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More women must have a role in shaping peace agreements, security reforms and post-conflict recovery plans, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the Security Council October 6. Credit: UN News

By Sima Bahous
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7 2025 (IPS)

We meet on the eve of the twenty-fifth anniversary of UN Security Council resolution 1325—a milestone born of the multilateral system’s conviction that peace is more robust, security more enduring, when women are at the table.

Yet the record of the last 25 years is mixed: bold, admirable commitments have been followed too often by weak implementation and chronic under-investment. Today, 676 million women and girls live within reach of deadly conflict, the highest [number] since the 1990s.

It is lamentable, then, that we see today rising military spending and renewed pushback against gender equality and multilateralism. These threaten the very foundations of global peace and security.

This anniversary must be more than a commemoration. Women and girls who live amidst conflict deserve more than commemoration. It must instead be a moment to refocus, recommit, and ensure that the next 25 years deliver much more than the last.

A belief in the core principles of resolution 1325 is shared by women and men everywhere. Whether through our work at country level, including in conflicts, or in the recent Member State commitments for the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, we know that our women, peace and security agenda, our conviction for equality, enjoys the support of an overwhelming majority of women and men, and also of Member States.

Even in Afghanistan, UN Women’s ongoing monitoring shows that 92 per cent of Afghans, men and women both, think that girls must be able to attend secondary education. It is also striking that a majority of Afghan women say they remain hopeful that they will one day achieve their aspirations.

This, despite everything they endure under Taliban oppression. Their hope is not an idle wish, and it is more than a coping mechanism. It is a political statement. A conviction. An inspiration.

As we meet to discuss the women, peace and security agenda, the painful situation in the Middle East, especially for women and girls, remains on our minds and in our hearts. Two years into the devastating Gaza war, amid the killing, the pain and the loss, a glimmer of hope emerges.

I join the Secretary-General in welcoming the positive responses to President Donald Trump’s proposal to end the Gaza war, to implement an immediate and lasting ceasefire to secure the unconditional release of all hostages, and to ensure unhindered humanitarian access.

We hope that this will lead to a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis alike, where all women and girls live with dignity, security, and opportunity.

The trends documented in the Secretary-General’s report should alarm us. It is understandable that some might conclude that the rise and normalization of misogyny currently poisoning our politics and fuelling conflict is unstoppable. It is not. Those who oppose equality do not own the future, we do.

The reality is that globally, suffering and displacement will likely rise in the face of seemingly intractable conflicts and growing instability. And it is a painful fact that we must be prepared for the situation to become worse before it becomes better for women and girls.

This will continue to be exacerbated by short-sighted funding cuts that already undermine education opportunities for Afghan girls; curtail life-saving medical attention for tens of thousands of survivors of rape and sexual violence in Sudan, Haiti and beyond; shutter health clinics across conflict zones; limit access to food for malnourished and starving mothers and their children in Gaza, Mali, Somalia and elsewhere; and fundamentally will erode the chance for peace.

Yet despite the horrors of wars and conflicts, women continue to build peace.

• Women are reducing community violence in Abyei and the Central African Republic, and mobilizing for peace in Yemen, in Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

• In Haiti, women have managed to achieve near parity in the new provisional electoral council and increased the quota for women in the draft constitution.

• In Chad, women’s representation in the National Assembly has doubled.

• In Syria, the interim Constitution ratified this March mandates the Government to guarantee the social, economic, and political rights of women, and protect them from all forms of oppression, injustice, and violence.

• In Ukraine, women have achieved the codification into law of gender-responsive budgeting, including across national relief efforts.

Whether mediating, brokering access to services, driving reconstruction, and more, women’s leadership is the face of resilience—a force for peace.

The Secretary-General has just spoken to UN Women’s recent survey findings, which highlight how current financing trends are endangering the viability and safety of women-led organizations in conflict-affected countries.

We believe there is no alternative but to change course and to invest significantly in women’s organizations on the frontlines of conflict.

The last 25 years have seen an emphasis on investing in transnational security and international legal institutions. This has not been matched by attention to investing in national capacities and social movements.

And while attention to the women, peace and security agenda has been focused in global capitals and in major cities of conflict-affected countries, it must also become localized and reach the remote areas that are worst affected and where it makes the biggest difference. This is true for information, funding, policy implementation, services, and more.

Recent years have seen a much-needed increased level of attention to conflict-related sexual violence than ever before. We have taken huge strides in ending the silence, chipping away at the impunity that emboldens and enables perpetrators.

