The Overall Story of Report Watch

The Security Council requests and receives information related to agenda items in several forms, primarily through Secretary-General Reports. As it stands, there is a deficit of information and insights originating from women’s civil society, and therefore a deficit of localised gender perspectives. The role of the Secretary-General’s Reports in directing Security Council dialogue on country-missions thus offers a key opportunity to integrate women’s voices into these dialogues, through the submission of our recommendations.

To date, WILPF’s Report Watch and analyses reveal that around half of the reports on WILPF focused countries, including the DRC, Bosnia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Colombia, Israel/Palestine, issued in 2017 touched on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in one form or another. Specifically, 55% of all Secretary-General’s Reports in 2017 contained  WPS-related references - a slight decrease from previous years. 54% of all reports had sex and age disaggregated data, primarily in the context of civilians targeted for violence and civilian deaths as well as victims of sexual and gender-based violence. For Libya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, data was also increasingly provided in terms of of the sex of candidates, voters, political office holders and the personnel in the mission and military. Like the frequency of WPS references in the reports, the quality has reduced as well. There still is an overall lack of analysis regarding deeper, structural causes, as well as, in the majority of cases, a failure to identify the ways in which women and civil societies are participating  in peace processes and protection efforts. In order for WPS to be implemented in the full scope of Security Council work, reports of the Secretary-General should provide concrete recommendations on ways to improve the implementation of the WPS agenda and strengthen gender analysis across the work of the missions.

WILPF’s analysis continues to draw from engagement with our existing partners and networks, particularly women’s civil society organisations in our focus countries, to develop recommendations for the Secretary-General on reports on regional issues. This further allows us to verify the data presented in the Secretary-General Reports as well as measure the success of our advocacy for women’s participation and sustainable peace in conflict-affected countries.