Description
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, on women, peace, and security (WPS), was adopted on the 31st October 2000. It acknowledged the role of women in peacemaking, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, humanitarian response, and post-conflict reconstruction. It included four pillars: participation, protection, prevention, and inclusion in relief and recovery efforts. While the adoption of the resolution has seen some success, yet, twenty-five years on, its implementation still faces challenges. Not only has its use been haphazard, but the proportion of women involved in peacekeeping processes remains low. Moreover, prevention, support, and justice for victims of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) are rare and often exclude heterodox women and other gender minorities from participating in peace processes. It also ignores the idiosyncrasies of local contexts. This paper explores some of the structural, bureaucratic challenges facing its implementation and offers recommendations such as: mandtory gender-sensitive training for all peacekeepers, and an increase in the number of women being deployed as military observers, civilian police officers, and humanitarian personnel, the provision of Gender and Women’s Protection Advisers to envoys, inclusion of gender-disaggregated data in future all peacekeeping mission reports.
