Women, Peace and Security Strategic Communication

01 September 2025

Holding the Line on Women, Peace, and Security: Navigating Pushback and Backsliding in a Time of Global Conflicts

Guidance documents, handbooks Public 2025 WO=MEN Dutch Gender Platform

This guide by WO=MEN, a Dutch gender platform, aims to provide a practical response to the growing pushback against the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. The authors present strategies to navigate these ongoing challenges and strengthen resilience through four core priorities.

The paper is based on discussions held during the 2025 NATO Summit week at the offices of WO=MEN. It is designed to equip practitioners, policymakers, and civil society advocates with the tools they need to protect hard-won gains and advance WPS in the fields of defence policy, military operations, and on the ground where peace and security are built and defended. It also includes checklists for all four priorities. 

The European Union is a strong supporter of the WPS agenda, and has a solid policy framework, this includes the 2018 Council Conclusions on WPS and the EU Strategic Approach to WPS, the related Action Plan (2019-2024) and the 2022 Council Conclusions on WPS. These documents stress the need to ensure gender mainstreaming, expertise and the implementation of the WPS agenda in CSDP missions and operations. The practical responses to the growing pushback against WPS as outlined in the report are therefore also very relevant for civilian CSDP. 

The first priority emphasises the necessity of recognising and tracking the signs of political and ideological pushback at an early stage. This pushback may manifest through active resistance, passive neglect or avoidance, or through funding cuts. 

Secondly, the guide prioritises strategic messaging to preserve and create space for WPS. In particular, it advocates the deliberate use of communication as a tool to link WPS with broader strategic priorities and to ‘normalise’ WPS within institutional discourse by raising the topic in meetings where WPS is not the primary subject of discussion. 

Their third priority is to strengthen collaboration by building and maintaining diverse and inclusive alliances, proactively seeking new partnerships and expanding influence through cross-sector collaboration across local, national and international levels. This includes engaging with dissenters and those holding opposing views to disseminate and preserve knowledge about WPS. 

Finally, the guide advocates building systemic resilience across policies, people, partnerships, and processes. This can be achieved by expanding support networks, adopting flexible approaches and fostering a long-term approach to systemic resilience. 

Reference: Dekker, A.-F., Hill, A., Jude, S.-C., Kaya, E. & Wright, K. (2025). Holding the line on women, peace and security: navigating pushback and backsliding in a time of global conflicts. WO=MEN Dutch Gender Platform.

The views presented in this document belong to the author and do not reflect the official position of the European Centre of Excellence for Civilian Crisis Management.

Resource

PDF | 32 pages
Read the full guidance

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