The WPS Agenda and the National Action Plans of France and Germany:
Us ‘Over Here’ Helping Those ‘Over There’.
Emi-Tihana Barker, YSC Research Fellow
Introduction
The Women, Peace, and Security Agenda is a body of UN resolutions focusing on the relations between women in war and peace that has played an influential role in international relations since 2000. The agenda aims to bring attention to (and positively influence) the representation of women in peacekeeping and peace negotiations, the plight of women and girls who suffer sexual and gender based violence in conflict, and implement gender sensitive development programmes after conflict. However, while existing as resolutions at the UN level, the agenda itself is implemented by individual member states through National Action Plans (NAPs). This article will use discursive analysis to focus on the NAPs of France and Germany.Such NAPs raise broader points about the ways in which states may manipulate the agenda to project their own desired image onto the international stage, consequently continuing neo-colonial discourses in which the problem states ‘over there’ are to be saved by us ‘over here’.
Photo credit: Women in Côte d'Ivoire celebrate International Women's Day. UN Photo/Ky Chung
What is the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda?
The year 2000 saw the unanimous passing of the UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325. The resolution took the fact that women and girls are often disproportionately affected by conflict as its starting point and laid out a variety of steps member states should take to address this gendered issue. Within its 18-point body, the resolution covers a range of gendered issues such as the need to increase the participation of women in decision-making spaces such as peacekeeping and negotiations, urging states to improve mechanisms to protect gendered rights both during and after conflict, and including a gendered perspective into post-conflict reconstruction missions (UN S/RES 1325, 2000). After various programmes and plans which aimed to centre women and gendered issues within international security such as the UN Decade for Women (from 1975-1985) or the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action The passing of UNSCR 1325 was a landmark moment for many feminist scholars and practitioners. The passing of the resolution was the first time that an entire session had been dedicated to discussing issues of women’s rights and laid the foundation for the Women, Peace, and Security agenda (WPS) as a whole (Cohn, et al., 2004).
Building from UNSCR 1325, the WPS constitutes a body of ten resolutions which broadly fit within four key pillars. These four pillars are: Protection, which focuses on protecting women and girls from the harms of conflict (primarily sexual violence); Prevention, which aims to prevent such harms from happening in the first place; Participation, which focuses on increasing women’s presence and participation in decision-making roles in peacekeeping and peace negotiations; and finally, Relief and Recovery, which focuses on including a gender-sensitive approach to post-conflict reconstruction (Achilleos-Sarll, 2020).
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Highlights the undervalued and underrepresented contributions of women to conflict resolution and peacekeeping. Stresses the need to include women equally and fully as participants in peace and security.
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Recognises sexual violence as a tactic of war and highlights rape and sexual violence as war crimes.
Calls for higher representation of women in peacekeeping and better gender-sensitive training for military and police personnel.
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Reiterates that sexual violence exacerbates armed violence. Calls for leadership to address conflict-related sexual violence.
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Focuses on post-conflict peacebuilding and women’s involvement in all stages of a peace process.
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Reiterates the call to end conflict-related sexual violence.
Establishes a ‘naming and shaming’ mechanism which includes referrals to the ICC as a means to show there are consequences for engaging in sexual violence.
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Focuses on operationalising current policies and structures rather than creating new ones.
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Affirms an ‘integrated approach’ to peace and sets out means to combat women’s participation deficit.
Links gender with disarmament through mentioning the Arms Trade Treaty.
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Urges member states to assess strategies and resourcing around the implementation of the agenda.
Recognising the role of the WPS agenda in countering violent extremism and terrorism.
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Recognises that sexual violence occurs on a continuum of violence against women and girls.
Names gender inequality and discrimination as a root cause of sexual violence.
Urges members to improve mechanisms of justice for survivors from reparations to accessing legal redress.
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Calls on states to promote all rights of women, urging them to increase funding to WPS projects.
Urges states to create safe and enabling environments for civil society actors, particularly women community leaders.
All information regarding the material of the resolutions taken from ‘Peace Women: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.’ Date Accessed: 16/02/2023. https://www.peacewomen.org/security-council/WPS-in-SC-Council
Implementing the Agenda
While the WPS agenda consists of the body of UN resolutions, it is actually implemented at state level through the development of domestic National Action Plans (NAPs). Defined by the UN, a NAP is “A document that details the actions that a government is currently taking, and those initiatives that it will undertake within a given time frame, in order to meet the obligations, set out in all the WPS resolutions.” (Petrovic, et al., 2010; p. xv).
On the whole, NAPs can be viewed as carriers of gender norms, shifting the WPS agenda from an abstract body of resolutions at the international level to the national level of jurisdiction (True, 2016). Many countries around the world have adopted NAPs, and many others have adopted several, continually updating them in four or five year cycles. At the time of writing, 104 states around the world have developed a NAP. Overall, 54 countries have developed one; 27 have developed 2; 17 have developed 3; and 6 are currently on their fourth NAP (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 2023).
Statistics used to create this table on the spread of NAPs around the world was once again taken from the WILPF database. Date Accessed: 15/02/2023. https://1325naps.peacewomen.org/
NAPs are therefore fascinating insights into how states translate the WPS agenda into concrete goals with information on what they want to achieve, what they focus on at the expense of other pillars of the agenda, how they want to support international efforts and where they want to support international efforts. NAPs can therefore be seen as useful windows into how states may use the WPS agenda for their own foreign policy gains and to construct images of themselves that they wish to project on the international stage.
