A Better World Volume 1

[

] 21

Women, peace and security: a roadmap

towards gender equality in the Arab region

Raidan Al-Saqqaf, Social Affairs Officer – Women, Peace, and Security,

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia Centre for Women

genda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals

(SDGs) brought new thinking about international

development, moving beyond the reductionist

approach of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

to an integrated approach where progress towards any

one goal requires progress towards several other goals as

well. The new development agenda also brought in a new

emphasis on peace as a prerequisite for development as

well as a development goal through SDG 16.

Peace as a development goal is particularly important for the

Arab region as fragility, conflict and instability do not only

hinder development progress, but also reverse gains made

particularly towards gender equality and the empowerment

of women in the region. This therefore requires a new genera-

tion of improved policies, institutions and methods to make it

work, particularly in fragile environments, within the context

of a dedicated agenda for women, peace and security.

The Arab region is shaken by unprecedented levels of

conflict, occupation, instability and fragility. It is home to

around 40 per cent of the United Nations’ political and peace-

keeping missions, and requires around half of the funding in

global humanitarian appeals to deliver life-saving support to

tens of millions of vulnerable persons. This is an acutely chal-

lenging context in which to deliver development and achieve

meaningful progress towards gender equality and the empow-

erment of women, especially since many Arab states already

trail global lists of gender gap and inequality.

Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, as the roadmap for

international development over the next 15 years, adopted the

motto ‘leaving no one behind’. It is the result of extensive nego-

tiations among governments and other development partners to

agree on a common floor and a roadmap for development by

2030. This insinuates that this agenda aims at delivering devel-

opment support to those who need it the most, and it proposes

a 5-P formula to do just that, focusing on people, planet, pros-

perity, peace and partnerships. Although Agenda 2030 did not

include a goal on leaving no one behind, it reiterated the focus

on inclusion and on particular population groups, and conse-

quently interweaved this focus in various goals and targets. This

was particularly evident in the focus on women, where women-

related targets were included in nine goals in addition to being

the focus of Goal 5 on gender equality.

Therefore, Agenda 2030 makes a lot of promises for women.

It is the latest international framework to make such prom-

ises, building on the progress achieved through the MDGs,

Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace

and Security (WPS), the Beijing Programme of Action, the

International Conference for Population and Development

Programme of Action and the Convention for the Elimination

of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), among others.

However, delivering on such promises is left to those states

and actors who negotiated it, as they decide what national and

local priorities to focus on, and how to go about responding

to these priorities.

A document entitled Arab Development Outlook: Vision

2030

proposes an agenda for the region loosely derived from

the global agenda. This document states that there is a case for

optimism despite the bleak current circumstance: the region

continues to experiences a steady rise in human capabilities,

it is well endowed in extractive resources and geography, and

the middle class remains a dominant economic group in most

Arab countries. However, according to the same document, the

region is unable to capitalize on these assets due to poor govern-

ance and dysfunctional governing institutions, adding that “this

democracy deficit is accompanied by a profound gender deficit,

particularly in terms of power-sharing and employment.”

Changing governance mechanisms and renegotiating the

social contract was one of the promises of the Arab Spring

which took the region by storm in 2011, and it remains

central to the grievances of people across the region. In her

Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Yemeni political activist

Tawakul Karman said that the youth-led revolt was for “the

pursuit of free and dignified life in a democratic and civil state

governed by the rule of law.”

This leads us to consider that

the top priorities for the Arab region are peace and justice and

gender equality, drawing parallels with SDGs 16 and 5 respec-

tively, and Goal 10 on inequality to a lesser extent.

The question is, then, how to advance gender equality for

women in the Arab region in such a challenging environment?

One answer is to integrate the advancement of women with

peace and security work as a dual goal. This idea originates

in Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on WPS, and

gradually evolved with other relevant resolutions and inter-

national frameworks. A maximalist approach to interpreting

this integration and subsequent evolution formulates the WPS

agenda to include all frameworks relating to the advancement

of women, such as Beijing Programme of Action and CEDAW,

with those relating to global peace and security, such as peace-

keeping and counter-terrorism resolutions and frameworks.

ender

quality

and

omen

’

mpowerment