International Development Committee Inquiry: Women, peace and security 

Written evidence submitted by Laura Wise (Senior Research Fellow), Allyson Doby (Communications Manager), and Robert Wilson (Research Fellow and Policy Co-ordinator), on behalf of PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, The University of Edinburgh[1]

1.    Foreword

This submission draws on comparative research from the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep), and the expertise of the lead author[2]. It focuses on the ‘participation’ pillar of Women, Peace and Security (WPS),[3] particularly women’s full, equal, meaningful and safe participation in peace and transition processes at all stages. It sets out:

• Contemporary challenges in global WPS adherence
• Ways of assessing the UK’s progress in meeting its 2023 National Action Plan (NAP) commitments to inclusive peace processes under Strategic Objective 1 (SO1): Decision-making[4]
• How PeaceRep integrates WPS principles across its ODA-funded programming to support women’s participation in peace processes
• Recommendations on supporting women in peace processes and implementation of the NAP Strategic Partnerships: UK Capabilities

2.    About PeaceRep

PeaceRep is a UK Government-funded consortium of research institutions, non-governmental organisations, and local research teams led by The University of Edinburgh Law School (ELS).

Our research examines the major trends and shifts in the post-1990 peace and transition process landscape, supporting peace and transition processes to innovate and adapt. We combine conceptual, data-driven quantitative research and digital tools with detailed field work undertaken by local research networks in countries that are experiencing active armed conflict and peace/transition processes – including Afghanistan, Colombia, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen.[5]

As a data-driven programme, our PA-X Peace Agreements Database contains over 2000 peace agreements signed since 1990, including the PA-X Gender sub-database on gender provisions.[6] PA-X data underpins a suite of digital tools, including visualisations, dashboards, and the PeaceFem app on women’s inclusion in peace processes.[7] PeaceRep researchers use these digital tools to support analysis and evidence-based programming on negotiated settlements.

3.    Evidence

What are the current trends that can be observed in respect of adherence of the international WPS agenda?

Intersecting crises

As the international WPS agenda marks 25 years of institutionalisation through United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 (2000), the agenda faces an intersection of crises that can be understood broadly as a) the changing nature of armed conflict; b) the transformation of international peace mediation; c) the global rise of the anti-gender movement; and d) critical reflections on how WPS has been implemented since 2000. In 2025, these crises have been exacerbated by announced cuts to ODA programming, with some donors such as the United States (US) already implementing immediate cuts to WPS work that supported women working for peace.

• Changing nature of conflict. The nature of armed conflict has changed extensively since UNSCR 1325 was passed in 2000. Wars have become increasingly fragmented across diffuse constellations of actors, whose allegiances and intentions can change quickly and unpredictably, with cross-border dynamics making conflict more complex.[8] The number of state-based armed conflicts has increased since 2013, with the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) recording 59 state-based conflicts in 2023, ‘the highest number of conflicts registered since 1946’.[9]
• International peace mediation. The forms and functions of peace processes have also shifted. The previously dominant notion of an ‘internationally sponsored’ ‘national level’ peace process between a government and one or several non-state armed actors is no longer useful for understanding how armed conflict is resolved.[10] Concurrently, the UN is struggling to maintain its primacy in a crowded and competitive mediation ‘marketplace’,[11] amidst the rise of so-called non-Western states and regional organisations as third parties to peace processes.[12]
• Anti-gender movement. This global conflict landscape has evolved against a backdrop of rising anti-gender mobilization, which has critical implications for international adherence to supporting women’s participation in peace processes. The anti-gender movement has been bolstered by Trump’s second term in the US and his administration’s purge of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion initiatives. WPS has been targeted as part of this purge, with the Department of Defense announcing its intention to end WPS programming, even though the WPS Act was written into law in 2017 during the first Trump presidency.[13]
• WPS implementation. Liberal peacemaking failures in places such as Afghanistan, Sudan, and Yemen have highlighted the limitations of commitments to gender equality that are hard won during peace processes, but easily lost when transitions collapse.[14] Beyond specific contexts, feminist scholars and activists rightly question the patchy implementation of WPS commitments made by UN member states, and challenge neocolonial practices that further marginalise Global South expertise and reify whiteness.[15]
• Proposed cuts to ODA. Current trends in global adherence to the WPS agenda are at a critical juncture, with leading WPS donor states retrenching from ODA at a time when women and sexual and gender minorities’ rights globally are more vulnerable than possibly any other time since UNSCR 1325 was passed in 2000. Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRD) and politically active women in conflict-affected countries are increasingly at risk of targeted attacks, including from repressive regimes, with inadequate international response or support. Despite 25 years of repeated commitments to protecting women’s rights, women who engage in peace processes still risk experiencing physical threats, violence (including sexual violence), intimidation, harassment, detention, and targeted killings.[16] Recently-announced dramatic cuts to ODA from leading WPS donors, including the US and the UK,[17] have caused concerns among those working to support women mediators, negotiators, and civil society activists that the previously limited funds for supporting women in peace processes will be reduced to the point that this important work would no longer be feasible. These immediate and/or proposed cuts have also added a huge mental strain to women mediators and peacebuilders, who are often already experiencing poor mental health due to the challenging work they deliver during conflict.[18]

