28 October – 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Join WILPF for an Interactive Side Event during WPS Week
Date: Tuesday, 28 October
Time: 10:30AM – 12:00PM ET
Location: Church Center (777 UN Plaza, New York NY), 8th Floor – in-person only
Registration link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/SHe6ikM35W
Co-hosts: WILPF International Secretariat, LIMPAL Colombia, WILPF Spain, and Centro de Investigación para la Paz (CEIPAZ)
Description
October 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the UN Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1325—the cornerstone of the global Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Built on decades of feminist activism from across the world—particularly from grassroots organizations in the Global South—UNSCR1 325 remains a landmark achievement in recognizing women’s vital roles in peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and post-conflict reconstruction. Yet one of the enduring challenges over the past quarter century has been the persistent gap between commitment and implementation, often exacerbated by a lack of meaningful accountability.
Many of the feminists who have advocated for the creation and implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda since the adoption of UNSCR 1325 in 2000 have come from pacifist, anti-militarist, and peace movements. They have emphasized the centrality of conflict prevention, feminist alternatives to securitized conflict resolution models, and nonviolent approaches to building and maintaining peace.
Yet despite this feminist vision, government-led WPS agenda implementation has often had an outsized emphasis on including women in militarized structures, and many policies continue to position women primarily as victims, rather than as agents of change. The WPS agenda has often been sidelined in favor of political expediency, reinforcing dominant models of peacemaking rather than rethinking them. And In 2024, world military spending surpassed 2.7 trillion USD, a number which is only projected to further increase in the coming years at the expense of development and human rights. Ideologically, this trend is re-positioning military solutions as a primary and legitimate answer to rising and intersecting global challenges, in lieu of diplomacy and peace.
Despite this, women-led peace movements continue to lead the way in advancing creative, transformative feminist alternatives. At a time when militarized security and realist conceptions of international relations are regaining steam, feminist antimilitarist voices are more essential than ever. Across regions, women are working together to resist violence and build transnational solidarity.
This interactive discussion will engage with different current global trends on WPS and international peace and security and will aim to identify what can be done for meaningful progress on the agenda. From the perspective of WILPF’s decades of work on WPS, it will discuss themes including implementation of the WPS agenda and the triple nexus of humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding; National Action Plans in Latin America; and global perspectives on the impact of military spending on gender justice and feminist peace. The event will draw from case studies on feminist peace work in contexts including Colombia, El Salvador, Mali, Ethiopia, and Lebanon.
Panelists include:
Moderator: Genevieve Riccoboni, WILPF Women, Peace and Security Programme Coordinator
Matt Mahmoudi (he/him) is a lecturer, researcher, and organizer. He’s been leading the “Ban the Scan” campaign, Amnesty International’s research and advocacy efforts on banning facial recognition technologies and exposing their uses against racialized communities, from New York City to the occupied Palestinian territories.
Berit Aasen is a sociologist by training and has worked at the OsloMet Metropolitan University on Oslo. She has 40 years of experience in research and consultancy in development studies, including women, peace, and security, and in later years in asylum and refugee studies. Berit Aasen joined WILPF Norway five years ago. She is an alternate member of the National Board of WILPF Norway, and representing WILPF Norway in the UN Association of Norway, the Norwegian 1325 network and the Norwegian Women’s Lobby. Berit Aasen has been active in the WILPF European Liaison group and is committed to strengthening WILPF sections and membership both in Europe and relations across continents.
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Prior to being elected Vice-President, Melissa Torres was the WILPF US International Board Member from 2015 to 2018. Melissa joined WILPF in 2011 when she was selected as a Delegate to the Commission on the Status of Women as part of the WILPF US’ Practicum in Advocacy Programme at the United Nations, which she later led. She holds a PhD in Social Work and is a professor and Global Health Scholar at Baylor College of Medicine and research lead at BCM Anti-Human Trafficking Program. Of Mexican descent and a native of the US/Mexico border, Melissa is mostly concerned with the protection of displaced Latinxs in the Americas. Her work includes training, research, and service provision with the American Red Cross, the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Centre, and refugee resettlement programs in the U.S. Some of her goals as Vice-President are to highlight intersectionality and increase diversity by fostering inclusive spaces for mentorship and leadership. She also contributes to WILPF’s emerging work on the topic of displacement and migration.
Jamila Afghani is the President of WILPF Afghanistan which she started in 2015. She is also an active member and founder of several organisations including the Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organisation (NECDO). Elected in 2018 as South Asia Regional Representative to WILPF’s International Board, WILPF benefits from Jamila’s work experience in education, migration, gender, including gender-based violence and democratic governance in post-conflict and transitional countries.
Sylvie Jacqueline NDONGMO is a human rights and peace leader with over 27 years experience including ten within WILPF. She has a multi-disciplinary background with a track record of multiple socio-economic development projects implemented to improve policies, practices and peace-oriented actions. Sylvie is the founder of WILPF Cameroon and was the Section’s president until 2022. She co-coordinated the African Working Group before her election as Africa Representative to WILPF’s International Board in 2018. A teacher by profession and an African Union Trainer in peace support operations, Sylvie has extensive experience advocating for the political and social rights of women in Africa and worldwide.
In response to the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and its targeted attacks on civil society members, WILPF Afghanistan issued several statements calling on the international community to stand in solidarity with Afghan people and ensure that their rights be upheld, including access to aid. The Section also published 100 Untold Stories of War and Peace, a compilation of true stories that highlight the effects of war and militarisation on the region.
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WILPF uses feminist analysis to argue that militarisation is a counter-productive and ill-conceived response to establishing security in the world. The more society becomes militarised, the more violence and injustice are likely to grow locally and worldwide.
Sixteen states are believed to have supplied weapons to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2020 with the US supplying 74 % of weapons, followed by Russia. Much of this equipment was left behind by the US military and is being used to inflate Taliban’s arsenal. WILPF is calling for better oversight on arms movement, for compensating affected Afghan people and for an end to all militarised systems.
Mobilising men and boys around feminist peace has been one way of deconstructing and redefining masculinities. WILPF shares a feminist analysis on the links between militarism, masculinities, peace and security. We explore opportunities for strengthening activists’ action to build equal partnerships among women and men for gender equality.
WILPF has been working on challenging the prevailing notion of masculinity based on men’s physical and social superiority to, and dominance of, women in Afghanistan. It recognizes that these notions are not representative of all Afghan men, contrary to the publicly prevailing notion.
In WILPF’s view, any process towards establishing peace that has not been partly designed by women remains deficient. Beyond bringing perspectives that encapsulate the views of half of the society and unlike the men only designed processes, women’s true and meaningful participation allows the situation to improve.
In Afghanistan, WILPF has been demanding that women occupy the front seats at the negotiating tables. The experience of the past 20 has shown that women’s presence produces more sustainable solutions when they are empowered and enabled to play a role.
