Security Council Resolution 1325: A Tool for Conflict Prevention?

Abstract

The debate on Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325) when it was adopted in 2000,¹ and its follow-up over the years since then, has brought into sharper focus the enormous potential contribution of women as stakeholders of peace, disarmament and conflict prevention. The result has been a greater awareness of the gender dimensions of security issues, and conflict and post-conflict situations, throughout the international community. Even the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is convening workshops on the significance of SCR 1325 to its work.² As Director of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) at the time of SCR 1325’s adoption, based in the New York office, I participated in the transnational advocacy network that brought it into being. A website I started soon after it was adopted, in order to monitor its implementation, continues to be widely used.³ As noted across this collection, in the international policy world and in the community of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the gender and security nexus is enjoying attention as never before. Indeed, the Security Council has adopted several follow-up resolutions since 2008.⁴ Collapsed into the short hand of four numbers ‘1325’ — 10 preambular paragraphs and 18 operational paragraphs — represents a good chunk of WILPF’s almost 100 years of international activism for peace.