Improving EU Responses to Gender and Peacebuilding

EU gender peacebuilding policy has a paper trail that stretches back to the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, yet for most of the decade that followed, commitments outpaced delivery. A June 2008 briefing by Karen Barnes and Minna Lyytikäinen, produced for a European Commission-funded research consortium on peacebuilding, set out why. Written for officials in Brussels and in Commission delegations, it remains one of the clearest diagnoses of the gap between what the EU says about gender and conflict and what its institutions are staffed, funded and structured to do.

The briefing’s starting point was practical rather than rhetorical. Resolution 1325 covers a sweeping range of actions, from women’s participation in peace negotiations to protection from sexual violence, but offers no guidance on how to prioritise them. Officials with limited time and money were left unsure what counted as the bare minimum. The authors’ answer was to treat 1325 as a tool rather than an end in itself, and to organise the European Commission’s response around five complementary areas for action.

Five priority areas for the European Commission

The briefing identified the following priorities for a more effective, coherent and coordinated EU response to gender and peacebuilding:

• Enabling strategic prioritisation. The Commission should develop a coherent strategy for implementing Resolution 1325, ideally its own action plan. Since 2006 several EU member states had adopted National Action Plans, but no regional body had yet built a dedicated implementation framework. An EC plan, starting with a baseline audit of existing capacity, resources and expertise, would have made the Commission a leader among regional organisations.
• Developing thematic and context-specific expertise. References to 1325 appeared in policy statements, but what it meant to operationalise the resolution was not well understood. Gender needed to be linked to sectoral work on transitional justice, security sector reform, disarmament and peace negotiations rather than reduced to “women’s issues”.
• Consulting with partners. Women’s organisations hold context-specific knowledge of local priorities and can often reach marginalised groups that official actors cannot. Consultation also needed to extend to men and traditional leaders as advocates for change.
• Providing adequate resources. Staff with competence in both gender and conflict were few, relatively junior and stretched across competing workloads. Where financial allocations could be quantified at all, they were small.
• Integrating monitoring and accountability. Without indicators, incentives and reporting requirements, gender issues would keep slipping down the priority list, especially in complex conflict settings.

Real progress in integrating gender into peacebuilding policy, the authors argued, “is less a question of ‘new ideas’ and operational guidance, and more a question of genuine attention, prioritisation and demonstrable political will at all levels.”

What headquarters was asked to change

For Brussels, the briefing’s recommendations were specific. The Commission should adopt an EC-wide plan of action on gender and armed conflict, complete with baseline assessment, benchmarks, timelines and costed resource allocations. It should recruit a senior gender expert to work full-time on gender and armed conflict within the Directorate-General for External Relations, giving the agenda both skills and authority. An internal working group across Directorates-General should vet the annual programming of the main financial instruments, including the Development Cooperation Instrument, the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, the Instrument for Stability and the 10th European Development Fund, to check that gender and conflict analysis was present and connected to money.

The authors also pressed for gender perspectives in the Commission’s thematic work. The joint Commission-Council EU Concept for Support to DDR, adopted in December 2006, had mainstreamed gender relatively well and was held up as a model for other policy areas. The journal’s article on the EU’s approach to disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration looks at that framework in detail, and the wider policy machinery is covered in the analysis of EU conflict prevention policy.

What delegations were asked to do

The country level is where the briefing located the sharpest consequences of under-resourcing. Commission delegations in conflict-affected countries were asked to lead on consultation mechanisms that give women’s groups access to policy processes, to recruit a gender and conflict expert in every delegation with a real mandate and budget, and to fund the capacity of civil society organisations, including core funding rather than project-by-project support. Delegations were also encouraged to help partner governments develop and finance their own National Action Plans on 1325.

The underlying logic was about ownership. Dynamic women’s leadership in politics and civil society, the authors noted, had repeatedly proved capable of transforming action on gender and peacebuilding, in Europe as much as in conflict-affected states. External support works when it strengthens those local advocates instead of substituting for them. Evidence from the field bears this out; the case study on women and transitional justice in Liberia shows what such advocacy achieves when it is resourced.

Gender and security sector reform

Among the thematic gaps, gender and security sector reform received particular attention. The briefing recommended that the Commission explore ways to incorporate gender perspectives into policy documents on security and justice reform, learning from the DDR concept. Four issues were singled out: the employment of women in security sector institutions; gender analysis of justice and SSR policy; specific measures to address sexual and gender-based violence by police and justice institutions; and gender training for security sector personnel.

