The WPS agenda is often described as an international normative framework. The aim is to advance various norms related to gender equality and reducing gendered forms of discrimination and harm.

The United Nations Security Council has adopted ten resolutions under the title of “women and peace and security,” which together form the architecture of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, although the agenda far exceeds the formal articulation captured in the resolutions. The resolutions lay out measures and interventions designed to ensure the protection of women’s rights, the participation of women in peace and security governance, the prevention of conflict, and effective and gender-responsive relief and recovery efforts in conflict and conflict-affected settings. Twenty years after the adoption of the agenda’s foundational resolution, UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, there is a significant body of literature on the origins and development of the WPS agenda, its implementation through (and the limits of) National Action Plans  and other mechanisms, and its translation into, as well as tension with, practice across local, national and regional domains. Further, scholarship on the WPS agenda continues to interrogate the agenda’s transformation as further resolutions are added, which centre sexual violence in conflict, for example, and incorporate issues such as terrorism and violent extremism.

The codification of the WPS agenda in the adopted resolutions establishes standards of practice to be adopted by UN member states and entities to prioritise women’s role as agents in peace and security settings and respond to women’s specific security needs. The treatment of the agenda as a normative framework offers insights into the processes through which the WPS agenda is implemented, institutionalised, internalised, contested, or translated, the intended and unintended outcomes, and the multiplicity of actors involved in these processes.

UNSCR 2242 was adopted by the Council in 2015. As an “agenda-setting” resolution, UNSCR 2242 maps out new avenues for WPS work and incorporates new challenges in to the WPS agenda. The normative provisions of the resolution are extensive, including several related to counterterrorism (CT) and preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE). Of the new challenges articulated in resolution 2242, which include forced migration and climate degradation, CT and particularly CVE received significant coverage in post-2015 national action plans for the implementation of the WPS agenda, and the most coverage of any new issue across the UN system. Moreover, the integration of CT and P/CVE with the WPS agenda caused a degree of consternation among WPS advocates and allies when the resolution was adopted. It is therefore important to ask whether and how the provisions in resolution 2242 are now shaping WPS practice.

Resolution 2242 includes three operative paragraphs related to the integration of efforts to counter terrorism and counter violent extremism with WPS work. These paragraphs call for this through, first, the integration of gender as a “cross-cutting issue” in CT and P/CVE, including in Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) activities, requiring attention to the gendered dynamics and gendered effects of CT and P/CVE initiatives. Second, the resolution emphasises the need to improve the knowledge base on the issue of women and extremism, through gathering gender-sensitive data on both the “drivers of radicalization for women” and the impact of counter-terrorism initiatives on women’s organisations. Third, UNSCR 2242 urges the participation of women and women’s civil society organisations in “developing strategies to counter terrorism and violent extremism,
reiterating the importance of incorporating women’s civil society organisations into the governance of peace and security, including counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism.

At the UN level, these provisions are echoed and reinforced in a later WPS resolution, UNSCR 2467, though given a different inflection, given that resolution’s focus on sexual violence. UNSCR 2467 identifies trafficking in persons and sexual violence as tactics used by “certain parties to armed conflict, including non-state armed groups designated as terrorist groups,” and reminds the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) to continue to report on these crimes and violations as part of its CT mandate. Although UNSCR 2467 positions the link between WPS and CT/CVE at the locus of sexual violence crimes, rather than focusing on governance, in general terms, the resolution represents continued efforts to associate or align WPS and CT/CVE, borne of the provisions in resolution 2242.

UNSCR 2242 is certainly driving a degree of engagement, if not alignment, between WPS and CT and P/CVE, but there is no real evidence that the normative provisions have been operationalised consistently. Domestic interpretation of international norms, processes to align norms with values and principles which inform national responses to terrorism and violence extremism, state political interests, and contextual security needs all contribute to variation within the national framing of the normative provisions of the agenda. Measures to implement these provisions have to align with existing material and ideational dimensions of state practice, including identity-making practices that constitute the state itself. The meanings attached to norms during the policy development process – the interpretation of the norms through the lens of existing ideas and interests – informs the measures proposed to validate and operationalise the norm, the circumstances where these measures are to take effect, and how they are implemented within the domestic context – and there is then a co-constitutive effect such that the normative commitments and actions inform the ideas and interests of the state, of course.

Doris Asante is a PhD candidate in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Her research explores the relationship between CSOs and states in the national implementation of UNSCR 2242.

Yasmin Chilmeran completed her PhD in 2020 at Monash University’s Centre for Gender, Peace and Security, working on the Australian Research Council Linkage Project ‘Towards Inclusive Peace’. Her doctoral research focused on women’s participation in peacebuilding in post-2003 Iraq, paying close attention to the role of international gender norms, including the Women, Peace and Security agenda.

Laura J. Shepherd is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney. She is also co-Director of the Methodological Innovation research stream within the UKRI GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub. Her primary field of research relates to the development and implementation of the WPS agenda.

Zoe Tiller is a foreign policy practitioner with more than fourteen years’ experience in international security and diplomacy, with a focus on gender equality. Most recently she has co-led Australian Government humanitarian policy and programmes in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Jordan. She has a Masters in International Security from France’s leading political science institution, Sciences Po in Paris, and Bachelors in Arts and Commerce from Melbourne University.

This is an edited extract from Asante, Chilmeran, Shepherd, and Tiller’s article in the Australian Journal of International Affairs titled “The impact of UN Security Council resolution 2242 in Australia, the UK and Sweden.” It is republished with permission.