It is 25 years since the United Nations adopted a Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. But the anniversary is likely to be a subdued occasion. Around the world, authoritarian regimes and resurgent anti-gender movements are challenging its foundations, while daily events remind us how easily the agenda’s core principles can be undermined or forsaken.
Yet Australia, like others, has been steadfast in its commitment to WPS. Australia’s adoption of a National Action Plan in 2012, later updated in 2021, signalled a strong political commitment and demonstrated willingness to integrate WPS principles into peace and security policy and practice.
But the single adjective that comes to mind in describing that engagement is “instrumentalist”. Australia has treated WPS less as a transformative opportunity to position gender equality as a central tenet of peace and security and more as a convenient tool for advancing political interests. Australia’s WPS leadership tends to shine when the spotlight is on yet too often dims once that attention shifts.
Although the WPS agenda dates to 2000 with the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, Australia did not develop its first NAP for implementation until it began to campaign for a non-permanent UN Security Council seat. The timing was no coincidence: the 2012 NAP bolstered Australia’s credentials as a champion of gender equality, a stance that gained prominence during its 2013–14 Council term when it led the adoption of UNSCR 2122, calling for women’s full, equal, and meaningful participation in peacebuilding and peace negotiations.
The blind spots are telling … the two national action plans have faced persistent criticism for weak accountability and evaluation mechanisms, and clear metrics for measuring success.
Australia has also been an active voice in multilateral arenas. Since 2012, it has worked closely with NATO’s Committee on Gender Perspectives, a collaboration reinforced by its 2024 decision to associate with NATO’s revised WPS policy. The deployment of the first Australian Defence Force Gender Adviser to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in 2013 marked a milestone that demonstrated Australia’s leadership in integrating gender perspectives into operations. Beyond Europe, Australia has championed women’s participation in peace and security across the Pacific and Southeast Asia, supporting civil society organisations and women’s mediation networks through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, most notably the Pacific Women Mediators Network launched in 2023.
This framing situates the WPS agenda primarily in service of broader foreign policy objectives. This might appear a reasonable and strategic use of the agenda. Yet a distinction is important. WPS was never (or at least should not be) conceived as a foreign policy tool, but as a transformative framework to advance peace and security through gender equality and by entrenching the rights and participation of women. Misunderstanding this fundamental point has distorted Australia’s implementation, steering it toward instrumentalism.
In effect, Australia’s outward-facing WPS commitments serve diplomatic and foreign policy ambitions but has delivered little lasting transformation within its own defence and security institutions. Inside Defence, WPS responsibilities have been reassigned to its human resources division, distancing this work from operational spaces. Gender Advisers, though symbolically important, are too often under-resourced and excluded from decision-making. The Australian Defence Force’s adoption of gender perspectives may help safeguard women in conflict zones, yet those same principles remain largely absent from its own institutional culture – where violence against women persists. Deeply ingrained masculinised hierarchies continue to relegate gender perspectives to the margins, sustaining the view of WPS as a “soft” policy rather than a core security imperative.
Australia’s implementation of the WPS agenda more broadly remains inconsistent. The second National Action Plan engages the domestic context in a way that the first plan did not, linking it with national initiatives to reduce violence against women and girls and combat human trafficking. It also references issues that move easily across national borders such as climate change, natural disasters and violent extremism. However, this broadened scope has yet to produce consistent or coordinated domestic action.
Moreover, the blind spots are telling. There is still no coherent WPS framework for confronting the more difficult issues affecting Indigenous and refugee women’s rights, areas that would require a discussion regarding Australia’s own post-colonial legacies. Civil society has repeatedly called for stronger accountability and clear pathways to embed WPS principles within domestic human rights and equality frameworks. Furthermore, the two national action plans have faced persistent criticism for weak accountability and evaluation mechanisms, and clear metrics for measuring success. Reporting has been largely descriptive, with limited indicators or enforcement to ensure meaningful change across agencies. The under-resourcing of WPS efforts, including minimal dedicated staff and funding, has restricted implementation and perpetuated dependence on individual champions rather than institutional responsibility.
These omissions make one thing clear: Australia’s commitment to WPS should not be measured by grand diplomatic gestures. While its diplomatic contributions and operational innovations have advanced global and regional gender norms, its domestic and institutional shortcomings – and current global actions – reveal the fragility of these gains. Therefore, success can only be measured by the extent to which WPS principles can and should re-shape our peace and security thinking, conversations and practices.
