Current Issues

Financing gender-inclusive peace: Gaps in implementing the WPS Agenda:

For years, UN Women has highlighted the persistent under-investment in gender-inclusive peace in conflict and post-conflict settings and the significant gaps in financing that make the implementation of Women, Peace and Security (WPS) commitments much more difficult. However, there is a dearth of data on the size of this gap, and how exactly the pledges and promises from donor conferences, peace agreements or post-conflict planning frameworks dissipate when it comes to allocating and spending resources on these issues.

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Strengthening women’s participation in peace processes: what roles and responsibilities for states?

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) organized an international seminar on Strengthening Women’s Participation in Peace Processes: What Roles and Responsibilities for States? in Rome, Italy, on 3 to 4 December 2019.

Building on Italy’s goal to strengthen the role of women in peace processes and in all decision-making processes as formalized in its Third National Action Plan on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000); its spearheading of the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network (MWMN); as well as its active facilitation of women’s participation in peace and political processes across the Mediterranean region, the high-level seminar examined the role of Member States in advancing the full and effective participation of women in mediation and peace processes.

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Launch of the Compact on Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action

The Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action (WPS-HA) Compact, a transformative initiative to see results on decades of commitments, was launched on July 2, 2021 at the Generation Equality Forum in Paris. The Compact – the product of a consensus-driven process including Member States, Regional Organizations, UN Entities, Civil Society, the Private Sector, and Academia – is an inter-generational, inclusive movement for action on women, peace and security and gender equality in humanitarian action. 

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Civil Society Consultations for the WPS Focal Points Network

In August 2020, the Women, Peace and Security Network-Canada (WPSN-C) hosted three virtual consultations with women peacebuilders to develop recommendations for the WPS Focal Points Network. Held in Arabic, French, Spanish and English, the consultations brought together 50 feminist voices from around the world, including women’s rights organizations and organizations working on WPS issues in fragile and conflict affected countries, representatives from youth networks and academia, as well as Indigenous voices.

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Race, Justice and New Possibilities: 20 Years of the WPS agenda

As the international community celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, New Directions reflects on its past (and future) and the assumptions inherent within the global normative framework. We argue that the WPS agenda is illustrative of a practice of global politics that can be rooted in exploitative patterns of interaction between the Global North and so-called Global South.

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