**Position Paper on the 20th Anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security**

**Introduction:**

October 29, 2020, marked the 20th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The resolution’s passage was historic for two key reasons. First, the Council voted unanimously in favor. Second, the resolution recognized, for the first time, the negative impact of armed conflicts on women, particularly as conditions worsened in regions experiencing sectarian wars and conflicts in East Asia and Africa. The resolution also acknowledged the crucial role women play in conflict prevention and resolution and established a new foundation for women’s leadership within the concept of gender equality, justice, and accountability in all aspects of peacemaking.

Since the adoption of Resolution 1325 in 2000, the UN Security Council has passed nine additional resolutions in support. Approximately 90 countries have incorporated these resolutions into their national action plans. Furthermore, women’s organizations and activists worldwide have advocated for increased female representation and participation at peace negotiation tables, in post-conflict reconstruction efforts, and in leading peaceful mass movements for democratic elections, and demanding trials for war crimes perpetrators. Women have also served in international peacekeeping forces in numerous conflict zones, providing role models for peacemaking. Despite this, progress on women’s empowerment, as envisioned in the resolution, is considered very slow.

Despite strong support from some member states and the global women’s movement, persistent gaps in implementation hinder the Women, Peace, and Security agenda, particularly in conflict-affected countries where two billion people live. The crisis is currently worsening as conflicts continue despite the spread of COVID-19, making the need to prioritize peace more urgent.

**Content of Resolution 1325**

Within the framework of the Security Council’s efforts to enhance women’s role in preventing conflict and in peacemaking and peacekeeping, the resolution emphasizes three main measures:

1. Measures related to the Secretary-General: Encouraging the Secretary-General to:
   

   • Increase women’s participation at all decision-making levels in conflict resolution and peacemaking processes.
   • Appoint more women as special representatives and envoys to undertake good offices on his behalf.
   • Increase the role and contribution of women in UN field operations.
   • Provide member states with guidelines and training materials on the protection of women, their rights and special needs, and on the importance of involving women in all peacekeeping and peacebuilding measures.

2. Measures related to Member States: Urging Member States to:
   

   • Ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making levels in national, regional, and international institutions and mechanisms for conflict prevention, management, and resolution.
   • Increase financial contributions and support for gender-sensitive training efforts.
   • Involve women when negotiating and implementing peace agreements, including considering the special needs of women during repatriation and resettlement, as well as rehabilitation, reintegration, and post-conflict reconstruction.
   • Ensure the protection and respect for the human rights of women, especially those related to the constitution, the electoral system, the police, and the judiciary.

3. Measures related to Parties in Conflict:
   

   • Fully respect international law regarding the rights of women as civilians, particularly the Geneva Conventions and their protocols, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Refugee Convention.
   • Take measures to protect women from gender-based violence in situations of armed conflict, especially rape and other forms of sexual abuse.
   • Ensure that perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, including crimes against women, are not exempt from punishment and that such crimes are excluded from amnesty.
   • Respect the civilian and humanitarian character of refugee camps and settlements, and consider the special needs of women.

**Dealing with Resolution 1325 on the Palestinian Level:**

The Palestinian Authority has dealt with the resolution positively, with President Mahmoud Abbas issuing a presidential decree for women’s participation in negotiations. He then announced the participation of Palestinian women in the International Women’s Commission “IWC,” which aims to involve women in negotiations with women on the Israeli side in the presence of international figures. However, the feminist engagement with Resolution 1325 came late. The feminist movement noted that the resolution did not address the conflict with the displacement-oriented (settlement-focused) military occupation. Thus, it does not fully apply to it, and all that has been approved of international legitimacy decisions towards the national rights of the Palestinians will not be effective at the international level to pressure Israel to compel it to comply with the resolution and its provisions.

Indeed, despite the passage of all these years since the issuance of Resolution 1325, it has not yet found its actual and comprehensive translation in the Palestinian context. Only some aspects have been translated into various programs. This is due to reasons, the most important of which, as mentioned earlier, is that the resolution does not directly address issues related to women’s issues under foreign occupation, which contradicts what is stated in all documents of international women’s conferences from Mexico 1975, through Copenhagen 1980 and Nairobi 1985, ending with the Beijing Document of 1995 and subsequent UN women’s conferences, which dealt directly with issues of women under foreign occupation through their programs and resolutions. Furthermore, the set of subsequent resolutions issued by the Secretary-General complementing Resolution 1325 did not address the situation of Palestinian women, considering that Palestine is the only area in the world suffering from a settlement-focused military occupation.

Despite this, Resolution 1325 has been re-read according to the specificity of the Palestinian situation, as it constitutes a general framework for working on the issue of women, peace, and security. It practically includes references based on a number of decisions and agreements issued by it, the General Assembly, women’s conferences, and related international charters. This understanding is based on analyzing the characteristics and nature of the national stage that Palestinian women and their national cause are experiencing, which carries the characteristics and tasks of the national liberation stage, in addition to other characteristics that generate the requirements of construction tasks, development needs, legislation, and participation.

