Critique of UNSCR 1325: Intersectionality Matters[1]
UNSCR 1325 (and the numerous resolutions that followed) has been hailed as critically important for the ways in which it drew attention to the plight of women and girls in times of conflict, but also for its recognition of the important role that women can and do play in preventing conflict and then working toward peace in the event of conflict or war. Few would disagree with the importance of 1325 and the points it raises. Nonetheless, there are a number of issues or critiques that can be raised about UNSCR 1325 almost twenty-five years after it was passed. These are especially salient when reviewing UNSCR 1325 from an intersectional perspective.
Intersectional analysis encourages us to look at issues from multiple perspectives and points of view. According to Hancock, “the interaction of categories of difference (including but not limited to race, gender, class, and sexual orientation)” and “the interaction of such categories as organizing structures of society recognizing that these key components influence political access, equality, and the potential for any form of justice.”[2] In other words, all these categories are interdependent and interrelated and when taken together, can provide a more complete picture and understanding of an issue. What we will do in this short piece, is illustrate how analyzing UNSCR 1325 from an intersectional perspective allows us to see more clearly what it was designed to do, and where, why, and how it has fallen short. These shortcomings will be important to think about as we envision what follows 1325, either by modifying the Resolution or by creating a new one, in other words, UNSCR 1325 +25.
According to a report from the International Peace Institute, in the two decades between 1992, eight years before 1325 was adopted, and 2011, more than a decade after the Resolution was passed, “just 2 percent of chief mediators and 9 percent of negotiators in peace processes were women.” And the report notes the barriers to women’s participation in high level peacemaking, starting with a basic dilemma: “if the goal of a peace process is only to end violence, then women – who are rarely the belligerents – are unlikely to be considered legitimate participants. If the goal is to build peace, however, it makes sense to gain more diverse inputs from the rest of society – women and others who will be affected by these decisions.”[3]
When looking at the role of women, especially in formal negotiations, there is another important point that must be considered: “Most efforts to advance women’s participation in peace processes have been ‘from the top down’—directed by governments and elites. The inclusion of women as official signatories or delegates in peace negotiations often has been temporary or their roles have been more symbolic than substantive.”[4] Furthermore, the women who are represented at the peace negotiations are not necessarily representative of women within the society as a whole in terms of race, ethnicity, class, education, etc. That raises questions about who the women in the peace negotiations are and whom they represent? While having women as part of the negotiations certainly seems to have a positive impact on the success as well as endurance of any peace agreement, it can be argued that working from the bottom up, instead of the top down, can have an even greater impact on more women in the society. And, perhaps even more important, working from the bottom up might mean not only including women but also other groups within the society who were affected and marginalized by conflict.
Monica McWilliams, one of the women in Northern Ireland who was critical in the creation of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition and was involved with the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, makes an important point when she notes that existing structures and systems have to change if women are to be included in the decision-making process. Simply saying that women should be included is not enough if the existing structures of the society make it impossible for women to participate because of barriers imposed, for example, lack of childcare, access to a political system controlled by men, or their positions are not taken seriously.[5] And the structures will not change unless or until there is enough pressure on the existing decisionmakers to make that happen. This can be critical to the reconstruction process necessary to rebuild a society after the conflict ends. Reconstructing a society after conflict and getting to a condition of peace built on trust means recognizing the ways in which all groups were affected by the conflict and need to be part of the post-conflict peace process. While the focus on women, as in UNSCR 1325, is important, it is not enough.
One of the other major critiques of UNSCR 1325 is the ways in which the discussions about it tend to ignore or minimize the contributions made by the Global South to the WPS agenda. As Basu notes, “the Global South is not a mere recipient of policies formulated elsewhere, but can claim ‘ownership’ of the WPS resolutions as well.” And then continues the argument, “the global narrative of UNSCR 1325 must take account of divergences from the canon – understood as different interpretations, resistances and subversions – particularly as these manifest in the Global South, which tends to be marginalized at the international level.”[6] This critique also speaks to the argument about intersectionality; including voices from different geographic regions as an important part of assuring that all voices are heard and different perspectives represented. As Basu argues, “UNSCR 1325 appears to be a tool that is used by powerful countries, located in the Global North, to establish favorable policies in post-conflict countries, located primarily in the Global South, in the name of gender equality.”[7] Pratt also makes an especially valid point when she notes that “1325 privileges gender above race, class or other significant relations of power in understanding women’s experiences and responses to conflict.” And she goes on to identify what is absent in 1325, “namely black/postcolonial feminist understandings of women, peace and war.” [8] These critiques once again bring us back to what is lost by looking at issues from a single lens or, put another way, what is gained in explanatory value when we bring in an intersectional perspective. By labeling it as the Women, Peace and Security Agenda the focus is on women, and presumes women are a homogeneous group.
