Nuclear nonproliferation nonprofit Ploughshares launched a new initiative elevating women’s leadership in global security on Monday, Sept. 22, at the International Peace Institute.
The Women Transforming Global Security initiative aims to apply feminist approaches to finding solutions in global security, nuclear weapons, climate change, and other interconnected issues. The initiative launches on the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, a landmark resolution that urges the inclusion of women in matters of international peace and security.
Now, two decades later, Ploughshares, along with other international organizations, The Elders and Horizon 2045, said they created this initiative to continue the resolution’s mission. Some initiative members, including Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said they believe women’s leadership is currently being threatened across global issues.
“A lot of strong forces across the globe who want to undo the aspirations, the vision of what could be,” Clinton said during the announcement ceremony on Monday. “It’s very clear that this is one of the overriding objectives of the authoritarian playbook that we are seeing followed in a number of countries.”
(Photo by Leah Clark).
According to Ploughshares President Emma Belcher, the initiative was conceived a year ago by Former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who desired to create a women’s leadership network on nuclear risk.
However, their research soon showed similarities between nuclear proliferation and other overlapping global crises. This led the initiative to shift to a collaborative method, including other global challenges that threaten global security.
“Because if we are looking at these issues in silos, we’re working on the problem separately, when a lot of these problems have shared characteristics,” Belcher said. “They have characteristics of power concentrated in the hands of the few.”
The network will operate on a three-tier system: senior leaders will identify connections between their various fields, emerging leaders will take on grassroots projects, and champions with careers in international public service will make up the top tier.
These champions include Clinton, Robinson, and other global leaders such as Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, Former UN General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, Ploughshares Board Chair Gretchen Hund, and media executive Pat Mitchell.
Belcher said the women in the top tier will have access to decision makers across the globe who can execute the network’s recommendations.
“I think far too often work that we do in civil society, you can have brilliant minds, you can produce great reports, but sometimes unless you’ve got that sort of way in, unless you’ve got champions who are well respected who endorse what you’re proposing, they can just sit in the report or as a doorstopper on the floor,” Belcher said.
Horizon 2045 leaders said this network will take the initiative beyond symbolism and create dialogue.
“We think that it’s time for a new global security paradigm,” Horizon 2045 President Erika Gregory said. “It’s about driving policy. It’s about making sure that different parts of governments and organizations talk to each other.”
