The United Nations Security Council, responsible for global peace and security, has adopted ten resolutions on Women, Peace and Security. We monitor and advocate for the implementation of the WPS Agenda in all country, regional and thematic matters on the Council, with a goal to advance transformative action.
We do this by providing recommendations to Council members and UN officials, facilitating briefings by WILPF members and partners to the Council on thematic and country issues and engaging with the Informal Experts Group on WPS. WILPF advocates at the Council both independently and through our coalition, the NGO Working Group on WPS, of which we are a founding and active member.
The WPS Agenda also holds significant implications for all other United Nations entities, encompassing commitments to gender equality, women’s rights, disarmament, peace and security and sustainable development. Because of this, we engage with actors across the UN system to shape and influence their implementation of WPS in line with WILPF’s vision and values.
We also amplify the voices of grassroots women peace activists, including from conflict-affected regions. This includes hosting delegations of WILPF members and partners to New York City to engage in advocacy with the UN system and connect with other key WPS stakeholders.
Our advocacy and monitoring efforts concerning the WPS Agenda in collaboration with key entities across the UN system extend to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW); Generation Equality, where we are a Catalytic Member of the Compact on WPS and Humanitarian Action; the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and other development processes; and the UN Secretariat.
Despite their vital contributions to driving change and advancing commitments to the WPS Agenda, the crucial work of women’s rights activists, peacebuilders and civil society organisations often goes unnoticed, underfunded and undervalued. In our work on the WPS Agenda, we centre civil society action and advocate for civil society to be supported and protected.
We advocate for the UN and member states to more systematically include civil society across all peace and security discussions.In this work, we consider participation to be a human right. We define participation as being full, equal, meaningful, effective and safe, where women are able to influence both the structure and outcomes of negotiations. We challenge tokenistic and superficial approaches to inclusion that fail to be grounded in human rights.
We also advocate for the UN, member states and the donor community to provide comprehensive political, technical and financial assistance to empower the active participation of civil society in peace processes and reconstruction efforts.
In conflict and post-conflict contexts, women’s organisations, advocates and women’s human rights defenders often face specific security threats designed to inhibit their work and their free expression. Protecting women’s groups and women’s human rights defenders is paramount to ensuring their meaningful participation in conflict resolution and political processes. We therefore do extensive advocacy with the UN system to ensure threats are taken seriously and perpetrators are held accountable.
The WPS Agenda calls attention to the gendered impacts of armed conflict on women and girls. However, gendered violations and women’s experiences during armed conflicts are inextricably linked with and rooted in preceding patriarchal structures, systems and norms. Therefore, WILPF uses feminist analysis to challenge the notion that women’s experiences of peace and security in peacetime and wartime are not deeply interconnected in a world marked by gender-based violence and rising militarisation.
Many actors interpret and implement the WPS Agenda in ways that strengthen military power and militarised institutions, such as by increasing militarisation and the availability of weapons in order to enhance security. We believe these approaches are counterproductive because militarisation itself is a leading cause of armed conflict and violence while the proliferation and accumulation of weapons directly contributes to gender-based violence in households and communities.
In our advocacy and recommendations on sexual violence in conflict and prevention, we emphasise how militarisation and the proliferation of weapons are drivers of violence. We call for military spending to be reduced, and emphasise the need for further connecting work on WPS, disarmament and demilitarisation.
Our WPS work is informed by intersectional gender analysis. We call for an intersectional implementation of WPS that seeks to dismantle all structures of oppression, including on the basis of race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, age and other factors. This is critical for all people to live in true peace.
Over 100 countries around the world have adopted National Action Plans (NAPs) on Women, Peace and Security, which are intended to guide efforts to implement the WPS Agenda within their unique country context. But many of these NAPs have no budget, limited coordination and oversight mechanisms and fail to target the primary issues identified by feminist peacebuilders. Through the wealth of expertise in our global membership base, we are working to turn these commitments into tangible change that makes a difference in women’s lives.
For many years, WILPF has maintained an online resource providing analysis of each country’s National Action Plan. This contains comprehensive coverage of past and current NAPs in order to facilitate accountability for member state commitments. On the website, people can also read some examples of WILPF Sections’ work on national-level WPS initiatives. In some countries, WILPF members have been among the primary actors who advocated for, drafted, implemented and/or monitored and evaluated NAPs.
In addition to this monitoring work, we bring together WILPF members and partners to discuss their experiences working on NAPs and other WPS initiatives at the regional, national and local levels. Through research, knowledge exchange, resourcing and analysis, WILPF is contributing to policymaking that aims to address the root causes of violence.
We engage in conflict prevention efforts and advocate for peaceful resolutions to conflicts, with a focus on addressing gender-specific impacts and ensuring women’s voices are heard.
We work to promote gender equality and empower women in conflict-affected regions, ensuring their full, equal, meaningful, effective and safe participation in peace processes and decision-making.
We work to ensure that gender and human rights are incorporated across peace and security discussions and processes.
We advocate for the holistic implementation of the WPS Agenda, grounded in human rights, nonviolence and antimilitarist feminism.
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.
More about Hanne Peterson coming soon.
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Diana María Salcedo López holds a degree in Political Science from the National University of Colombia, a Master’s degree in Women’s, Gender and Citizenship Studies from the University of Barcelona, and a Master’s degree in Human Rights, the Rule of Law and Democratisation from the University of Alcalá de Henares in Madrid. A feminist and anti-militarist, she has a solid track record spanning two decades working as a consultant for non-governmental organisations, international cooperation agencies, the United Nations and state bodies in Colombia.
Her work has focused on safeguarding women’s rights, incorporating a gender and intersectional perspective into public policy, strengthening the social fabric amongst women who are victims of the armed conflict, and consolidating local peace-building processes.
She currently serves as director of the Colombian section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (LIMPAL Colombia), where she leads initiatives on issues such as feminist approaches to the energy transition, the protection of women human rights defenders, the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, and advocacy in international forums. She also represents the organisation on the Special Women’s Body for Monitoring the Peace Agreement and on the Intersectoral Commission on Security Guarantees for Women Human Rights Defenders and Women Leaders in Colombia.
Desirée Sterner currently serves as President of the Swedish Section (IKFF), a role she has held since 2023. Her engagement with WILPF began at the grassroots level through the local branch in Lund/Malmö during her university years. Desirée brings a deep substantive understanding of WILPF’s core issues, rooted in academic training in gender, peace and security (LSE), war studies (Swedish Defence University), peace and conflict studies, and human rights (Lund University), combined with several years of practical advocacy, movement-building and organisational leadership work in Swedish civil society.
Sylvie Ndongmo, is a Cameroonian peacebuilder, feminist leader, civil society actor and Women, Peace and Security expert with over 30 years of experience in peacebuilding, mediation, and gender equality advocacy. She serves as International President of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and is the founder of WILPF Cameroon and Executive Secretary of Women Peace Initiatives. She coordinates the Women and Youth Early Warning Monitoring Room in Cameroon and was recently appointed to the African Union Advisory Panel on Democratic Elections and Governance in Africa. Her work focuses on advancing women’s leadership, conflict prevention, and sustainable peace through feminist, inclusive, and intergenerational approaches.
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.
