Despite the decision of the United Nations Organization that was supposed to protect women in armed conflicts and ensure their wider participation in peace processes, they remain the first victims of armed conflicts and are underrepresented in diplomatic negotiations, officials testified before the Security Council yesterday Tuesday.

The UN is organizing the 67th meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), an international body of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, in New York from Monday and for ten days.

On the eve of International Women’s Day, today Tuesday March 8, the director of UN Women, Sima Bachus, sounded an “alarm”, during a discussion on “women, peace and security” in the SA.

On 31 October 2000, the Council adopted resolution 1325 on “women, peace and security”. The text emphasized “the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, in peace negotiations”.

“In the first 20 years (…) we witnessed historic advances for gender equality,” said Mrs. Bachus.

But, he added, “we have not significantly changed the composition (of those sitting) at the peace negotiation tables, nor the impunity enjoyed by those who commit atrocities against women and girls.”

Ms Bachus cited Afghanistan as an example, where the Taliban, who retook power in 2021, turned the country into one of “the most extreme examples of backsliding on women’s rights”.

He also stood in Ukraine, where “women and their children represent 90% of the eight million Ukrainians forced to flee to other countries.”

Next to her, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, called on the international community to “fully implement the ‘women, peace, security’ agenda as we approach the 25th anniversary of the adoption of Resolution 1325”, in October 2025.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield denounced the “violence and oppression faced by women and girls around the world, in Iran, Afghanistan, the Russian-held areas of Ukraine and so many other places”.

The representative of France at the meeting of the Security Council, Marlene Chiapas, undersecretary of the Social and Solidarity Economy of the government of Emmanuel Macron, formerly responsible for issues of equality between men and women, complained that “in all armed conflicts and crises (…) in Ukraine, Yemen, Somalia, women are severely affected, if not deliberately targeted, by sexual and gender-based violence.”