**Our Understanding of Resolution 1325:**

Our understanding is based on the fact that we are in a stage of conflict with a foreign occupation of a military nature that aims for displacement, meaning (settlement-focused), and the continuation of its aggressive measures that have effects on us, starting with forced displacement, the presence of more than half of the Palestinian people in refugee camps and the diaspora, and the continuation of the policy of land confiscation and settlement construction in all the occupied Palestinian territories in 1967, especially Jerusalem, and the ongoing annexation measures in it, the demolition of homes, the confiscation of land, and its persistence in killing, arresting, blockading, and spreading barriers, with the aim of restricting citizens and pushing them to internal and external migration, and ending with the current reality in the Gaza Strip, where about 2 million Palestinians live and suffer from disastrous humanitarian conditions due to the policies of the Israeli occupation, especially in imposing a stifling blockade and repeated military aggressions on the sector, which has resulted in a severe humanitarian crisis for all residents of the sector and a violation of most of their human rights, and they have become living in a collective prison, where the entry and exit of Palestinians from and to the Gaza Strip is restricted, and it has become a humanitarian disaster area unfit for life, according to the UNRWA report 2020. This is in addition to imposing more occupation policies and measures that stand in the face of our people’s aspirations to get rid of the occupation and establish an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, as these policies are a flagrant violation of international agreements, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention, human rights law, and the principles of the United Nations.

This means that there is a need to redefine the conflict based on the definitions of armed conflicts in the Beijing Platform for Action strategies in the 12 areas and the paragraph on women and armed conflicts, and the political declaration issued by the General Assembly in 2000, which reaffirms the commitment of states to the objectives of the resolution in accordance with its provisions and the references it is based on.

The importance of clarification lies in dealing with the resolution in a comprehensive manner, meaning that it includes all Palestinian women, including refugees, displaced persons, and those living in Palestine under occupation, which will help us Palestinians to determine the priorities of action plans and benefit from the mechanisms contained in the resolution.

**Work Orientations According to the Resolution’s Axes:**

The four axes of the resolution are accountability, protection, prevention, and participation. Therefore, the work must be carried out as follows:

1. Documenting the occupation’s violations against Palestinian women through statistics, reports, images, and documentary films, regarding (the killing of women at checkpoints and border areas, childbirth at checkpoints, the death of patients at checkpoints, dealing with female prisoners, demolishing houses, bulldozing agricultural land, confiscating land, preventing family reunification, the effects of the blockade and the closure of crossings on women and children, etc.).
2. Submitting reports and presenting them before the United Nations missions in Palestine specialized in documenting the occupation’s crimes, and before the international bodies specialized in accountability for the occupation’s crimes in the occupied territories.
3. Initiating legal cases and complaints through the international bodies authorized to file lawsuits.
4. Carrying out advocacy campaigns and directing invitations to regional and international legal entities to hold a trial for war criminals, as a tool of pressure on the International Criminal Court and the international bodies specialized in following up on related reports.
5. Submitting reports to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the situation of Palestinian women, on Israeli violations and abuses against Palestinian women, and on the obstacles hindering the progress and implementation of the resolution in Palestine.
6. Requesting the Secretary-General to issue an annex to Resolution 1325 regarding women living under foreign occupation, including a paragraph on Palestinian women.
7. Establishing regional and international alliances and networks under the resolution, and issuing calls, statements of condemnation and denunciation, and demands to conduct trials for war criminals and expose the violations of the Israeli occupation.
8. Demanding temporary international protection for the Palestinian people until the end of the occupation and the establishment of a democratic State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital.
9. Demanding the release of female prisoners in the occupation prisons as a basic goal, based on the legitimacy of the struggle to resist the occupation. Therefore, the humanitarian conditions of those under detention must be improved and all violations they are subjected to in detention centers must be ended.
10. Working to rehabilitate released female prisoners after their release, in cooperation with the relevant bodies, documenting their stories and narratives of the experience of detention, providing them with psychological and moral support, and working to reintegrate them into society after their release.
11. Demanding the activation of Resolution 194 to guarantee the right of return and compensation for refugees, and documenting the effects of the forced displacement suffered by the Palestinian people since 1948 until now.
12. Issuing reports on the effects of displacement resulting from the construction of the wall and the systematic destruction of homes in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and the policy of withdrawing identity cards from Jerusalemites, and the extent of the negative impact of this arbitrary policy on women and their families on the social fabric in terms of loss of security and family stability.
13. Pressuring the official authorities in Palestine to implement the provisions of Resolution 1325 and its references in terms of increasing and developing women’s participation in decision-making centers.
14. Pressuring for the re-establishment and amendment of legislation to guarantee women’s right to political participation based on justice and equality, and to provide social security and peace.