Days before the October 7, 2023, attacks, thousands of Israeli and Palestinian women met in Jerusalem to talk about peace. They were part of two groups — Israel’s Women Wage Peace and Palestine’s Women of the Sun — that have convened for decades to call for an end to armed conflict in the region.
But in the war since then, women have been largely sidelined from negotiations, even as they bear the brunt of violence.
A new tool called the Women, Peace and Security Conflict Tracker aims to fill a long-standing gap among conflict trackers that are used by policymakers and advocates to monitor and respond to global armed conflicts. Launched in March 2024 by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) with funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Embassy of Denmark in Washington, D.C., the tracker is the first of its kind to examine conflict through the lens of gender, said Jessica Anania, its lead research fellow who led its development. Currently monitoring 25 conflict-affected countries, the tracker aims to highlight the disproportionate impact that women bear in armed conflict, but also their pivotal roles in preventing and recovering from conflicts.
“Women are never the initiators of armed conflict and invariably its victims,” said Dame Louise Richardson, president of the Corporation, “yet the impact of global armed conflict on women is underanalyzed and the role of women in peacemaking is underappreciated.” The tracker evaluates countries against the principles of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, established in 2000 by the UN Security Council’s landmark Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), which called upon member states to respond to conflicts’ disproportionate impacts on women and to empower women to play a greater role in preventing and responding to conflict. UN research has shown that women’s participation increases the probability of a peace agreement lasting at least two years by 20 percent, and the probability of it lasting 15 years by 35 percent.
“Peace agreements that include women are more likely to last longer; negotiations that include women are more likely to reach agreement,” Anania said. “Women are also doing a lot of the frontline response when it comes to community outreach, helping displaced populations, securing food, and collecting and documenting evidence of sexual violence. They play a really important role at every single stage of responding to and moving forward from conflict.”
Women’s security and well-being is “worsening” in more than half of the 25 countries tracked by GIWPS, based on information collected by the research team, from the rates of conflict-related sexual violence and the participation rates of women in peace processes, to firsthand accounts from local women leaders and other factors. Other countries are ranked as “static” or “improving” even though risks and severe issues still exist. “We’re not just looking at what already impacts women,” she said. “We’re looking at the conflict dynamics to understand how they could affect women and gender broadly.”
Leaders and experts say the tracker raises needed awareness of women, peace, and security issues.
“The WPS Conflict Tracker is one of many important data tools that can be used by governments in their work toward implementing the WPS Agenda as defined by UNSCR 1325,” said Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark’s ambassador to the United States.
“The role of women in preventing conflict, building peace, addressing global threats, and other national and transnational challenges is both underappreciated and under-understood,” said Deana Arsenian, vice president of the Corporation’s International Program and program director for Russia and Eurasia. “Elevating and advancing awareness about the role and status of women in peace and security is an essential element in addressing today’s complex global problems.”
Here are three examples of countries tracked by the new conflict monitoring tool:
Kosovo
During the 1998–99 war in Kosovo, Serbian forces systematically used rape and sexual violence as a weapon against Kosovo Albanian women. In 2014, after years of advocacy, the Kosovo Assembly passed a historic law granting legal recognition and financial reparations, which the government began implementing in 2017, to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.
While fewer women than hoped have registered for reparations under Kosovo’s long-awaited survivors’ law amid continued stigma, the program nonetheless offers a model for other countries looking at reparations.
As of June 2024, Kosovo was ranked as “static” because “we are not seeing huge fluctuations in terms of the trajectory,” Anania said. But, she cautioned, “a country can be static and still be facing severe issues.” Amid regional tension, there is a specter of resurgent fighting. “Any renewed violence could lead to a direct threat to women’s stability and physical security,” says Anania, “given the recent legacy of gendered conflict dynamics and weaponized uses of sexual violence.”
Colombia
Colombia’s historic 2016 peace accord focused strongly on women’s rights and needs, including accountability and reparations for sexual violence, support for rebuilding communities, and increased gender sensitivity at all levels of society. Since then, the country has made progress toward its first-ever National Action Plan on women, peace, and security, which has been developed in consultation with women’s groups across the country and is expected to pass this year.
At the tracker’s launch in March, Colombia was one of the few conflict-affected countries that the researchers rated as “improving” in terms of women’s well-being and security. In June 2024, the GIWPS research team reclassified the country’s trajectory as “static” amid renewed violence, including the assassination of a female indigenous activist by a dissident rebel group, leading the government to suspend its ceasefire with the group in parts of the country.
The tracker highlights “Gender-relevant stipulations of the 2016 Peace Agreement remain under-implemented, inhibiting accountability and relief for Colombian women and the reintegration of female combatants.”
Israel / Palestine
An estimated 63 women have been killed each day since the war in Gaza began last October, according to UN statistics. Data examined by the GIWPS research team shows that women there are disproportionately impacted by air strikes, health tolls, and displacement crises. In February UN experts called for an investigation into credible allegations of Palestinian women and girls being deliberately targeted for extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detention, and sexual assault.
Conflict-related sexual violence, including rape, occurred in multiple locations during the Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel, according to UN experts, and in March, the UN reported that Israeli women taken hostage in Gaza have been subjected to sexual violence that may be ongoing.
As food insecurity worsens, 9 in 10 women in Gaza say it is harder for them to access food compared to men, a UN survey has found. Tens of thousands of women are experiencing health complications as Gaza’s hospitals are forced to close, and miscarriages in the region have reportedly increased 300 percent since the war’s start.
At the same time, “we are seeing women excluded from official talks, and we are not seeing women brought comprehensively to the table,” Anania says. Nonetheless, women in the region — including the groups that met shortly before October 7 — remain “very active” despite losing members to violence. “I think their efforts and their leadership are an untapped resource for any talks around negotiated solutions,” said Anania.
1: Haiti, 2: Colombia, 3: Mali, 4: Niger, 5: Libya, 6: Central African Republic, 7: Democratic Republic of Congo, 8: Sudan, 9: South Sudan, 10: Mozambique, 11: Ethiopia, 12: Somalia, 13: Yemen, 14: Israel & Palestine, 15: Lebanon, 16: Syria, 17: Iraq, 18: Kosovo, 19: Ukraine, 20: Iran, 21: Afghanistan, 22: Pakistan, 23: Myanmar, 24: Indonesia, 25: Philippines
The Women, Peace and Security Conflict Tracker monitors rapidly changing conflicts. To view countries’ updated trajectories, visit the interactive tool at wpsconflicttracker.com.
