Australia’s campaign (Opens in new window) for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for 2029–30 presents a test. Australia has identified conflict prevention, climate and ocean security, and international cooperation as priorities. The WPS agenda should be central to these commitments, not an optional addition. Three practical shifts would demonstrate leadership.
First, put prevention before militarisation. Military capabilities may be necessary for deterrence and defence, but they cannot substitute for investments in diplomacy, social protection, climate resilience and the institutions that sustain peaceful societies including women’s safety. (Opens in new window)
Second, support women’s movements, not only governments. Where authoritarian regimes exclude women, diplomacy must engage independent civil society, including women organising in exile. Supporting women’s political leadership requires sustained funding, protection and access to international decision-making.
Third, build coalitions that defend international norms. When Security Council divisions obstruct action, states can work through regional partnerships, human rights mechanisms and alternative accountability processes. Initiatives addressing Afghanistan through international legal mechanisms, (Opens in new window) and Australia’s efforts to strengthen protection for humanitarian personnel (Opens in new window), demonstrate possibilities for collective action. None of these approaches requires abandoning the WPS agenda. They require taking its transformative ambitions seriously.
The greatest threat to WPS is not simply that governments reject gender equality. It is that militarised and exclusionary visions of security become normalised, leaving women’s rights, democratic participation and human security expendable. Australia’s Security Council campaign offers an opportunity to challenge this trajectory.
Feminist analysis reveals that militarisation does not simply divert resources from peace to war. It creates gendered circuits of violence and capital (Opens in new window) in which military expansion depends upon the largely invisible labour of sustaining households, communities and societies, while simultaneously depleting the care and social infrastructures on which human security depends. Rearmament may strengthen military capabilities while weakening the very foundations of resilient and peaceful societies. (Opens in new window) For Australia, taking the Women, Peace and Security agenda seriously means recognising that security cannot be measured by military expenditure alone. It must also be measured by the capacity of societies to sustain life, protect rights and prevent violence in the first place.
The question is not whether the world can afford to invest in women’s security and peacemaking. It is whether the world can afford not to.
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