NAPs of Germany and France
In exploring the domestic level implementation of the WPS agenda, this article utilises the European states of France and Germany both as powerful EU states but also as two states closely linked to the YSC organisation as a whole. Looking at the most recent German and French NAPs, the debate on the ability of (particularly western states) to utilise the WPS agenda to present narratives on conflict and gender inequality is brought to life. Rather than offering reflections on gender inequality as a global phenomenon, including within Germany and France, these two states use their most recent NAPs to create an image of peaceful Europe directing its efforts elsewhere to less developed conflict-ridden states. As researchers such as Shepherd (2016) have summarised “NAPs tend to reproduce a world in which problems occur ‘elsewhere’ but solutions can be found ‘here’” (p. 325). Both states are currently under their third NAP. Both plans were implemented in 2021 and for France the plan will remain valid until 2025 and for Germany, their NAP will remain valid until 2024.
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· Crisis prevention
· Participation
· Protection and support
· Humanitarian assistance and reconstruction
· Increasing institutional integration and capacities
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· Prevention
· Protection
· Participation
· Promotion of the WPS Agenda
Beginning with a discussion of the German NAP, it is made clear that the German NAP is an outward facing document meant to support the country’s broader foreign policy goals. In its introductory comments, the plan notes that “the WPS agenda addresses many of Germany’s foreign policy principles” (German NAP, 2021; p. 5). Straight from the introduction, the NAP begins to build the narrative that gender inequality is that which is located outside of Germany as opposed to a global phenomenon requiring both external and internal reflection by all states.
Following on with crisis prevention, the German NAP makes the argument that “the Women, Peace, and Security agenda is essentially an agenda for prevention. The aim is to prevent violent conflict and crises” (German NAP, 2021; p. 22). However, this is an incredibly reductive argument to make about the WPS agenda. As has been noted above, the agenda comprises a multitude of resolutions and goals which, while including a focus on conflict prevention, also focuses on improving the political representation of women, improving mechanisms of justice for victims of war, and aims at eradicating exploitative behaviour in peacekeeping forces. To distil the agenda down to the prevention of conflict and to implicitly assume that gender equality would follow as a result once again situates the NAP as an outward facing document, focusing on war and conflict as the originator of gender inequality and not global structures of power. This allows European states such as Germany and France to avoid reflecting on their own failings in regard to gender equality and creates an unequal relationship in the dialogue of the agenda. In this relationship, western states which dominate the agenda ‘do’ WPS to the ‘other’ i.e., those in the Global South (Haastrup & Hagen, 2020).
Similarly, France’s NAP situates itself as an externally foreign policy-focused document from the get-go. Following on from the nation’s two previous plans, France’s third NAP “aim[s] to take into account gender challenges systematically for all French external action in peace and security” (French NAP, 2021; p. 6; emphasis mine). As with the German NAP, the notion that gender inequality, and particularly sexual violence, is a phenomenon that belongs exclusively to conflict zones is a running theme that is continuously underlined. In the area of protection, the French NAP aims to “continue to include gender and the protection of women and girls from sexual and sexist violence and violent extremisms in all of France’s actions overseas concerning peace and security” (p. 16; emphasis mine). Regarding prevention, France intends to “strengthen and develop the available training specifically on the inclusion of gender and the protection of women against sexual and sexual violence and violent extremisms in conflict and post-conflict situations” (French NAP, 2021; p. 14).
Fascinatingly, and in contrast to Germany, France also includes ‘Priority Geographic Areas’ for the implementation of the plan. In Africa, areas of concern are the Sahel region and states such as the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Burundi. In the Americas the focus is on Haiti and in Asia and the Middle East, states of concern are Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar (French NAP, 2021; p.21). The inclusion of geographical areas of concern onto which to project France’s goals not only reinforces the debate that the WPS agenda is used by western states to ‘do’ foreign policy to ‘others’ in the Global South, but it also fails to include any further reflection on the part of France. Haiti, CAR, the DRC, Lebanon, and Syria have all historically been part of French colonies or under French mandate following the end of the First World War (Oliver-Smith, 2010; p. 33; Fildis, 2011; p.130; Frohlich, 2020). France’s history with these states is conveniently absent in the NAP, as is any discussion of how France’s influence in these states may have contributed to present day conflict and under-development. Here, global histories of colonialism are rendered silent and insecurity and conflict are painted as if operating in a vacuum, playing out separately to the peaceful societies of Europe.
This is not to dismiss the work of the NAPs as a whole. The German NAP makes reference to the multitude of identities women can occupy and the compounding effect this can have on their subordination, as well as including non-binary individuals in their gendered discussions. This positively highlights a dedication to an intersectional approach as well as the recognition of the varied spectrum of gender identity (p. 32). Both NAPs dedicate sections to the more transformative elements of the agenda such as increasing the representation and inclusion of women in peacekeeping and in negotiations. The German NAP in particular makes an explicit reference to the need to prioritise the safety of women fleeing conflict (p. 33). Although a small comment, this represents a big shift from NAPs prior to the 2015/16 migrant crisis in which migrant women were essentially invisible from WPS narratives, the consequences of which became starkly apparent when Europe was finally called upon to care for the refugees appearing at their borders (Holvikivi & Reeves, 2020). These positive elements highlight the transformative potential that NAPs could have as well as the ability of states to learn from previous mistakes and absences. However, narratives of gender inequality as linked exclusively to conflict as well as the omission of any discussion of gender inequality within European states holds the agenda back. At its passing in 2000, the WPS agenda represented an opportunity for substantial change in the rights and social standing of women and girls around the globe. However, the utilisation of the WPS agenda by western states that dominate the debate to simply reinforce neo-colonial debates on the imperfect societies of the Global South needing help and guidance from supposedly superior Western states does nothing to undo global systems of power to achieve universal equality. Western states must reflect on their own internal failings regarding gender equality and recognise the transnational nature of conflict if the agenda is to be as transformative as was once hoped.
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