Smith and Stavrevska look at WPS through an intersectional lens and argue that “As intersectionality work shows, categorization based on sex-based difference does not provide a sufficient platform, or sufficient protection, for all women, or all men. Intersectionality work has shown how categorization and subsequent policy based only on sex-based comparison/difference works in favor of those whose race/age/sexuality/ethnicity concerns are already appeased.”[9] Part of their argument, then, is that the WPS agenda, as defined by UNSCR 1325 and subsequent resolutions, divides participants into two categories: men or women. The reality is far more complex than this simple binary distinction. “In WPS, then, to categorize differently vulnerable women only in relation to ‘women/gender’ makes it difficult to account for their interests and needs that may fall outside gender concerns and makes visible that marginalization only where it intersects with ‘gender.’” Or, as they succinctly note, “What becomes visible is not the presence of women of color, but their absence…”[10] They further argue that “…the resolutions fail to grasp or acknowledge the historical and political structures within which conflicts unfold and gendered violence (direct and structural) occurs.”[11]
To be truly inclusive, a peace process must go beyond the categories of gender or the binary of men and women to include other groups within the society who have also been affected by the conflict, and who are critical in creating peace and the security needed to ensure that the peace will continue. This also means identifying and addressing the root causes of the violence, Galtung’s “structural violence,” as part of any discussion of peace.[12] That, in turn, requires that a broad range of participants are included in the peace process, as different groups experience that structural, as well physical, violence of the conflict, differently. Similarly, their understanding of what “peace” means will also be different. While UNSCR 1325 and the creation of a WPS agenda was important for the prominence it gave women, it minimizes or disregards not only a range of other variables and categories, but the intersection of them.
Hence, looking at WPS through an intersectional lens should include an analysis of who has the power and how that affects the relationships among groups. This same argument can be applied beyond 1325 to all the UNSC resolutions that developed from that seminal resolution. While some, such as UNSCR 1889, mention gender as opposed to women, the understanding is that it addresses “women.” And all are about the inclusion of women in some aspects of conflict prevention and resolution, and peacekeeping. But this minimizes the fact that access to these processes for women are limited, and that those limitations will be greater in some societies than others given issues of culture, race, ethnicity, and other determinants of power. Unless this larger set of conditions or variables are brought into play, then understanding the women, peace and security agenda will only be confined to some women.
To summarize, in the almost fifty years since it was created, the WPS agenda made great strides toward identifying the critical role that women play in many aspects pertaining to conflict and also peace. Research shows that the presence of women in peace negotiations can not only ensure the success of an agreement, but that it will endure. On the other hand, WPS also essentializes women and the need for them to be protected, rather than seeing them as active agents and participants in these various processes. As mentioned above, neither women nor men are homogeneous categories, but rather are made up of various intersecting groups that affect who they are and the ways in which they see the world. That, in turn, affects the ways in which they will be affected by conflict and envision the peace that will follow.
Author: Joyce P. Kaufman is the Director of the Women, Peace and Security Program at the Institute of World Affairs.
[1] This material was drawn from Chapter 2, “Intersectionality and Issues of War, Peace and Security,” in Gender, Race and Power: Examining IR Through and Intersectional Lens, by Joyce P. Kaufman and Kristen P. Williams (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2025).
[2] Ange-Marie Hancock, “Inersectionality as a Normative and Empirical Paradigm,” Politics and Gender 3, no. 2 (2007), 250.
[3] Marie O’Reilly, Andrea O Suilleabhain, and Thanis Paffenholtz, “Reimagining Peacemaking:Women’s Roles in Peace Processes,” International peace Institute, June 2015. 1.
[4] Danielle Robertson, “If we want to build peace, we can’t keep women out,” United States Institute of Peace, October 18, 2018, https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/10/if-we-want-build-peace-we-cant-keep-women-out.
[5] See Monica McWilliams, Stand Up, Speak Out: My Life Working for Women’s Rights, Peace and Equality in Northern Ireland and Beyond (Northern Ireland: Blackstaff Press, 2021).
[6] Soumita Basu, “The Global South writes 1325 (too),” International Political Science Review 37, no. 3 (2016), 363.
[7] Basu, “The Global South writes 1325 (too),” 364.
[8] Nicola Pratt, “Reconceptualizing Gender, Reinscribing Racial-Sexual Boundaries in International Security: The Case of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on ‘Women, Peace and Security,” International Studies Quarterly 57 (2013), 774.
[9] Sarah Smith and Elena B. Stavrevska, “A different Women, Peace and Security is possible? Intersectionality in Women, Peace and Security resolutions and national action plans,” European Journal of Politics and Gender 5, no. 1 (2022), 74.
[10] Smith and Stavrevska, “A different Women, Peace and Security is possible?” 74.
[11] Smith and Stavrevska, “A different Women, Peace and Security is possible?” 74.
[12] Johann Galtung, “Violence, Peace and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167-91.