The OSCE has long acknowledged that equal rights for women and men and the protection of all human rights are essential to peace, sustainable democracy and economic development, and hence to security and stability in the OSCE region.

That is why the 56 participating States endorsed the OSCE Action Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality (2004) and adopted the Ministerial Council Decision on Women in Conflict Prevention, Crisis Management, and Post-Conflict Rehabilitation (2005), both of which specifically cite United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on Women, Peace and Security.

Nevertheless, policymakers generally give insufficient attention to women's rights and gender aspects of security policy issues. Programmes to address security concerns must be gender-sensitive in order to be consistent with the relevant OSCE commitments and other international human rights standards, and to ensure maximum impact.

UNSCR 1325

UNSCR 1325, which the UN Security Council adopted in 2000, acknowledges that armed conflict impacts men and women differently and emphasizes the need to guard against the violation of women's human rights.

It also recognizes the undervalued and underutilized contributions that women make to conflict prevention, peacekeeping, conflict resolution and peace-building, and stresses the importance of their full and equal participation as active agents in peace and security.

In order to plan and properly evaluate national implementation of UNSCR 1325, several OSCE countries have prepared national action plans.

Working to support participating States in implementing the relevant commitments, ODIHR's Human Rights, Women and Security (HRWS) programme advocates the implementation of processes that will integrate a gender perspective into the work of the institutions that comprise the security sector, as well as moving women's human rights concerns to the forefront of the security discourse.

Since 2005, the HRWS programme has been developing activities to support national-level implementation of UNSCR 1325 by strengthening national networks linking government representatives with NGOs and other local actors in order better to identify priorities and create practical resources.

As part of these activities, it has taken steps towards strengthening national governments' capacity - with the support of civil society - to integrate a gender perspective into the security sector.

Gender and Security-Sector Reform

ODIHR’s activities focus on working with governmental and non-governmental counterparts to promote strategies that the Toolkit on Gender and Security Sector Reform recommends as effective means of realizing the principles set out under UNSCR 1325.

Direct programming has also been initiated to work with police services and the armed forces to improve their mechanisms for recruiting, retaining and promoting women, as well as to integrate a gender perspective into their operational planning.

Early Warning and Conflict Prevention

Conflict analysis, post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation processes, as well as early warning and preventive response systems, have traditionally not included a women's rights or a gender perspective.

ODIHR is working to generate a series of practice-oriented briefing notes to ensure that women and men are equally involved in early-warning systems and conflict prevention and preparedness.