International Development Committee

WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY INQUIRY

I am Dr Maria Holt, Emeritus Fellow at the University of Westminster (Politics & International Relations). I have been researching and writing about women, Islam and violence in the Middle East and North Africa, based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, for many years. My most recent book, Violence Against Women in Peace and War: Cases from the Middle East, was published in 2021.

1.0              Introduction: the man’s world of peace making

Women, Peace and Security (WPS) is a policy framework that recognizes that women must be critical actors in all efforts to achieve sustainable international peace and security. WPS recognizes the unique impacts of violent conflict on women and promotes their equal and meaningful participation in peace processes, peacebuilding and security (United States Institute of Peace).

1.1              While the WPS agenda is highly commendable, the one notable aspect of various meetings to agree ceasefires and initiate peace negotiations, for example recently for Ukraine and Gaza, is that usually everyone, or almost everyone, in the room is male. This is nothing new of course; despite international resolutions, the dogged work of activists and proof of women’s effective roles as peacemakers, little has changed since UN Security Council Resolution 1325, on women, peace and security, in 2000; men remain in charge. And women are not only not involved in solving the conflict but tend to be disproportionately affected by its violence. It is time to shift the narrative.

1.2              For western policy makers, this needs to happen on at least two levels: (i) in terms of empowering women in conflict and post-conflict situations to take an active and meaningful role in negotiations; and (ii) to educate western publics that women and girls in the Global South, including veiled women, are not the stereotypical objects of pity so often portrayed in the western media.

1.3              Inclusion must be more than simply a buzzword. While policy attention on sexual violence against women and girls has remained a priority over the past 15 or so years, ‘what is called mainstreamed inclusion of women remains patchy’ (Schomerus 2023:12).

1.4              Although Resolution 1325 calls upon member states to mainstream gender perspectives into peacebuilding efforts, we should not – as gender scholar Nicola Pratt suggests, ‘read this as a positive step toward the transformation of the lives of women’ in conflict zones. Rather, interpreting 1325 ‘through a postcolonial feminist lens reveals that this reconceptualization of gender occurs through a re-inscription of racial-sexual boundaries evocative of the political economy of imperialism’ (2013:772).

1.5              The WPS agenda ‘remains critically important in a world that grapples with complex conflict, whether it be violent state-based warfare, civil war, internal conflict or violent extremism’ (2029). Although the UK government has done much worthwhile work to advance this crucial agenda, the cut in aid means that its efforts now need to be even more carefully focused and this, I suggest, can be achieved through changes in attitudes and priorities.

In this submission, I will give some examples from my own work, on violence against women in peace and war in the Muslim majority states of the Arab Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. I will conclude my submission with a brief case study of the current emergency for Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip.

2.0              Argument

The argument I am making in this submission is that, when considering the impact of violent conflict on women and girls and their ability to play a constructive role in post-conflict reconstruction, we should bear in mind that a diverse range of actors and stakeholders is involved in the process and each will have an impact on decision-making. Not engaging with some of these actors, for example Islamists, betrays a colonial mindset. It risks excluding important voices from the debate.

3.0              The Muslim Arab woman in the western imagination

3.1              If the UK government’s objective is to strengthen and legitimize women’s involvement in peace and security, it might like to take a more critical look at how women in Muslim-majority states are portrayed in the western media and popular culture. Especially after 11 September 2001, Muslim women living in non-western countries have tended to be represented ‘as victims of violence and Islamic practices’ (Mishra 2007), as ‘oppressed victims of their controlling husbands or fathers’ (Al-Sibai 2022) and ‘as being in need of sexual freedom’ (Mekay 2024). They are seen as objects without the means to act on their own behalf.

3.2              Rather than solidarity with women suffering the dreadful effects of violent conflict, there is a tendency in the western media to portray Muslims both negatively and simplistically. Popular stereotypes include ‘terrorists, misogynistic men and oppressed women’ (Shehryar 2023). A recent study concluded that Arab and Muslim women are only portrayed positively in the western media when they look or act like western women. These ‘westernized women’ are treated as an exception to the ‘repressive’ culture that supposedly characterizes the Arab and Muslim worlds, ‘according to the Orientalist stereotype’ (Muhtaseb 2020). If they are shown as empowered, ‘their empowerment is typically seen as a rejection of their faith, reinforcing the idea that Islam and liberation are mutually exclusive’ (Andrias 2024). Indeed, ‘Muslim women’s modes of resistance are regularly co-opted and reported on in a reductive manner that strengthens harmful imperialist, Islamophobic and interventionist agendas, rather than offering any meaningful support or solidarity’ (Jaber 2022).

