Presentation on Recent Initiatives to Bring WPS into Disarmament Processes

On 10 October 2025, the Permanent Mission of Malta to the UN hosted a First Committee side event on the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda and disarmament. RCWs Director Ray Acheson was invited to address the establishment of Gender Focal Points in arms control and disarmament and to asses these and other innovations that the gender equality agenda has brought to arms control and disarmament processes. 

10 October 2025

To start with progress: First a quick shout out to civil society-government collaborations, including with government represented on this panel; I don’t think any of the progress we’ve seen would have happened without civil society proposing it, advocating for it, and working with governments to make it happen.

At last year’s First Committee, 33.8 per cent of resolutions included gender references, and 80 delegations endorsed a joint statement on gender and disarmament. This is more than ever before, and that’s positive. This was due to a deliberate initiatve by Canada a few years back to do a gender audit of First Committee resolutions.

The increased attention to the gendered impacts of weapons is also positive, in particular in relation to nuclear weapons through the TPNW, small arms through recent UNPoA outcome documents, gender-based violence through the ATT, and in relation to landmines and cluster munitions.

The increasing attention to gender diversity in disarmament is positive. Though, it is still pretty binary, most delegations only speak of increasing women’s participation with notable exceptions like Austria, Australia, Canada, and a few others. And this is still not really intersectional, as the focus on participation doesn’t really address other inequalities like race, class, disability, etc.

The treaty-based gender focal points are really important developments that can take all of this work forward. They are the operationalisation of the idea of mainstreaming gender and WPS into disarmament work. Or at least, they could be, if they operate to their full potential.

And that means not only looking at gendered impacts of weapons or increasing gender diversity in disarmament discussions, but also exploring the ways that gender norms affect discourse and decisions about weapons and war. Weapons are typically seen as important for security and power, while disarmament is treated as something that makes countries weaker or more vulnerable. This has implications for policies related to all weapons, from nuclear bombs to small arms.

It also is reflected in the patriarchal approach to security that we’ve heard in the First Committee, including the defence of genocide and military invasions. As Mexico said this week, “In recent years, the First Committee has become a forum for countries to exchange accusations and justify why it is not possible—or desirable—to move towards disarmament.” This is part of the dynamic.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the WPS agenda. A key demand of the feminist peacebuilders behind resolution 1325 was to stop war altogether, not to make it “safer” for women. Empty condemnations of attacks against civilians while continuing to arm violence against them is unacceptable. Withdrawing from humanitarian disarmament treaties on landmines and cluster munitions also undermines the WPS agenda, as does threatneing to use nuclear weapons and investing billions in their modernisation. Each of these actions, and the imposition of military bases and increasing military spending, undermines human rights, impedes economic justice, and puts people and the planet at risk of ever more harm.

If we’re serious about WPS, this means stopping arms transfers that violate international law. It means reducing military spending and redirecting that money toward providing for people and the planet. It means eliminating nuclear weapons and not developing new technologies of violence like autonomous weapons. It means demilitarisation and disarmament, not bolstering the military-industrial complex.

Being serious about WPS and disarmament also means confronting the global backlash against gender and the rights of women, gender diverse and LGBTQ+ people.

The very term gender—which is a core concept in international human rights law that for decades has been used to challenge the systematic oppression of women and LGBTQ+ people—is today being aggressively undermined by anti-gender movements globally, including here at the UN.

Civil society and human rights defenders around the world, especially those defending gender equality, women’s rights, sexual and reproductive rights, and LGBTQ+ rights, are being targeted for who they are and the work they do. Combined with rising militarism, erosion of respect for international law, capitalist exploitation, and slashing of funding for gender equality and women’s rights organizations, these attacks have thrown work for WPS into crisis.

This year’s open letter from the NGO Working Group on WPS, which was signed by more than 660 organizations globally, noted that: “To remain silent as the WPS agenda and those who advocate for it are attacked, defunded and abandoned not only undermines decades of commitments to uphold gender equality and women’s rights, but jeopardizes peace and security for everyone.” 

Disarmament is a key element of the WPS agenda, because we cannot achieve equality and justice as long as the philosophy of might makes right dominates and the world is controlled by war profiteers and those commiting genocide get away with it because it’s ecomomically advantageous. To reference Mexico again from just a few days ago, it’s important to discuss the responsibility of the arms industry and to challenge the perception that security is based on weapons. The reality is that the security of women, of LGBTQ+ people, of other marginalised groups, and really of everyone, is harmed by, not enhanced by, weapons.

And WPS is important to disarmament because we cannot undo this political economy of violence, which undermines and prevents disarmament, without confronting the systems of oppression that sustain it, like patiarchy, racism, and colonialism. Abolishing weapons and war, and achieving gender equality and other forms of equality, are key goals of the UN Charter and subsequent international law, and should be pursued together.

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