The Vilnius Summit and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: progress or performance?
By Simone Benson
Introduction
In July 2023, NATO held its 36th summit in Vilnius, where the Alliance demonstrated their strength and unity by making many critical decisions for their future and stability. The summit included multiple victories, including a definite answer on Sweden’s accession timeline, Ukraine’s membership prospects, and new defence plans and spending budgets. However, as important as all these decisions are, the Vilnius summit presents significant concerns about NATO’s commitment to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. Heads of state rarely contributed to discussions and actions on behalf of the agenda during the summit, and NATO barely mentioned the agenda throughout the summit and its official documents. These concerns arguably contribute to the idea that NATO’s Women, Peace, and Security Agenda is in a predicament where it appears to be more performative for the organization’s sake rather than genuine action to increase the number of women at the table.
This article will demonstrate how the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda is perceived as a performative action by NATO at the Vilnius Summit. It will discuss the objectives of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda. It will then be followed by an analysis of NATO’s current WPS policies. Next, the article will analyze NATO’s commitments to the agenda from the official documents of the Vilnius Summit, their 2022 Strategic Concept, and their most recent Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security. Finally, it will conclude why women are essential to peace and security and how the Alliance can move forward with their Women, Peace, and Security Agenda.
What is the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda?
The Women, Peace, and Security Agenda (WPS) is a policy initiative established in October 2000 by the United Nations Security Council through Resolution 1325. This policy was established with two objectives: to recognize how conflict affects women and girls differently and to acknowledge the demand for women in discussions of peace and security. NATO implemented its first Women, Peace, and Security policies in December 2007, focusing their rendition of the agenda around three principles: integration, inclusiveness, and integrity. First, their integration principle refers to gender equality and women’s inclusion at all levels of the Alliance. Their second principle, inclusiveness, refers to the importance of including women at the table to enhance NATO’s operational effectiveness. Finally, NATO’s integrity principle addresses systemic inequalities within the Alliance to ensure equal treatment between all men and women.
As aforementioned, NATO implemented its first formal policy on WPS in December 2007, focusing on how gender perspectives can apply to NATO operations. Subsequently, the first NATO WPS Action Plan was established at the 2010 Lisbon Summit and is continuously updated with new plans, commitments, and recommendations. Most recently, a new 2021–2025 Action Plan has been endorsed by defence ministers to further advance gender equality and integrate gender perspectives into all of NATO. Heads of State and Government also declared at the 2022 Madrid Summit that NATO would advance a strong WPS by incorporating gender perspectives across the Alliance and in their 2022 Strategic Concept. This declaration was monumental for gender equality in NATO and the WPS Agenda, as it was the first time the agenda or its commitments were mentioned in NATO’s Strategic Concept.
What was said about Women, Peace, and Security at the Vilnius Summit?
NATO’s commitment to the WPS appears more performative due to the minimal discussion of the agenda at the Vilnius Summit. It is vital to note that there was only one event related to Women, Peace, and Security held at the summit: the high-level women’s breakfast on July 12, 2023. The meeting gathered to discuss women’s leadership by allowing foreign and defence ministers to meet with civil society representatives and inspire “change and support” for women in the Ukraine conflict. Irene Fellin, the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for Women, Peace, and Security, opened the meeting with civil society representatives with a speech where she applauded civil society’s work to increase women’s political representation and participation in peace and security. Fellin followed this by stressing how today is a critical time for international peace, stability, and security and how important it is to have varying perspectives at the decision-making table, stressing that diverse representation is needed to guarantee the longevity of the agenda. Further, Fellin states that the change and results we want to see in Ukraine can only happen if we include all voices at the table, as having diverse perspectives enables NATO to have a better understanding of the world and will facilitate better solutions that result in “longer lasting and more sustainable peace.”
