Cross-Cutting Report No. 1: Women, Peace and Security
The full Cross-Cutting Report on Women, Peace and Security is available for download in PDF
This report provides an assessment of the impact of the overall UN women, peace and security, or 1325, agenda. This includes both the status of mechanisms that are being developed (such as monitoring, analysis and reporting arrangements on conflict-related sexual violence) and the incorporation of the women, peace and security agenda into the Council’s overall work.
Our 2010 report covered the first ten years since the adoption of resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. It examined the framework created by the Council to address this matter; the extent to which the Council addressed these issues in the country situations on its agenda; the international legal framework in which the matter falls and the Council’s changing dynamics on these issues over the past ten years. It surveyed relevant data in resolutions, presidential statements, Secretary-General’s reports and peacekeeping mandates.
The current report follows the same methodology in surveying the 2011 data in order to allow for comparison with the results of our 2010 report.
The findings of this report include:
- attention to women and peace and security continues to be integrated into the Council’s country-specific resolutions and presidential statements, but is not yet universal;
- the Secretary-General’s reports have given increasing weight and consideration to women’s issues over the years, but there remains a lack of reporting consistency between different country-specific situations;
- there will likely be a continuing need to improve the timeliness of communication between missions in the field, the Secretariat and the Council;
- in terms of the continuing development of the Council’s response to sexual violence, including the implementation of the monitoring, analysis and reporting arrangements on conflict-related sexual violence and possible imposition of sanctions on individuals, the Council may soon want to address how to ensure the effectiveness of its actions (for example, how to deal with the possibility of persistent violators or governments reluctant to bring past violators to justice); and
- the Council may want to continue its consideration of how best to incorporate the Office of the Special Representative for Sexual Violence with the work of UN Women in the future.