Feb 9, 2026, 8:13 p.mFeb 9, 2026, 8:13 p.m
“Peace is more sustainable if half of the world’s population is not excluded.” Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger said this on Monday at the opening of the two-day Vienna conference “Women as agents for Security and Peace”.
The Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger.Image: keystone
The occasion is the 25th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on “Women, Peace and Security”. The resolution, adopted unanimously on October 31, 2000, is the first UN resolution to highlight the specific impact of conflict on women and to emphasize the essential and active role of women in peace efforts – from peace negotiations to reconstruction.
UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, said Resolution 1325 changed peace and security policy forever. She reiterated that “no conflict or crisis is gender neutral and no effective response can be gender blind.”
Reversal of progress
Nevertheless, “we are currently experiencing a reversal of the progress that has been made in the area of gender equality,” emphasized Patten. The UN special representative referred as an example to the plight of women in Afghanistan, “whose bodies have become prisons without bars.” It is a conscious “campaign to roll back human rights that should actually be irreversible by now.”
Around 676 million women currently live within 50 kilometers of active conflict areas. Over the past two years, her agency has documented an 87 percent increase in confirmed cases of conflict-related sexual violence, with victims ranging in age from one to 75 years old.
Instead of defending progress, funding is being cut for life-saving programs – women’s organizations on the front lines, many facing closure, Patten warned. At the same time, military spending has continued to skyrocket and has reached a record level of $2.7 trillion. Patriarchal power structures invest more in the machinery of war than in the architecture of peace.
Austrian Foreign Minister Meinl-Reisinger also noted that crises and conflicts particularly affect the safety of women and girls. And where the rights of women and girls are trampled on, conflict and chaos are more likely to break out. (hkl/sda/apa)