The Women, Peace and Security agenda at 25: time to move beyond words

This October will mark the 25th anniversary of the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. At the time, the WPS agenda – anchored in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 – was groundbreaking in the way it recognised the need to increase the participation of women and incorporate gender perspectives in conflict prevention, peace building and security.

But a quarter century on, the WPS agenda is falling badly short at a time when, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres has noted, the world is experiencing more armed conflicts than at any moment since World War II. The problem is not a lack of professed commitment: more than 100 countries have adopted national action plans to implement Resolution 1325. International organisations including the European Union, NATO, the African Union and the OSCE have embedded a commitment to WPS in their institutional programming. The problem is that, on this significant anniversary, there is relatively little to show for it. Moreover, the gap between global commitments to the WPS agenda and realities on the ground in conflict-affected and fragile states has become impossible to ignore.

The most glaring example is the ongoing war in Gaza where more than 50,000 people have been killed and more than 110,000 injured. According to UN Women, this is a war where women and children bear the highest burden, comprising the majority of casualties. It has noted that every single day from 18 to 25 March  – after Israel broke the ceasefire – an average of 21 women and over 40 children were killed.

“This is not merely a conflict; it is a war on women – on their dignity, their bodies, their very survival,” Maryse Guimond, UN Women Special Representative in Palestine said in March. “Women have been stripped of their fundamental rights, forced to exist in a reality where loss is their only constant.”

Yet, prominent voices – including in Europe – otherwise vocal on WPS-related issues have been painfully silent on this aspect of the war in Gaza. These double standards have caused rifts within a number of WPS-related organisations and raise further questions on whether the WPS agenda is fit for purpose. They have also fed the perception among women activists in the Middle East, Africa and Asia that advocates of WPS in Europe are selective when it comes to walking the walk on WPS. Ironically, this benefits conservatives who reject not only Resolution 1325 but gender equality more generally as a “Western imposition” undermining traditional values.

It would be a shame if the WPS agenda were to falter at such a crucial moment. Not only is the world roiled by conflict in places like Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, but the rise of authoritarian and populist governments across the globe presents a significant threat to the ideas underpinning WPS. The Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts pose yet another challenge as WPS-related NGOs across the world struggle with dramatically shrunken budgets.

Growing up in Ireland, I had an early lesson in the crucial role women play in peace building. I was a teenager when the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) was founded. A cross-community movement and political party, the NIWC became an important player in the peace process that brought an end to three decades of conflict. Two women from the NIWC were among the 20 negotiators responsible for drawing up the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The NIWC’s efforts resulted in a peace deal that specifically referenced victims’ rights and provided for the reintegration of political prisoners among other elements. As a fledgling journalist in post-Good Friday Agreement Belfast, I saw how these provisions were key to promoting social cohesion after the conflict, and ultimately helped sustain the hard-won peace up to today.

In my years of reporting on other conflicts and post-conflict societies, including Syria, Afghanistan, Congo, the Balkans and Libya, I have observed how peace processes can be shaped by the presence – or absence – of women. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, between 1992 and 2019, women constituted, on average, 13% of negotiators, 6% of mediators and 6% of signatories in major peace processes around the world. Despite decades of research showing that women’s participation in both conflict prevention and resolution can improve outcomes at different stages of a conflict, women are still missing from most peace processes.

Libya is a more recent example of how women can help drive more inclusive peace building. Libyan women comprised 17 (or 23%) of the 75 delegates in the UN-facilitated Libyan Political Dialogue Forum launched in 2020 in a bid to end six years of civil conflict. It was another woman – Stephanie Williams, then acting head of the UN Support Mission in Libya or UNSMIL – who helped ensure women were at the table. They pushed for greater female representation in a future transitional government. Women went on to hold several ministerial portfolios including foreign affairs and justice in the interim authority known as the Government of National Unity.

Closer to home, more women are serving in key decision-making roles when it comes to security, defence and foreign policy in Europe. As of March 2025, the EU had five female defence ministers and six female foreign ministers. Kaja Kallas is the third woman to serve as EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. NATO members have a higher-than-average share of women in defence posts, with eight female defence ministers. Yet more can – and should – be done. Underrepresentation of women in institutions and governments promoting WPS is one of the reasons why commitments to WPS can appear hollow. It is worth noting that the UN, which birthed the WPS agenda in the first place, has yet to have a woman lead as Secretary-General.

The war in Ukraine and the subsequent shift in the European conversation towards a more hard-nosed approach to the continent’s security and defence has changed the parameters of the WPS conversation in Europe. There is more focus on the role of women in defence and more attention to the needs of women serving in militaries. On a visit to Kyiv with a Friends of Europe delegation last October, I was struck by the symbolism demonstrated by a prominent statue of Saint Olga, the patron saint of the Ukrainian capital, which had been draped in a bulletproof vest. I later learned women activists campaigning for better equipment for female soldiers – including bulletproof vests tailored for women – had chosen Saint Olga to make their point.

In a fast-changing world, it’s time for a different conversation on Women, Peace and Security. It’s no longer enough to pay lip service to the WPS agenda. The UN, the EU and others in the international community must do more to practice what they preach on women’s inclusion. Moreover, the paradoxes in its implementation must be addressed if the principles behind it are to put down deeper roots on a national and international level. How can growing perceptions of double standards be overcome? How can we ensure that the WPS agenda remains as focused on peace – as in conflict resolution and peace building – as it does security? Where does the equilibrium between both lie –  whether in Ukraine or Gaza – and how do we maintain it?

Recalling that women comprise half the global population and bear the brunt of conflict is even more urgent in these times. If the WPS agenda is to survive, let alone flourish, we need to move beyond rhetoric and push for tangible outcomes that include more women at the policy table and a reinvented idea of the role of women in peace and security.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.