Women, Peace and Security Sounds Hollow in the Arab World – Now It's Time for Real Change

The Women, Peace and Security agenda was supposed to be revolutionary, created to finally ensure that women have a real seat at the peace table. Today, we have the right language in the right agreements endorsed by the right actors—on paper. But 25 years on, introspection is due. For starters, reducing this agenda to a little acronym—WPS—has brought risks. Omissions. We lose the power behind the words. And we risk turning this work into a sub-category, a sideshow, or an add-on. Imagine if we could just say “peace and security” with the full recognition that women are indispensable to this effort. Globally, neither P nor S are remotely possible without W.

A Promise on Paper

When I look at the Arab region, I have to ask: is this agenda just hopeful rhetoric, or is it actually changing lives? In a region facing immense peace and security challenges and wide gender gaps, this agenda should be a lifeline. Plagued by empty pockets, a deep disconnect from what grassroots activists actually need, and the devastating fallout of endless conflicts, the WPS framework seems to be faltering precisely where we need it most. 

With a growing list of states developing National Action Plans—including Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, and Sudan—political buy-in seems present. Yes, the adoption of these plans is a step forward, but there’s a growing chasm between the agenda's lofty ambitions and women’s daily realities. 

When I look at the Arab region, I have to ask: is this agenda just hopeful rhetoric, or is it actually changing lives?

Analyses confirm what many of us have seen firsthand: while these plans are being churned out, actually implementing them is a whole other story. The NAP—a truly unfortunate acronym—should be the starting line, not the finish line. And to even get off the starting blocks, we need two things: funding and genuine political will. Without them, the engine won't even start.

Credibility Is Crumbling

The agenda's credibility is undermined when the very institutions championing it fail to practice what they preach. It's impossible to ignore that the United Nations, the orchestrator of WPS, has never been led by a woman Secretary-General. Studies have shown again and again that women in top political leadership roles can have a powerful domino effect, inspiring parties to appoint more women and motivating women to get involved in politics. When the agenda’s founding organizations don’t even reflect the change they demand, their commitments to women's inclusion feel hollow and disingenuous, weakening the political pressure needed to effect real change. The outcome is the reverse: a resistance to promoting women into meaningful leadership roles. We need women at the helm of the UN and other international bodies. No more excuses.

Throughout the global majority, I’ve heard criticisms that the WPS agenda is a foreign, imposed framework filled with Western-centric jargon like "gender mainstreaming" that doesn't resonate with the diverse experiences of women. This language often speaks to an elite few with access to education and resources, alienating the very women it aims to empower. It makes the agenda feel disconnected and shaped more by the priorities of international donors and technocrats than by the urgent needs of local women.

Palestine Is the Agenda's Most Egregious Failure

These critiques pale in comparison to what we're witnessing today. A "post-mortem"—a grim but necessary choice of words—is needed for the WPS agenda in Palestine, because it represents the agenda’s most egregious failing, unfolding in real-time as I type this. Israel’s relentless bombardment of Palestine has extinguished lives, families, and futures. While the available numbers underestimate reality, this represents a catastrophic failure of the most basic pillar of the WPS agenda: protection. What meaning does a NAP hold in the face of such violence? 

Hope Is Growing in the Grassroots

Despite these systemic failures, women at the grassroots have always been leading the charge, whether with or without a "WPS" label.

• In Yemen, the Yemeni Women Pact for Peace and Security disburses humanitarian aid, negotiates the release of prisoners, and advocates for women's inclusion in official talks.
• In Lebanon, the Young Women Peacebuilders program equips women across the Arab region with practical skills in mediation and conflict resolution, building a new generation of leaders.
• In Syria, the Mazaya Women’s Center in Idlib provides services and a space for women to organize and participate in local governance—even in areas controlled by extremist groups.
• In Iraq, women-led organizations are documenting human rights abuses and providing crucial support to survivors of ISIS, laying the groundwork for future justice and reconciliation.

And the recent formation of the WPS Working Group for Arab States—co-led by UN Women Arab States and the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut—focuses on research, policy advocacy, and women’s participation, providing a platform to reshape the agenda from within, and centering the real experiences of Arab women. 