Trends in gender provisions in peace agreements

The PA-X Database and the PA-X Gender sub-database include all peace agreements between 1990 and 2024 that contain provisions referencing women, girls, gender, and/or sexual violence. PA-X publishes open-access annual data releases tracking both gender provisions in peace agreements, and the actors who signed those agreements as parties or third parties, alongside analysis of the substantiveness of gender provisions and longitudinal trends. Analysis drawn from PA-X in April 2025 illustrates recent trends in gender provisions in peace agreements in 2024:

• 31% of peace agreements reached in 2024 included at least one provision referencing women, girls, gender or sexual violence.[19] Although this is an increase on gender provisions in 2023 (20%), and part of a positive trend since 1990, 31% is roughly in line with annual proportions since 2018, which have ranged from between 20-30% of peace agreements.
• In 2024, conflict parties signed peace agreements in 11 peace processes; however, only five processes in three countries produced agreements which contained gender provisions: Colombia, South Sudan, and Sudan. The recent peace processes between the Colombian government, the FARC-EP, and the ELN, appear to be driving the prevalence of gender references in 2023 and 2024, and these processes are generally more gender inclusive than other peace processes globally – both in terms of women’s and LGBTQI+ participation within the processes, and in terms of resultant agreements. The UK is publicly engaged with mediation in Sudan and South Sudan, but not Colombia.[20]
• Gender provisions in 2024 primarily focussed on women’s and LGBTQI+ effective participation in peace processes and political life, violence against women, equality and non-discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, conditions for women in detention, and the need for care and psychological first aid with a gender perspective in peace process fora.
• The ‘Tumaini Initiative: Protocols for Initialling’ document in South Sudan was the only peace agreement in 2024 containing a gender quota, in which parties committed to ‘representation of ... at least 35% of women across public institutions’.[21] However, agreements from Colombia also set out specific commitments to women’s ‘direct, real and effective participation’ in the FARC-EP process, and elements of the differential and rights-based approaches for women and LGBTQI+ people in the ELN process.[22]

Qualitative analysis of peace agreements since 2021 suggests that contemporary peace processes vary greatly in terms of the extent to which they incorporate a gender perspective,[23] which goes beyond explicit references to women, girls, gender, and sexual violence, and refers to women’s influence on process outcomes, assessment of gendered impacts of an agreement, and consideration of women’s differential needs in all their diversity.[24] Whilst some peace processes have developed comprehensive, intersectional approaches to peace that attempt to mainstream gender, many continue to be high-level, exclusive negotiations that produce gender-blind peace agreements. Many UN member states that publicly claim to support WPS are clearly struggling to translate this support into tangible, inclusive, gender-responsive peace process outcomes.

To what extent is the UK successfully achieving the strategic outcomes it set out within the 2023 National Action Plan?

Potential WPS data gaps

External assessment of women’s participation in peace processes supported by the UK is limited by gaps in publicly available data. The UK has not yet published open-access annual data on individual women’s participation as negotiators, mediators, and signatories in peace processes that it engages with or supports. This makes it difficult to externally assess women’s presence in peace processes supported by the UK, and for WPS stakeholders to hold the UK Government to account for meeting its WPS commitments under SO1: Decision Making.

