Future peace-building efforts should reflect evolving technology and its impact on women.
At the Arms Control Association meeting in Washington D.C. this past June, the United Nations (U.N.) Secretary General sounded the alarm on nuclear weapons, stating that “humanity is on a knife’s edge.”
Almost a year earlier, in July 2023, the U.N. Secretary General presented the New Agenda for Peace, his vision of peace and security based on international law to reform the global peace and security architecture. The New Agenda for Peace raises profound fears of the pushback against women’s rights along with the existential challenges of the potential weaponization of technology, rising inequality, shrinking of civic space, and climate emergency.
The upcoming 25th anniversary of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, also known as the Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, presents an opportunity to reflect on its accomplishments and to chart new directions in which the agenda could be evolving.
The WPS agenda, often referred to as the “crowning achievement” of the global women’s movement, transformed women’s role in peace building and, to a lesser degree, in conflict prevention.
All the while, the next 25 years will see enormous change. Artificial intelligence (AI) will make conflict more lethal—AI-enabled cyberattacks can destroy networks and AI enabled decision-making can transform conflict and develop new tactics of warfare. The growing digital gender divide is excluding women in decision-making while ignoring the gendered impacts of AI-facilitated nuclear weapons, including Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS).
To realize the full promise of the WPS agenda, states must address the specific impact of nuclear weapons on women and girls and ensure full representation of women in weapons negotiations, which include LAWS negotiations.
The General Assembly adopted the Women, Disarmament, Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Resolution in December 2020. It further reaffirmed the Sustainable Development Goals and called for the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in efforts to prevent, combat, and eradicate the illicit transfer of small arms. The resolution also recognized the WPS agenda’s core mission: Women should not only be perceived as victims and survivors of gender-based armed violence, but are key players in peace and, in this case, advocating for arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation.
In addition, the General Assembly encouraged U.N. member states to deepen their understanding of the impact of armed violence on women and girls and to address the disparate impacts of the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons on women, men, girls. It also encouraged the full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in the implementation of these resolutions.
The issue of nuclear weapons, however, was largely left out of the narrative arc of the WPS agenda, despite the potential to address nuclear weapons through WPS agenda’s “prevention” and “participation” pillars.
The 2017 U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was labeled as the first “gender-sensitive” international nuclear weapons agreement, as it highlighted the gendered effects of nuclear weapons. Some of these effects include the dangers of ionizing radiation on women and the gendered physical and psychological impacts, stigma, and inequity caused by nuclear use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as decades of nuclear production and testing.
TPNW is also a call for greater participation by women in nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament from development to dispersion. This approach to women’s decision making includes medical care and psychological support for those affected by the use or testing of nuclear weapons.
A gendered approach to nuclear weapons is central. Women in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example, were at nearly twice the risk of developing and dying from cancer due to ionizing radiation exposure. Pregnant women exposed to nuclear radiation face a greater likelihood of maternal mortality, stillbirths, and babies born with birth defects. And yet, we need even more research on the gender-sensitive impact of ionizing radiation.
Though negotiations for TPNW saw female leaders and delegations led by women, women are often underrepresented in decision-making regarding nuclear weapons. This provides further ammunition as to why the WPS agenda must rise to its stated mission of including women in discussions of conflict, peace, security, and decision-making.
In addition, the WPS agenda as it stands does not address AI Facilitated LAWS, despite the suggestion that drone swarming technology—an application of AI now labeled LAWS—is the most significant military technology since the nuclear bomb.
Autonomous weapons systems have been the subject of debate since 2010, when Philip Alston, then Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, raised the issue on the global stage in his interim report to the U.N. General Assembly.
Alston emphasized that advancements in automated technologies and AI are progressing at a dizzying pace with substantial investment in research. He exposed the risks of military forces and defense contractors pursuing the development of “fully autonomous capability,” aiming to enable unmanned aerial vehicles to make complex decisions, such as identifying and engaging human targets.
The pace of technological development in the field of AI has been described by the U.N. Secretary General as happening at “warp speed.” New technology commonly spreads more quickly and is weaponized before states have had the chance to act in any meaningful way.
In fact, in September 2021, then U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, called upon the Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights encouraging states to develop appropriate safeguards to prevent human rights violations. She urged that “action is needed now to put human rights guardrails on the use of AI, for the good of all of us.”
These human rights guardrails must include red-teaming—structured testing that involves a group of people testing cyber security models to address existing gaps and vulnerabilities—that includes women human rights defenders before the product-launching phase of large language models.
In November 2023, the U.N. First Committee approved the New Resolution on Lethal Autonomous Weapons, which expresses concern about the possible negative consequences and impact of autonomous weapons systems on global security and regional and international stability, including the risk of an emerging arms race.
Although the First Committee underscored the capacity of new and emerging technologies, to advance human welfare and enhance civilian protection in conflict under certain circumstances, it also recognized that these technologies could be a double-edged sword with the potential for negative consequences from autonomous weapon systems for global security.
Most importantly, there was recognition that international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, applies to autonomous weapons systems.
Article 39 of Chapter V11 of the U.N. Charter acts as the gatekeeper of maintaining peace. Under its terms, the Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken to maintain or restore international peace and security. Although complete disarmament is a long-term goal, in the progress toward full equality, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) envisions the “complete disarmament, in particular nuclear disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
The most recent contribution to the international normative structure is the upcoming General Recommendation 40 of the CEDAW. The General Recommendation is ambitious in its vision because it redefines “equal and inclusive representation” as parity between women and men in terms of both equal access to and equal power within decision-making systems, and most importantly in conflict prevention, participation in conflict resolution, and building a more sustainable peace and security.
The numerous global conflicts that are fueling a new and expanded arms race are creating a renewed focus on multilateral means of control and verification in the field of disarmament and non-proliferation.
The 25th anniversary of the WPS agenda falls at a time of great global change, driven by new and continuing conflict and emerging technologies. It is time for the WPS agenda to cross a new threshold in its “participation” pillar.
