Advocacy

The PeaceWomen Advocacy Section is a space to share PeaceWomen’s work as an advocate for the implementation of SCR1325. PeaceWomen Project has over time developed this role and has engaged in many advocacy efforts to advance SCR1325, and the subsequent resolutions on women, peace and security. The PeaceWomen Project advocacy efforts include annual advocacy at the Commission on the Status of Women; advocacy and monitoring at the C34 General Assembly Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations; monitoring and reporting on CEDAW sessions; monitoring of the General Assembly General Debates and the associated extraction and index compilation of all language on women and gender in statements made; advocacy in the formation and work of the Peacebuilding Commission; advocacy, monitoring and reporting on the Security Council’s annual Open Debate on women, peace and security including providing information on associated events and making all statements available and compiling a thematic index of these; and advocacy over the last two years towards reforming the UN’s gender equality structures and machinery.

The PeaceWomen Project’s added value in relation to many of these fora is that it draws further attention to the intersection of their agenda and women, peace and security issues. It serves to populate dialogue in the UN with 1325 issues through entry points and processes, which may not traditionally have been seen as relevant. This approach has been valuable in that it has been used as a creative way of overcoming some of the difficulties inherent in dealing with an instrument, which has no real international accountability, monitoring or reporting mechanism. These other fora and processes also offer the opportunity to link international advocacy with that taking place at the national level and to engage in two-pronged synergistic efforts.