This book examines how the Security Council has approached issues of gender equality since 2000. Written by academics, activists and practitioners the book challenges the reader to consider how women's participation, gender equality, sexual violence and the prevalence of economic disadvantages might be addressed in post-conflict communities.

At the time of its adoption in October 2000, United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) was hailed as a turning point for women involved in conflicts, peacemaking, peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction. Resolution 1325 required all efforts aimed at resolving conflicts and building peace to be inclusive, gender-sensitive and transformative for women. In recent years, National Action Plans (NAPs) on WPS have become one of the most commonly used tools by states to channel, assess and monitor the implementation of resolution 1325 and other UN WPS resolutions. This book presents an edited version of the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on ‘National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security’, held in Dublin, Ireland, in May 2016. The workshop brought together representatives from various states, as well as academics, and members of civil society and international organizations, to discuss their experiences with NAPs and to critically reflect on the role of NAPs in supporting the implementation by states of the WPS framework. The aim of this book is to disseminate the key arguments, findings, and recommendations which emerged from the discussions held at the ARW. It includes a summary report which sets out key arguments and recommendations and offers a number of key papers from the ARW, with the intention of contributing to academic and policy debates concerning gender and armed conflict and, more particularly, the WPS framework.

This book examines how the Security Council has approached issues of gender equality since 2000. Written by academics, activists and practitioners the book challenges the reader to consider how women's participation, gender equality, sexual violence and the prevalence of economic disadvantages might be addressed in post-conflict communities.

Contemporary feminist advocacy in human rights, international criminal law, and peace and security is gripped by the issue of sexual violence in conflict. But it hasn't always been this way. Analyzing feminist international legal and political work over the past three decades, Karen Engle argues that it was not inevitable that sexual violence in conflict would become such a prominent issue. Engle reveals that as feminists from around the world began to pay an enormous amount of attention to sexual violence in conflict, they often did so at the cost of attention to other issues, including the anti-militarism of the women's peace movement; critiques of economic maldistribution, imperialism, and cultural essentialism by feminists from the global South; and the sex-positive positions of many feminists involved in debates about sex work and pornography. The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict offers a detailed examination of how these feminist commitments were not merely deprioritized, but undermined, by efforts to address the issue of sexual violence in conflict. Engle's analysis reinvigorates vital debates about feminist goals and priorities, and spurs readers to question much of today's common sense about the causes, effects, and proper responses to sexual violence in conflict.

This volume examines the specific gender roles in peace and security. The authors analyse the implementation process of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 in various countries and discuss systemic challenges concerning the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Through in-depth case studies, the authors shed new light on topics such as the gender-related mechanisms of peace processes, gender training practices for police personnel, and the importance of violence prevention. The volume studies the role of women in peace and security as well as questions of gender mainstreaming by adopting various theoretical concepts, including feminist theories, concepts of masculinity, organizational and security studies. It also highlights regional and transnational approaches for the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, namely the perspectives of the European Union, NATO, the UN bureaucracy and the civil society. It presents best cases and political advice for tackling the problem of gender inequality in peace and security.

Gender oppression has been a feature of war and conflict throughout human history, yet until fairly recently, little attention was devoted to addressing the consequences of violence and discrimination experienced by women in post-conflict states. Thankfully, that is changing. Today, in a variety of post-conflict settings--the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Northern Ireland --international advocates for women's rights have focused bringing issues of sexual violence, discrimination and exclusion into peace-making processes.In On the Frontlines, Fionnuala Ni Aolain, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Naomi Cahn consider such policies in a range of cases and assess the extent to which they have had success in improving women's lives. They argue that there has been too little success, and that this is in part a product of a focus on schematic policies like straightforward political incorporation rather than a broader and deeper attempt to alter the cultures and societies that are at the root of much of the violence and exclusions experienced by women. They contend that this broader approach would not just benefit women, however. Gender mainstreaming and increased gender equality has a direct correlation with state stability and functions to preclude further conflict. If we are to have any success in stabilizing failing states, gender needs to move to fore of our efforts. With this in mind, they examine the efforts of transnational organizations, states and civil society in multiple jurisdictions to place gender at the forefront of all post-conflict processes. They offer concrete analysis and practical solutions to ensuring gender centrality in all aspects of peace making and peace enforcement.

This book investigates to what extent UNSCR 1325/WPS agenda has functioned in practice, to advance women’s equality and empowerment in the peacekeeping context and beyond. The book examines whether widespread implementation of UNSCR 1325 and the broader WPS agenda via gender mainstreaming in UN operations has translated into increased gender equality in peacekeeping operations, the broader UN institutional context and, by extension, the host countries in which missions are situated, via norm dissemination. The book investigates this via a review of the implementation of UNSCR1325 in the operations chosen as research sites over three snapshot years. The book undertakes a comparative analysis that scrutinizes if, how and under what conditions gender mainstreaming has succeeded as a strategy to advance gender equality by analyzing the factors/conditions that have led to successful gender mainstreaming across the operational context, and those that have impeded this outcome. The book concludes that, despite rhetorical commitments to women’s equality in peacekeeping since the passage of UNSCR 1325, progress on the ground has remained minimal, and that the operational environment continues to be discriminatory against women. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, women do not participate as equal partners in peacekeeping and continue to have less access to resources and decision-making power, overall. The book interrogates that by exploring the spaces available within law, policy and practice of the UN to pursue the human rights agenda of gender equality and considers whether UNSCR 1325 has enlarged those spaces. It also points to the irony of internal UN structures failing to adequately adapt to their own gender mainstreaming mandates, while those same structures have delivered some gender equality mandates successes externally, at local levels. This book will be of interest to students of peacekeeping, gender studies, and International Relations.