Securitization risks the 1325 agenda, Hibaaq Osman tells NATO Summit
The failure of Western governments to focus on the prevention and resolution of conflict is putting women and girls at risk, and jeopardizing the women, peace and security agenda, the NATO summit was told today.
The statement was made by Karama founder and CEO Hibaaq Osman at a roundtable held by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to mark NATO’s 2022 Summit in Madrid.
Speaking alongside Angeles Moreno Bau, Spain’s Secretary of State for Foreign and Global Affairs, Irene Fellin, NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security, Hibaaq told the roundtable that the diplomatic consensus on women, peace and security has broken. In order to return to consensus, the agenda must be refocused on preventing and resolving conflict - with the participation of women vital to this.
Hibaaq told the roundtable that civil society must be supported in order to localize the agenda and center it around the priorities of communities, as a means of making women, peace and security relevant to the needs on the ground.
Read her full intervention below.
Why is the role of civil society so important for the women, peace and security agenda? Hibaaq Osman’s remarks at the roundtable ‘Advancing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Today’s Geopolitical Context’, 27 June 2022:
We are at a critical point for the women, peace and security agenda because the diplomatic consensus has broken.
When 1325 was passed, the Security Council voted unanimously.
All subsequent resolutions on women, peace and security were passed unanimously - until 2019 when Russia and China abstained on resolution 2467.
The diplomatic consensus unravelled further in 2020, with an attempt to water down the agenda’s foundation in human rights, and undermine the role of civil society.
And just this month we have seen a terse and difficult debate at the UN Security Council on the state of the agenda.
The collapse of the diplomatic consensus has been something we have seen out in the open. But the undermining of the roots of the WPS agenda has been going on for a long time - and it is something that has been done by countries across the global north.
When we campaigned for 1325, and in particular for its pillars of prevention and women’s participation, it was because we viewed it as a step towards a world in which no one had to suffer in conflict.
The protection of women and girls in conflict, relief and recovery - these were always pillars of last resort.
Of course we want to see those who use rape as a weapon of war punished; we want to see the sexual and reproductive rights of refugee women and girls protected and their needs met. But these must be last resorts.
Since 1325 was agreed, wars and conflicts of choice have too often been the first resort of countries - in Nato and elsewhere in the world.
In Ukraine, in Iraq, in Darfur, in Gaza, in Syria, and too many other countries, war has been a choice.
Twenty-one years after 1325 and we are not seeing the emergence of gender-sensitive conflict.
We are not seeing a world in which sexual violence in conflict is prosecuted in the courts with the same determination with which it is perpetrated in war zones.
This is why we placed so much emphasis on preventing conflict, and ensuring women’s participation in the resolution of conflict.
Instead, governments - especially those in the global north - have made much of their efforts to increase women’s participation and leadership within their militaries as part of their commitment to women, peace and security.
But we have to ask the question - has this led to an appreciable change in the approach of these militaries? Rather, has this work simply broken down traditional sexist barriers for women to progress in the military just as long as they otherwise fit the already existing culture and mindset?
We must be focused on the outcomes. As feminists, we don’t celebrate when a woman in leadership makes the same bad decisions that the man she replaced would have made.
Women’s participation is not about just numbers, it is about the transformative power of the women’s agenda. As my colleague Zahra’ Langhi has put it, when it comes to women’s participation in peace, we don’t want a bigger slice of the cake, we want to change the recipe.
The securitization of the women, peace and security agenda has further deepened a problem of alienation, which has been terminal for implementation.
We have seen many governments reject their responsibilities to WPS by claiming it is only relevant to countries involved in conflict.
Alienation from the agenda has also affected civil society. Securitization has alienated people because they see an agenda that is being pushed on them by the same people who are supplying the arms used to kill and oppress them or their neighbors.
A women, peace and security agenda that is focused only on security is not a people’s agenda. This is where civil society is so important. In countries like Palestine, it has been the work of civil society that managed to put women, peace and security on the political agenda.
In Palestine, it was local organizations that showed they could take ownership of the agenda, demonstrate its utility for the people, bring their communities and representatives with them and on board. It was not by chance that Palestine became one of the first countries in the Arab region to develop and implement a national action plan.
It was because civil society made women, peace and security a people’s agenda. One that was focused on human rights and social justice. The very roots of the agenda.
There is, I am glad to say, a concerted push back on securitization, one that is growing. I was very pleased recently to hear Miguel Ángel Moratinos say at the recent conference in Madrid held by the Women for Africa Foundation that “if you only focus on security, you will not achieve peace.” We need foreign and defense ministries across the world to recognize that fact.
Civil society can and is challenging the securitization of the 1325 agenda. Civil society groups need support from regional and international institutions to localize the agenda, refocusing on its roots, on the reasons we fought so hard for the formalization of the agenda, renewing it my making it relevant to the community.
Why is civil society so important to the women, peace and security agenda? Because our vision is not a different kind of conflict. It is NO conflict.