Can the Women, Peace and Security Agenda Save Feminist Foreign Policy?

Over the last eleven years we have witnessed the rise and subsequent fall of feminist foreign policy. Initially heralded as a progressive answer to power politics, several states have recently dropped their feminist foreign policies, announcing that they will continue implementing the policy substance without the ‘feminist’ label. One way in which states want to achieve this is by pursuing the Women, Peace and Security agenda with renewed vigour. Given these developments, can the Women, Peace and Security agenda save feminist foreign policy or serve as a fallback option if feminist foreign policies are withdrawn?

Today the international arena is characterised by the significant and growing contestation of gender equality as an international norm. One way this contestation has become visible is in the rise and fall of feminist foreign policy over the last eleven years. Initially  heralded as a progressive answer to power politics, a growing number of states have recently withdrawn their feminist foreign policies. This includes Sweden, Luxembourg, Argentina, the Netherlands, and, as of 2025, Germany. Each time, the feminist label was dropped after federal elections that brought centre-right or right-extremist parties into power. Other states adopting the approach, such as Canada, have been noticeably quiet on how they intend to move forward with their feminist foreign policies.

Many of these states, including Germany, Sweden, and Luxembourg, have announced that they have merely dropped the feminist label and will continue implementing the policy substance. As a diplomat explained during a recent meeting with foreign policy experts I attended, “The label will go, but the substance will stay.” One way in which states want to achieve this is by pursuing the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda with renewed vigour.

Given these developments, can the Women, Peace and Security agenda save feminist foreign policy? Or, failing that, at least serve as a fallback option if feminist foreign policies are withdrawn?

Feminist Foreign Policy and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

The Women, Peace and Security agenda is a global framework established by ten United Nations Security Council resolutions, adopted between 2000 and 2019. Recognising the link between gender equality, peace, and security, it rests on four central pillars: women’s participation in peace processes; protecting women and girls from violence; preventing gender-based violence during and post-conflict; and relief and recovery during humanitarian crises based on women’s specific needs.

Feminist foreign policy is a more recent phenomenon and emerged when former Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström coined the label to describe the Swedish foreign policy approach in 2014. Since then, feminist foreign policy has spread to more than 16 states worldwide, including France, Mexico, Colombia, and Germany. While there is no unified definition of what a feminist foreign policy entails, it is often centred around strengthening the rights, representation, and resources of women in and through international affairs, with some regional variations when it comes to the underlying concepts of feminism and means of implementation. Despite this variation, feminist foreign policy has often been framed as a normative reorientation of foreign policy. Recently, more and more states have chosen to withdraw their feminist foreign policies in favour of more interest-based foreign policy approaches.

However, this does not mean that feminist foreign policies will simply disappear. Recently, scholars have argued that a feminist foreign policy cannot be fully undone. They have identified three reasons for this.

First, the decentralised nature of the foreign policy apparatus allows for considerable autonomy when it comes to policy implementation. Diplomats are geographically dispersed and governments do not have full control over what diplomats make of their foreign policy decisions. Diplomats may thus continue to work on matters that fall under the feminist foreign policy, including gender equality.

Second, international expectations for states may lead to a continued adherence to their role as gender equality champions. Germany, for instance, has established itself as a supporter of gender equality in foreign affairs well before it adopted a feminist foreign policy. To some extent, this may create role-based constraints for its foreign policy.

Third, international law and soft law on women’s rights stay in effect, placing demands on policy content and implementation. The Women, Peace and Security agenda is one such international law.

The Women, Peace and Security agenda is particularly important because it is one of the cornerstones of feminist foreign policies worldwide. In the German case, the feminist foreign policy guidelines for security policy issued by the Federal Foreign Office essentially rested on the implementation and further development of the agenda. Similarly, Spain has identified the agenda as a thematic priority for its feminist foreign policy. Yet, feminist foreign policies usually go far beyond the four pillars of the Women, Peace and Security agenda. They incorporate commitments to strengthening women’s rights, resources, and representation across a number of fields, ranging from climate foreign policy to trade, cultural relations, and humanitarian aid. Many states also include measures for internal change in their respective Ministries of Foreign Affairs, seeking to increase their credibility as international gender equality champions. In that sense, the Women, Peace and Security agenda can only ensure the continued implementation of a small host of measures that fall under a feminist foreign policy.

The Potential and Limits of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

The Women, Peace and Security agenda also comes with its own limits. For one, the agenda remains dominated by liberal feminist concepts, such as the binary understanding of gender. In practice, this has led to an understanding of women as a monolithic group, which ignores the intersecting dynamics that shape experiences of conflict. Second, the implementation of the agenda and particularly National Action Plans are shaped by global racial hierarchies that reproduce the image of the ‘white saviour’. Further, the global majority world remains the focus of implementation, while issues of gendered conflict and insecurity in the global minority world are not addressed. This also neglects the important contributions of the majority world in conceptualising and developing the agenda. Third, the Women, Peace and Security agenda has largely been stripped of its potential to address militarisation. In a world marked by an exponential growth in military spending, a rise of authoritarian states, and ongoing genocide, demilitarisation can hardly be addressed in the agenda’s framework. Overall, the Women, Peace and Security agenda is unable to tackle many of the structural issues that underlie violent conflict.

Still, what makes the agenda somewhat more effective than feminist foreign policy is its binding nature. The Women, Peace and Security agenda is made up of United Nations Security Council resolutions, meaning that United Nations member states must adhere to it. Consequently, states can be held accountable not only through civil society, public, and diplomatic pressure, but through leveraging the tools of the United Nations. Even if these accountability mechanisms may be difficult to put into practice, an extensive monitoring and reporting machinery on the Women, Peace and Security agenda exists worldwide. Periodic reviews, National Action Plans, and civil society oversight mechanisms are just some examples. By comparison, feminist foreign policy never had a legal basis to begin with. Feminist foreign policy is nothing more than a state declaration: a self-commitment to adhere to self-chosen principles. It cannot be enforced; therefore, states cannot be held accountable if they choose not to implement certain aspects of the policy or drop it altogether.

At the same time, we must recognise that the accountability mechanisms for the Women, Peace and Security agenda leave much to be desired. Over 100 states have adopted at least one National Action Plan – a roadmap for the implementation of the agenda – and most include at least a reasonable amount of specificity for monitoring and implementation. However, there is often a lack of indicators, metrics, and qualitative data that would provide a clear picture of whether or how measures have been implemented. Additionally, states tend to report on their actions irregularly, if at all, and civil society is often relied upon to fill the gaps through shadow reports – often without adequate funding. At the level of the United Nations, existing accountability frameworks are not harmonised, and not all United Nations bodies integrate Women, Peace and Security equally in their reporting. This not only creates additional workload for member states but also, and more importantly, a reporting framework that is uneven, fragmented, and inconsistent. Making reporting on the Women, Peace and Security agenda mandatory and providing a standard format for doing so is crucial to address these shortcomings.

Can the Women, Peace and Security Agenda save Feminist Foreign Policy?

The Women, Peace and Security agenda cannot save feminist foreign policy. But it can act as a fallback option if feminist foreign policies are withdrawn – at least to a limited extent. If we want the agenda to remain a viable framework for peace and security policy, we must not only address its limitations but also ensure effective accountability mechanisms for its implementation.