These data may exist within the UK Government internal reporting, as the 2023 UK NAP Annex 4 SO1: Decision Making suggests the following as draft indicators for focus countries: ‘% of women participating in peace processes as a result of FCDO support (funding and political)’; and ‘% and impact of women negotiators increases, where appropriate, as a result of UK political and diplomatic support’.[25] The 2023 UK NAP did publish the number of members of the Women Mediators Across the Commonwealth network who had engaged in peace processes since 2018 (when the network was founded).[26] However, this information does not include the gender balance of individuals engaged across those peace processes and therefore prevents assessment of gender parity.

There may be good reasons for this WPS data gap - if in fact, there is a gap.[27] An individual woman’s presence in peace process fora does not automatically equate or subsequently lead to influence in negotiations, unless there are supportive conditions for full, meaningful, equal, and safe participation.[28] Therefore, recording numbers of individual women present only tells us about gender parity of individuals and women’s symbolic representation, and not women's substantive or influential participation, which requires further information to assess. Another reason the UK Government does not publish data on individual women’s participation in peace processes, could be that it is methodologically difficult to systematically identify individual women as peace process actors.[29] Women often hold less visible or non-public facing roles, or may prefer that their engagement is low-key due to the safety risks faced by women who are publicly involved in transitions from conflict.[30]

Despite these methodological limitations, there is still value in quantitatively measuring women’s participation in peace processes, as this can highlight gaps between donor countries’ public rhetoric and actions to support women’s participation; identify contexts that could offer lessons in best practice through further qualitative exploration; and make women’s (often-overlooked) peace leadership more visible.[31]

As an external and voluntary accountability mechanism, the UK has welcomed[32] but not officially joined the UN Secretary-General’s 2024 ‘Common Pledge for Women’s Full, Equal and Meaningful Participation in Peace Processes’.[33] The pledge calls on member states and mediation actors to take tangible actions, including appointing women to key roles in mediation teams, such as lead mediators; and advocates for targets for women’s participation in negotiation teams. The UK has continued to sign other shared commitments to supporting WPS as a UN member state, which include commitments to advancing the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in UN-led or co-led peace processes.[34] However, it is unclear how these initiatives would be monitored.

Measuring women’s participation in peace processes and gender perspectives in peace agreements

The PA-X Database supports assessment and scrutiny of the UK’s SO1 commitments to ‘Focus on inclusive peace outcomes as well as processes and push for the inclusive and full implementation of negotiated settlements that promote gender sensitive reconciliation and more inclusive structures, institutions and processes,’[35] as demonstrated by the ‘Gender provisions in peace agreements’ section of this submission. PeaceRep research assists longitudinal assessment of the 2023 NAP SO1 draft indicator ‘% of peace agreements supported by the UK that secure gender provisions within the agreement or within the implementation plan’ for the duration of the NAP, but only in contexts where the UK’s support is public knowledge.

PA-X data show that only one peace agreement was signed by a representative on behalf of women in 2024.[36] This is consistent with PA-X longitudinal signatory data since 1990, although substantive reading of Colombian agreements in 2024 suggests that women’s representatives did participate in peace processes with the ELN and the FARC-EP, without necessarily signing on their behalf. As Colombia demonstrates, the absence of a women’s representative signatory does not always mean women did not participate. However, signatory data is still a useful barometer for peace processes either not including women’s representatives as active, primary participants, or perhaps not considering their public endorsement as important for the agreement’s success.

Through the PeaceRep programme, the UK Government is supporting the development of the ‘Women in Peace Processes Monitor,’ a UN Women-led initiative to consistently track a range of indicators on women’s participation in peace processes, and the gender-responsiveness of peace agreements and their implementation, in UN-led and non-UN-led Track 1 and Track 2 processes.[37] PeaceRep directly contributes to the development of the Monitor by offering advice to UN Women on how to track women’s participation in peace processes, data collection, and designing digital applications. The Monitor also draws on PA-X peace process data to assess the inclusion of gender references in peace agreements.

Initial analysis from the Monitor shared by UN Women in 2024 suggested that ‘in 2023, women made up only 9.6 per cent of negotiators, 13.7 per cent of mediators and 26.6 per cent of signatories to peace and ceasefire agreements. The proportion of women signatories drops to 1.5 per cent if Colombia’s agreements are excluded.’[38] However, the full Monitor and accompanying documentation has not yet been published and therefore does not currently support assessment of the percentage of women negotiators, mediators, and signatories in 2023 peace processes supported by the UK.

