The Alliance has actively begun to implement UNSCR 1325 in its operations. The benefits of this, and of having more female personnel on the ground, has helped save lives.
In Afghanistan, Kosovo and Supreme Headquarters Allied Command Europe (SHAPE) special Gender Advisers are now in place. They advise commanders on how best to conduct operations to both make them more successful and limit their impact on women and children.
Particularly in Afghanistan, female soldiers are able to connect with members of the population otherwise closed off from their male colleagues. This has led to fresh information on Taliban supporters, the positioning of improvised explosive devices (IED) tracks and redirected patrols, as well as better understanding the needs of Afghan women.
Gender Advisers have also been very active in supporting the implementation of UNSCR 1325 and related Resolutions by promoting the senior leader engagement, public outreach events and conferences in Afghanistan. In addition they have ensured that the gender perspective has been incorporated in operational planning documents throughout the chain of command. These documents outline how a gender perspective, which includes both men and women, must be implemented as part of the overall campaign, and that – given the historical and cultural position of Afghan women – women’s perspectives must be specifically addressed in all ISAF operations.
The Operations Policy Committee (OPC) in ISAF and KFOR format prepared a NATO action plan to mainstream UNSCR 1325 into NATO-led operations and missions. This Action Plan was finally endorsed by Heads of State and Government at the Lisbon Summit in November 2010, together with an overall implementation report of the NATO/EAPC Policy, marking the tenth anniversary of the adoption of UNSCR 1325.
Considerable progress has been made by Allied Command Transformation (ACT), which has ensured that the gender perspective is included in the curriculum of NATO Training Centres and Centres of Excellence and into pre-deployment training.
NATO and its operational partners in Afghanistan and Kosovo have attached great importance to incorporating a gender perspective in crisis management, operational planning and exercise planning from the higher political and strategic level to the field-level. The gender perspective has also been included in many NATO planning directives and related relevant documents such as handbooks, codes of conduct and standard operating procedures.
Efforts continue to be made to ensure that the gender perspective is included in documents outlining NATO’s current and future partnerships with Afghanistan and that the commitments made by Afghanistan in terms of respecting human rights – in particular the rights of women as enshrined in the Afghan constitution and set out in UNSCR 1325 and related Resolutions – continue to receive due attention.
Though the Alliance has no influence on measures or policies taken at national level, it is required that personnel deployed in NATO-led operations and missions and serving within NATO structures are appropriately trained and meet required standards of behaviour. In that respect, several nations have initiated gender-related training for subject matter experts and raised general awareness on UNSCR 1325 ahead of national force deployments.
