I have the honour to deliver this joint statement on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) on behalf of the following 45 OSCE participating States and partners for co-operation: Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, South-Kora, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom.
This year marks a milestone with the 25th anniversary of the WPS agenda. Despite the significant progress over the past quarter century to enhance women’s full, equal and meaningful participation, it is crucial to acknowledge remaining challenges amid growing backlash against gender equality, like the need to tackle all structural barriers for women’s underrepresentation in peace and security affairs, taking into account intersectional aspects.
And let precisely the OSCE, as the largest regional security organisation in the world, be the ideal place to promote, support and implement UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 and its subsequent resolutions. As highlighted in the 2024 Independent Evaluation of the Implementation of the 2004 OSCE Action Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality, the OSCE with its comprehensive approach to security, is able to respond quickly to emerging needs and support participating States in the implementation of their gender equality commitments.
The OSCE-wide Roadmap on WPS launched by Finland at the CiO’s Gender Conference this year encourages participating States to pledge to one or more of the 17 actions ranging from developing National Action Plans (NAPs) on WPS to promoting the role of men in advancing WPS goals.
On the latter, it is worth highlighting the side event organised in the margins of the Annual Security Review Conference in June by the FSC Chair’s Coordinator on matters relating to UNSCR 1325 and the Men4Gen Network titled “25 years Women, Peace and Security agenda: Men’s role in countering unconscious bias”. The relevance of the active engagement of men and boys in addressing the root causes of gender inequality and violence has explicitly been recognised in Ministerial Council Decision No. 4/18 in Milan.
Furthermore, the importance of NAPs on WPS to ensure the implementation of the WPS agenda cannot be overstated. As of 2025, 44 of the OSCE’s 57 participating States and 6 of its 11 Partners for Co-operation have adopted NAPs for WPS. In May of this year, the OSCE organised a “Regional Workshop with a focus on Turkmenistan on Women, Peace, and Security and UNSCR 1325 National Action Plan” to exchange best practices, insights and lessons learned on the development of WPS NAPs. This kind of cooperation can also be achieved through the voluntary reporting of the WPS questionnaire under the Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security.
Amidst the Russian war of aggression, Ukraine has updated its NAP on WPS to reflect the full[1]scale invasion’s reality illustrating the importance of WPS in mitigating the gendered impacts of conflicts. Women and girls, in all their diversity, are differently and disproportionately affected by wars, conflicts and crises. Their full enjoyment of human rights needs to be protected. Numerous reports, among them the OSCE Moscow Mechanism reports, document widespread and systematic sexual and gender-based violence committed by Russian authorities, including in places of detention. All such violence is unacceptable, and perpetrators must be held accountable.
Women in Ukraine and elsewhere show their courage, resilience and role as agents of change on a daily basis, inter alia, at the frontline, in civil society organisations and as peacebuilders. Ensuring women’s full, equal and meaningful participation in peace operations is not only a matter of fairness, but also leads to more effective peacekeeping. In this context, we welcome yesterday’s side event organised by the OSCE’s Gender Issues Programme “Her Vision, Our Peace: Women Leading peacebuilding and comprehensive security in the OSCE region”. The OSCE Field Missions, like the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat, the OSCE Mission in Moldova and the OSCE Mission in Montenegro, play a key role in facilitating capacity-building activities to enhance the knowledge around women’s role in peacebuilding.
Lastly, the Forum for Security and Cooperation (FSC) remains an important place to examine ways in which we can assist the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in the OSCE region, in line with Ministerial Council Decision 7/11. This year’s FSC chairpersonships, Spain, Estonia and Finland, have all walked the talk by organising FSC Security Dialogues on WPS from different angles. The Finnish Chairpersonship dedicated a whole event to the 25th anniversary taking stock of the four pillars of the WPS agenda: Participation, Protection, Prevention, Relief and Recovery.
Let us make sure that the WPS commitments across the four pillars are implemented in the OSCE region and beyond and that the topic remains at the top of our agenda. Achievements cannot be taken for granted and we must collectively safeguard women’s full, equal and meaningful participation at all levels to guarantee our common peace and security.