Across the United Nations System: Year in Review
By Rocío Maradiegue, WILPF's Women, Peace and Security Programme Consultant
WILPF International President and WILPF Nigeria President Joy Onyesoh provides civil society statement to the Opening Session of the PGA’s High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace (Photo: UN Photo/Evan Schneider)
In 2018, in response to long-standing women civil society advocacy, the United Nations continued to shift from crisis response to prevention, especially through the work on Sustaining Peace. However, the ongoing failure to shift funding priorities for prevention means this shift risks being more in rhetoric than results.
As part of WILPF’s ongoing work for an integrated approach that disarms security and promotes a feminist political economy, WILPF continued to push to strengthen policy coherence, across human rights, disarmament, development, and gender justice work at the UN.
WILPF successfully advocated through our coalitions to strengthen language on women’s meaningful participation, disarmament and accountability in the CSW 62 Agreed Conclusions and the HLPF 2018 Ministerial Declaration on Sustainable Development. A strong feminist push resulted in the successful inclusion of references to the impact of conflict on women, including in rural areas, and the affirmation of the importance of women’s meaningful participation and the role of men and boys.
On sustainable development and sustaining peace, we pushed for the recognition that people are not just left behind by accident: they are excluded as a matter of design. As pointed out by WILPF International President, Joy Onyesoh, at the High-Level Event on Sustaining Peace, “sustaining peace requires consistent and committed political will to move out of the comfort zone and challenge dominant narratives on gender, conflict analysis and power”.
As the international community prepares for 2020, there would be many opportunities for all to advance coordinated coherent and integrated action with the WPS Agenda at its core, including around the 2019 HLPF review of Sustainable Development Goal 16 on peaceful societies. WILPF will use these opportunities to mobilise for the implementation of their WPS commitments and delivering results for women across the conflict spectrum.
Read WILPF’s full analysis of the High-Level Meeting on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace here>>
Read WILPF’s UNGA73 Gender-Militarism Index here>>
Read WILPF’s Call to Action on 2015 WPS Commitments here >>
Read more about WILPF’s UN Monitoring work here>>