3.3              Such framings, stemming from the orientalist mindset of the colonial era, normalize the ‘othering’ of Muslims, especially women. They deny both agency and diversity to women in the MENA region. Western governments, such as the UK, need to bear in mind huge disparities within the region of class, educational attainment, economic means and personal aspiration.

4.0              Women in the MENA region: experiences of war

4.1              During the so-called ‘Arab spring’ uprisings of 2011, many in the west were astonished by the sudden appearance of large numbers of loudly protesting women and girls on the streets of Arab cities. Alongside men, women were demanding ‘freedom, social justice and dignity’, the slogans of the revolution. But, despite popular prejudice, this was not something new. Women have been raising their voices for many decades against oppressive practices and regimes.

4.2              Nonetheless, their efforts have not been without danger. My own research on the impact of violent conflict on women in several MENA states revealed high levels of suffering as women struggle to survive and to protect their children.

4.3              One of the tools widely used by women in the MENA women has been their religion, Islam, both as a source of comfort and a means of resistance and activism. While the political strategy of Islamism has been largely dismissed as terrorism in the west, this is not how it is regarded by many ordinary people in the MENA region.

5.0              Violence against women in peacetime

5.1              ‘Peace includes not only the absence of war, violence and hostilities… but also the enjoyment of economic and social justice, equality and the entire range of human rights and fundamental freedoms within society’ (Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies1993).

5.2              Although the MENA region has experienced significant conflict since the start of the millennium and Arab women have suffered disproportionately, there have been corresponding attempts, at local and regional levels, to combat violence against women, including domestic violence. For example, in 2014, a coalition of Arab women parliamentarians established a model for the MENA states inspired by the Istanbul Convention and designed to ‘respond to the challenges that women face, in peace time as well as during conflict’ (Westminster Foundation for Democracy).

5.3              Part of the problem, as I learned during my research on violence against women in the MENA region, is a significant paucity of female role models. Although women are not entirely absent from the public sphere in the majority of Arab states, young girls rarely see themselves in the faces of political, religious and business leaders. In some MENA states, we find a marked reluctance to increase the participation of women in the political arena, with some even arguing that such behaviour is un-Islamic.

5.4              Arab states have been slow to react to problems of violence and sexism. Despite widespread conflict in the region, the League of Arab States only relatively recently – in 2015 – adopted a regional strategy in response to Resolution 1325. The strategy and action plan on Women, Peace and Security helped guide the development of national plans across the region. Central themes were ‘political participation; addressing violence against women; protecting women from conflict and post-conflict violence; and providing recovery and relief support’ (Al Atiyat 2020). For many, it has been too little too late.

6.0              Impact of war on Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip

6.1              I will end this submission with a case study of the various impacts of violent conflict on women and girls in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, especially during the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip that began in October 2023.

6.2              According to UN Women, women in Palestine have been ‘largely excluded’ from formal dialogue efforts to end Palestinian political division. Their voices and concerns ‘have neither been heard nor included in the various reconciliation talks held and agreements reached since 2005. Existing discrimination and unequal power relations make women more vulnerable to crisis, yet their situation and specific needs continue to remain largely ignored or insufficiently targeted in post-conflict recovery’.

The Palestinian Ministry of Women’s Affairs adopted its first National Action Plan (NAP) for the period 2017-2019 and its most recent plan for the period 2020-2024. Focusing on four pillars – prevention and protection; accountability; participation; relief and recovery – the NAP seeks to protect ‘women and girls from the impacts of occupation and conflict, holding the Israeli occupation accountable, and enhancing the participation of Palestinian women in local and international decision-making processes’ (https://1325naps.peacewomen,org/index.php/palestine/)

6.3              However, since October 2023, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been subjected to intense and apparently indiscriminate bombardment from Israeli forces. This has resulted in a huge loss of life, the destruction of homes and infrastructure and the erasure of all vestiges of family and social life.

