Written evidence submitted to the International Development Committee

Inquiry: Women, Peace and Security

Prepared by Dr Paul Kirby, Reader in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London and Senior Visiting Fellow at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security. I am an academic specialising in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, gender and armed conflict, and masculinities.[1] I have studied and published on UK WPS for a decade.[2] For two years I was on the Steering Board for the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) and I currently attend quarterly meetings of the Cross-Whitehall Working Group on WPS as an academic stakeholder.

Executive summary

1. The government’s overseas development aid (ODA) cuts pose an existential threat to the UK’s delivery of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. In a global climate of retrenchment and backlash, the reduction risks more than the UK’s reputation for leadership. If reports are accurate, dedicated spend on gender equality will cease in the twenty-fifth anniversary year of the agenda. Coming on the heels of the disproportionate impact of the Covid-era ODA cuts on women and girls, the collapse of UK WPS will exacerbate the insecurity of women and girls in conflict and post-conflict sites; damage efforts to prevent and respond to conflict; undermine the United Nations architecture on women’s participation and conflict-related sexual violence; weaken the UK’s response to climate change, migration, terrorism, and arms proliferation; and embolden those attacking women’s rights worldwide.
2. The UK’s historical record of investment in WPS is significant in its overall volume and the wide range of projects supported. However, UK WPS has also been inconsistent and often unfocused in its efforts, making any conclusive accounting of its impact challenging, if not impossible. There is no means to track the total sum spent by the government on WPS activities, which are divided across multiple funding pots and initiatives. Reviews of NAP and PSVI efforts have repeatedly stressed the difficulties of evaluation, the need to improve support to grassroots women’s networks, and at times flagged failures in ethical protocols.
3. Despite the UK’s record of investment and activity, its framework of accountability is weak and deteriorating. Previous National Action Plans (NAPs) and versions of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) suffered from vague objectives and indicators where change could not be directly attributed to the UK. Though monitoring and evaluation is clearer on paper for the fifth NAP, at the half-way point there is still no public baseline data, no agreed final indicators of progress, no reporting to Parliament and little meaningful engagement with external stakeholders.
4. Since the UK’s first NAP, the global field of WPS activity has become vast and complex, spreading across hundreds of countries, dozens of regional and multilateral bodies, and integrating local networks, expert practitioners, international non-governmental organisations, academic research centres, celebrity humanitarians, international organizations, courts and more. There is no single trend to the development of WPS, though the agenda at large stands at a major cross-roads in its twenty-fifth year as it faces coordinated attacks from several sides, neglect by some of its previous champions, and a more serious defence from others.
5. The UK’s current NAP – its fifth – represents a significant advance on prior plans in several areas. It finally includes climate change as a front of WPS, acknowledges the domestic dimension of WPS, and sets out a more robust governance and accountability framework. However, the NAP has been undercut in practice, in part by political events (frequent changes in ministers, pre-election purdah, a new government, elections in the US, pressures on European defence) and in part by decisions over implementation and reporting. The cuts to UK ODA have prompted a ‘refresh’ of the NAP which has not yet been consulted on, but which it is feared will drastically weaken UK WPS programming and capacity.
6. Without a course correction, UK WPS is in peril. In the absence of dedicated funding, the government can nevertheless act to preserve a WPS minimum standard. The final section of this evidence makes eight recommendations in that direction: (i); mainstream gender at ‘Category C’ level across Integrated Security Fund (ISF) programmes; (ii) ensure that gender remains a substantial focus in the declared priority areas for remaining ODA; (iii) extend and deepen WPS capacity with UK defence; (iv) consolidate the domestic aspects of WPS by redoubling current efforts, addressing remaining gaps and preserving capacity across government; (v) deploy ministerial leadership wisely; (vi) cooperate with other WPS champion states to resource essential mechanisms at the United Nations, International Criminal Court and beyond; (vii) preserve the distributed expertise and capacity in the focal point network and UK embassies; (viii) leverage diplomatic influence to retain a gender focus in peacekeeping missions and multilateral institutions. 

