SEMINAR AND SESSION THEMES IN 2020
No in-person seminar took place in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Spring Session had to be cancelled, and the Annual Session programme had to be severely curtailed (only two speakers invited by the NATO PA). Nevertheless, the Assembly’s online meeting programme sought to ensure continued coverage of the WPS agenda.
To highlight the progress made and remaining challenges in the implementation of the WPS Agenda, the Assembly hosted a dedicated webinar in October 2020, with Clare Hutchinson, the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for WPS, Vice-Admiral Louise Dedichen, NATO Military Representative for Norway, and Cristina Finch, head of the Gender and Security Division at the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF). This event was complemented by a series of interviews with then-NATO PA President Attila Mesterhazy (Hungary), Ms Schmidt and Ms Hutchinson.
The International Secretariat also gave more visibility to the work related to gender and security within the dedicated section on its website and across its social media channels.
Furthermore, the online Annual Session highlighted the WPS agenda particularly through the discussion of special reports on the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the consideration of the Committee on the Civil Dimension of Security’s dedicated report and resolution on the 20th anniversary of UNSCR 1325 mentioned above.
COMMITTEES’ CONSIDERATION OF NATIONAL AND NATO’S IMPLEMENTATION OF UNSCR 1325
No survey on the parliamentary implementation of UNSCR 1325 was conducted in 2020, but the topic was extensively addressed in the aforementioned CDS General Report on Advancing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.
OUTLOOK FOR 2021
2021 should again provide several important opportunities to highlight the WPS agenda. Several of the Assembly’s report topics have a clear gender dimension, which will be incorporated wherever relevant. This notably includes reports on Enhancing the Resilience of Allied Societies through Civil Preparedness, Bolstering the Democratic Resilience of the Alliance against Disinformation and Propaganda, A Decade after the Arab Uprisings: Democratic Hopes and Disillusions and Belarus: Political, Economic and Diplomatic Challenges. This will help ensure that, after a particularly strong focus placed on the Women, Peace and Security agenda in 2020, the Assembly continues to mainstream WPS considerations into its work.
The International Secretariat also remains poised to take advantage of other opportunities to highlight this priority. A recent example is the social media outreach by the Assembly’s Bureau on the WPS agenda on International Women’s Day 2021.