Pushing Back the Pushback? WPS, Power Politics, and Liberal Retreat

In October, the 4th Ministerial Conference on Feminist Foreign Policy took place in Paris. With its FFP scrapped after the last elections, Germany was participating with a delegation from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Concluding the conference, 31 states signed a joint political declaration. This declaration not only reaffirmed their commitment to integrate and implement the WPS agenda but also recognized that “feminist-based approaches provide conditions for sustainable, resilient and inclusive societies and peace”. In the current context – with the most violent conflict since the end of WWII and a  disproportionate impact on women, girls and marginalized groups – this is timely and necessary. Only recently the UN reported that between 2022 and 2024 cases of conflict-related sexual violence increased by 87%.

However, this year’s report of the UN Secretary-General on WPS shows stagnation and even regression in states’ commitment to the WPS agenda. Key issues include women’s exclusion from peace processes, rising violence, shrinking funds for women’s organizations, and political resistance to the agenda. Several states in the Global North have not renewed their National Action Plans on WPS. Germany’s NAP expired in 2024 – a new version is expected to be published in the spring of 2026. Other countries have announced their withdrawal from WPS-related commitments altogether, the United States being the most prominent among them.

Illiberal Backlash

In April last year, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the abolition of the WPS program in his department, dismissing the agenda as “yet another woke, divisive social-justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops.” This decision politicized what had previously been a bipartisan initiative – the WPS Act was initially signed by Donald Trump during his first term in October 2017. Being part of the massive funding cuts and Trump’s isolationist “America-first” approach, the US retreat from its WPS program had far-reaching impact globally – both through its financial impact but also its normative effect.

More broadly, it marks a shift that placed the US, historically a supporter of liberal gender norms in international institutions, firmly within the global anti-rights camp, reinforcing networks that have been active across Europe and beyond for more than a decade. These networks, composed of far-right governments, religious institutions, oligarchic funders and right-wing civil society groups, frame the commitment to gender equality as part of a broader “gender ideology” imposed by liberal international actors. Spearheaded by states such as Russia, Hungary, Türkiye, China, and, most recently, the United States, these efforts extend beyond domestic politics. They seek to deploy the usage of anti-gender norms to advance a more illiberal global order and to weaken multilateral institutions from within.

Liberal Backsliding

In recent months, this issue has taken center stage at nearly every conference on WPS or on FFP. Political representatives routinely framed it as the key challenge: they highlighted illustrative cases, presented the backlash as a rising tide, and insisted it must be stopped. Yet strikingly, few acknowledged their own positionality within this dynamic. The backlash appeared as an external, apolitical, almost natural phenomenon – a force majeure, rather than the outcome of political choices or shifting power interests in which states themselves are deeply embedded.

This overlooks how liberal states themselves contribute to gender backsliding through their own policy choices. It becomes particularly visible in growing militarization trends: while defense budgets expand, funding for preventive measures, gender equality, and feminist civil society organizations – both domestically and internationally – is declining. Nearly half of women’s rights organizations operating in conflict-affected settings are projected to close due to shrinking financial support. WPS is selectively promoted, often reduced to questions of operational effectiveness or women’s representation within security institutions. Its broader preventive, transformative, and emancipatory ambitions are sidelined by short-term security concerns and national priorities. Inclusive approaches are frequently framed as a secondary issue in times of crisis. This approach does not counter the backlash; it actively contributes to it.

Pushing Back the Pushback?

It is this tension that has prompted feminist non-state actors and civil society organizations to discuss how the WPS agenda might be reclaimed from within. In the context of this year’s anniversary, feminist actors urged to focus on non-state actors instead and to bring the agenda back to its roots, namely, the work of feminist mobilization, global women’s rights, peace activism, and civil society engagement. Further suggested  approaches vary from stronger support for locally driven strategies to looking beyond the UN for its implementation, with the aim of decolonizing an agenda still strongly shaped by racialized hierarchies. Moreover, calls to prioritize peace and demilitarize the agenda are at the center of the debate.

Yet, the agenda remains a milestone in efforts by states and governments to anchor gender dimensions in peace and conflict. One of the enduring strengths of the WPS agenda lies in the fact that it is among the most institutionalized and comprehensive frameworks for those efforts. But for the agenda to endure amid current global political dynamics it requires renewed political backing, adequate and sustained funding, and a clear recommitment to its preventive and transformative ambitions.