These efforts must be redoubled, giving greater attention to reproductive violence, gender-based persecution in accountability initiatives, and a more comprehensive understanding of atrocities disproportionately affecting women and girls in conflict.

In the next 25 years of the critical women, peace and security agenda, it is crucial that we see funding earmarked, robust quotas implemented, clear instructions and mandates, and accountability measures in place that make failures visible and have consequences.

So, allow me to leave you with five calls to action that need full attention in the coming years:

• First: Affirmative action to ensure women take their rightful place at the peace-making table and consistent support to them as peacekeepers, peacebuilders, and human rights defenders. This must become a hardwired feature of the way we conduct the business of peace.

• Second: Measure the impact of this agenda by the number of women that participate directly in peace and security processes, and by the relief women receive in the form of justice, reparations, services, or asylum.

• Third: End violence against women and girls, address emerging forms of technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and challenge harmful narratives both online and offline.

• Fourth: End impunity for atrocities and crimes against women and girls, respect and uphold international law, silence the guns, and ensure peace is always in the ascendency.

• Fifth: Embed the women, peace and security agenda ever-deeper in the hearts and minds of ordinary people, particularly young people, both boys and girls. It is they who will determine the future of our ambitions, ambitions that must ultimately become theirs too.

Above all, the coming few years should see Security Council resolution 1325 implemented fully, across all contexts.

When women lead, peace follows. We made a promise to them 25 years ago. It is past time to deliver.

This article is based on remarks by UN Under-Secretary General and UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous at the Security Council meeting on “Women and peace and security” on 6 October 2025.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

Sima Bahous is UN Under Secretary-General and Executive Director UN Women

Zum zweiten Jahrestag des palästinensischen Massakers in Israel hat Bundespräsidentin Karin Keller-Sutter zu Frieden aufgerufen. «Es ist höchste Zeit, die Gewalt zu beenden», schrieb sie am Dienstag auf der Plattform X.

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and K Kuhaneetha Bai
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Oct 7 2025 (IPS)

The World Bank’s 1981 Berg Report provided the blueprint for structural adjustment, including economic liberalisation in Africa. Urging trade liberalisation, it promised growth from its supposed comparative advantage in agriculture.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Berg promises
Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Plan for Action by Professor Elliot Berg blamed government interventions for blocking post-colonial African economic progress.

Removing ‘distortions’ caused by marketing boards and other state interventions and institutions was supposed to unleash export-led growth for Sub-Saharan African (SSA) producers.

However, despite the supposed comparative advantage and trade preferences, African agricultural exports have not grown significantly due to protection by wealthy nations.

By the turn of the century, Africa’s share of worldwide non-oil exports had declined to less than half of what it was in the early 1980s.

African agricultural output and export capacities have been undermined by decades of low investment, economic stagnation and neglect.

Significant public spending cuts accelerated the deterioration of existing infrastructure (roads, water supply, etc.), undermining potential ‘supply responses’.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

However, high growth in East and South Asian economies boosted SSA mineral exports, often mined by foreign firms from the most significant economies in Asia.

Even the primary commodity price collapse from 2014 did not prevent Africa’s share of world exports from increasing.

Promises, promises
The 1994 Marrakech declaration, concluding the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, created the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995.

The new Doha Development Round of trade negotiations began in 2001, following the dramatic walkout by African trade ministers at the WTO Seattle ministerial conference in 1999.

The Public Health Exception to the WTO’s onerous new intellectual property rules alleviated this concern but was ignored during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

Developing countries were projected to gain US$16 billion in the most likely scenario, according to a 2005 World Bank study led by Kym Anderson, which estimated the likely effects of a Doha Round trade agreement.

However, various studies estimating the welfare effects of multilateral agricultural trade liberalisation – including Anderson et al. – suggest significant net losses, not gains, for SSA.

Gains from agricultural trade liberalisation would largely accrue to existing major agricultural exporters – mainly from the Cairns Group – not SSA.

Nevertheless, the World Bank and others continued to insist that trade liberalisation would benefit all developing countries, including SSA, although most studies indicated otherwise.

WTO trade rules have reduced the policy space for developing countries – especially in industrial, trade, or investment policy – although some claim that room for industrial policy remains.

African governments were told that a Doha Round deal would reduce agricultural subsidies, import tariffs and non-tariff barriers by rich nations, especially in Europe.

But the neglect of both physical and economic infrastructure over two decades of structural adjustment programmes left little effective capacity to respond to new export opportunities.

Worse still, trade liberalisation of manufactured goods also undermined nascent African industrialisation.

