Commemorating the Third Anniversary of the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security

On December 19, 2011, President Obama launched the United States National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) through Executive Order 13595. Last week, USAID hosted a Third Anniversary Event to commemorate this fundamental change in how the U.S. government approaches diplomacy, development and defense to support women in conflict zones. The event featured speakers from USAID; the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor; the National Security Council and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. The panel focused its remarks on successes and barriers to NAP implementation, including research gaps, in anticipation of the three-year review of the U.S. NAP.

The U.S. NAP represents the government’s express commitment to realizing UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), which seeks to increase women’s participation in peacebuilding and protect women from conflict-related sexual violence. Bringing more women to negotiation tables, integrating solutions and justice for women into peace agreements, and increasing women in security and justice systems “is not just a nice thing to do, it is a strategic thing to do,” said Karen Hanrahan, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) at the U.S. Department of State.

Echoing this sentiment, those in the WPS field must recognize that “we cannot sell the agenda with rights-based arguments alone,” said Dr. Robert Egnell, Senior Faculty Advisor at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. “[And] we are still [unfortunately]…in a startup phase 15 years after the initiation of the agenda.” We need evidence-based research, which Egnell acknowledged tends to indicate a desire for quantitative figures—a report that can show “including women at the peace table is 70% more effective,” for example. However, there are so few cases of women’s inclusion in peace talks that it would be statistically insignificant research to form quantitative analyses at this juncture. Instead, Egnell suggested that we emphasize qualitative examples so we can begin to understand how women impact peace processes. Another facet of the WPS research agenda that Egnell raised is the need to shift from viewing women as victims to seeing them as change agents, so that 1325 can have the intended empowering effect.

To gauge the U.S. government’s success in implementing its NAP, Executive Order 13595 called for a comprehensive review after three years—which is due to take place in 2015. Contemplating the successes and challenges of the U.S. NAP, Carla Koppell, Chief Strategy Officer of USAID Office of the Administrator, shared her reflections on a recent trip to Uganda: There is a palpable difference in how individuals engage in conversations around gender today, versus three or four years ago. “Today, everyone at the mission thinks about gender issues as woven into the entire post-conflict reconstruction program.” Additionally, Dr. David Yang, Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at USAID, highlighted that USAID has made significant progress in the past three years. Signs of this progress include the integration of WPS objectives into the overall USAID business model, mandatory country-level and project-level gender analysis, gender training for staff, and adopting mission orders at the country level on gender integration. While these are welcome indicators of success, many challenges to fully implementing the U.S. NAP still exist.

There are several tactical choices that the U.S. will need to address when reviewing its NAP and overall implementation strategy: Should there be a focus on rights based arguments or strategic arguments? An emphasis on gender perspectives or integration, on gender mainstreaming or specific functions? Where should the government initiate the process of change? After addressing these concerns, the U.S. will need to think about how to alter “centuries of ingrained bureaucratic processes…there are questions about how to effectively integrate organizational change that we still don’t have answers to,” Egnell indicated.

It is a point of critical importance: How do we get the appropriate stakeholders—at home and abroad – to accept this agenda and meaningfully incorporate it into preexisting structures? This is a fundamental challenge of working in the WPS field, especially in crisis environments where governments experience problems of political will and capacity, and cannot always plan beyond the urgency of the conflict at hand. Furthermore, we need to ascertain how “we address societal discrimination and cultural values associated with the WPS effort,” stated Regina Waugh, Director of Human Rights and Gender at the National Security Council. She asserted, “the type of social change that needs to happen is not an overnight thing.”

Hanrahan remains positive, noting the U.S. is “trying to improve how we do business” and is “committed to leading by example,” but cautions, “we must also be somewhat humble as we review [our] global track record.” In light of the upcoming 15^th Anniversary of UNSCR 1325, the third anniversary of the U.S. NAP and its upcoming review, and the post-2015 development agenda, Hanrahan shared, “We are viewing 2015 as the year of women, peace and security,” and “we are pushing to place gender equality and women and girls at the heart of the post-2015 development agenda.”

In addition to the identified priorities, research gaps, successes and challenges, the U.S. and all countries committed to the WPS agenda will need to explore how to move beyond the numbers when assessing gains in women’s political participation. Yang stressed, “It is not just about increasing quotas, it is about devising, conceptualizing and achieving women’s true influence, power and leadership.” This is the essence of UNSCR 1325, and one of the fundamental goals of the WPS agenda.