Additionally, the Official Communiqué further highlights the performative perception of WPS discussion at the summit, as it is the only official document which discusses NATO’s commitments to the agenda. In the Vilnius Summit Communiqué, only four points mention the WPS agenda. Other issues discussed at the summit, like cyber defence and climate change, are included and discussed much more in the communiqué. For instance, NATO’s cyber defence was discussed in ten points of the communiqué, with multiple paragraphs addressing its related threats and the Alliance’s actions to enhance their cyber defence. The communiqué also discussed NATO’s climate security goals in the document. Although they only mentioned it in three points of the communiqué, the paragraphs dedicated to acknowledging climate security and the actions NATO will take exceed the discussion of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda. Additionally, it is interesting to note when these security sections were added to the Alliance’s commitments, as cyber defence was first integrated into their agenda at the Prague Summit in 2002, and climate change was first acknowledged as a security issue in the 2010 Strategic Concept. As previously mentioned, the first WPS policy integrated into NATO was in 2007, in between the Alliance’s integration of cyber defence and climate change. Thus, it would be reasonable to expect that the amount of discussion around all three would be similar in the communiqué.
Nevertheless, the expectation above is not met. The Women, Peace, and Security Agenda is first mentioned in point seven, where NATO condemns Russia for its human rights violations and abuses, specifying conflict-related sexual violence as part of the violation. Following this, at point twenty-two, they also state that they condemn Russia for contributing to the instability of different regions of the world, resulting in the proliferation of violence against its citizens. This point also touches on conflict-related sexual violence, stating that said violence poses a serious humanitarian challenge in the said regions, which NATO acknowledges as having a “disproportionate impact” on women and children.
The following points which discuss the WPS agenda only occur at points seventy and seventy-one. Point seventy discusses how NATO is committed to integrating WPS across all its core tasks and will continue to work towards fully implementing the agenda to enhance the Alliance’s operational effectiveness and improve cooperation between their civilian and military structures. Point seventy-one also explicitly mentions the agenda, stating that NATO recognizes how vital women’s “full, meaningful, and equal” participation is regarding all facets of peace and stability. It states that NATO recognizes how conflict disproportionately impacts women and girls, and the Alliance will continue implementing policies that advance gendered perspectives and equality.
The points made in NATO’s Official Communiqué that mention the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda.
The minimal discourse of WPS within NATO’s Official Communiqué implies that the agenda is not a current priority for NATO as it is only discussed when it is convenient for them to discuss equal integration and participation. Although it was not the only topic discussed in minimal lines, NATO has committed through their official statements that WPS is supposed to be at the forefront of all their commitments and integrated across every single one of their core tasks. Therefore, their lack of consistent discussion regarding the WPS Agenda in the Official Communiqué demonstrates that the agenda is being sidelined, whether intentionally or not, rather than just being superficially covered by the Alliance so they cover their bases.
This minimal acknowledgement creates concerns for its longevity, as the loss of momentum at such a critical meeting can hinder the future of the WPS Agenda within the Alliance.
To eliminate these concerns, NATO should acknowledge the agenda within each main topic discussed at the summit. Many topics were discussed at length, including Russia’s hostilities, nuclear forces, terrorism, and defence spending. Instead of the Alliance including two points which acknowledge women’s equal participation, it should be integrated into the points made throughout the communiqué, like done in points seven and twenty-two. By including a sentence or two within the different topics on the impacts and importance of a gendered perspective, the Official Communiqué would not appear as performative and would reassure women and the feminist community that they are being thought about throughout NATO’s missions and tasks. Of course, since the communiqué is a large document and covers many topics, it is understandable that even if the WPS agenda was integrated throughout the entire document, the quality of the points made might be surface level. At this point, however, consistent superficiality would be an improvement, especially for women, to reassure them that the agenda is still evidently discussed and considered at important meetings.
What is said about Women, Peace, and Security in the 2022 Strategic Concept?
In press releases regarding the Vilnius Summit and the high-level women’s breakfast, NATO continuously refers to its Strategic Concept, citing it when discussing the WPS Agenda as being at the forefront of all NATO commitments. NATO’s new Strategic Concept was drafted in 2022 and is used to state the Alliance’s current values, purposes, and commitments as the guide for their future political and military developments. In this document, they discuss the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda in two sections — their Purpose and Principles and their Strategic Environment. NATO first emphasizes the importance of investing in the WPS agenda across all core tasks and commits to advancing gender equality as it reflects its values. Second, the Strategic Concept discusses how “pervasive instability” results in violence against civilians, including conflict-related sexual violence and irregular migration.
