decisions by the Council.

In the post-2015 period, states pushed for the fourth objective in Table 1: implementablity. This sought to break WPS out of a silo by integrating more concrete language on WPS in resolutions, presidential statements, and press statements on all items on the Council’s agenda. The emphasis on implementability has led to a growing number of Council resolutions that include WPS language that can be more easily  translated into desired actions on the ground. For instance, Sweden, Mexico, Kenya, Ireland, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Switzerland, the Republic of Korea, and Norway have made integration one of their core efforts.

The next step in this process could be to focus on ensuring the outcomes from these combined efforts by standardizing accountability. This lines up with conventional wisdom drawn from leaders in military organizations: forming ideas and giving direction is just 10 percent of ensuring impact from a decision; the remaining 90 precent is follow-up.

The Next Objective: Promoting WPS Impact through Standardizing Accountability

How can states that advocate for WPS language to be included in resolutions also advocate for the language to have impact on the ground in a specific conflict context? We see movement in this direction in efforts made by elected members of the Council. For example, some countries’ permanent representatives consistently communicate expectations and raise questions on WPS when they meet with country representatives, senior UN leaders, and members of the UN Secretariat who are working to realize a Council decision.

This approach could be expanded by states interested in supporting WPS coordination, with the aim of being even more consistent in communicating expected activities and outcomes from language already integrated in existing resolutions on a specific item. Security Council members with experience in armed conflict and WPS could lead the way in more clearly articulating expectations from WPS language, such as on women’s election participation, influence in negotiations, addressing sexual violence, and accessing humanitarian aid. Moreover, because it is currently difficult for the Council to agree on new WPS language in resolutions, a focus on standardizing accountability would allow for dedicating resources on how already agreed-upon language should be better translated into actions and outcomes.

How Can We Build a Standardized Accountability?

The post-2015 efforts on intergration taught us two things that are central for pushing for impact. First, the quality of language matters for whether or not something is possible to implement. In our study on the use of WPS language from 2015–2021, Patty Chang and I suggest four criteria that define implementable language. Relevance and frequency are about what WPS language is included and to what degree. Clarity and priority are about how possible it is to realize in practice.

Second, earlier efforts by Council member states have shown that we need a more granular understanding of WPS if we are to make it more implementable. As exemplified in Table 2, our study discusses how the earlier agreed-upon WPS language integrated in current Council resolutions revolves around several quite distinct subthemes. These can be considered “categories” that require specific activities and measures to reach the outcomes intended from that specific subtheme. Improving the number of women deployed in peacekeeping operations is a very different process from promoting women’s influence in peace negotiations, for instance. Hence, it is possible for states to take each subtheme as a starting point to agree on a number of expected activities and outcomes that a peace operation, political mission, country team, or state ought to undertake to act in line with the included WPS language.

A concrete example of how this form of accountability pressure from member states in the Council has affected behavior on the ground is that peace operations have started to translate language in resolutions on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) into more consistent forms of actions and results that are similar across all operations; actions that are supported by policy formed at the UN Secretariat. The actions and outcomes are then fed back to Council members in response to pressure to act systematically on this form of violence and abuse.

Similar forms of pressure on activities and outcomes in other subthemes could be formed by Council members that are supportive to WPS. These can then be used in communication with UN and state officials in regular meetings and debates as well as informally.

Conclusion

A joint effort by a large number of states and women’s organizations over soon-to-be 25 years has created a foundation to push for accountability in a more standardized and consistent manner—a step that is critically needed, as underlined by the Head of UN Women. Taking a standardized approach to accountability can contribute to wider organizational learning and more consistent impact over time.

Practical arenas for building common approaches among states supportive to WPS is to add such dimensions more clearly to the Shared Commitments on WPS, discuss them in the Informal Working Group of WPS, and to debate them in the Group of Friends of Women, Peace and Security network context, which also involves the central competence of civil society. Drawing on the deep expertise of UN agencies, such as UN Women, DPO, or DPPA, is also key. Formalizing standardized approaches to impact should furthermore be accompanied by efforts to ensure funding and staffing.

While this article has focused on Security Council-level efforts for standardized accountability for impact, it is critical that these efforts consider how Council decisions can be used to reinforce positive national and local dynamics related to WPS. It is important to keep in mind that the main efforts for gender equality in each state and situation on the Council’s agenda are already owned and driven by national and local stakeholders, such as actors who are present in the conflict-affected areas. United Nations support should contribute to strengthening the work of these actors on women’s rights, influence, and access to resources and security, as it is a national force that is stronger than the international WPS norms by themselves. Moreover, such grounding in national and local debates is central given the growing negative perceptions surrounding WPS as mainly a Security Council construct. With these recommendations, we can further unpack the power dynamics and assumptions holding back progress a quarter of a century after women from conflict areas around the world successfully pushed states in the Council to adopt resolution 1325.

Louise Olsson is Research Director of the Global Norms, Politics and Society Department and leads PRIO’s Gender Research Group.

The author would like to thank all those who have generously shared their knowledge and insights and for all the practical help in conducting the research in New York. She would also like to thank Angela Muvumba Sellström; the members of the Global Observatory team— Jill Stoddard, Phoebe Donnelly, and Albert Trithart; and PRIO’s communication team, Agnete Schjønsby and Georgina Berry, for help and suggestions.

The article is based on field work and projects on elected members in the UNSC, funded by the Swedish Research Council and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as discussed in a presentation from an IPI/Nordic Africa Institute seminar in March 2024.