Background

7. The United Kingdom is a recognised champion of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, the UK supported the foundational Resolution – 1325 – which established the agenda. The UK government was the second country to issue a National Action Plan (NAP) in 2006, and is currently one of only two countries on its fifth NAP.[3] The UK is also the ‘penholder’ on WPS at the Security Council, a position of stewardship and leadership, distinct from efforts to end sexual violence in conflict, for which the penholder is the United States of America. As the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has noted in its current call for evidence in a separate inquiry, penholdership implies efforts to “bring about an end to global conflict, whilst advancing [the Council’s] goals for a rules-based international order”.[4]
8. The UK government is also a leading actor in a series of alliances and multilateral fora taking up the WPS agenda, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the UN Human Rights Council, and until 2020 the Council of the European Union. WPS is further complementary to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and overlaps with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, to which the UK government is committed.
9. UK WPS includes some distinct initiatives, most obviously the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), and partly overlaps with the UK Government’s International Women and Girls Strategy, Human Security in Defence approach and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy. Since the fifth National Action Plan, the UK government also recognises a ‘domestic’ dimension of WPS, and “includes input from the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Northern Ireland Office”.[5]
10. In this submission I concentrate on five of the Committee’s guiding questions:

• What financial resources has the UK allocated towards advancing the WPS agenda? Are these resources appropriately distributed across programmes and regions?
• How does the UK’s current WPS National Action Plan compare to its previous iterations? To what extent is the UK successfully achieving the strategic outcomes it set out within the 2023 National Action Plan?
• Are there appropriate accountability mechanisms in place to ensure that the Government is meeting its WPS commitments, and that these commitments are translated into substantive outcomes?
• What are the current trends that can be observed in respect of adherence of the international WPS agenda? What role does the UK play on an international scale, and how can this be improved?
• What can the UK Government do to ensure that its WPS efforts are sustainable long-term, particularly in light of global political shifts?