Aside from these few points made in two sections, there is no other mention of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda anywhere else in the thirteen-page document. This lack of transparency about how they integrate gendered perspectives further facilitates the appearance of the agenda being a performative action. From a gendered perspective, it is not easy to understand how the agenda is a commitment across all core tasks of the Alliance while only being listed in two sections of the Strategic Concept, which formulates their core values and commitments. One way that NATO could reduce this concern is by including more information on WPS within their Strategic Concept. For instance, they could articulate the importance of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda within the section “NATO’s Core Tasks,” and indicate how they will integrate and invest in the agenda, through specific provisions, into each of their core tasks: Deterrence and Defence, Crisis Prevention and Management, and Cooperative Security.
Comparing the Summit outcomes to NATO’s WPS Action Plan
Furthermore, when one compares the official documents from the Vilnius Summit to their Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security policies, concerns arise again regarding NATO’s commitments to the WPS agenda. The first section of the action plan discusses WPS integration within NATO’s institutional framework, where they commit to sustainably advancing gender equality through their WPS policies. In this section, their commitments include supporting NATO’s WPS Task Force and WPS-related positions committees. Specifically, they state that the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives will be an advisory body to their Military Committee to ensure that gender mainstreaming is a fundamental part of their policies and operations. Gender mainstreaming, according to UN Women, is a strategic approach and institutional process focused on achieving the long-term goal of gender equality. This point regarding gender mainstreaming in the Military Committee in the action plan is interesting within the context of the summit, as according to the Communiqué and NATO news articles, gender mainstreaming is not indicated in the discussions of policies, programs, or military operations associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict which dominated summit discussions. Although the forced deportation of children and conflict-related sexual violence is mentioned, there is no discussion nor transparency regarding acknowledgements or actions NATO will take to protect and prevent these violations against civilians in the Official Communiqué or how NATO will integrate the WPS Agenda to support their objectives and priorities in Ukraine. Other international institutions, like the United Nations, have been transparent on this front, addressing how women and girls have been affected by the conflict in Ukraine and how they are integrating their perspectives into the UN’s response to the conflict. Thus, NATO can provide this transparency, too, as although its agenda is modelled after the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, NATO is its own separate entity with its own specific agenda and tasks.
Later, the Action Plan states that NATO will integrate and identify a gender perspective into all its policies, programmes, and activities. In particular, the document states that a gendered perspective will be included within all their strategic communications. However, as previously mentioned, this has yet to occur. While the summit and the Official Communiqué formally acknowledged the impact conflict has on women and children, the Alliance does not consider a gendered perspective throughout all their policies and statements made at the summit. Therefore, NATO’s lack of inclusion and integration of a gendered perspective communicated at the summit cannot mean that the agenda is being integrated across all policies, programmes, and activities and does not reflect its intentions in its Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security.
Moreover, the Action Plan commits to integrating the agenda into its partnership frameworks. The Action Plan states they will continue to “enhance partner capacities” relating to WPS through education, training, and capacity building alongside continuing cooperation to strengthen their shared understanding and implementation of the WPS Agenda. However, none of this is mentioned in the official documents at the summit. Multiple NATO partners attended the event, yet there is no acknowledgement of the agenda in their discussions, which is concerning considering their commitments to these policies in the Action Plan.
Why is a gendered perspective important to peace and security?
A gendered perspective is critical to the prosperity and stability of the NATO Alliance and for all peace and security matters. One can see the trend developing in the research that when the inclusion of women is prioritized, long-term peace and stability are more likely to occur. The research that has been conducted on women’s inclusion has multiple findings that are vital to peace and security. Arguably, the most important findings have been that including women in conflict negotiations and mediation strengthens the process. A study completed by the International Peace Institute (IPI) and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies found that the participation of women in peace talks is monumental for long-term peace and stability, as agreements are thirty-five percent more likely to last longer than fifteen years if women are involved in the discussion. The research was completed by analyzing forty peace processes within thirty-five countries from the last three decades. Through this research, they found that peace agreements were almost always reached when women’s groups were involved and influential in the peace process, as well as were associated with higher rates of implementation of the negotiations. The study compared the peace processes when women were involved to when they were excluded and found that the rate of reaching an agreement was much lower when women did not participate. The study conducted by the IPI is one of many of its nature. It indicates an idea many are starting to recognize: that women play a critical role in preserving peace and stability within communities and states, as well as improving conflict prevention outcomes before, during, and after conflict.
