The Implementation of Protection and Prevention pillars of UNSCR 1325 on Gender-Based Violence in Conflict-Affected Areas
Author: Jordan Fields
Introduction
In the 23 years since the declaration of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (the WPS Agenda), national and international implementations have had both successes and failures in upholding the agenda. By evaluating the progress that has been made, we can better understand how to move forward with better solutions for the future.
UNSCR 1325 identifies four basic pillars to which all mandates are intended to relate: participation, protection, prevention, and relief & recovery. This research will focus specifically on the protection and prevention pillars. These pillars have impacted conflict-affected regions in various ways, including through National Action Plans (NAPs), international statutes, and organizations. The following terms will be used to describe the issues of gender-based violence (GBV) in conflict: gender-based violence, sexual-based violence (SBV), and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). This study found that the protection and prevention pillars of UNSCR 1325 have provided some guidelines for combating gender and sexual-based violence in conflict-affected regions, in particular relating to NAPs, however, there has simply not been enough progress, as most implementations lack specificity, and surrounding circumstances in conflict regions often preclude any success.
Background
To evaluate the impact of the protection and prevention pillars of UNSCR 1325, the pillars first must be defined. The protection pillar calls for the “protection of women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence” in emergency situations such as conflict zones and humanitarian situations, such as refugee camps. The protection pillar emphasizes gender-based violence in general, sexual violence in relation to conflict, and the specific protective needs of refugees or internally displaced women and girls. The prevention pillar of UNSCR 1325 calls for “improving intervention strategies in the prevention of violence against women'' which includes prosecuting those responsible for violations of international law, emphasizing women’s rights under national law, and supporting local women’s peace and conflict resolution initiatives. Often overlooked, the prevention pillar also addresses implementing measures to prevent gender-based violence. This is done through fighting impunity and increasing prosecutions of conflict‐related sexual violence, as well as strategies focused on challenging discriminatory gender norms.
Successful Actions Taken
Since the adoption of UNSCR 1325 in 2000, a variety of initiatives have been successful in addressing protection and prevention in the context of combating gender-based violence in conflict-affected regions. For instance, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was enacted in 2002 and outlines a comprehensive list of crimes against women. Additionally, the statute codified and expanded upon previous understandings of gender-based crimes and persecution. This was the first international criminal law to recognize forms of sexual and gender-based violences as distinct war crimes, which is significant in combating gender and sexual-based violence in conflict-affected regions.
Another noteworthy action taken after the adoption of UNSCR 1325 has been the appointment of a Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict by the UN Secretary-General. The Special Representative serves as the United Nations’ spokesperson and advocate on conflict-related sexual violence. Progress made by the office since its creation in 2021 includes greater awareness of issues through the deployment of the Secretary-General's Annual Report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, as well as “more strategic and structured engagement with the security and justice sectors,” as part of the prevention strategy. The annual report is significant because it is presented by the Secretary-General on behalf of the UN, and therefore is a reflection of how the UN intends to address the issue at large. Special Representative Pramila Patten has also asserted her priorities for combatting conflict-related sexual violence which include emphasizing a culture of justice and accountability, taking a survivor-centered approach to responses, and addressing the root causes of CRSV such as structural gender inequality, poverty, and marginalization. Making these assertions helps to illustrate an awareness of the need to address the issue, and while this is not necessarily indicative of successful action, it does depict some awareness and intent by the United Nations to address conflict-related sexual violence.
In addition to novel initiatives, the expansion and improvement of past implementations also reflect the success of UNSCR 1325 in adhering to its protection and prevention pillars. For instance, The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) first issued General Recommendation 19 in 1992, explaining obligations to prevent, investigate and punish violence against women. In 2013, the Committee adopted General Recommendation 30 on women in conflict prevention, conflict, and post-conflict. The Recommendation outlines the specific obligations to eliminate discrimination against women in conflict-affected settings to ensure women's human rights are protected before, during and after conflict. It also affirms CEDAW's linkages with the Security Council Women, Peace, and Security Agenda. This illustrates the successful improvement of previous implementations, providing some guidelines for addressing conflict-related sexual violence.
The guidelines of National Action Plans (NAPs) in many countries have also shown a general upward trend in including the prevention pillar. According to raw data analysis on the presence of the UNSCR 1325 pillars’ in NAPs, while the participation pillar has been referenced the most over time, since 2016 there has been a vast increase in broad references to prevention of conflict which could be an indication that more NAPs are working to address conflict-related sexual violence. Furthermore, in recent years there has been an increase in NAPs asserting the concept of a “whole-of-government approach”. This means that there is a broad coalition of departments with the responsibility to carry out the implementation of the WPS agenda, of which some of the countries include the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Belgium, and Norway. While Foreign Affairs and Gender/Women continue to be the most prominent departments holding responsibility for these issues, the growth is significant because it indicates that some countries are beginning to see the issue of gender and conflict as relevant in all government departments. This is essential to creating long lasting implementations of the protection and prevention pillars that are respected across the whole of a government, which is necessary to create collective solutions to combatting conflict-related sexual violence.