As Koppell underscored in her remarks, “civil society is essential” to government accountability and mainstreaming this commitment across sectors. The involvement of civil society will be indispensable in designing a review of the U.S. NAP that addresses these identified gaps and ultimately strengthens the government’s commitment to effectively implementing 1325.

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Ashley Binetti is the 2014-2015 Hillary Rodham Clinton Law Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 2014, specializing in human rights and transnational law.

Human Rights Day: Women, Peace, and Security

Originally posted on the Clinton Foundation blog here.

Agents of Peace, Agents of Change

Today, on Human Rights Day, No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project is proud to join the United Nations in calling for “365 Days of Human Rights” to ensure that we not only celebrate global efforts to uphold peace once a year, but work to promote peace, human rights, and inclusive security every day.

While many communities lack critical defenses to protect them from violations to thier rights and opportunities, women and girls remain particularly vulnerable, and are often disproportionately impacted by conflict, war, and civil strife. Yet still, women frequently do not have a voice in mediating or resolving conflicts, and are also vastly underrepresented in peacemaking negotiations, at the decision-making table, and among peacekeeping and police forces. Of the hundreds of national and international peace treaties signed in the last 20 years, fewer than 10 percent included women negotiators, and fewer than 3 percent had any women signatories.

Last week at Georgetown University, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton discussed the essential need to include women in peacemaking processes, and noted that women are not just “victims of conflict, they are [also] agents of peace and agents of change.”

“When women are involved in the peacemaking processes,” Secretary Clinton noted, “overlooked issues such as human rights, individual justice, national reconciliation, economic renewal are often brought to the forefront.”

The tactics that women employ in peacemaking are what Secretary Clinton calls “Smart Power;” using, in her words, “every possible tool – leaving no one on the sidelines – showing respect even for one’s enemies . . . that is what we believe in the 21st century will change the prospect for peace.”

Promoting Inclusion

How can we ensure that women as well as men are supported to participate equally in the peace and security process?

The path has been years in the making.

In 1995 at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, 189 countries adopted a landmark Platform for Action to promote the full participation of women and girls in all aspects of society, including the need to support and empower women in peace negotiations during times of armed conflict. Five years later, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), to affirm and encourage the active participation of women in all aspects of peacemaking processes.

Earlier this year, Secretary Clinton announced that No Ceilings would partner with the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security and the Institute for Inclusive Security to launch the first-ever National Action Plan Academy that would work to advance national action plans (NAPs) on women, peace and security, pursuant to UNSCR 1325.

Secretary Clinton’s remarks at Georgetown launched the inaugural meeting of this academy, a three-day conference that brought together delegations from ten countries around the world, which currently have, or are developing, NAPs on women, peace and security.

Throughout the conference, the academy offered technical workshops with experts from civil society, the military, police, and government to share successes, failures, best practices, and challenges to help improve policies and inspire effective solutions to advance women’s participation in peace and security. In the last session, each country delegation – from Afghanistan to Japan, Norway to the U.S. – made commitments, by both government and civil society, to uphold and strengthen NAP implementation in their respective countries.

This academy, and the ongoing work to develop and implement national action plans in the U.S. and abroad, are evidence that we are truly working 365 days a year to promote inclusive security, ensure women are a central part of the conversation, and protect human rights for all – today and every day.

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Terri McCullough is the director of No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, a Clinton Foundation initiative led by Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton. She has a B.A. in politics from the University of California at Santa Cruz and lives in New York City with her husband, daughter and son.

Japan Reaffirms Its Commitment to Women’s Participation in Peacebuilding

In partnership with the Institute for Inclusive Security, Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security co-hosted the inaugural National Action Plan Academy December 3-5 at Georgetown University to share best practices on developing, implementing and reviewing National Action Plans.

A National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security represents a country’s express commitment to realizing UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), which seeks to increase women’s participation in peacebuilding and protect women from sexual violence. While the UN Security Council called upon member states to create NAPs in a 2004 presidential statement, only 48 Countries currently have NAPs, with Afghanistan being the most recent. There is still a long way to go—this number represents less than 25 percent of all UN member states, and the existence of a plan does not guarantee its implementation.