To what extent does the UK Government integrate Women, Peace and Security principles across its ODA-funded programming?

As an ODA-funded programme, PeaceRep delivers research to inform policymaking and practice on gender sensitive negotiated settlements. This work directly supports diverse WPS stakeholders to understand the gendered nature of peace and transition processes. Due to conflict sensitivity, we cannot report publicly on all our activities which support women’s participation in active peace processes; however, this section of the submission highlights some of PeaceRep’s work in this area.

PeaceRep builds gender dimensions of conflict and peace and transition processes into field-based research design and informs policy-level discussions and higher levels of UK Government delegations with comparative country data.[39]

• In South Sudan, PeaceRep’s Peace Perceptions survey work has incorporated a gender focus to guide thinking on how dowry payments are part of wider conflict-triggering patterns. This data has been fed into policy discussions, informing feminist debates around dowry payments in other conflict-affected countries.[40]
• In Syria, PeaceRep researchers draw on collaborative work with networks of women across different parts of the country to engage with FCDO and other stakeholders on conflict and transition dynamics in Syria from a gender perspective, and promote women’s involvement in local peacebuilding networks.[41]
• In Ukraine, PeaceRep researchers have examined the gender dimensions of the war, providing analysis of Ukraine’s WPS agenda and hosting several advice calls and seminars for FCDO staff.[42]

PeaceRep also regularly provides research and data to senior WPS stakeholders on gender-responsive peace agreements to inform policymaking and to support practice.

• PeaceRep maintains sustained relationships with senior WPS stakeholders in UN Women. The lead author regularly provides UN Women with evidence drawn from PA-X on gender perspectives in contemporary peace processes, which is used to underpin official calls for gender-inclusive political settlements and to support better understanding of global trends in peace process data.
• The UN Secretary-General has included PeaceRep research and data in annual reporting on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 every year since 2019. In 2024 Antonio Guterres cited PA-X data and analysis to illustrate the stagnation of gender references in peace agreements.[43]
• PeaceRep research on women's representatives as peace agreement signatories has informed the Committee for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women’s (CEDAW Committee) General Recommendation No. 40 on equal and inclusive representation of women in decision-making systems.[44]
• As one of the lead developers of the PeaceFem mobile app, PeaceRep have used our expertise in peace and conflict transitions to develop digital tools for women’s rights advocates and women’s mediators in contexts such as Myanmar and Yemen. The app draws on PA-X data from the University of Edinburgh and case studies developed by Inclusive Peace and Monash University’s Gender, Peace and Security Centre.[45]

PeaceRep directly supports women’s participation in peace processes through convening high-level networks of women mediators, negotiators, and constitution-makers from conflict-affected places to advance thinking on peace process themes, and to provide peer-to-peer spaces for women peacemakers.

• PeaceRep convenes the Women’s Constitution-Makers Network and annual dialogue, which provides a platform for past and current women constitution-makers to build learning and share lessons and experiences with peers from other constitutional reform processes worldwide.  
• PeaceRep researchers at ELS have partnered with Scotland-based NGO Beyond Borders to co-deliver the Women in Conflict 1325 Fellowship Programme, which supports women peacebuilders through tailored peer-to-peer fellowship cohorts. The programme is referenced in UK Government NAP SO1: Delivery Plan under the lead of the Scottish Government,[46] who recently announced new funding for the Fellowship, emphasising Scotland’s commitment to inclusive peacebuilding amid rising global conflicts and aid cuts.[47]   

PeaceRep also delivers structured courses and tailored trainings on women’s participation in peace processes for peacebuilding professionals, supporting individuals working across the UK Government, the UN, and leading peacebuilding organisations to better understand gendered barriers to women’s participation.

