Albania has partnered with fellow Security Council members to advance the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in the work of the Council.

The “Statement of Shared Commitments on Women, Peace and Security” were launched in December 2021 and have been signed by 15 former and current Security Council Members: Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Malta, Mexico, Niger, Norway, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Signatories have committed to prioritize WPS during our respective Presidencies of the Security Council in January, February, May, June, July, September, October, and December 2023.

Our shared goal is to ensure that the WPS agenda is fully and meaningfully integrated into all aspects of the Council’s work, including in country-specific discussions, and that the crucial work of women peacebuilders and human rights defenders in conflict prevention, peacebuilding and sustaining peace is supported and recognised.

The Commitments are open to all Presidencies to join, with the aim of making it a continuing initiative.

As the facilitator of the Shared Commitments for 2023, Albania will continue to work and coordinate with all Security Council Members who are part of this initiative to ensure the implementation of the WPS Agenda in concrete and tangible ways.

Read more about the concrete commitments in the document below.

 

Statement of Shared Commitments

Niger, Norway, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Japan, Malta, and Switzerland during our respective Presidencies of the Security Council in December 2021, January, March, April, June, July, September, and October 2022, and January, February, May, June, July, September, October, and December 2023 are committed to making Women, Peace and Security a top priority, and to ensuring its implementation in concrete and tangible ways. These commitments build on the initiative launched in September 2021 by Ireland, Kenya, and Mexico.

We believe in the transformative power of the WPS agenda to enable the Security Council to fully realise its mandate to maintain international peace and security. We are determined to advance the implementation of the WPS agenda, and ensure the Council approaches WPS in a systematic way to help close the persistent gap between rhetoric and reality, especially on the ground.

Women and girls have the right to participate fully, equally and meaningfully in all matters of peace and security, including conflict prevention, and to protection in situations of armed conflict, including from sexual and gender-based violence, in accordance with United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and international law, in particular international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

Our shared goal is to ensure that the WPS agenda is fully and meaningfully integrated into all aspects of the Council’s work, including in country-specific discussions, and that the crucial work of women peacebuilders and human rights defenders in conflict prevention, peacebuilding and sustaining peace is supported and recognised.

To drive forward implementation of the WPS normative framework, we commit to:

Women’s full, equal, and meaningful participation in Council meetings:

• Promoting gender balance and striving towards gender parity, among those we invite to brief the Security Council.
• Ensuring strong representation of diverse women civil society briefers in Security Council meetings.
• Supporting the safe participation of civil society briefers in Security Council meetings, including by consulting and coordinating with the briefer in question to assess risks and develop appropriate risk mitigation strategies, and also committing to a zero-tolerance approach to reprisals against the briefer and calling for accountability for such acts.
• Drawing attention to, and following up on, the recommendations and priority issues raised by civil society briefers in Council meetings and other available opportunities.

Including gender perspectives in Council meetings and products:

• Requesting the inclusion of gender analysis as a cross-cutting theme in United Nations (UN) briefings to the Council.
• Sharing civil society statements and recommendations from previous meetings as a reminder to briefers, and requesting UN briefers to reflect on previous civil society recommendations to the Council.
• Making WPS-related issues an explicit focus of at least one mandated geographic meeting of the Council or specifically host a WPS signature event in each Presidency and requesting UN briefers to focus on this aspect.
• Ensuring that Security Council products integrate strong WPS language, taking into consideration the recommendations from the Reports of the Secretary-General on Women, Peace and Security and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, and the recommendations from Informal Expert Group on WPS.
• Including substantive gender perspectives in the signature events of our presidencies.
• Highlighting the work and recommendations of the Informal Expert Group on WPS and coordinating with the IEG and relevant UN Groups of Friends to ensure information sharing.

Transparency in advancing the WPS agenda in the Council:

• Upholding the provisions of all previous Security Council Resolutions pertaining to the Women, Peace and Security agenda, and advocating for their full implementation.
• Highlighting and advancing key WPS issues in our statements, and heightening the visibility of our discussions on WPS, including by holding WPS press ‘stakeouts’
• Reflecting WPS highlights and recommendations in our end-of-presidency wrap-up sessions. – Calling for the UN to lead by example in ensuring the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in peace processes it leads or co-leads.