Seeds Will Grow

24 years ago this month, the UN Security Council passed UNSCR 1325 – the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Resolution – a resolution championed by women on the grassroots level, in nations heavily impacted by war, to gain more participation “in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction…” (1)

The USA passed their first WPS action plan in 2011…
South Korea in 2014…
Japan in 2015…
China’s Platform for Action in 2015…
110 nations have adopted WPS plans… (2)

And, yet – “Despite wide support for including women in peace negotiations, only 3 in 10 peace processes in 2021 included women as mediators or signatories. In 2021, women’s representation in UN-led peace processes was only 19%. In 2021, only 32% of peace agreements explicitly took into account the needs of women and girls.” (3, 4)

Next week, I’ll be facilitating a peace negotiation simulation based on the UN Security Council’s Women, Peace, and Security agenda implementation in Northeast Asia.

As I prepare for next week’s event, I read a recently published open letter to permanent member states of the United Nations. It expresses the vital importance of the WPS agenda at this time in our world and requests decisive action in 10 areas that make a life and death difference to women around the world. It was signed by 628 civil society organizations from 110 countries on behalf of the women “of Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Western Sahara, Yemen and all other crises on the Security Council’s agenda… looking to you to deliver on 25 years of promises.”

Our world tastes too much of war. Women have had enough.

Sources:
1. Landmark Resolution on Women, Peace, and Security: https://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/#resolution
2. ODI (2024), Women at the forefront: the transformative impact of the UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, webinar
3. AFSC Northeast Asia Peace Games Role Sheets
4. Congressional Research Service. (2023). “Women, Peace, and Security: Global Context and U.S. Policy”. In Focus
5. Working Group on Women Peace and Security, 2024 Open Letter to Permanent Representatives to the United Nations in advance of the annual Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security, October 8, 2024