The Global Pushback on Women's Rights: The State of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda

Source: International Peace Institute, 2019

Author(s): Sarah Taylor and Gretchen Baldwin

Topics: Assessment, Conflict Prevention, Dispute Resolution/Mediation, Gender, Governance, Peace and Security Operations

By many indicators, the global status of commitments to gender equality, including of efforts to prevent and end conflict, is under threat. Despite recognition that the level of gender equality can be a litmus test of a community’s capacity to eschew violent responses to threats and that women’s leadership and women’s status are inextricably linked to conflict prevention and resolution, mediators and negotiators in conflict resolution processes are rarely women, and women’s rights are insufficiently reflected in agreements. In the multilateral system, a growing number of states are questioning established standards of women’s rights in venues from the Commission on the Status of Women to the UN Security Council. As xenophobic populism grows, threatening the multilateral system’s ability to grapple with crises, the gender analysis needed to understand this trend is overwhelmingly missing. For two decades, national and international policy frameworks have been built to embed a gender perspective in peace and security efforts. What we know as the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda has been the subject of policy development internationally, regionally, and nationally. As of September 2019, eighty-two UN member states have adopted national actions plans on WPS, and a number of WPS envoys and ambassadors have been appointed at the national, regional, and international levels. New regional networks of women mediators are being established, with the goal of increasing women’s meaningful engagement in peace processes. The UN Security Council has, to date, adopted nine dedicated resolutions on WPS and established an Informal Expert Group to receive timely information on and analysis of WPS in specific conflicts.