scholarly journals WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY ON THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ADOPTION OF THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1325

On 31 October 2000, the United Nations (UN) Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. This resolution was followed by others (1820, 1888, 1889, 1960, 2106, 2122 and 2422), which stress the disproportionate impact of wars and conflicts on women and children, and highlight the fact that, historically speaking, women have always been on the margins of peace processes and stabilisation efforts. They underline the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, in peace negotiations, peace building and humanitarian and post-conflict activities. Resolution 1325 calls upon member states to integrate gender perspective into UN plans and programmes, but mainly to protect women and girls in armed conflicts. The Resolution was also adopted by the Republic of Slovenia and the Slovenian Armed Forces has included it into pre-deployment training of Slovenian contingents as required reading. After 1991, when Slovenia became independent, two journals on women in the military have been published. The first one was published in 1995, five years prior to the UN Resolution. It was edited by Zorica Bukinac and published by the Ministry of Defence under the title of Ženske v oboroženih silah (Women in the military). The second journal was produced in 2002. It was edited by Ljubica Jelušič and Mojca Pešec and published by a joint effort of the Defence Research Centre of the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, the Ministry of Defence and the SAF General Staff. The former journal provides the first account of the experiences of female SAF members, and the views of Slovenian and foreign authors on the role of women in the military. The latter uses traditions, culture and gender-role patterns to present the limiting factors of the integration of women in the military, and provides an analysis of the share of women and the duties they perform in the SAF. Greater integration of women in the military still raises much attention and a number of questions. The experiences vary importantly across countries. A number of them are positive, but there are also the negative ones. 2015 marked 15 years since the adoption of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, 20 years since the publishing of the first journal, and 13 years since the publishing of the other. With this thematic issue, the Editorial Board wished to learn about the novelties regarding the Resolution in Slovenia and abroad, and publish them. We invited Lieutenant Colonel Suzana Tkavc, PhD, Gender Advisor at SAF General Staff, appointed coordinator of the MoD for Gender Equality and national representative in the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives to participate. The issue in front of us is the result of our joint efforts. Pablo Castillo Díaz, who works in the United Nations Organisation, wrote the article Military women in peacekeeping missions and the politics of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. He shares with us his expert view and experiences regarding the Resolution on Women, Peace and Security. By focusing on international operations and missions, he draws attention to the advantages and disadvantages of the Resolution. Garry McKeon wrote an article titled Better citizens – humanitarian and gender training, EUTM Somalia. The author has been member of the Irish Defence Forces for over 30 years and has also been deployed in a mission in Somalia. His experiences regarding training in the implementation of Resolution 1325 are very interesting, since they concern a cultural setting, which is substantially different from ours. In her article Some of the best practices in gender perspective and the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in the 25 years of Slovenian armed forces, Suzana Tkavc provides an insight into gender perspective in the 25 years of Slovenia’s independence with a special emphasis on the armed forces and their activities in international operations and missions. How well did Slovenia do compared to female and male representatives of other armed forces? Jovanka Šaranović, Brankica Potkonjak-Lukić and Tatjana Višacki are the authors of the article Achievements and perspectives of the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Armed Forces. Serbia invested important effort into the implementation of Resolution 1325, since this subject matter is included in the national action plan, which includes a number of different state authorities and other non-governmental institutions. In their article, the authors determine how successful they were in this mission. In the article titled An analysis and critique of the UNSCR 1325 – what are recommendations for future opportunities? Jane Derbyshire acquaints us with the perspective and experiences of the New Zealand Defence Force regarding the resolution. Are they very different from the experiences of other countries? The author believes that time has come for changes. Unlike the majority of the authors, who are members of armed forces or are directly related to them, Nadja Furlan Štante wrote her article Women in military system: between violence and vulnerability from a different perspective. She specialises in religion and women’s studies and as such bases her writing on biological, historical, religious and other aspects, also taking into consideration the findings, practice and works of the authors who write about defence and the military. We believe that with this themed issue we have passed on new experiences and added some views to the mosaic of gender perspective, encouraged you to read or maybe even write.

Author(s):  
Chantal de Jonge Oudraat

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 recognized the critical roles women can and must play in advancing international peace and security. The WPS agenda, however, has focused largely on the protection of women in conflict, in particular from sexual and gender-based violence. In doing so, the substantive participation of women in peace and security remains significantly underexplored. This chapter suggests that the lack of progress on the WPS agenda is due to the perception that it is a women’s agenda, as opposed to one that seeks to advance gender equality and security. Moreover, this chapter reveals the challenges associated with the disparate nature of the WPS and security communities. In response, this chapter suggests that for the WPS agenda to advance, the community needs to emphasize that this is not only a women’s agenda. Specifically, the dialogue needs to be reframed to acknowledge that a focus on women is necessary, but not sufficient.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alena F. Douhan

The United Nations organization was planned to be established as a single universal system of collective security. Major efforts were supposed to be taken by the UN Security Council. Regional organizations were introduced into the system as a subordinate subsidiary means – elements of the system. Over the course of the time it has, however, appeared that the UN Security Council was not able to act in the way prescribed by the UN Charter in suppressing newly emerged threats and challenges in the sphere of security. In the contrary, the role of regional organizations has increased substantially. They do the majority of tasks in the sphere of maintenance of international peace and security, often without authorization or even informing the UN Security Council, although the legality of some of these actions may be dubious. As a result, the Council itself transfers the accent in relations between the UN and regional organizations from subsidiarity to complementarity or even partnership. It is thus necessary to re-check the meaning of the concepts of complementarity and subsidiarity as well as the UN Charter provisions in the changed circumstances and to specify principles of the new system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (29) ◽  
pp. 142-163
Author(s):  
Magdalena Kempa

