Security Council Resolution 2242 on women, peace and security: progressive gains or dangerous development?

Heathcote, Gina

Abstract

This paper challenges the UN Security Council’s approach to women, peace and security through a detailed analysis of participation initiatives in the eight resolutions on women, peace and security, alongside study of the recent shift to include countering terrorism and violent extremism provisions in resolution 2242. Through review of a range of feminist approaches that remain ‘outside’ the strategies leading institutional gender perspectives I scrutinise the shifts across the resolutions on women, peace and security. In particular, this article analyses how Security Council resolution 2242, produced after the High-Level Report studying the fifteen years after resolution 1325, includes important developments in the articulation of participation. However, the risk of progressing work on women, peace and security within global structures without attention to the diversity of women’s needs, lives and experiences drawn from a feminist commitment to anti-militarism and postcolonial listening is likely to produce a series of regressive outcomes that perpetuate victim feminisms and which fail to dislodge the intersection of gender with colonial and racial power structures within global institutions.

Citation

Heathcote, G. (2018). Security Council Resolution 2242 on women, peace and security: progressive gains or dangerous development?. Global Society, 32(4), 374-394. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2018.1494140

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 21, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Jul 25, 2018
• Publication Date: Jul 25, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jun 28, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 28, 2018
• Journal: Global Society
• Print ISSN: 1360-0826
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-798X
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 374-394
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2018.1494140
• Keywords: feminist approaches; women, peace and security; participation; Security Council; counter-terrorism