INTERNATIONAL: Ten Years on from Resolution 1325

At an event marking the 10th anniversary of the landmark Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, the man credited with pushing through the resolution was not in a celebratory mood. Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, dubbed “the father of Resolution 1325,” expressed disappointment at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) event about slow progress in achieving women's participation and protection. According to Ambassador Chowdury, the previous decade was characterized by a frustrating record of implementation and a lack of leadership by the UN Security Council on women, peace and security.

And who can blame Ambassador Chowdhury for his disappointment? When the original resolution was adopted it was seen as groundbreaking. Finally, the international community recognized the impacts of war on women and was working to ensure their participation in peacebuilding and protection from sexual and gender-based violence.

In October 2010, the UN Security Council discussed the progress of the resolution and adopted a presidential statement. It may be hard to believe, but ten years on from adopting Resolution 1325, the member states of the UN have still not agreed on indicators for measuring how it is being implemented. Given the lack of agreement, the best the Security Council could do was support “taking forward” the indicators proposed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon “as an initial framework.” They decided that Ban should include a strategic framework on implementing the resolution, including targets and indicators, in his next report – next year. So the decision is put off even longer.

In reality, UN Security Council resolutions mean nothing unless member states take them seriously and put them into action. The original aim of Resolution 1325 was that countries would put into place National Action Plans on women, peace and security. But so far, only 22 out of the 192 UN member states have adopted such a plan. The United States has taken an important leadership role in pushing the UN to move forward on women's participation and protection. Yet over the last ten years, even the U.S. has failed to produce its own National Action Plan.

In light of these issues, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement to the Security Council on the anniversary meeting of Resolution 1325 was highly anticipated by women's rights activists. Clinton announced that the U.S. would commit nearly $44 million to a set of initiatives designed to empower women. Even more significantly, she said that the U.S. will develop a National Action Plan to accelerate the implementation of Resolution 1325 across the government and with its partners in civil society.

“To measure progress on our plan, we will adopt the indicators laid out in the Secretary General's report,” Clinton continued. “We will measure whether women are effectively represented in the full range of peace-building and reconstruction efforts; whether they are protected against sexual violence; and whether they are the focus of conflict prevention, relief and reconciliation efforts.”

This is good news indeed. And Clinton went even further. She announced that “in the future, every USAID project to prevent or manage conflict will study its effect on women and will include women in the planning and implementation.”

These are important commitments by the U.S. government. Now it is our role to monitor carefully how these commitments are carried out in practice. One decade of inaction is more than enough.