UK to push harder for women and girls 'bearing brunt' of global conflicts, minister says

The UK’s development minister has pledged to push for action at the United Nations this week to improve the situation of women and girls who are “bearing the brunt” of global conflicts.

In an opinion piece on Thursday for Middle East Eye, Anneliese Dodds said that the conflict in Sudan will be amongst the most urgent issues she raises at the UN General Assembly, along with other crises including Gaza and Ukraine.

She says she will “focus not just on the UK’s role in resolving political tensions, but also on the women and girls who are bearing the brunt of conflict” because it makes for stronger policies.

“Integrating gender equality across the full breadth of foreign and development policy makes both more effective,” Dodds writes.

“It is also the morally right thing to do.” 

She writes that conflict is “catastrophic for development and its impacts are gendered”, intensifying pre-existing problems which intersect “to wreck the lives of women and girls”.

Sudan crisis: Women and girls must be at the heart of global response

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Dodds points out that the UK played a key role in establishing the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda through the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325.

The resolution, adopted in 2000, which recognised the disproportionate impacts of armed conflict on women and girls.

The agenda, which evolved from the resolution, is a policy framework that recognises that women must be critical actors in global efforts to achieve sustainable international peace and security.

Organisations focused on women's rights and the WPS agenda welcomed Dodd's message on Thursday, but called on the UK government to be consistent across conflicts.

Eva Tabbasam, director at Gender Action for Peace and Security, the UK's Women, Peace and Security civil society network, told MEE that to be effective, the UK government "must adopt a more principled, consistent and proactive approach with gender justice at its heart across its foreign, development and domestic policies".

Currently, she said, there is a noticeable absence of a strong set of rights-based principles guiding decision-making, evident in the inconsistent application of the WPS agenda in the UK government's response to crises in Palestine, Lebanon, Ukraine and Sudan.

'The minister speaks of a moral obligation to ensure a liveable planet, and this must include the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and Beirut'

- Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counselling

"Issues such as arms trade, climate change, immigration and asylum, and policing are fundamentally connected to the WPS agenda, and the UK must recognise this interrelation in its responses," Tabbasam said.

The Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counselling, a Palestinian women's rights organisation based in Ramallah, said Dodd's commitments would "ring hollow" unless they were fully applied to Palestine as a country under occupation.

Palestine women and girls have been directly affected by Israeli occupation measures for the past 57 years, a situation that has significanty escalated over the past year, the organisation said.

"The minister speaks of a moral obligation to ensure a liveable planet, and this must include the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and Beirut," the organisation said.

"This should entail a two-way arms embargo and the obligation of states to prosecute those involved in war crimes.”

Marwa Baabbad, director of the Yemen Policy Center, said the UK's recommitment to the agenda was positive, but that there is a need "for meaningful and sustained investment which is required to enhance women's active and strategic participation in public life.

"More robust and forward-looking WPS funding, coupled with greater confidence in Yemeni women's ability to lead, is key to fostering a more inclusive and lasting peace in Yemen," Baabbad told MEE.