National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)]

Today marks the publication of the UK’s fourth National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (2018-2022) by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, with support from the stabilisation unit.

The National Action Plan (NAP) is the UK Government’s five-year strategy that captures how we will meet our women, peace and security (WPS) commitments under UN Security Council Resolution 1325, demonstrating how we will ensure better protection and empowerment of women in conflict situations overseas through our diplomatic, development and defence engagements alongside our bilateral and multilateral partners.

The UK is a global leader on women, peace and security, taking the lead on drafting resolutions on this issue in the UN Security Council. In 2017 the FCO’s first ever special envoy for gender equality was appointed as part of wider UK ambition to eliminate all forms of gender inequality. The UK has continued work to increase women’s participation in conflict resolution in some of the most fragile countries in the world, including in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria. Along with Bangladesh and Canada, the UK launched the Women, Peace and Security Chief of Defence Network at the UN Peacekeeping Ministerial Conference in Vancouver in November 2017. The promotion of women in mediation in conflict resolution and countering violent extremism will continue at the Commonwealth Summit and beyond.

The UK continues to tackle gender-based violence, particularly violence against women and girls as the most prevalent form of gender-based violence. We continue to champion the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative to end sexual exploitation and abuse, working closely with our international partners.

This NAP has been developed based on lessons learned from the previous three UK NAPs, extensive consultation and new research and evidence on WPS. Key changes are:

The NAP covers a longer, five-year period, enabling greater opportunity for the UK and implementing partners to demonstrate impact against our long-term objectives and outcomes.

The NAP provides a vision of what the UK wants to achieve on WPS, not a fixed country-level implementation plan. This will enable us to respond flexibly to local realities and changes in the contexts, and to adapt programmes and activities to global and local developments.

We have set out seven strategic outcomes, linked to the four pillars of UNSCR 1325, where the UK can demonstrate a comparative advantage and expect to see real progress over this period.

We have retained inclusion of focus countries, recognising that this helps the UK to raise issues and work in partnership with governments, and to improve domestic and international visibility. We have increased the number from six to nine. They are: Afghanistan, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria.

The NAP 2018-22 sets out more clearly how it fits with wider HMG policies and strategies to ensure complementarity with other Government efforts.

We are grateful to the all-party parliamentary group on women, peace and security for their active engagement on this important issue and would, in particular, like to thank Baroness Hodgson for her dedicated work in this area. We would also like to thank the civil society network, Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS), and the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security for the contribution they have made to the process of revising the NAP.

We will continue to consult with Parliament and civil society, including through the annual report on progress on the implementation of the NAP. The FCO will convene a new WPS steering group, chaired by Lord Ahmad, to bring together NGOs and academics with senior officials to provide accountability and leadership on this agenda. We will commission an external evaluation for a mid and end of term assessment of how the strategic outcomes have been included through HMG’s planning and delivery processes.

A copy of the NAP has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses, and is available on gov.uk.

It can be viewed online at:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2018-01-16/HCWS404/.

[HCWS404]