On International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament - May 24, we celebrate the historic and current efforts of women for peacebuilding and disarmament. The message is clear: we refuse violence as a solution to the world’s challenges. We are working for a just and peaceful world, one that meets human needs, not military ones!
Women and girls experience armed violence within and across contexts. This is especially so in post-conflict settings, which tend to be long-lasting and often characterized by residual fighting or high levels of lethal violence. Yet, there is a continuity of violence across contexts: conflict-era dynamics surrounding VAWG influence the magnitude and types of VAWG in post-conflict environments. Disarmament programmes rarely translate into the total removal of all firearms from the community.
During and following conflict, men, women, boys, girls and gender minorities are often direct victims of small arms violence including domestic violence, sexual violence, forced recruitment into armed groups, injury, and death. Indirect consequences of armed violence include taking care of injured family members and an inability to access work, education, and health care. Yet armed conflict can also create spaces to transcend traditional gender roles.
Security sector reform is explicitly mentioned in many of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security (UNSCRs on WPS): UNSCRs 1820, 1888, 2106, 2122. It is also implicitly mandated in the UNSCRs on WPS’ calls for reform within peacekeeping, armed forces, police services and the judicial system, as well as increased collaboration with civil society.
The Women, Peace and Security agenda will only be fully realized when states and other key stakeholders prioritize its radical premise of preventing conflict and violence rather than just cleaning up the pieces afterward. This requires an integrated approach that dismantles the current economy of violence and war and instead invests in an economy of gender justice and peace.
This submission makes the normative case for understanding Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325) and related resolutions on women, peace and security (WPS) as an integrated part of an established and growing framework of international and regional law that upholds the rights of women and girls in relation to conflict (the legal framework). This legal framework is grounded in international and regional human rights law, international humanitarian law (IHL) international criminal law and international refugee law.
