By Howard Mollett, Senior Policy Advisor at CARE International UK, and Sara Saleh, Senior Advocacy and Communications Coordinator at CARE International in Jordan
On 27th October, diplomats at the UN Headquarters in New York hold their annual Open Debate on progress made on UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security (WPS). This year the theme of women’s participation gets priority, and there’s talk of a new UN resolution being adopted to catalyse greater effort on this.
At CARE, we’ve worked for years to support both women’s rights activists pressing for participation, but also wider programmes to build a more enabling environment – through community-based projects on education, health, livelihoods and so on – within which women can build their confidence, networks and resources to participate meaningfully on their own terms.
Early negotiations suggested that the Open Debate narrow down on participation in security forces. So we joined others calling for a more comprehensive approach. When we talk about women’s participation in conflict, CARE highlights the critical importance of women’s participation in humanitarian, resilience and recovery work. Why?
Debates on participation under UNSCR 1325 often highlight higher-level political, peace and security negotiations. If women aren’t at the table for these, then decisions can get embedded in ceasefires and political settlements with negative implications for women’s rights over the longer-term.
However, we argue that participation at this level needs to be complemented by participation at other levels.
Just take a look at how the Syrian women’s movement has evolved since the initial uprising and deterioration into violent conflict. An older generation of Syrian women activists have continued to play important and prominent roles; many of them experienced in advocacy on civil and political rights. But alongside this, numerous women who were not previously active became so. Furthermore, a wider number of women became active in supporting their families and communities cope during the conflict; running education activities, aid distribution, protection monitoring and so on. Talking to one of these activists recently, she shared: “We are in part redefining what feminist activism is. It is not just one thing. For us younger activists, it is not necessarily less empowering or relevant to be engaged in activities like health or education that benefit women and the wider community. As we do this, we’re building the space for women to participate in different ways.”
All this said, other Syrian women activists share concerns about how international funding and partnerships tend to constrain what is deemed as legitimate activities within more traditional humanitarian ‘boxes’.
As one of them told us: “Dignity and agency are at the heart of what we are doing. Aid agencies shouldn’t ask us what the gaps in our needs are, but rather what are our skills and capacities and how can we support you on these? We don’t want to be put in the position of saying ‘we need’, we want to be able to say ‘we do.”
Experience in Jordan also illustrates how women’s participation can also be enabled, or obstructed, by the priorities made by national governments and their international partners. Manal al Taleb works with the Arab Women's Organisation in Jordan, a national NGO that supports an extensive network of grassroots civil society groups working on women’s rights and gender-based violence issues. She’s in New York right now to share their priorities with diplomats involved in the UN Security Council debate. She told us: “Without freedoms that enable meaningful civil society participation, how can UNSCR 1325 be implemented? NGOs need to be able to work and operate independently without limitations or restrictions on their work, and for laws to enable open civic participation. We are hopeful that the Jordanian government’s national action plan, which is now ready, will get adopted and contribute to enabling this. Another opportunity is the Jordanian government’s stated commitment to deliver gender equality under Agenda 2030, Sustainable Development Goal Five and its ‘targets.’ So now we need to see the Government agree a clear action plan to take this forward. The Open Debate is one high-level moment to bring some political attention to these issues, but we need to see follow-up over the rest of the year to ensure progress.”
So if we want to see progress on participation in peace and security, then we need to see wider spaces for participation by women and civil society opened-up. The Open Debate comes at a timely moment for this. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has just published a major report outlining recommendations on UN system reforms to overcome siloes across different areas of work – humanitarian, development, peace, security and political. Guterres attends his first UN OCHA global humanitarian policy forum this December and could press for action on this by humanitarian agencies there. Ana Maria Menéndez has been appointed his Senior Policy Advisor leading on both peace and security, and gender issues. Next April, the General Assembly convenes a two-day ministerial to review progress on the UN Sustaining Peace agenda. We hope today’s Open Debate can build momentum for women’s participation across these.
What should Member States highlight at the Open Debate and in any new Security Council Resolution on participation?
- Firstly, call on the UN Sec General’s flagship initiatives on ‘Sustaining Peace’ and ‘Working as One’ in the UN to factor in how women’s participation in humanitarian and resilience strategies can build towards participation in peace, security and political processes.
- Secondly, commit to specific steps through their bilateral policies & funding to promote women’s participation across humanitarian and resilience work again building towards their participation in peace and security processes. In doing so, specific attention should be given to overcoming the obstacles, threats, intimidation and resistance that women face when they participate. Examples of which could include:
1. Ensure that humanitarian and resilience funding include more specific expectations and indicators on agencies to ensure meaningful participation by women. This needs to go beyond tick-box gender mainstreaming and GBV risk mitigation, as important as those are as a starting-point.
2. Increase funding to women’s rights organisations; especially focusing on multi-year, flexible support to grassroots networks that bridge the rural-urban and generational divides that often occur, and which enables them to build-up core capacities on risk assessment, self-care and protection.
3. Commit to regular consultation and engagement with local women activists on their bilateral policies and funding in each conflict context, not just tokenistic events pegged to International Women’s Day. As Manal al Taleb highlights activating the Jordan National Action Plan on WPS will be one important step. But this needs backing from Jordan’s international partners – both informally and formally through follow-up to the Jordan Compact adopted at the London Conference on Syria in 2016.
As authors of this blog, we’ve both witnessed the obstacles faced by women who try to participate in public life even from the relative comfort zone of an international NGO. In the very first high-level meeting that I (Sara) attended in a previous job, I was told how surprising it was that "someone like me, a young female from a different background" could be qualified to represent my organisation. As the global momentum around #MeToo has highlighted, this kind of casual sexism and racism is all too prevalent even in peaceful contexts. For the women that CARE supports in war-affected countries, the challenges are immeasurably greater. We hope this year’s Open Debate on women, peace and security will result in more specific commitments and actions by the world’s most powerful governments to change that picture.