A Roadmap for Real Change

To bridge the gap between rhetoric and reality, these local successes offer a roadmap for a more effective and authentic WPS agenda. 

This agenda starts with—and was created for—women. This means firstly acknowledging the generations of WPS activism, well before there was a label for it. A Lebanese expert who chose to remain anonymous had this to say: 

“This year we’re commemorating the 25th anniversary of UN SCR 1325. Meanwhile the messaging doesn’t even acknowledge women’s efforts for decades before this, instead it negates their experience as if women were doing nothing until the acronym was invented.”

Women in the region are the “silent architects of stability,” doing the work in a million ways—most of it invisible. They are transforming peace as leaders of change, not just claiming a seat at the table—but building their own tables. 

Activist and founder of Politics4Her Yasmina Benslimane put it this way: 

“Young women are leading movements, mediating in their communities, and building innovative forms of solidarity every single day. Yet too often, our voices are dismissed as ‘too young’ or ‘too radical.’ For me, WPS is about dismantling that silence, recognizing that young women are not the future of peace, we are its present.”

Women—including young women—are not the exception, an add-on, or an afterthought. They are the global norm. 

Decolonize, Decentralize, and Localize

We need to shed the elitist, foreign jargon and develop concepts in local dialects and contexts, evolving as our contexts change. For instance in Palestine, the same decades-old framework no longer applies in the context of mass destruction, millions displaced, trauma, and life-changing injuries. 

International organizations should host conferences in cities in the region to shift the intellectual gravity away from Western capitals. Promoting scholarship in Arabic and other regional languages will ensure that knowledge production on peace and security is truly indigenous.

We need to shed the elitist, foreign jargon and develop concepts in local dialects and contexts, evolving as our contexts change.

A Sudanese expert who preferred to stay anonymous told me this: 

“WPS is too sanitized—it doesn’t question the structures of power or allow for the social, economic, political shift we badly need. What does WPS have to say for an active genocide and colonial projects? Humanity is in crisis—and WPS seems naively optimistic. As an Arab and an African, I feel like reality is one language and WPS is speaking another.”

Radically Reorient the Funding

We make lofty claims of support for women's organizations, but the funding doesn’t match the claims. A genuine feminist peace starts with acknowledging—and resourcing—the organizations that have been pursuing this long before we arrived, and who will be cultivating it long after we leave. This funding must be accessible, flexible, long-term, meaningful—with priorities defined by the women leaders themselves. They need direct resources—and full control over those resources—not more red tape and reporting requirements.

An anonymous expert in Lebanon said: 

“So much money spent on glossy plans and launches, but look at the results - nothing. Removing real barriers to participation isn’t as appealing, it seems. None of this trickles down to make a meaningful impact where it is most needed.” 

Expanding the Definitions of "Participation" and "Protection" 

Participation cannot just mean one symbolic seat at a formal negotiating table. It must include recognizing and supporting women's leadership in informal governance, community resilience, and local peace councils. And protection has to be more than just addressing gender-based violence. It must tackle the systemic threats that kill women every day: the collapse of healthcare, economic devastation, and forced displacement. 

Arwa Damon, former CNN International Correspondent and founder of INARA, had this to say:

“If we don’t stop patting ourselves on the back for acronyms and start doing the real work on the ground that is needed there aren't going to be any women left for “peace and security” in Gaza. All this talk about women needing “a seat at the table” in peace and security talks, and yet when most vital we not only see women being sidelined, but also actively ignored. If those three letters - WPS - are to mean anything at all then member states need to put weight behind them and help identify women leaders and support into leadership positions. Male leadership is what brought us here. Women deserve to be more than a catchy acronym or a three letter agenda.”

Sustainable peace in the Arab world will not be achieved through top-down, foreign-imposed frameworks. It has to be cultivated from the ground up, by and for the women who experience conflict and build resilience every single day. Only by truly centering their voices, funding their work, and genuinely sharing power can the promise of the Women, Peace and Security agenda finally become a reality.

Women deserve no less.