Other studies also indicate that women’s equality and participation is an optimal predictor of peace. Research has indicated that countries with higher women empowerment are less likely to get involved in conflict with their neighbours or hold a poor standing within the international community. Moreover, studies indicate that gender equality better indicates how peaceful a state is over democracy, religion, or even GDP. This same publication also found that states with higher gender inequality indicate higher levels of armed conflict within and between states. All this research demonstrates that a gendered perspective and the inclusion of women are essential for longer-lasting peace and stability.
Finally, a gendered perspective is essential to peace and security because women experience conflict differently from men and, therefore, have different issues that must be addressed in times of conflict. Their differing perspective during conflict facilitates women seeing other issues that must be discussed at the table. For instance, women are less likely to take up arms during the conflict but more likely to die in higher numbers due to the multiple indirect effects of war and conflict on them. These effects include, but are not limited to, human rights abuses, widespread disease, and economic ruin. According to O’Reilly’s article, studies are finding that women raise different priorities to the table during negotiations due to the unique experiences they encounter as a woman, although it is not yet considered a direct correlation. For instance, women at the table bring up different issues that look beyond military action and territory, like humanitarian needs. They expand the issues discussed during negotiations, which ultimately helps societies resolve themselves and build a more stable and robust peace.
Conclusion
Overall, it is evident from the official documents of the Vilnius Summit that there are reasonable concerns about the need for more acknowledgement of the WPS. NATO’s Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security commits to actively promoting the agenda to ensure a gender perspective is integrated across the Alliance. However, this is not happening based on the Official Communiqué of the Vilnius Summit. Taking active promotion of a policy means consistently taking specific and identifiable actions toward encouraging the discussion and implementation of said policy, which has not happened.
The one event that focused on advancing women’s leadership and empowerment was not mentioned in the Official Communiqué. The purpose of the high-level women’s breakfast was to inspire change and support the women who are caught in the middle of the conflict in Ukraine. Nevertheless, this discussion was not reflected whatsoever in the final documents that were produced. Irene Fellin’s opening remarks almost imply this concern, saying that the Alliance has a joint responsibility to do more to leverage women’s leadership.
Although there were many topics on the table to discuss at the Vilnius Summit, none of which should be marginalized as they are critical to the security of Alliance, the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda is one of these topics that are critical to the stability and prosperity of the Alliance. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg states that their 2022 Strategic Concept is the “blueprint for the Alliance,” which is a document that states the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda is critical to the Alliance and will be invested across all of their core tasks. NATO acknowledges that the agenda is pivotal to improving women’s voices within the field of international security and improving the lives of women and children affected by human security threats. They acknowledge this in their Strategic Concept and Action Plan on WPS, recognizing the excessive burden of conflict against women and girls. Thus, if NATO identifies the agenda as a critical part of its institutional framework, the official documents from pivotal gatherings should reflect their commitments, such as facilitating better gender mainstreaming and implementing a gender perspective.
Arguably the most critical aspect in the Vilnius Summit’s Communiqué is how NATO states they will subject their WPS policies to review. Moving forward post-summit, this statement in the communique is critical to the agenda’s future. When this review does happen, NATO must make sure that they are more transparent about how they plan to implement the agenda into their core tasks to ensure their stance on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda comes off as non-performative. From the summit, we have learned that their core tasks involve major security issues, like the conflict in Ukraine. Therefore, NATO should acknowledge how they plan to prevent conflict-related sexual violence and how they plan to integrate more women into their military forces at all levels of their participation in relieving the conflict. Of course, these acknowledgements are just the minimum to ask for, as this review should encompass all tasks NATO takes on. Thus, NATO should also address how they implement gendered perspectives into all areas of the Alliance, such as cyber security, climate and environmental security, and deterrence and defence. NATO can only transcend its current accomplishments and prosper through the complete integration and transparency of its commitments, policies, and plans to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. Hopefully, this pending review of their policies will facilitate better transparency and communication.
Simone Benson is in her third year at Queen’s University, studying Political Studies and pursuing a certificate in International Studies. She also works as a research assistant at the Centre for International and Defence Policy.