African market access to rich, mainly European, markets was secured through negotiated preferential agreements, rather than trade liberalisation. Hence, further multilateral trade liberalisation would erode these modest gains.

Additionally, most African governments – particularly those of poorer economies with limited government capacities – were unable to replace lost tariff revenues with new taxes.

African losses foretold
What was Africa expected to gain from a Doha Round deal?

Thandika Mkandawire warned the WTO trade regime would make Africa worse off, especially without preferential treatment from the European Union under the Lomé Convention.

Anderson et al. claimed SSA would gain substantially as “farm employment, the real value of agricultural output and exports, the real returns to farm land and unskilled labor, and real net farm incomes would all rise substantially in capital scarce SSA countries with a move to free merchandise trade”.

To be sure, the modest gains from trade liberalisation would be ‘one-time’ improvements projected by the models used.

Anderson et al. claimed that SSA, excluding South Africa, would gain US$3.5 billion, compared to roughly US$550 billion worldwide.

These projected gains of less than one per cent of its 2007 output were nonetheless much more than the tenth of one per cent for all developing countries!

World Bank structural adjustment programmes undermined the limited competitiveness of African smallholder agriculture. However, their projections ignored the reasons why African food agriculture declined after the 1970s.

Meanwhile, the agricultural exports of wealthy nations have benefited from higher production subsidies, which more than offset lower export subsidies. However, reducing agricultural subsidies would likely lead to higher prices of imported food.

Uneven effects
Uneven and partial trade liberalisation and subsidy reduction will have mixed implications. These effects vary with national conditions, including food imports and share of consumer spending.

Earlier estimates for all developing countries obscured the likely impacts of trade liberalisation on Africa. The one-time welfare improvement for SSA, excluding most of Southern Africa, would be three-fifths of one per cent by 2015!

With deindustrialisation accelerated by structural adjustment, Sandra Polaski estimated that SSA, excluding South Africa, would lose US$122 billion from Doha Round trade liberalisation.

Although former World Bank economists agreed the lost decades were due to Bank structural adjustment programmes, these were reimposed a decade ago.

SSA, excluding South Africa, would lose US$106 billion to agricultural trade liberalisation. Poor infrastructure, export capacities and competitiveness in both SSA industry and agriculture were responsible.

Most of the poorest and least developed SSA countries were likely to be worse off in all ‘realistic’ Doha Round outcome scenarios.

With more realistic model assumptions – e.g., allowing for unemployment – Lance Taylor and Rudiger von Arnim found SSA would not gain, on balance, from trade liberalisation.

Mainstream international trade theory cannot justify trade liberalisation for SSA. Worse, ‘new trade theories’ and evolutionary studies of technological development suggest trade liberalisation would permanently slow growth.

Export growth?
As economic growth typically precedes export expansion, trade can foster a virtuous circle but cannot trigger it.

Specifically, a weak investment-export nexus hinders export expansion and diversification, as rapid resource reallocation is unlikely without high investment and sustained growth.

Citing the World Bank, Mkandawire noted Africa’s export collapse in the 1980s and 1990s meant “a staggering annual income loss of US$68 billion – or 21 per cent of regional GDP”!

For Dani Rodrik, Africa’s ‘marginalisation’ was not due to its trade performance, although poor by international standards. Gerald Helleiner has emphasised, “Africa’s failures have been developmental, not export failure per se”.

With its geography and income, Africa probably trades as much as can be expected. Indeed, “Africa overtrades compared with other developing regions in the sense that its trade is higher than would be expected from the various determinants of bilateral trade”!

Vulnerable Africa
The Doha Round of WTO negotiations effectively ended over a decade ago as the backlash in wealthy nations – against globalisation and its consequences – gained momentum.

Meanwhile, trade liberalisation – as part of structural adjustment programmes – deepened SSA deindustrialisation and food insecurity.

With Africa unevenly integrated by economic globalisation, most of the continent exports little to the USA, making it less of a target of Trump’s tariffs.

Nevertheless, trade liberalisation has made developing economies more vulnerable to and unprotected from the recent weaponisation of tariffs and other economic measures.

Last month’s expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) prompted some African leaders to scramble for an extension.

US AGOA imports in 2023 totalled US$10 billion, accounting for high shares of some countries’ exports. Tariff imposition will exacerbate problems due to AGOA’s demise.

Meanwhile, there have been great expectations for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Still, regional trade integration may not be very beneficial, as SSA exports are more competitive than complementary.

K. Kuhaneetha Bai studied at the University of Malaya and does policy research at Khazanah Research Institute.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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