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Mapping Women, Peace and Security in the UN Security Council: 2018 Contents

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Mapping Women, Peace and Security in the UN Security Council: 2018 Contents Mapping Women, Peace and Security in the UN Security Council: 2018 Contents Introduction.................................................................................................................................................... 1 Overall Trends ................................................................................................................................................. 3 Ad-hoc and inconsistent implementation ............................................................................................................................................... 4 Improvement in the inclusion of information, but weak analysis and recommendations .......................................................................... 8 Instrumentalization of women’s experiences and marginalization of their concerns ................................................................................ 10 Women viewed as a homogeneous group ............................................................................................................................................ 11 Superficial attention to women’s meaningful participation ................................................................................................................... 13 Addressing the root causes of violence remains overlooked .................................................................................................................. 22 More attention to sexual violence, but gaps in addressing broader violations of women’s rights ............................................................. 25 Country-Specific and Regional Situations .......................................................................................................... 28 Peace Operations ............................................................................................................................................................................... 29 Sanctions ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 34 Crisis Situations .................................................................................................................................................................................. 37 Civil Society and Human Rights Defenders ........................................................................................................ 40 Civil society engagement with the Security Council ............................................................................................................................... 41 Consultations with women’s civil society by peace operations ............................................................................................................... 44 Shrinking civil society space ................................................................................................................................................................ 44 Threats to human rights defenders, including women human rights defenders ..................................................................................... 45 Missed Opportunities ..................................................................................................................................... 47 Women and girls with disabilities ........................................................................................................................................................ 47 Sexual orientation and gender identity ................................................................................................................................................ 48 Climate change and exploitation of natural resources as drivers of conflict ............................................................................................ 48 Humanitarian action ........................................................................................................................................................................... 49 Sexual and reproductive health and rights ........................................................................................................................................... 50 Recommendations ......................................................................................................................................... 52 Methodology ................................................................................................................................................ 56 Process and scope ............................................................................................................................................................................... 56 Assessing engagement with civil society .............................................................................................................................................. 57 Annex: UN peace operations: summary of WPS-related mandate provisions ........................................................ 58 References .................................................................................................................................................... 65 Introduction The overall aim of the policy brief is to assess the implementation of the women, peace, and security (WPS) policy framework in the work of the Security Council (SC). The analysis and recommendations build on our well-established policy guidance project, the Monthly Action Points (MAP) on Women, Peace and Security, as well as broader advocacy throughout 2018. A year before the 20th anniversary of the adoption of United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), progress on women’s rights has wavered both outside and within the UN. Despite a strong normative framework, repeated commitments by the UN system and Member States, and the wealth of evidence on the importance of ensuring gender equality and women’s participation in peace and security efforts, implementation of the agenda continues to be uneven and selective, and normative progress a challenge. Our analysis of the Security Council’s performance over 2018 shows that its approach to WPS remains superficial, ad-hoc and inconsistent; subject to the individual efforts of Security Council members rather than being systematically integrated into Council action; and reflects a lack of willingness to tackle the harder and more complex issues under the WPS agenda. Its approach is defined by a lack of accountability for failure to fully implement all provisions of the ten resolutions that constitute the WPS agenda. Conflicts around the world disproportionately impact the health, safety, and the rights of women, yet women continue to be excluded from decision-making processes that determine their future. Although the Security Council paid increased attention to women’s participation in peace processes in 2018, women still faced challenges at every level, and at every stage, of peace and reconciliation processes and dialogues currently taking place. As has been widely noted, the Yemen peace talks held in Sweden last December included one woman out of the government’s 12 delegates, while the Houthi delegation included none. The resulting Stockholm Agreement, which does not contain any specific provisions on gender or women, fails to adequately address the deeply gendered impact of the conflict on Yemeni women and girls. Although there were attempts to include Yemeni women in other ways, such as the role of various advisory groups at different stages of the process, exclusion from the formal process led to a lack of meaningful participation and limited influence over the outcome.1 Similarly, peace talks between the United States and the Taliban sidelined not only the Afghan government, but also Afghan women, whose rights are at particular risk. There are many other examples of women’s exclusion from peace processes or where women’s rights have been viewed as dispensable or secondary to getting warring parties to the table. Given the overwhelming evidence that gender equality is critical for conflict prevention, such exclusion actively undermines peace. This means that there needs to be more focused attention on the gendered challenges and barriers to participation, rather than mere rhetorical acknowledgment of the importance of women’s participation. It also reflects the need for more attention to the full scope of women’s rights. Our analysis shows that while attention to the important issue of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) continues to receive dedicated and annually increasing attention by the Security Council - in 2018, 90% of the references to women’s rights in reports of peace operations were focused on SGBV, accounting for 45% of all references to WPS - women’s rights more broadly have failed to receive an equal amount of attention. Recognition of the interrelated and mutually reinforcing nature of all pillars of the agenda - for instance, that protection of women from gender- based violence is inseparable from their meaningful participation, bodily autonomy and rights, and that ensuring accountability for violations of fundamental human rights is necessary in order to prevent relapse into conflict - remains critical for the advancement of the agenda as a whole. The pushback against women’s participation is not restricted to exclusion from formal negotiations over peace agreements. The Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders reported worsening
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