Women, war and peace

It is 25 years since the UN Security Council signed a historic agreement linking gender equality to the maintenance of international peace and security. But the world is now facing the highest number of active conflicts since 1946, creating unprecedented risks for women and girls. Yet only one in ten peace talks in the past year included female negotiators. Annette Young talks to Chris Coulter, Executive Director of the Berghof Foundation, who has more than 20 years’ experience in conflict resolution and is a former adviser to the Swedish Foreign Ministry, and Lyric Thompson, CEO of the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative in Paris, ahead of the Feminist Foreign Policy Conference. Also, as the war in Ukraine continues and European nations grow increasingly concerned about Russian aggression, Denmark has now begun drafting women into its armed forces.