Women, peace and security: a critical analysis of the Security Council's vision

The Charter of the United Nations makes forty-five references to the word “peace.” In the vast majority of them, peace is coupled with security – rather than development or human rights – in the interdependent phrase “international peace and security” (for example, arts. 1(1), 2(3), 11(1), 11(2), 11(3), and 12(2)).1 It is no surprise, then, that the Security Council continues this linkage in its women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda, which commenced in 2000 with the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325), the first of its thematic resolutions on WPS. In this critical analysis, I historicize the WPS agenda and argue that long-standing feminist conceptions of positive peace – which at least some members of the coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who lobbied the Security Council to adopt SCR 1325 had hoped to thereby promote – have become captive to the militarized security frame of the Council’s operation.