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This year in October, the United Nations will mark the 20th anniversary of Security Council Resolution 1325, a landmark resolution on women, peace and security which acknowledged the impact of conflict on women and girls and recognised the importance of adopting a gender perspective in building international peace and security. In the last two decades, Resolution 1325 has been followed by a further nine resolutions, that together make up the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. These resolutions have different aims but, taken together, the Agenda aims to promote women’s meaningful participation in peace and security governance at all levels, and to protect women from sexual and gender-based violence and other conflict-related harms.
However, 20 years on from Resolution 1325, many of the tasks it set out are still yet to be achieved. Women are still marginalised from peace negotiations and political processes, women peacebuilders and human rights defenders face an increasing number of gender-based attacks, and sexual exploitation and abuse continues to mar UN peacekeeping efforts.
Speaking at the Security Council in October 2019, Secretary-General António Guterres remarked that ‘change is coming at a pace that is too slow for the women and girls whose lives depend on it, and for the effectiveness of our efforts to maintain international peace and security’. At this meeting, the Security Council issued Resolution 2493 to call for investigation into the ongoing issues in implementing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, and to look for future directions for tackling new peace and security challenges. This was the second Women, Peace and Security resolution issued in 2019, following the adoption of Resolution 2467 on conflict-related sexual violence in April, to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Office of the Special Representative on Conflict Related Sexual Violence.
Resolution 2467 aims to promote a ‘survivor-centered approach’ in responding to sexual violence in conflict in all UN peacebuilding and peacekeeping work. It also intended to strengthen sexual violence prevention mechanisms and increase accountability. However, the introduction of the resolution was accompanied by disagreement over some of its provisions. During the course of the negotiations, China, Russia and the US, three of the five permanent members of the Security Council, expressed opposition to the resolution’s recognition of LGBTQ+ communities’ vulnerability to conflict-related sexual violence and the inclusion of provisions that would establish a formal working group of the Security Council on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). These references had to be scrapped from the resolution by the German Presidency of the Security Council in order to see it pass. Ultimately, it passed with abstentions from Russia and China, but avoided the political setback of a veto.
This political wrangling over the language of the resolution demonstrates some of the setbacks that have prevented the UN from fulfilling the promise of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF) highlights two key issues which are evidenced by the diplomatic disagreement over Resolution 2467. Firstly, the defeat of a more principled resolution in the Security Council would have incurred reputational losses for its supporters and would have represented a step back for the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, which until now has enjoyed resounding support among Security Council members. While civil society organisations like WILPF seemed to be against the issuing of further Women, Peace and Security resolutions (seeing additional resolutions as piling on to the already numerous tasks of the existing eight resolutions), the impending 20th anniversary of Resolution 1325 presents an opportune moment for member states to review achievements and contribute to the advancement of the Women Peace and Security Agenda. The introduction of the new resolution was also a high-profile event, and the failure to pass the resolution due to Russia, China and the US’s objections would reflect poorly on Germany as the presiding member of the Security Council.
Secondly, this disagreement over the language of the resolution represents the very different approaches of Security Council members, and within its P5, towards women’s reproductive health rights. Despite copious attention being given to protecting women from sexual violence, the protection of their sexual and reproductive rights in conflict features marginally in the overall Women, Peace and Security Agenda, which the absence of SRHR from Resolution 2467 only amplifies. The reference to SRHR in the draft resolution was replaced in the final text by mentioning the earlier Resolution 2106 (2013), which discusses reproductive rights in the context of ‘health’ (rather than rights) and so fails to demonstrate how the UN would deliver on women’s rights to sexual and reproductive healthcare services in conflict-affected and post-conflict areas and in direct response to experiences of sexual trauma.
Furthermore, the call for member states and UN bodies to ensure humanitarian assistance and funding allows women access to ‘the full range of sexual and reproductive services, including regarding pregnancies resulting from rape, without discrimination’ as presented in Resolution 2122 (2013) has not been echoed in subsequent resolutions, despite Resolution 2467 being focussed on the issue of sexual violence in conflict.
The omission of language on SRHR represents a wider problem in the delivery of sexual and reproductive health services in peace and development. The USA’s Mexico City Policy (also known as the Global Gag Rule) has informed the inclusion or exclusion of SRHR in the work of the UN and in international aid for over three decades. The policy was first imposed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and mandated that US federal funding would not be allocated to any organisation that will ‘perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning’ overseas. It has since been repeatedly repealed by Democratic administrations and reinstated by Republican presidents. One of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders of his presidency was to reinstate the Mexico City Policy in January 2017, as it had been repealed by the Obama administration in 2009. The Trump administration has extended the policy to apply to other forms of US global health assistance beyond family planning, including HIV prevention, maternal and child health, nutrition and anti-malaria programmes. Organisations which agree to the policy are not permitted to use funds from any other source (from outside of the US) to promote abortion as a method of family planning. Given the scale of the US’ contribution to international development funding, Claire Pierson and Jennifer Thomson argue that this decision has ‘huge implications for the funding of reproductive health in development work and for abortion access particularly, in both in crisis situations and beyond’.
SRHR provisions are vital to addressing rising birth and abortion rates in refugee camps and the impacts of sexual violence on women’s reproductive health. Currently, there is a gap between resource availability and need which limits women’s access to essential services, which can contribute to high rates of unsafe abortion and maternal mortality, as well as having major mental health impacts for women experiencing conflict.
Madeleine Rees of WILPF views the lack of inclusion of SRHR in UN resolutions as ultimately the responsibility of its member states. Clearly, policy moves like the Mexico City Policy make it difficult for more progressive ideas about women’s sexual and reproductive health needs and rights to be picked up at the high level of the Security Council and enable action throughout the UN system.
Rees’ solution is for other member states and civil society and non-governmental partners to hold the Trump administration accountable for its ‘retrogressive’ policies that lead to this omission. However, Pierson and Thomson suggest that member states that have liberal domestic abortion provision policies and international development policies, such as the UK and Sweden, will have to lead in pushing for the inclusion of reproductive rights in the future of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.
The future of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda must be used to secure women’s access and rights to sexual and reproductive health services and to secure their rights, in order to meet the goal of protecting women from the gendered impacts of conflict as first set out in Resolution 1325. The exclusion of SRHR provisions and acknowledgements of the impact of conflict on LGBTQ+ persons from Resolution 2467 reveal that the Security Council still has a long way to go to successfully implement its Women, Peace and Security Agenda after 20 years of work.
Author: Jessica Craig
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