• PeaceRep and ELS run the online short course ‘Gender and Peace Processes in a Changing World’. This course facilitates a community of practice of peacebuilding professionals working in key WPS roles across diverse contexts and institutions, including the UK Government.[48] A key theme of the course is understanding opportunities and barriers to women’s participation in peace and transition processes, with participants encouraged to share experiences of best practice, and to interrogate the gendered politics of peacemaking, including within their own institutions.
• This course has supported the implementation of the UK NAP priority ‘Promote and build UK expertise on WPS’, particularly commitments to ‘build WPS expertise as a core skill in the FCDO’s Conflict Stabilisation Group Cadre’ and to ‘design an online gender and conflict training course available for other states to use to build understanding and knowledge.’[49]

4. Recommendations

To support sustainable implementation of SO1 in relation to peace process participation, PeaceRep recommends that the UK Government:

• Resist the urge to step back from global WPS leadership. The UK holds a unique position in global diplomacy systems, particularly as a member of the UNSC P5. Amid retrenchment from other member state donors, there is an opportunity for the UK to develop a reputation as a trusted, reliable, and experienced WPS partner, and to advance the normative commitments made in the 2023-2027 NAP.
• Work collaboratively with women in conflict to identify longer-term avenues for structural change. Contemporary conflict dynamics have highlighted the limits of long-held peacemaking doctrines. Although prioritising long-term thinking may seem antithetical in today’s donor climate, it is central to genuinely feminist and transformative programming, which needs to be considered alongside immediate short-term goals for supporting women in peace processes.[50]
• Implement gender parity in UK diplomacy to bolster advocacy. Any time the UK Government engages with peace processes without gender parity in negotiation teams and delegations, this undermines the WPS values it claims to hold. Demonstrating genuine commitment to achieving gender parity ‘at home’ would bolster the credibility of the UK’s calls for other mediation and conflict actors to support women’s participation in peace processes.
• Carefully assess the gender dynamics of digital dialogues, which have already evolved since cyberspace was considered under the 2023 NAP SO5: Transnational Threats. As technology rapidly advances, and conflict becomes more challenging for peacemakers to navigate, digital platforms are becoming a way of trying to improve women’s access to peace processes. Although in some contexts this may mitigate some risks and restrictions, and offer pathways for wider participation, digital technologies can present new risks for women’s safety (such as surveillance or online sexual and gender-based violence)[51] and impact the quality of women’s participation. Digital risk assessments and training can potentially reduce safety and inclusion implications.

To support monitoring and evaluation of SO1, and implementation of Strategic Partnerships: UK Capabilities, PeaceRep recommends that the UK Government:

• Publish or support the publication of open-access, systematic, annual data on individual women’s participation as negotiators, mediators, and signatories in peace processes that the UK engages with or supports, including sub-set data on UK delegations. This would support public scrutiny and accountability of the UK Government’s strategic objective to increase women’s meaningful participation, leadership and representation in decision-making processes, and specifically its commitment to ‘Ensure senior women are included in UK delegations to and relating to peace processes’ as set out in the 2023 NAP Annex 4 SO1.[52]
• Utilise the UK’s existing internationally valued academic and practitioner expertise on gender and peace process data, in order to support better monitoring and evaluation of SO1 and to implement Strategic Partnership priorities. For example, through its support of the PeaceRep programme, the UK Government has supported the development of gender and peace process expertise. PeaceRep researchers regularly inform intergovernmental monitoring of WPS adherence, and are working to develop innovative, feminist methodologies, including utilizing Natural Language Processing (NLP) and directed web-scraping to more effectively identify women as actors in mediation events and peace processes. Such initiatives need sustained funding to generate robust and reliable data that can continue to effectively support policymaking.
• Support detailed comparative, case-study research on women’s participation at the peace process level. Any data collection on women’s participation in peace processes should be thought of as a first step, with qualitative approaches needed to assess substantive outcomes, and for the UK to meet its NAP commitments on participation. This is particularly important in the current context, as many of the prominent studies cited in the NAP on women’s participation draw on peace process cases from the 1990s and 2000s.[53] Whilst those studies still provide valuable insights, the nature of conflict has changed greatly since the 1990s and 2000s and contemporary comparative studies would support better understanding of the barriers to women’s participation in more fragmented and competitive peace processes, in which the UK’s role is rapidly evolving.
• Use caution if deploying Artificial Intelligence to generate data. Whilst Artificial Intelligence offers new opportunities to generate and analyse peace process data at scale, a recent pilot study run by PeaceRep shows that using Large Language Models and Natural Language Processing to identify individual women’s participation in peace processes also requires extensive data cleaning by humans and raises ethical questions, particularly around gender, which are not yet well enough understood or considered by the field.[54] Any deployment of AI commissioned by the UK Government to address Women, Peace and Security gaps would require rigorous academic and ethical oversight to consider the reasonable benefits of such an approach.