Resourcing UK WPS

11. There is no dedicated budget on WPS within the UK government. WPS has instead been funded under several headings and reported on in fragmented ways. Annual reports to Parliament have tended to list large expenditures containing some gender or WPS component but without specifying its extent. For example, the £74 million commitment to the UN’s Iraq Humanitarian Fund in 2018 included some level of work on WPS pillars such as participation, protection, and relief and recovery, but the Report to Parliament provided only the headline figure.[6]
12. Between 2015 and 2023 the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) was a significant funder of WPS. From 2020, the CSSF included a dedicated ‘Gender, Peace and Security’ thematic portfolio, spending just over £3 million in FY 2022-2023, or 0.37% of the CSSF budget.[7] The percentage was similar in the two preceding years though total annual spend varied by as much as £1.7 million.[8] However, focusing on this theme alone undercounts WPS spend, as other thematic portfolios also include targeted gender programmes. For 2021-2022 we counted over £22 million in plausible WPS spend, or 1.7% of the total CSSF budget.[9] This covered such items as contributions to the Elsie Initiative Fund for Women in Peace Operations and UN Team of Experts on sexual violence in conflict (categorised as ‘Multilateral’), the localisation of Resolution 1325 in Sudan (the ‘Africa’ regional portfolio), support for the Jordanian and Egyptian NAPs (‘Middle East and North Africa’), and more besides.
13. Other CSSF programmes mention gender but without dedicated projects or other details stipulating what is to be spent on WPS, indicating that the proportion is likely small. For example, in 2017-2018 CSSF summaries indicated “specialist assistance…in gender issues” as part of a £4.9 million programme on ‘Improving African Responses to Crises’ through British Peace Support Teams (BPST) but gave no further breakdown for training and assistance in projects spanning five UN missions and five regional training partners on issues also including small arms and light weapons, the illegal trade in wildlife and improvised explosive devices.[10] To avoid inflating the extent of WPS commitment, prior research has excluded the programme totals where there is no specific project detail on gender or WPS.[11]
14. Our analysis of gender spend across all themes in published CSSF programme summaries since 2017 indicates a steady growth from 0.5% of CSSF spend to a high of 1.8% in 2019-20.[12] The expanded measure may be considered a reasonable best estimate as it includes both items where not all monies were assigned to WPS and spending on gender inequality which would not normally qualify as WPS.[13]
15. Nevertheless, the WPS element of CSSF remained modest. CSSF subsequently merged with other government funds in the Integrated Security Fund (ISF), shrinking coverage of WPS.[14] It is not yet clear what level of WPS spending ISF has achieved in its first year, although the ‘Gender, Peace and Security’ portfolio has been preserved, and ISF was initially required to make gender the primary objective of at least one project in each programme.[15] The CSSF was likewise committed to integrating gender analysis in all projects and programmes.[16] However, given the huge cut to overseas development assistance (ODA) and the use of ISF funds for projects within the UK, the reduction in WPS activity is bound to be dramatic.
16. Not all UK WPS spend flows through CSSF or ISF. PSVI projects have been supported by a range of funds, many in recent years from the FCDO’s International Programme Fund or the Global Britain Fund with only some from the CSSF’s Multilateral theme, which supports work on sexual violence at the United Nations.[17]
17. As with CSSF, there is a lack of clarity over what PSVI has spent and on what. The House of Commons Library this year reported that PSVI had spent £33 million to date, a plausible extension of the £21 million in intervention spend documented by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) in 2020, but significant less than the at least £55 million from 2012-2021 listed in PSVI documents provided to academic researchers.[18]
18. Regardless of the true total, PSVI spending has been volatile. Expenditure was at its highest in 2014-15 under the leadership of the Rt Hon William Hague MP, the first of the Prime Minister’s Special Representatives on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict and then also Foreign Secretary, at just over £15 million, before steadily declining to less than £500,000 in 2019-2020 and rebounding to at least £3.5 million in 2021-22.[19] The Government pledged £12.5 million for 2022-2025 when launching the new PSVI strategy but funding is likely to fall to its lowest level given the scope of the cuts to UK ODA.
19. Assessments of the scope of UK WPS are complicated by further funds which have some bearing on WPS but are not badged as such. Among the ‘WPS-adjacent’ highlights in UK spend are the £25 million ‘What Works to End Violence Against Women and Girls’ research programme, which conducted some work on conflict and humanitarian crisis and its £67.5 million second wave has expanded coverage over WPS topics; over £1 billion in sexual and reproductive health and rights since 2019, some significant fraction of which is spent in humanitarian, conflict and post-conflict contexts; or the £355 million Girls Education Challenge programme, some of which was for fragile and conflict-affected contexts.[20]
20. The current NAP ‘mainstreams’ WPS, relying on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) markers for monitoring.[21] The spending pathways and likely indicators remain divided by fund and focus – one draft indicator for the NAP strategic objective (SO) on security and justice was the percentage of CSSF funds to police and military projects with GESI marker scores of C or higher.[22]
21. For many years, civil society organisations have pushed for a dedicated budget as a way to both target resources and improve monitoring and accountability.[23] They have also stressed the challenges faced by grassroots women’s organisations in accessing and reporting on funding from the FCDO.
22. Whether through the NAP, CSSF or PSVI, UK practice over the last decades has been to support a wide pool of initiatives with varying degrees of financing and commitment. One obvious advantage of this approach is that the UK supports work across the agenda, though further research would be needed to establish whether some areas have been neglected. This approach also lends support to many agencies and stakeholders and thereby upholds the plurality of the WPS ecosystem. It is also possible that this strategy provides some opportunity for innovation and value for money in the case of smaller disbursements. Disadvantages include a lack of strong strategic direction, the potential for neglecting innovative practices in subsequent years, challenges in scaling up, and limited learnings from one programme to the next.

