WILPF has identified five critical issues affecting peace and security around the world, each with unique impacts for women and other marginalised populations.
These issues are complex, interlinked and are not exhaustive of current and emerging threats to peace. They play out differently in different contexts and therefore have varying implications for local, national and international levels of response.
Patriarchy, inequalities, militarised masculinities and discriminatory power structures prevent inclusive peace and violate women’s rights and participation.
Too often, masculinity is equated with violence and armed response and women are reduced to victims or passive spectators of political and social decision making. In reality, however, violence is gendered in complex ways and violent masculinities shape both institutions and intimate lives. They reduce space for participation and support exclusion and inequality.
Militarised masculinity, and the gendered inequality to which it is bound, is tightly connected to violence both in the home and the wider world. Yet policies continue to incorrectly assume a fair playing field and ignore gendered power relations that perpetuate inequality and violence.
Militarisation continues to be used as a process for normalising armed conflict and armed violence. Militarism is underpinned by the assumption that the use of force or the threat thereof is the most appropriate response to conflicts.
These ideas are fuelled in large part by profitability. The international arms trade is currently valued at $70 billion USD per year. Global military spending totalled over $2.44 trillion USD in 2023, the highest amount ever recorded. The profits from weapons production and sales provide economic incentive to governments, corporations and individuals. International law has also often been subordinated to the profits of war.
Yet despite the devastating human and environmental impacts of violence and conflict, investments continue to flow towards the tools of violence rather than social goods such as social welfare, renewable energy, gender equality, education, health and preventive mechanisms for conflict.
Unequal access to and distribution of social, economic and ecological resources results in injustices for people and communities. In turn, these injustices become both the causes and consequences of violence and conflict, all of which are gendered. The realities of these injustices play out differently in different contexts and are particularly severe for those facing discrimination on intersecting grounds such as gender, race, socioeconomic status and disability.
Economic injustices are multifaceted. Trends show how gender-biased macroeconomic policies, supply-chains, labour markets and political economic norms can negatively impact women and girls. Privatisation and private control over basic services have, in many countries, had a huge impact on affordability of services for women, especially with regard to health, jobs and education.
Policies of international financial institutions, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, multilateral corporations and private finance institutions, often adversely affect marginalised communities and individuals. These policies can facilitate or contribute to increased violence, inequality and injustice and corporations can be complicit in human rights abuses in situations of instability or armed conflict.
Ecological injustices are closely linked with an increasing trend of global instability caused by an unsustainable relationship with the environment. This pattern can be seen in many conflicts where access to natural resources such as oil, water, food and minerals is an underlying cause of conflict.
A feminist political economy lens is required to uncover these and other power and conflict drivers and dynamics, which are often invisible in political and security discourses.
WILPF believes there is a dangerous rise in rhetoric and actions based on fear, hate and lack of solidarity. This is coupled with a shift toward xenophobic and polarising nationalist policies. This has been further compounded by decision makers failing to respond to chronic violent conflicts, both at the global and national level.
In parallel, nonviolent alternatives for mobilising civil action are under threat and their spaces are shrinking. Feminist and peace activism — which challenges the status quo of injustice, militarisation and existing power structures — is often met with opposition and violence from state and non-state actors. There have been increased direct and serious threats to the WILPF community which add difficulties to our mobilisation efforts.
These growing trends of political uncertainty and instability signal a real threat to the legitimacy of existing human rights, rule of law and the normative framework of international peace, security and development that emerged in the aftermath of World War II. These threats are also testing the resilience of institutions and norms that we have taken for granted in supporting peace and equality.
The multilateral system suffers from a lack of accountability, transparency and poor implementation of commitments. As the 2015 Global Study on UNSCR 1325 found, there is a “consistent, striking disparity between policy commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and the financial allocations to achieve them.”
Lack of action and implementation remains the critical challenge across agendas. This multiplies the burdens on women and fosters violent masculinities — but there are opportunities for change. One example is the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which, if effectively implemented, promise to end poverty, promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies, reduce inequality and tackle climate change within the next fifteen years.
To be consistent with human rights obligations and effective in creating sustainable development and long-term peace, WILPF believes the SDGs must be implemented through a feminist peace lens. Empowerment, equality and peaceful, progressive societies cannot be realised while trading weapons, sustaining warlords and waging wars.
Furthermore, the multilateral system is a vital space to shift narratives and thinking on security. The United Nations needs to be reclaimed as the peace organisation it was intended to be. WILPF has opened spaces even within this constrained system.
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.
