Understanding and applying United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 as a theory of human security offers Australia an edge in its regional engagement. This is particularly so in an era of competition, and a region challenged, as we are, by gender-based violence and the need for economic growth. Leveraging the connection between women’s participation and stability, and longer term with rights-based economic development, is a theme implicit in the 2024 National Defence Strategy, but one that should be called out explicitly for best success.
This broader theoretical context of UNSCR1325—the resolution that established the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda—is often overlooked.
The resolution’s origins in a century of activism by a feminist-inspired peace movement have been recognised. It also has clear legal antecedents. These notably include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women 1979, which calls for women’s equal participation in policy development and national representation (articles 7-8), declaring that ‘the full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields.’
Consistent with this legal background, the lynchpin of the WPS agenda for the Security Council is not gender equality for its own sake, but international stability: there is a clear, empirically backed connection between women’s involvement in the conflict spectrum, and greater security. In fact, it is only this connection that brings UNSCR1325 within the Security Council’s jurisdiction at all.
A 2018 study of 130 peace agreements signed since 1990, for example, found a ‘robust correlation’ between agreements signed by at least one woman—of which there were 13—and the durability of the peace settlement. Agreements with female signatories had significantly more provisions dealing with political reform, not specific to gender, and higher rates of implementation of provisions over 10 years.
Second, the resolution’s development alongside the concept of human security gives it great relevance to Australia’s defence planning. This is because ‘human security’ reconfigures ‘security’ within a broader, non-traditional framework. This is centrally important to Pacific nations facing non-traditional threats—including climate change—and therefore to the 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS) given the importance it places on the Pacific family within Australia’s approach.
Throughout the 1990s, the emerging UN concept of human security placed the individual and individual human rights at the centre of security discourse and recognised that security threats expanded beyond armed conflict. An early expression of this came in 1995, with the Commission of Global Governance’s declaration that ‘Global security must be broadened from its traditional focus on the security of states to the security of people and the planet.’
The UN General Assembly also drew a connection between rights, development and security in its development goals and its 2000 Millenium Declaration. The 2005 Secretary-General’s report took the idea further, describing a human security triangle sided by development (freedom from want), security (freedom from fear) and human rights (freedom to live in dignity). Similar connections have been drawn in international legal theory between the stability offered by rights-based rule of law systems and the realisation of economic development. This thinking was essential context to the passage of UNSCR1325 in 2000, as well as the subsequent body of resolutions that have guided the UN’s approach to WPS.
Understanding UNSCR1325 as a security concept, and a path to rights-based economic development, helps situate it as an effective part of Australia’s defence strategy.
Australia’s 2024 NDS focuses on ‘strategic competition,’ particularly in the Pacific and particularly with reference to competition for influence and access. To this end, the strategy specifically names coercive and grey-zone tactics. However, the strategy does not set out any clear concept of Australia’s competitive offering in response to this coercion, instead focusing on the Australian Defence Force’s deterrence tasking, capability acquisition and references to respect for sovereignty.
A human security model, acknowledging and addressing risks across whole populations, could be this competitive offering. Such a model is implicit in the NDS’s linking of security and economic prosperity. The challenge now is to make it explicit and enable Defence to develop tasking and prioritisation that reflects the security objectives of WPS.
In the immediate future, such tasking would be diplomatic and subtle, lacking the grandeur of large-scale capability projects. It would instead focus on engagement, capacity-building and consolidating population security approaches across the blue Pacific. This could be a major contribution to building partnerships and shared stability.
In this capacity, the WPS agenda contributes directly to the ADF’s directed requirement to protect Australia’s economic connections and, by implication, regional economic development. It can greatly support the force’s mission to collaborate with partners on collective security in the Indo-Pacific and contribute to the maintenance of the rules-based global order.