With UN80 reform underway amid maneuvers intensifying around the United Nations’ secretary-general selection, a troubling pattern is emerging: The steady erasure of the women, peace and security agenda.
Anchored in UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which was approved in 2000, the WPS agenda provided a blueprint for transforming how peace is made and sustained by prioritizing prevention, the participation of women in peacemaking and paying close attention to the needs of people affected by conflict. Its relevance to today’s debates on conflict is crucial, while its deliberate demotion contradicts the very purpose of UN reform. Yet, there are practical recommendations on how to realize the potential of the WPS agenda to help secure the UN’s future relevance and impact.
The most recent erasure is reflected in UN General Assembly Resolution 80/251, the 2025 reform text calling for changes in the mandates of UN entities, but it never mentions women. The erasure also extends to the various pillars of UN peace and security operations. In peacekeeping debates, for example, there are no references to gendered analysis in assessments of security threats. Nor is there acknowledgment of the impact of WPS advisers or women peacekeepers to enhance missions’ effectiveness and accountability.
A case in point: During Israel’s attacks on Gaza in 2025, a cadre of female medical officers from Jordan’s military deployed to Gaza were critical to ensuring the safety and evacuation of premature babies and mothers during Israeli attacks.
Similarly, despite evidence that including women in peace negotiations improves the substance and durability of agreements, WPS has been consistently sidelined from mediation and political processes. This was evident in October 2025, during the UN Security Council’s negotiations of Resolution 2798, which focused on the verification of the Colombia peace accord. The final text “commends” women’s roles and “notes” gender and sexual violence but omits verification of inclusivity or protection, reflecting the de-prioritization of WPS commitments
Disappearing acts
The invisibility extends to the peacebuilding architecture. UN Security Council Resolution 1820 assigns the UN Peacebuilding Commission to engage women’s civil society organizations in post-conflict contexts. Evidence shows that in fragile settings, these groups mitigate violence, counter extremism, address humanitarian needs and sustain social cohesion. In war-torn Syria during the 2023 earthquake, for example, women peacebuilders were the first responders. In 2025, as the Bashar al-Assad regime collapsed, women’s groups mediated locally to reduce revenge killings. But UN80 reform — the most significant step in decades to make the organization more relevant and efficient — is ignoring the mandate and these experiences.
The WPS agenda is also diminished in the proposed merger of UN Women with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). As a March 2026 report states, a merger “risks disrupting programs and explicit operational safeguards . . . essential” for programming, notably WPS.
The erasure is also partly driven by the coercive backlash by the United States against women’s rights domestically and internationally. But it is also the inadvertent effect of the UN’s technocratic approach to reform that misses the politically transformative vision of the WPS agenda.
Guterres’s “Shifting Paradigms: United to Deliver” progress report on UN80 reform proposes a “single center of excellence” housed in the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs “to provide coherent support to missions and country teams’ while liaising with UN Women.”
Such a hub risks becoming a bureaucracy providing guidance and training without the political authority to shape decisions or ensure accountability. It is antithetical to the spirit of an agenda whose profound essence is calling for women’s participation at the heart of peace and security decision-making.
A hub also risks being a tick-the-box exercise. I spent over a decade training and advising UN staff and leadership on the integration of the WPS directives into the UN’s crisis response and peace processes. Without senior leadership and a political mandate, this center could accelerate the end of the agenda. If housed in the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, it would play a limited role in humanitarian and development issues.
Follow the money
Funding cuts are another major driver of UN reform. Although women’s peacebuilding organizations have proven cost-efficient and effective, their funding has shrunk over many years, and they are invisible in the proposed steps to radically improve the work of the UN. The existing UN funds — particularly the Peacebuilding Fund, burdened with administrative costs and bureaucracy — could have a multiplier effect if it partnered with civil society groups. But the UN’s funding structures are not adapting.
The current reform plan is thus creating a system that speaks the language of inclusion while structurally excluding those it claims to support.
If member states are serious about improving UN relevance and performance through reform, they must establish structures that reflect the centrality of WPS to peace and security. Three practical, efficient actions are essential:
• A consolidated political anchor: Establish a senior representative of the secretary general (SRSG) on women, peace and security to encompass prevention of sexual violence, aligned with the secretary-general’s office, independent but linked to:
-
- The Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs to ensure inclusive analysis and women’s participation in prevention, mediation and peacebuilding
- The proposed Peace Support Office to integrate gender into security programs and ensure compliance with Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820, 1889 in post-conflict and peacebuilding settings, especially including women-led civil society organizations in design and implementation
- The Office of Counter-Terrorism to strengthen gendered approaches to addressing violence extremism
- The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to ensure UN and independent humanitarian organizations fulfill their obligations for the protection and participation of women, following WPS-related guidance, and make funding conditional on compliance
- The prevention of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in programming across the peace, humanitarian and development pillars of the UN
• Civil society as partners: UN80 reform must recognize civil society as core actors. The SRSG could convene an agile advisory group linking the UN with global WPS networks to ensure that field-based expertise informs policy and is included in design and delivery.
• Responsible investing: UN funds’ rules prevent a full reach to local actors. Donors should enable partnerships with trusted civil society peacebuilding funds to foster the ecosystem of peace and security.
A crucial moment
The UN system is rooted in centuries of hard-won lessons: That war is a moral failure; that peace depends on diplomacy, not domination; that states require shared laws; and that unchecked militarization corrodes societies. Yet from Ukraine to Gaza, today’s leaders are abandoning their responsibilities and flouting international laws with double standards and hypocrisy.
Emerging from World War II, when civilians comprised 50 percent of victims, the UN’s architects understood that governments alone cannot be trusted. People require protection, participation and accountability — hence the Charter enshrining the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, calling on “we the peoples.” Women have been key to ensuring the institution reflects their rights and contributions equally.
UN80 is a once-in-a-century opportunity to reignite the original vision of the UN. But reform cannot be driven by financial Hunger Games, state bullying and bureaucratic fixes. The WPS agenda bridges the perennial tension between the state-centric, security-driven vision and a human-centered one, providing a tested roadmap for transformation. Its devaluation during UN80 may reflect ideology, bureaucratic misunderstanding and neglect.
A UN reform process that neither upholds its commitment to half the world’s population nor embraces the vibrant global civil society ecosystem leading crisis response is thwarting its own capacity to sustain peace. This is a dereliction of responsibility leading to regressive, not progressive, reform.
In a world currently scarred by genocide and fragmentation, this is a risk we cannot afford.
This is an opinion essay.
We welcome your Comments on this article. What are your thoughts?
Related Posts
Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE, is the founder/CEO of theInternational Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) andan architect of Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000. She was a senior consultant on the implementation of the women, peace and security agenda across the UN system from 2001-2018. In 2011, she was appointed as the first senior gender and inclusion expert on the UN’s Standby Team of Mediation Experts.
![[Re]Group - A Playbook for Turbulent Times -Subscribe Now](https://passblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/regroup-v2_unf2026_square_600.500@2x.webp)
Thank you Sanam for this great contribution. I would say that the world without WOMEN is not a world. That is a fact we have been running away from for too long, but nothing serious, solid, humane, effective and impactful can be built without women, starting with our families! The second point I would underline is about PEACE KEEPING vs PREVENTION. I fully agree with you that PREVENTION is the best way to go for the UN and for humanity but countries which have weapon industries will never adhere to this principle! Unfortunately!