6.4              According to a March 2025 report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, Palestinian women in Gaza ‘have been subjected to a range of gendered forms of bodily and mental harm, including reproductive and other gender-based violence’. The ‘horrific conditions of life inflicted by Israel’ continue to disproportionately affect women and girls’. These include ‘damage and destruction of homes, medical facilities including maternity wards, maternal care clinics and other life-sustaining infrastructure as well as to shelters protecting women and girls from gender-based violence’.

6.5              The Commission concludes that ‘Israeli military operations in Gaza have had a disproportionate impact on Palestinian women and girls, who continue to bear the brunt and pay the price for decisions made by those in power while themselves marginalized from decision-making and military and political power’. Israel, they add, ‘has targeted civilian women and girls directly, acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of wilful killing’ (2025).

6.6              Despite these well-documented crimes against Palestinian women in Gaza, there has been a distinct lack of solidarity, including from western feminists, and a woeful lack of action from western governments. Where, as Saira Iffat Bhatti demands, ‘is the feminist outrage for the thousands of Palestinian women killed, displaced and left to mourn their families?’

6.7              The rest of the world, and particularly the Arab-Muslim world, is watching this lack of western action and solidarity with dismay, clearly understanding the operation of blatant double standards. Many also expect the UK, with its long colonial experience in the region, to know better.

7.0              Recommendations for action

7.1              Take greater care to avoid accusations of hypocrisy and double standards, in situations such as the current violent conflict in Gaza. As Amnesty International observed: ‘No discussion of human rights is possible without tackling Israel’s decades long impunity for its violations against Palestinians’ (2025). This is especially essential in the case of Palestinian women and girls who have suffered significant gender-based violence and suffering.

7.2              Need to de-colonize aid. There is still deep-seated structural racism in the development sector, and this must be addressed directly. Re-thinking development needs to be something other than a programme redesign. It needs ‘to hurt, challenge us to the core, drive us to listen to those who disagree with us and come with a commitment to unlearn’ (Schomerus 2023).

7.3              Practical programmes that assist women and girls in the MENA region, especially those in conflict-afflicted or post-conflict situations, to fulfil their potential in terms of participating in political, economic and social developments, must be supported; for example, the training of police officers to deal more sensitively with incidents of domestic violence; training lawyers and judges to represent women survivors of gender-based violence to receive the justice to which they are entitled.

7.4              Initiation and support of training programmes to encourage more women to enter the political sphere. This is essential so that young women and girls have role models and examples of people who look like them in positions of influence.

7.5              Recognition that, in Muslim-majority states and societies, religion tends to occupy a larger space. Women are both comforted and empowered by Islam and, far from experiencing it as a tool of oppression, they see it as a legitimate means of expressing their social and political concerns. While the impact of Islamist parties on women is often dismissed in the west as negative and detrimental, my own research in the West Bank and Gaza Strip revealed that many Palestinian women derive what Aitimad Muhanna calls a ’model of moral agency’ (2015) from their involvement in religious politics.

Bibliography

Al Atiyat, Ibtesam (2020), “The Current Faces of Arab Feminisms: Micro-Rebels, Art Activists and Virtual Heroines”, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, December.

Amnesty International (2025), ‘UN report on Israel’s gender-based violence and genocidal acts against women’s health facilities must spur action to protect Palestinians, 13 March.

Iffat Bhattia, Saira (2024), ‘Western feminists’ silence on Gaza proves they never cared about saving Muslim women’, analystnews.org, 10 December.

Muhanna, Aitemad (2015), ‘Women’s Moral Agency and the Politics of Religion in the Gaza Strip’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 31:1, pp.3-21.

Pratt, Nicola (2013), ‘Reconceptualizing Gender, Reinscribing Racial-Sexual Boundaries in International Security: The Case of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on “Women, Peaceand Security”’, International Studies Quarterly, 57, pp.772-783.

Schomerus, Mareike (2023), Lives Amid Violence: Transforming Development in the Wake of Conflict, London: Bloomsbury Academic.

UNDP (2019). ‘Parliament as Partners Supporting the Women Peace and Security Agenda’, Oslo, Norway.

United Nations (2025), ‘”More than a human can bear”: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023’, Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, 13 March.

UN Women, ‘Advancing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Palestine’.