ABSTRACT
In 2000, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented the document that became known as the Brahimi Report (the full title of which is the ‘Comprehensive review of the whole question of peacekeeping operations in all their aspects’) to the General Assembly. This report marked the beginning of an attempt to reform the way peacekeeping missions were conducted in order to include more complex, multidimensional, and dynamic mandates so as to ensure that the past failures of Bosnia and Rwanda did not repeat themselves. Almost concurrently, there was also a growing demand on the part of international and local women’s groups/NGOs, as well as other members of civil society from all around the world, to push for a Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda after the 1995 Beijing Declaration adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing 1995. In 2001, the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), which is a landmark international legal framework that addresses not only the impact of war on women, but also the important role women play in conflict management, resolution, and peace. The change in the way that peacekeeping has been undertaken, to include more complex and multidimensional mandates, has recently converged with the WPS agenda and has made women’s representation and gender mainstreaming in peacekeeping missions a major priority within the UN. There are now almost no mandates that do not include the mention of gender equality in the security forces (Karim and Beardsley 2013).
