Rethinking UNSCR 1325 after Afghanistan: Towards a women, peace, and state collapse framework
Keywords:
Feminist Institutionalism, Gendered Insecurity, De Facto Governance, Institutional Resilience, Critical Security StudiesAbstract
With United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda was launched to improve the participation, prevention, protection as well as recovery of women. In terms of WPS agenda, Afghanistan had indeed made some progress during the period from 2001 until 2021 as women in Afghanistan became more active in education, civil service and other sectors. However, the return of the Taliban to power in August 2021 ruined many of the institutions through which these gains were made. In this conceptual article, feminist security theory and feminist institutionalism are applied to the Afghan case via qualitative review of the studies on WPS, UN documents, Afghan policy texts and human rights reports. This is how it is argued in the article that in order for WPS to be put into practice it is usually believed that functional state institutions, cooperative authorities, legal protections and administrative capacities are present. However, if these conditions vanish, all four WPS pillars are going to collapse. As a result, it is proposed that Women, Peace, and State collapse could be used as an additional analytical framework that could be applied to women’s security in the context of institutional failure, contested sovereignty and actual rule.
Downloads
References
Akbari, F., & True, J. (2024). Bargaining with patriarchy in peacemaking: The failure of Women, Peace, and Security in Afghanistan. Global Studies Quarterly, 4(1), ksae004. https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksae004
Amnesty International. (2014). Too many missed opportunities: Human rights in Afghanistan under the Karzai administration. https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/asa110042014en.pdf
Amnesty International. (2022). Death in slow motion: Women and girls under Taliban rule. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa11/5685/2022/en/
Amnesty International, & International Commission of Jurists. (2023). The Taliban’s war on women: The crime against humanity of gender persecution in Afghanistan. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa11/6789/2023/en/
Anderson, G. R. M., & Choudhry, S. (2023). Devolution and federalism in collapsed states: Constitutional process and design. In A. Ü. Bâli & O. M. Dajani (Eds.), Federalism and decentralization in the contemporary Middle East and North Africa (pp. 295–317). Cambridge University Press.
Aroussi, S. (2011). “Women, Peace and Security”: Addressing accountability for wartime sexual violence. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 13(4), 576–593. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2011.611663
Azadmanesh, S., & Ghafoori, I. (2020). Women’s participation in the Afghan peace process: A case study. Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. https://giwps.georgetown.edu/resource/womens-participation-in-the-afghan-peace-process/
Brinkerhoff, D. W. (2005). Rebuilding governance in failed states and post-conflict societies: Core concepts and cross-cutting themes. Public Administration and Development, 25(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/pad.352
Buzan, B. (1991). People, states and fear: An agenda for international security studies in the post-Cold War era (2nd ed.). Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Cohn, C. (2011). “Feminist security studies”: Toward a reflexive practice. Politics & Gender, 7(4), 581–586. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X11000389
Cohn, C., Kinsella, H., & Gibbings, S. (2004). Women, Peace and Security Resolution 1325. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 6(1), 130–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461674032000165969
Duncanson, C., & Farr, V. (2019). Testing the Women, Peace and Security agenda: The case of Afghanistan. In S. E. Davies & J. True (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Women, Peace, and Security (pp. 553–568). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190638276.013.42
Enloe, C. (1989). Bananas, beaches and bases: Making feminist sense of international politics. University of California Press.
George, N., & Shepherd, L. J. (2016). Women, Peace and Security: Exploring the implementation and integration of UNSCR 1325. International Political Science Review, 37(3), 297–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512116636659
Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. (2004). The Constitution of Afghanistan. https://natlex.ilo.org/dyn/natlex2/natlex2/files/download/66413/AFG66413%20ENG.pdf
Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. (2015). Afghanistan’s national action plan on UNSCR 1325—Women, Peace, and Security, 2015–2022. Ministry of Foreign Affairs. https://unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/wps-afghanistan_national_action_plan_1325_0.pdf
Human Rights Watch. (2024). Afghanistan: Events of 2023. In World report 2024. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/afghanistan
Kirby, P., & Shepherd, L. J. (2016). The futures past of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. International Affairs, 92(2), 373–392. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12549
Meagher, K., Khaity, M., Hafez, S., Rodo, M., El Achi, N., & Patel, P. (2023). Strengthening health systems and peacebuilding through women’s leadership: A qualitative study. Globalization and Health, 19, Article 21. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-023-00920-1
Moser, C. O. N., & Clark, F. C. (Eds.). (2001). Victims, perpetrators or actors? Gender, armed conflict and political violence. Zed Books.
Pratt, N., & Richter-Devroe, S. (2011). Critically examining UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 13(4), 489–503. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2011.611658
Shepherd, L. J. (2008). Gender, violence and security: Discourse as practice. Zed Books.
Shepherd, L. J. (2016). Making war safe for women? National action plans and the militarisation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. International Political Science Review, 37(3), 324–335. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512116629820
Sjoberg, L. (Ed.). (2010). Gender and international security: Feminist perspectives. Routledge.
Sobat, T. (2025). No peace for Afghanistan: Afghan women’s epistemic resistance and the failures of international peacebuilding efforts. The Global South, 18(1), 86–110. https://doi.org/10.2979/gbs.00029
Thomson, J. (2019). The Women, Peace, and Security agenda and feminist institutionalism: A research agenda. International Studies Review, 21(4), 598–613. https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viy052
Tickner, J. A. (1992). Gender in international relations: Feminist perspectives on achieving global security. Columbia University Press.
True, J. (2016). Explaining the global diffusion of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. International Political Science Review, 37(3), 307–323. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512116632372
True, J. (2018). Bringing back gendered states: Feminist second image theorizing of international relations. In S. Parashar, J. A. Tickner, & J. True (Eds.), Revisiting gendered states: Feminist imaginings of the state in international relations (pp. 33–48). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190644031.003.0003
United Nations Development Programme. (1994). Human development report 1994: New dimensions of human security. Oxford University Press. https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-1994
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (2025, August 19). Afghanistan: Four years on, 2.2 million girls still banned from school. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/afghanistan-four-years-22-million-girls-still-banned-school
United Nations Population Fund. (2023). The state of Afghanistan’s midwifery 2021: Final report. https://afghanistan.unfpa.org/en/publications/state-afghanistans-midwifery-2021-final-report
United Nations Security Council. (2000). Resolution 1325 (2000) [S/RES/1325]. https://docs.un.org/s/res/1325(2000)
UN Women. (2014). The contribution of UN Women to increasing women’s leadership and participation in peace and security and in humanitarian response. https://gate.unwomen.org/EvaluationDocument/Download?evaluationDocumentID=3674
UN Women. (2015). Preventing conflict, transforming justice, securing the peace: A global study on the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. https://wps.unwomen.org/pdf/en/GlobalStudy_EN_Web.pdf
UN Women. (2022). Legal and justice system changes and implications for gender equality and women’s rights in Afghanistan (Gender alert no. 2, brief no. 2). https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2022/12/legal-and-justice-system-changes-and-implications-for-gender-equality
UN Women. (2024). “Unstoppable women”: The Afghan women’s movement. https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2024/03/unstoppable-women-the-afghan-womens-movement
UN Women. (2025). Afghanistan Gender Index 2024. https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2025/06/afghanistan-gender-index-2024
Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of international politics. Addison-Wesley.
Zuckerman, E., & Greenberg, M. (2004). The gender dimensions of post-conflict reconstruction: An analytical framework for policymakers. Gender & Development, 12(3), 70–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/13552070412331332330.
Downloads
Published
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Anoshka Johum, Salma Malik (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