Failed Implementations and Obstacles to Successful Implementations
While some strides have been made in addressing the protection of women and prevention of violence against women in conflict-affected areas, there have also been shortcomings to implementations. For one, while there have been some successful aspects of NAPs as previously discussed, most NAPs lack specificity when it comes to addressing the issues at large. Notably, often little is stated regarding concrete actions or what is meant by each state when they reference pillars. Furthermore, when pillars are directly mentioned in NAPs, the reference is often skewed towards participation more than any other, with few referencing protection or prevention as a primary pillar. While participation is certainly an essential issue to be addressed, NAPs often lack a well-rounded representation of the WPS Agenda and therefore are not always universal in assertions to combat gender and sexual-based violence, which in turn makes progress variable across conflict regions and countries.
An interesting perspective to the prevention pillar and its implementation is the idea of the prevention paradox. As proposed by Laura Shepherd, in relation to women, peace and security in the context of conflict, this concept asserts that prevention actions are often contradictory in themselves in conflict-affected areas. This is because often the conceptions of methods of prevention in conflict rely on the logistics of military and security institutions. Thus, when it comes to implementing the WPS Agenda, and specifically conflict-related issues, militarism often dominates solutions and undermines the logic of peaceful solutions evident in the construction of prevention in the WPS agenda. Recognizing this paradox is important because it depicts a pitfall in how prevention of gender and sexual based violence is represented, which has been a hindrance to successful implementations of preventative measures.
Furthermore, surrounding circumstances that greatly affect violence against women in conflict-affected areas have been an obstacle to successful implementation of the prevention and protection pillars. This includes the spike in violence against women and children that occurs during humanitarian and public health emergencies. In terms of public health, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the ways in which a public health crisis affects women and often leads to an increase in gender-based violence, while at the same time support services are heavily strained due to the pandemic. Thus, not only have public health crises been shown to lead to an increase in women’s exposure to violence, but they also have proven to be an obstacle to protection services. Similarly, this can be seen in other humanitarian emergencies such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo and regions in East Africa in which chronic conflicts leading to increased violence are combined with climate and economic crises that often hinder attempts to prevent and protect women from gender-based violence and conflict-related sexual violence. It is important to recognize that surrounding circumstances often affect implementations of methods of protection and prevention, and therefore must be taken into account in order to bring about more successful solutions and policies.
Lastly, the ways in which the ideals of the protection and prevention pillars to combat conflict-related sexual violence have been addressed and implemented have presented a huge obstacle to progress. For instance, Security Council Resolution 1820 was adopted in 2008 and calls for an end to widespread conflict-related sexual violence. However, the United Nations often argues that it is the responsibility of member states to address conflict-related sexual violence, and because of differing political and cultural views, as well as a lack of funding among many states, especially during times of conflict, responses for protection and prevention are often limited and structural inequalities that contribute to this violence remain in many cases. Furthermore, the view of sexual violence as a individual issue at times by the UN ignores the systemic problems of inequality that contribute to the violence, which once again is a limitation to implementing protectitive and preventitive measures for combatting conflict related sexual violence.
Conclusion and Recommendations
In combatting conflict-related sexual violence, the protection and prevention pillars of UNSCR 1325 have provided some guidelines for actions addressing the issue at hand in conflict regions, however, these guidelines, especially in relation to NAPs have been limited, and the ways in which the pillars themselves and subsequent Security Council Reccommendations are structured limit the success of implementations, often lacking specificity and emphasizing military solutions rather the peaceful logic depicted in the WPS pillars. Additionally, conflicts themselves and their resulting circumstances often hinder the effectiveness of any aims at protecting women from violence and preventing it in the first place.
It is therefore important to look for ways to improve the effectiveness in addressing the protection and prevention pillars of UNSCR 1325 and mitigate the obstacles to implementation. Greater emphasis should be placed on preventive measures such as warning systems and preemptive discussions rather than simply resorting to increased militarization at the local, national, and international levels. Furthermore, with increasingly complex conflict zones, WPS officials should advocate for international humanitarian law and equal protection for all victims of conflict as well as ensuring that the clear prohibition of sexual violence is integrated into national law, military doctrines and training. When it comes to National Action Plans, through which many aspects of the protection and prevention pillars are supposed to be executed, these plans should address specific funding and resource allocations as well as inclusive measures and systemic monitoring put in place.
For instance, 2022 marked the first year of the Generation Equality Action Coalitions and its monitoring framework to identify progress, opportunities for collaboration, and gaps in progress of WPS initiatives according to the UN Secretary General’ss’ 2022 Report on Women, Peace and Security, . Systems such as these should continue to be used to evaluate current implementations and find ways to improve how gender and sexual-based violence in conflict zones is addressed. Furthermore, efforts should continue to be made to encourage collaboration of states and organizations with civil society entities when it comes to combatting conflict-related sexual violence as they are often undervalued, yet are effective in implementing conflict resolutions. These recommendations are not exhaustive in addressing the implementation of the protection and prevention pillars in relation to conflict-related sexual violence, but they are nonetheless an important starting point in advocating for increased protective and preventitive measures for women who continue to suffer in conflict regions both during and post-conflict.