The Fifth UK National Action Plan on WPS

23. In line with global trends, UK WPS has become more detailed, and by some measures more expansive, over time. The first UK NAP was 2 pages long, the fifth is 52 pages long. Across five strategic objectives and two implementation objectives, the current NAP lists 117 separate commitments, each assigned to a lead department. By contrast, the fourth NAP only included 24 ‘indicators’ against seven strategic objectives.
24. On issue coverage, there are several developments. The fifth NAP includes the first reference to climate change in UK WPS policy, fifteen years after the first governments acknowledged the gendered impacts of climate change.[24] Compared to previous NAPs it includes more references to participation, sexual and reproductive health, small arms and light weapons, non-proliferation and arms control, and sexual exploitation and abuse; and fewer to prevention, relief and recovery, refugees and internally-displaced persons.[25]
25. Prior research has shown how UK WPS emphasised sexual violence, terrorism and extremism to a greater extent than peers, while paying less attention to justice, refugees, small arms and light weapons, climate change and disarmament and arms control. This remains the case, with references to sexual violence matching those of all other topics combined.[26]
26. One notable reduction has been in the UK’s attention to men and masculinity in gender equality work. The UK’s third NAP included many references to men and boys, sexual and reproductive health, and LGBTQI+ persons, representing a significant expansion in the understanding of gender relative to prior plans, and helping to break some of the simplistic stereotypes operating across global WPS policy. In this period PSVI raised awareness of, and supported programming on, men and boys as survivors of sexual violence, as well as noting their potential role as allies for gender equality. The fourth NAP had fewer references to men and masculinity, while the current NAP is at a lower level still.[27]
27. The fifth NAP for the first time acknowledged a domestic dimension to WPS. States in the global north have tended to treat WPS as a matter of foreign, defence and development policy without implications for other policy domains, while global south NAPs frequently include objectives for ministries of gender, health or policing. This pattern has drawn criticism for obscuring the global north’s implication in armed conflict, neglecting the intersection between foreign and domestic policy, and promoting global north expertise without corresponding scrutiny of global north institutions.
28. Coinciding with the fifth NAP was the revision and reissuing of Joint Services Publication (JSP) 985 on Human Security in Defence. In previous NAP periods the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had been a joint owner of the NAP, but was significantly less engaged than the FCDO, or the Department of International Development before the merger. With the new JSP, the MoD commits to a ‘Champion’ on conflict-related sexual violence and an accompanying plan, puts greater emphasis on gender analysis in human security, expands gender training, and addresses the risk of violations by partner forces.[28] Work on WPS is scheduled to continue as part of a twelve-year strategy to embed human security in the UK military.
29. The expanded scope, cross-governmental basis and greater detail in commitments of the fifth NAP are to be welcomed. They reflect a degree of political will, consultation and effort by civil servants arguably greater than for any previous NAP.[29] This is not to say that there is no room for improvement, and there could be more policy coherence, ambition and self-reflection in UK WPS. However, the most significant disadvantages of the current NAP have been in delivery and accountability.

Accountability

30. The fifth NAP envisioned “greater senior accountability for the NAP through better governance structures and external transparency mechanisms” in pursuit of a “strong account of the UK’s impact overseas”.[30] The delivery plan promised a new accountability framework, to regularly consult civil society and to make use of UK expertise, including through a dedicated WPS academic network.[31]
31. Progress on these commitments has been disappointing, and in some cases non-existent. There has been no report to Parliament since 2022, on the last NAP, following a change in practice. Reports were previously issued once a year. For the current NAP, stakeholders have been informed that the FCDO has funded work to establish a baseline for indicators but this has not been released. The review and refresh of the NAP this year is expected to significantly reduce and realign outcomes. The anticipated mid-point review of the NAP will also be significantly affected by the changes to the scope and resourcing of UK WPS.
32. It has historically been challenging to assess the substantive effects of UK WPS policy. With such a significant level of spend spread across many hundreds of activities there will be many projects that have delivered benefits. In evaluations of NAP activity, external experts often note the impact of, or appreciation for, discrete projects. In other areas, the government has received sharp criticism for poor programme design and failure to follow ethical protocols.[32]
33. There is no clear accountability mechanism to track progress on UK commitments, and not yet a framework for assessing the UK’s substantive impact. For the fourth NAP, the final evaluation noted “the lack of a systematic monitory and analysis mechanism” and could find “no empirical evidence of the impact of the NAP activities on the situation of women and girls in conflict-affected countries”.[33] ICAI had concluded of PSVI that there was a “dearth of evidence” on programming effectiveness and that “the general picture of PSVI learning is bleak”.[34] The situation should have improved since, given that clearer outcomes were detailed in the 2022 Theory of Change, though this did not list objectives or indicators of progress.[35] Though the fifth NAP committed to a better foundation for accountability and monitoring, the system does not yet exist.
34. In the absence of baseline indicators and a fully-developed monitoring and evaluation framework, alternative routes for tracking progress have been highly limited. Updates from departments during the quarterly Cross-Whitehall Working Group meetings attended by external stakeholders highlight convenings, work commissioned and new funds, but do not track progress against NAP commitments or otherwise report on draft indicators. In the absence of a baseline study, there are no formal indicators, though the WPS team does provide a headline percentage of ‘commitments in progress’ for each strategic objective. The measure is consistent with every commitment being missed by the end of the NAP, every commitment being exceeded, and all possibilities in between.
35. Typically, civil society and academic representatives are assigned 10 minutes each at the quarterly meetings to ask questions and receive any answers. As of April 2025, Working Group updates are no longer circulated to external stakeholders in advance and department representatives only provide verbal updates, further reducing the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution in the time allotted. For a period, the FCDO WPS team solicited questions from external stakeholders in advance, so that detailed answers could be given, but this practice was ended. Both civil society and academic stakeholders have provided feedback on ways to improve on Working Group practice, but these have not been taken up to date.
36. Despite efforts by several academics to establish the academic engagement group from as early as May 2023, at one point yielding a draft terms of reference and outline of annual activities, the group has still not been established. At the time of writing there is still no clarity on whether the group will be formed, and if so on what terms and with what resources.
37. Civil society and academic stakeholders anticipate that they will be consulted to some extent on the NAP and PSVI strategy reviews, though in neither case is there yet a timeline or process for doing so. The delay is especially concerning in relation to the revision of the NAP, as that is due to be launched for the 25th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which falls in October of this year.
38. On more formal mechanisms, the government is understood to be opposed to the WPS Act introduced in the House of Lords, which would require annual reporting on the NAP and PSVI and make the Foreign Secretary responsible for integrating the gender perspective across foreign policy and for continuing UK efforts on gender training, funding women peacebuilders, pursuing justice for conflict-related sexual violence, and more.[36] The Bill is currently at second reading in the House of Commons.

