Preventing Conflict: The Origins of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda (Chapter in "Preventing Conflict, Transforming Justice, Securing the Peace: A Global Study on the Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325"
Publisher: UN Women
Author(s): Radhika Coomaraswamy
Date: 2015
Topics: Conflict Prevention, Gender, Governance
Throughout history women peace activists from all over the world have united to try and put an end to war. Their call for a commitment to peace and for disarmament has been consistent and universal even when their own countries were at war. The same was true in 2000. When women took their demands for a women, peace and security (WPS) agenda to the Security Council in 2000, they were demanding that prevention of war be a key aspect of the Security Council’s agenda along with a recognition of the capacities of half the world’s population to resolve the complex challenges of global peace and security.
They were seeking a fundamental shift in how these goals are secured. Their objective was, at its core, the prevention of armed conflict and a roll back of the escalating levels of militarization making homes, communities and nations less rather than more secure. These concerns and fears continue to resonate today. During consultations for this Study, women the world over expressed their conviction that the United Nations had lost sight of its own vision to beat ‘swords into plowshares.’1 Over the years, international actors have increasingly shifted their attention and resources toward militarized approaches to security, resolution of disputes and the hurried and ad hoc protection of civilians in conflict. This is not the ‘prevention’ envisioned 15 years ago.
It is no coincidence that 2015 saw three major peace and security reviews underway simultaneously in the UN system. The institutions and mechanisms established to make and keep peace are stretched to capacity, functioning on a multilateral logic of a bygone era and an over-reliance on mitigation of crises once they erupt, rather than sustainable, long-term approaches to peace and security. The recent High-Level Independent Panel on United Nations Peace Operations found that prevention efforts remain “the poor relative of better resourced peace operations deployed during and after armed conflict.”2 A militarized view of conflict prevention sells resolution 1325 short of its transformative vision for a more equal, just and peaceful world, and neglects a proven tool available to achieve this.