Introduction: Security Council Resolution 1325: Assessing the Impact on Women, Peace and Security

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Willett
Author(s):  
Manuel Fröhlich ◽  
Abiodun Williams

The Conclusion returns to the guiding questions introduced in the Introduction, looking at the way in which the book’s chapters answered them. As such, it identifies recurring themes, experiences, structures, motives, and trends over time. By summarizing the result of the chapters’ research into the interaction between the Secretaries-General and the Security Council, some lessons are identified on the changing calculus of appointments, the conditions and relevance of the international context, the impact of different personalities in that interaction, the changes in agenda and composition of the Council as well as different formats of interaction and different challenges to be met in the realm of peace and security, administration, and reform, as well as concepts and norms. Taken together, they also illustrate the potential and limitations of UN executive action.


2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-483
Author(s):  
Jenny Lorentzen

AbstractMore than 20 years after the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, the international community is concerned with taking stock of its implementation in countries undergoing transitions from war to peace. This article contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics involved in implementing the Women, Peace and Security agenda through a focus on the frictional interactions that take place between different actors promoting women's participation in the peace process in Mali. Based on extensive fieldwork in Bamako between 2017 and 2019, it analyses interactions between different international and local actors in the Malian peace process through a discussion of vertical (between international and local actors) and horizontal (between local actors) friction. It finds that the way different actors respond to friction shapes relationships and impacts norm trajectories by triggering feedback loops, which in turn trigger new responses and outcomes.


Author(s):  
Laura J. Shepherd

This chapter outlines the architecture of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda at the United Nations. Building on the explanation of the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 provided earlier in the volume, it explores the meanings of “women,” “peace,” and “security” that are constructed through the WPS policy framework. The chapter traces the continuities and changes to the central concepts in the resolutions and reflects on the implications of these representational practices as they affect the provisions and principles of the WPS agenda in practice. Moreover, the chapter draws out the key provisions of each resolution to explore the tensions that have arisen over time regarding the types of energy and commitment that have become manifest in the architecture supporting WPS implementation. This in turn enables a brief analysis of likely future directions of WPS practice and a comment on the ways in which Security Council dynamics might affect and effect certain possibilities while excluding or proscribing others.


Author(s):  
Swati Parashar

This chapter offers a postcolonial critique of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. Moreover, it problematizes the emphasis on gender equality and women’s empowerment as universal outcomes for the implementation of a gender-just peace. In doing so, it suggests that the normative evolution of the WPS agenda that derives from UN Security Council Resolution 1325 produces a discourse for understanding WPS that perceives of individuals in the Global South as merely recipients of norms. To demonstrate the implications of this claim, the chapter draws from attempts to include the WPS agenda in the development of policies designed to counter violent extremism (CVE). It highlights the failure of these policies to account for the complex histories of political violence and extremist ideologies rooted in colonial encounters. In response, this chapter argues that for the WPS agenda to acquire universal character and meaning, the Global South must be employed as a site of knowledge and investigation.


Author(s):  
sam cook ◽  
Louise Allen

In the decades since the Security Council adopted its first resolution on Women, Peace and Security this thematic policy area has both expanded and deepened. Although there are key institutional and geo-political continuities to be traced here, the contours of the space into which WPS policy now emerges has also shifted profoundly. Emerging out of a conversation between two former NGO policy advocates this article explores some of these continuities and changes. With a combined experience spanning 15 years of the WPS Agenda at the UN’s Headquarters in New York, Louise Allen (NGO Working Group Executive Director 2014-2018) and Sam Cook (WILPF, PeaceWomen Project Director, 2005-2010) reflect on and weave together a range of concerns: the significance and ethical challenges of the Council’s behind-the-scenes politics; the shifting role of NGOs in relation to WPS policy development; the impact of advances in communication technology; and perhaps most cogently for ongoing political efforts, the challenges and rewards of working in feminist coalition and toward a shared feminist future.


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