Women, Peace and Security
In October 2000, the Security Council did something it had never done before. It linked gender equality directly to international peace and security. Resolution 1325 was born.
Twenty-five years later, the agenda it created faces its hardest test yet.
UN Women
What WPS Actually Says
UNSCR 1325 rests on four pillars: participation, protection, prevention, and relief and recovery. It urges women’s inclusion in peace talks. It demands protection from violence during conflict. It calls for gender training across peacekeeping missions.
Nine more resolutions followed between 2008 and 2019, addressing sexual violence, accountability, and monitoring. Together, the ten resolutions form WPS’s full legal architecture.
How It Started
Women’s organizations pushed for this resolution for years before it passed. The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action laid early groundwork. Namibia, then a Security Council member, championed the cause. Ambassador Angie Brooks-Randolph worked alongside women’s groups to build support.
All 15 Security Council members adopted Resolution 1325 unanimously. It was the first resolution in UN history to name women’s role in peace and security explicitly.
25 Years On: The Numbers Tell a Hard Story
WPS hit its 25th anniversary in 2025, and the data is sobering. Only 1 in 10 peace talks in 2024 included women negotiators. Conflict-related sexual violence rose 87% between 2022 and 2024. Four times more women and girls were killed in conflict during 2023–2024 than in 2021–2022.
Meanwhile, the money is moving the wrong way. Global military spending hit $2.7 trillion in 2024, a 9.5% jump from the year before. Less than 0.4% of funding to conflict-affected countries reaches women’s organizations directly.
115 countries now have National Action Plans under WPS. But adoption isn’t the same as funding. Many plans sit on paper, underfunded and unmonitored.
Why It Became Popular, Then Stalled
WPS had real momentum for two decades. Sweden’s 2014 “feminist foreign policy” made the agenda a diplomatic signature. The slogan “More Women, More Peace” captured a growing research consensus: peace deals last longer when women help negotiate them.
That momentum has cooled. Sweden dropped its feminist foreign policy label in 2022. Major donors have redirected budgets toward defense and away from peacebuilding. The UN Secretary-General’s 2025 report describes the result plainly: chronic under-investment and weak implementation, even as the evidence for WPS keeps growing stronger.
What Comes Next
Three things will define WPS’s next chapter. Funding needs to reverse course, fast — the gap between commitments and dollars has only widened. Accountability needs sharper teeth, since national plans without monitoring rarely survive budget cuts. New conflicts — Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza — are testing whether the agenda holds up under real pressure, not just in peacetime planning documents.
RYB’s Place in This Picture
RYB tracks WPS because it sits at the center of our Women, Culture and Peace framework. The agenda’s core claim — that women’s participation makes peace more durable — is the same argument RYB makes about culture more broadly.
Looking Forward
Watch the National Action Plans moving through 2026 and 2027. Watch whether funding commitments made at WPS’s 25th anniversary translate into actual disbursements. And watch the active conflicts where WPS principles are being tested in real time, not just reaffirmed in New York.
Sources
- UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) — un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/
- What is the Women, Peace and Security agenda?, UN Women — unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/what-is-the-women-peace-and-security-agenda
- Women, peace, and security, United Nations — un.org/en/peace-and-security/page/women-peace-and-security
- Global Study on UN Security Council Resolution 1325 — wps.unwomen.org
- Women, Peace, and Security agenda, UN Women — unwomen.org/en/articles/in-focus/women-peace-and-security-debate