Women, Peace and Security: Rethinking Policy, Advocacy and Implementation

"Resolution 1325 was one of the crowning achievements of the global women’s movement and one of the most inspired decisions of the United Nations Security Council. The recognition that peace is inextricably linked with gender equality and women’s leadership was a radical step for the highest body tasked with the maintenance of international peace and security."

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, in the Foreword to the Global Study on the Implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325.

In 2000, the UN Security Council made an important commitment to upholding women’s rights in the context of international peace and security with the adoption of resolution 1325. UNSCR 1325 draws attention to the unparalleled importance of women’s participation in peace and security governance. It notes the need to increase the representation of women in peace and security institutions to inform and reshape conflict prevention efforts. The resolution also calls for the rights of women to be protected in conflict and during relief and recovery efforts in conflict-affected settings. With the subsequent adoption of nine further resolutions, ‘Women and Peace and Security’ now represents a significant and well-established thematic agenda for the Council, and its relevance as an area of political practice extends well beyond the Council Chamber at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

In this research, which was funded by the Australian Research Council (DP160100212), we examine the three dimensions of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda:

1) the formation of the agenda at the UN Security Council and its diffusion across the UN system;

2) the implementation of the agenda at the national level, primarily through the development and adoption of National Action Plans (NAPs); and

3) the advocacy of civil society organisations related to the WPS agenda both within countries and transnationally.

This page provides links to the project’s outputs, and also acts as a document repository for the materials we collected and analysed throughout the research. The repository tracks the development of the WPS agenda over two decades at the UN, forming an archive of all resolutions, Presidential Statements, reports of the Secretary-General, and transcripts of Open Debates at the Security Council.

One of the outputs of the project has been the creation of a new interactive website which presents the analysis of the NAPs that have been collected and/or translated so far, in an interactive visual display. All available NAPs can also be downloaded below, along with a report on key findings from analysis of the NAPs.

Feedback and questions about the research are welcome. Please direct queries by email to the project’s Chief Investigator, Professor Laura J. Shepherd (laura.shepherd@sydney.edu.au).

The links to National Action Plans are provide for research purposes. Copyright in these documents remains with the original rights holder, except where otherwise noted.

WPS National Action Plans interactive database