The article presents a psychological approach to sex and gender in uniformed public services, and is based on the author’s own research. The research examines the role of women in the military and the popular perception of women participating in the armed forces, as well as possible differences in this regard between the military and the civilian environment. The paper also presents the results of research on the perception of personal security by uniformed public service members when on duty. In the course of the analysis of the factors significant for the investigated phenomenon, i.e. for the psychological gender, a number of specific research problems has been identified. The identified problems are dependent in nature and relate to the significance of relations between variables. The analysis of the research problem, conducted on the basis of subject literature, indicates that psychological gender is one of the significant factors that determine perceived personal security. This factor is chosen as the primary independent variable in this paper. Psychological gender is understood here as spontaneous readiness to apply the dimension of gender in relation to oneself and the external world.


2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda L. Moore

This Armed Forces & Society issue is on women in the contemporary armed forces in the United States and other nations to include the South African National Defense Force and the Australian Defense Force. This issue contains a collection of nine papers, each reviewing a current aspect of women serving in the military since the post–Vietnam War Era. There are also two review essays of Megan Mackenzie’s book, Beyond the Band of Brothers: The US Military and the Myth That Women Can’t Fight. An overview of changing laws and the expanding role of women in the military is provided in this introduction, as well as summaries of the nine articles, and comments on the two book reviews mentioned above.


Author(s):  
Aisling Swaine

This chapter considers scholarly and practical attempts to advance notions of gender security. Human rights and inclusivity are central to the pursuit of comprehensive gender security. With this in mind, this chapter argues that going forward, the isolation of the WPS agenda within the confines of the UN Security Council and its mandate requires unshackling. Furthermore, it concludes that comprehensive approaches to gendered security need to be advanced across all initiatives relating to peace and security. Pursuing gender security is a complex endeavor that requires understanding security, war, and gender as concepts in and of themselves in disaggregated ways, and at the same time illuminating the impossibility of disaggregating one from the other. To that end, this chapter concludes that war and insecurity cannot be understood without understanding their gendered nature, while the dynamics of contemporary gender relations are inseparable from the insidious influence of norms of militarism and militarized masculinities, that overtly and covertly infuse our societies.


1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Johnson

IntroductionPrior to the Suez crisis of 1956, the United Nations found itself restricted in its military response to threats to international peace and security. The authors of the UN Charter had originally called for member states to make armed forces available to the UN Security Council under a set of special agreements to be concluded in the post-war period. These would furnish the UN with the military means to take collective action against aggression which was to be the essential precondition of the success of the UN. The body responsible for the conclusion of these special agreements under Article 43 of the UN charter was the Military Staff Committee (MSC), which comprised the Chiefs of Staff of the five permanent members of the Security Council. However, the divisions of the developing Cold War permeated the MSC from 1946 and it became clear that there were major differences amongst the permanent members on the military role that the UN should play in the post-war international system. As a result, the Article 43 special agreements were stillborn and the UN was left without a formal system to provide it with its own armed forces.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 118-122
Author(s):  
Ieva Miluna

The Uniting for Peace resolution together with the UN Charter prescribes a certain role for the General Assembly with regard to international peace and security. Larry Johnson addresses that role, but he does not consider a second question: how does the Uniting for Peace resolution affect the UN Security Council? The normative role of the Council is influenced not only by the Charter, but also by general international law. In this comment, I explore the normative role of the Council in fulfilling the Charter’s purpose to maintain international peace and security. I argue that the text of the Charter and the prior practice of both the Assembly and the Council help to determine the proper division of these organs’ respective tasks within the Charter system. I conclude that the Council alone exercises the constant control needed to enforce measures of collective security effectively, and that the Assembly is limited to recommending the consequences for states when threats or breaches of the peace occur.


2019 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Miroslav ŠKOLNÍK

Logistics management is implemented in activities such as planning, organisation, implementation, control and assistance in all functional logistics areas. The Military Doctrine of the Slovak Republic establishes three levels of war - strategic, operational and tactical, which are applied in war and non-military operations. However, in today‘s international environment, it is not possible to determine with certainty at what level the organisational structure operates. All levels are interconnected. The Ministry of Defence and the General Staff of the Slovak Armed Forces focus on the strategic logistics management. The logistics office resolves operational and some strategic logistics issues. Logistics departments of ground and air forces deal with operational logistics management, influencing the tasks imposed on the commander in the operational plan for the use of Slovak armed forces, including the creation of procedures, doctrines and training documents. At a tactical level, the logistics of departments and units are organically integrated into the structures of their headquarters with their subordinate logistics units. The structure of logistics management in the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic (AF SR) and the role of its individual elements at the strategic, operational and tactical level is examined in this paper. It concludes by showing possible ways of logistics management and goals for the future.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-14
Author(s):  
Nevena Atanasova-Krasteva

Abstract The paper focuses on the policies for gender equality which can and should be understood as a long-term investment, not as a situational solution or a short-term cost, especially in military environment. On the basis of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 - “Women, peace and security”, the National plan for implementation of the Resolution 1325 in the MoD in Bulgaria has been analyzed. New policies or initiatives concerning the implementation of gender in the Bulgarian Armed Forces are included with the actual information about female active duty military personnel and the perspectives to overcome the prejudices and stereotypes in people’s minds.


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