Current Trends in WPS

39. At least 103 countries have had a WPS NAP.[37] A significant number – perhaps more than a quarter – are lapsed, but there are also at least 19 countries that have issued three or more NAPs.[38] Judged by the standard of a ‘tipping point’ – when more than a third of states have endorsed a new rule or standard of international politics – WPS has been a core norm for almost a decade.[39] National governments are only one source of WPS policy alongside regional political and military alliances, UN bodies, and other multilateral initiatives.[40] Across such a large swathe of policy there is no single direction of travel for WPS at large. Rather, there is complex, uneven and changeable investment in the pillars and themes of the agenda.
40. Though the take-up of WPS is more globally dispersed than is often assumed, most of the resourcing of the agenda comes from the global north. The Trump administration’s hostility to gender equality and international organizations has significantly disrupted the agenda. There was already a significant change in US policy during the first Trump term, though this was somewhat offset by the passage of the WPS Act by Congress in 2017. At the time of writing, WPS has been effectively abolished in the US Department of Defence and the funds of US AID have been reduced to a tiny fraction of their prior level, leaving the wider field of WPS and gender equality work heavily depleted.
41. The effect of ODA cuts on women’s rights organisations is immense. A global survey by UN Women revealed that nearly half of women’s organisations in conflict and crisis settings expected to shut within six months, that over 60% had reduced services to women and girls already, and that almost 70% of gender-based violence prevention and response programmes had been negatively affected.[41] The survey was conducted in March 2025 and so likely captured only a small portion of the impact of the UK’s reductions.
42. In response to dramatic cuts decided in Washington, WPS champion states must decide between balancing or band-wagoning: whether to offset the damage by increasing or better focusing their efforts, or instead to follow the US lead to preserve political capital or make their own reductions with US policy as a justification. Some governments may maintain or even increase their support to beleaguered UN agencies. Others appear to be reducing their commitments to gender equality. The Dutch government, for one, has heavily reduced support to NGOs, including those working on reproductive justice and women’s rights.
43. The new Minister for International Development has indicated to this Committee that cuts will disproportionately hit women and girls.[42] The prediction fits with estimates by the Center for Global Development that after multilateral commitments, domestic spend, and humanitarian and climate change budgets, no bilateral funds would remain for women and girls (nor for health, education, conflict prevention or good governance).[43] The damage exacerbates the harm done by Covid-era cuts which reduced ODA to 0.5% of GNI. As this Committee uncovered, the impacts on women and girls were then already “severe”.[44] The cuts to programming for women and girls were relatively deeper than for the ODA budget at large and were already on an annual downward trend before the last round of reductions.[45]