During the Academy, we had the privilege of speaking with Rui Matsukawa, Director of the Gender Mainstreaming Division in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to learn more about Japan’s forthcoming NAP.

Japan began developing its NAP in September 2013, and is hoping to publish the plan in early 2015. When asked about the inspiration for embarking on this journey, Ms. Matsukawa said it was greatly facilitated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s enthusiasm: “Prime Minister Abe’s government is really interested in women’s empowerment and gender equality—domestically and internationally. The Prime Minister’s leadership is the ‘why now’ piece.” She also noted the Prime Minister’s work on increasing women’s participation in the Japanese business world through womenomics, as well as Japan’s recent $3 billion contribution in Official Development Assistance for women’s empowerment initiatives.

In its NAP, Japan has focused on five themes contained within UN Security Council Resolution 1325: participation, protection, prevention, relief and recovery, and monitoring and evaluation. In summarizing the NAP’s focus, Ms. Matsukawa stated, “First, it’s about gender mainstreaming in peace and security; second, its about promotion of women’s rights issues more broadly.” The NAP’s provisions encompass prevention of and training on sexual and gender-based violence, assistance after natural disasters, peace education, victim assistance, participation of women in the community both politically and economically, and assistance to internally displaced persons and refugees, and more. Furthermore, the action items in the NAP apply not only to improving women’s status internationally, but within Japan’s own population as well. “If we promote externally, we promote internally,” Ms. Matsukawa affirmed.

The effort to develop Japan’s NAP has been a truly collaborative affair. Several government agencies and civil society organizations have come together to create a holistic, multi-layered approach. The government departments involved include the Ministry of Foreign affairs, Ministry of Defense, National Police Department, Ministry of Justice, Department of the Interior’s Peace Keeping Operations Secretariat, and Natural Disaster Department, among others. Each ministry has a representative in the office that coordinates internally within their department, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs serves as the coordinator.

“Our NAP is very specific and special in terms of its process,” Ms. Matsukawa shared, “It is not only about working on these issues, but how we work on them. We are working with civil society, and creating accountability towards civil society, which is very important.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs held ten consultations within the central government, and five regional consultations with more than 30 civil society organizations (CSOs) in various regions of the country. The CSOs first met together to form a consensus, and then negotiated with the government agencies to shape the NAP’s focus and the indicators against which progress would be measured. Ms. Matsukawa noted that the interaction between CSOs and the government will extend beyond the NAP’s publication: “We will face difficulties with the CSOs, together—we will review our NAP over time, and may change focus or indicators to respond to feedback—but in that phase too there [will be] partnership between civil societies and [government] agencies.”

The NAP Academy has helped Japan assess potential areas for improvement before it renders the final version of its NAP. One Japanese CSO representative shared her concern that Japanese Parliament has not yet been involved in the NAP process, which might mean lessened political will for the implementation of the plan. Another uncovered issue concerned the number of proposed indicators in Japan’s NAP. Maki Mitsuoka of Japan’s Gender Mainstreaming Division reflected on what she had heard from peer country delegations who already had NAPs in place: “We have too many indicators…we will have too much data to collect.” Ms. Matsukawa also expressed her concern, noting, “We want improvement, and we want to be practical. Time and resources spent on information gathering can take away from implementation efforts.” The Japanese delegation indicated that it planned to bring this newly gained knowledge back home and reassess.

Implementation is crucial—without tangible actions, a NAP is a collection of words on paper. “We want to make sure it’s not just a [NAP] launch, but an implementation,” said Jacqueline O’Neill of the Institute for Inclusive Security as she addressed the NAP Academy delegates. The same idea holds true for the overarching implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325—without countries identifying and executing clear action plans, the resolution will have nominal impact. When asked how to best support other countries in joining in this process, Ms. Matsukawa stated,

“The reason why womenomics is taken seriously in Japan is that it makes sense—it increases GDP. Similarly, including women in security efforts makes sense. If countries are educated on the benefits of adopting a NAP and inclusion of women in decision-making and peace and disaster management—that’s the motivation that will encourage them to act.”

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Special thank you to Rui Matsukawa, Maki Mitsuoka, and Junichi Sumi for making this interview possible.

Ashley Binetti is the 2014-2015 Hillary Rodham Clinton Law Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 2014, specializing in human rights and transnational law.