These points anticipated what has since become standard guidance. The Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF) now publishes a widely used toolkit on gender and security sector governance, and gender analysis is a routine component of SSR assessments. The reform agenda itself, including how justice and security institutions are rebuilt after conflict, is examined in the journal’s piece on transitional justice and security system reform.

How the agenda evolved after 2008

The briefing appeared at a pivotal moment. Six months later, in December 2008, the Council adopted the EU’s Comprehensive Approach to the implementation of Resolutions 1325 and 1820, the first EU-wide framework of the kind the authors had called for. Seventeen indicators to track implementation followed in 2010. The creation of the European External Action Service in 2011 reorganised the institutional terrain the briefing had mapped, and the EU later consolidated its commitments in the 2018 Strategic Approach to Women, Peace and Security and an accompanying action plan, coordinated through the European External Action Service.

Measured against the five priority areas, progress has been uneven in ways the 2008 analysis predicted. Frameworks and indicators now exist. A Principal Advisor on Gender sits in the EEAS. Yet independent reviews, including those by UN Women on the global Women, Peace and Security agenda, keep returning to the same weak points: junior and overstretched gender expertise, funding that is hard to trace, and accountability mechanisms without teeth. The research base behind the briefing is synthesised in the journal’s overview of what the evidence shows on gender and peacebuilding.

The 2008 briefing’s lasting contribution is its insistence that mainstreaming fails without structure. Policy language costs little. Senior posts, earmarked budgets, consultation machinery and indicators cost real money and political capital, and they are what separate a gender-sensitive peacebuilding policy from a gender-sensitive press release.

Frequently asked questions

What does EU gender peacebuilding policy involve?

It covers how the EU integrates gender considerations into conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict reconstruction: women’s participation in peace processes, protection from sexual and gender-based violence, gender expertise in EU missions and delegations, and funding for women’s organisations in conflict-affected countries.

What were the five priority action areas identified in the 2008 briefing?

Enabling strategic prioritisation, developing thematic and context-specific expertise, consulting with partners, providing adequate resources, and integrating monitoring and accountability measures. Together they were meant to turn Resolution 1325 commitments into a coherent European Commission work programme.

Why was Resolution 1325 hard for EU institutions to implement?

The resolution lists a broad range of actions without saying how to prioritise them. Officials faced limited time, small budgets and few colleagues with combined gender and conflict expertise, so references to 1325 often stayed at the level of policy statements rather than operational practice.

What is gender and security sector reform?

It is the integration of gender considerations into the reform of police, military and justice institutions. Core elements include employing women in security institutions, gender analysis of SSR policy, measures against sexual and gender-based violence by security personnel, and gender training across the sector.

Why did the briefing recommend a senior gender expert at DG RELEX?

Because existing gender-and-conflict staff were few, junior and overloaded. A full-time senior expert in the Directorate-General for External Relations would have given the agenda the authority and continuity needed to influence programming decisions rather than comment on them afterwards.

What role do women’s organisations play in EU peacebuilding work?

They supply knowledge of local priorities, reach marginalised populations that official actors struggle to access, and hold governments and donors accountable. The briefing recommended institutionalised consultation with them and core funding to build their capacity, not just short project grants.

What is the EU Concept for Support to DDR and why was it praised?

It is a joint Commission-Council framework from December 2006 guiding EU support to disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of ex-combatants. The briefing praised it for mainstreaming gender issues and proposed it as a model for other policy areas such as security sector and justice reform.

Did the European Commission ever adopt a plan like the one recommended?

In December 2008 the Council adopted the EU Comprehensive Approach to implementing Resolutions 1325 and 1820, followed by 17 tracking indicators in 2010. The EU later adopted a Strategic Approach to Women, Peace and Security in 2018 with an action plan, so the framework the briefing called for did eventually take shape.

What are National Action Plans on Resolution 1325?

They are government strategies setting out how a state will implement the Women, Peace and Security agenda. Several EU member states adopted them from 2006 onwards, and the briefing recommended that Commission delegations help partner governments in conflict-affected countries develop and fund their own.

Why do monitoring and accountability matter so much in gender mainstreaming?

Because overloaded officials prioritise what is measured and reported. Without indicators, baselines and clear lines of responsibility, gender commitments remain ad hoc. The briefing argued that accountability mechanisms, not new ideas, were the binding constraint on EU performance.