Possible Futures for UK WPS

44. UK WPS cannot be sustainable, and UK leadership cannot be credible, in the absence of significant resourcing for the agenda. Given the development of the agenda over twenty-five years and examples of good practice from other WPS champions, it should be possible to deliver a coherent national approach to WPS, addressing the breadth of the agenda and embedding a significant domestic dimension, delivered and monitored according to clear strategies and theories of change, integrating the gender perspective across decision-making while responding to the most severe crises, through dedicated or traceable budgets, in collaboration with academic and civil society, and accountable to Parliament.
45. The UK will struggle to make progress, or come close to its prior record, if funding for WPS and gender equality work evaporates. The trajectory of ODA reductions suggests that many of the fifth NAP objectives will remain unfulfilled, that capacity in areas of prior investment such as sexual violence will be lost, and that the UK will make a minimal contribution to core objectives of WPS as set out in the ten thematic resolutions of the UN Security Council.
46. It is therefore essential for the future of UK WPS that resources are reinstated in as expeditious and thoughtful a way as possible. In the interim a number of urgent measures can be taken to preserve a minimum level of WPS activity.
47. On funding, the ISF should maintain its commitment to integrate gender from the design stage across its projects. Cuts are likely to threaten Category D (gender as “an important objective”) and Category E (gender equality is “the main objective”) projects, but as before all projects should aim for Category C (gender equality is not the “primary reason” but remains part of the project objectives).[46]
48. The government has indicated that there will be eight continuing priority areas for aid: Ukraine, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Sudan, Overseas Territories, corruption, instability, climate change and global health.[47] Each of these areas has a gender dimension and in several gender is a major front of harm or insecurity. The reduction of general WPS and gender equality funds should not carry though into the priority areas, which could instead become a focus for expertise and capacity.
49. Defence had already embarked on a 12-year programme of change in relation to human security, including WPS, before the announcement of an increase of the defence budget to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, and to 3% in the next Parliament. While it is crucial to recognise that militaries have a complex history with WPS, and that there are many parts of the agenda that militaries are not well placed to deliver on, every effort should be made to extend and deepen WPS capacity in defence functions where it is applicable.[48] Doing so would also help correct the past marginalisation of defence in UK WPS policy.[49]
50. In the absence of a strong foreign and aid policy approach to WPS, the agenda should be further consolidated in its ‘domestic’ connections. Two of the current NAP’s strategic objectives have commitments led by departments other than the FCDO and MoD, and the other strategic objectives include training and capacity building within the UK government. There are three routes by which domestication can proceed in a climate of reduced spend: a) ensuring that tasks already assigned to domestic agencies are completed; b) addressing remaining gaps in domestic alignment with WPS principles; and c) using cross-government infrastructure to preserve WPS capacity. In SO2 on gender-based violence, for instance, the UK government could redouble its commitment to victim support through the Ministry of Justice, finally remove its reservation to Article 59 of the Istanbul Convention which disadvantages migrant women in the UK, and ensure that gender expertise in the Home Office includes WPS competencies and acknowledges the connection between conflict and crisis abroad and challenges experienced in the UK.[50]
51. UK leadership in WPS is endangered by the cuts, but committed individuals within government may still have an impact. The appointment of Lord Collins suggests a continuing life for PSVI, albeit with a much-reduced budget. Baroness Harriet Harman is now Special Envoy for Women and Girls, a post replacing the previous Special Envoy for Gender Equality, and therefore not as new as the government has suggested, but with potential nevertheless. It is however vital that the UK government does not seek to compensate for the loss of substantive investment with prominent summits, unless these truly galvanise new coalitions and funds.
52. Instead ministers might reexamine UK strengths considering global need and the capacity of other WPS champions states. Cooperation among allies will be essential to resource multilateral institutions for the functions which only they can perform, as is the case for sanctions for conflict-related sexual violence in the UN Security Council, or the capacity of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to consider gender in situations under investigation. 
53. If funding is not restored, the UK government should also act to preserve the distributed capacity of its networks. In the fifth NAP, UK missions in focus countries are required to have a WPS focal point, a gender action plan, a current GESI conflict analysis and more. All embassies in fragile contexts were expected to develop a gender plan, nominate a WPS lead and conduct gender analysis by 2027.[51] These expectations should be maintained. In addition, as much of the gender expertise built into existing roles in FCDO, MoD and beyond as possible should be retained.
54. The UK can also maintain its commitment to WPS in diplomatic practice. The fifth NAP already positions the government to “lead the international roll back on the rights of women” with a specific commitment on strengthening cooperation in the UN and beyond.[52] In the Security Council this means holding the line on gender-sensitive language in UN Security Council mandates, with a focus on gender expertise and response in peacekeeping missions.

26 May 2025