The First Ever Security Council Resolution on Women/War/Peace: UNSCR1325 - What Does It Take to Implement It?

Those of us with a specialism in gender/post-conflict reconstruction know well how even 10 years down the line one of the greatest UN Security Council resolutions is the one resolution Member States ‘most honour in the breach'. An article by Susan Willett in International Peacekeeping (see detail below) shows just why Member States find it so easy not to bother with UNSCR1325, the first ever Security Council resolution on women/war/peace –

· UNSCR1325 is not a Treaty
· There has been no lead agency within the UN tasked with implementing 1325
· There are no mechanisms whatsoever for ratification, compliance or verification
· There has been a general lack of operational coherence and absolutely no sanctions or penalties for failure to implement UNSCR1325 commitments

· All attempts to mainstream gender within the UN have failed to go to the heart of the institutional inequities and power relations that structure gender relations within the organisation

Successive UN Secretaries-General, including Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon, have made the right noises on UNSCR1325 but like Greek Choruses in classical Athens they have never exercised a grip on Member States – and every Secretary-General has appointed SRSGs at a rate in excess of 9 men to each woman, completely undermining the very resolution the UN is charged with implementing.

Excerpts from Introduction –

Security Council resolution 1325 is not a treaty; consequently there are no mechanisms for ratification, compliance or verification. As such the resolution lacks the muscle that can compel states to comply with its provisions. Consequently, implementation of 1325 has been erratic.

A code of conduct for peacekeeping forces has been introduced, gender advisers have been appointed to counsel UN peacekeeping operations, there has been an increase in the reporting of abuses against women in war, and a number of developed countries have evolved National Action Plans for achieving the goals of 1325. Other than these minor measures, there has been a general lack of operational coherence for implementing the UN's 1325 commitments. Partly, this can be attributed to the fact that there has been no lead agency within the UN tasked with implementing 1325.

The task of gender mainstreaming in peacekeeping has been split between several agencies, including the Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Commission on the Status of Women, the Special Adviser for Gender Issues, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, the Peace Building Commission (PBC), the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP's) Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (BCPR). These departments are filled with talented and motivated staff, but their past efforts have been undermined by a system that has ascribed responsibility for implementing 1325 to all, but has held no one accountable. This has made for an unwieldy, fragmented and bureaucratic response.