Peace and Security without Women - SCR 1325 as a means to tackle gun violence

Oct 3, 2026

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Notice for the 592nd Meeting of the OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation, chaired by the United Kingdom on 28 October 2009, informing that Ms Vanessa Farr and Ms Sarah Masters will address the meeting. The accompanying paper explores the gendered impact of small arms and light weapons (SALW), arguing that humanitarian and human rights concerns weakened after 1998, that research and policy often omit gender perspectives, and that gun ownership and misuse reinforce gender hierarchies, including race and class tensions. It cites SCR 1325 (2000) and calls for deeper analysis and policy application at operational levels.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Notice and meeting context

Background: Gendered impact of SALW

Humanitarian and human rights considerations over time

Lack of political interest and impunity

Misalignment with SCR 1325

Need for gender- and age-specific analysis

FSC.INF/19/09 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe 27 October 2009 Forum for Security Co-operation ENGLISH only Chairmanship: United Kingdom Please be informed that on Wednesday, 28 October 2009, - Ms Vanessa Farr, Project Manager of Gender and Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration, UNIDIR and - Ms Sarah Masters, Women’s Network Coordinator for the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), will address the 592nd Meeting of the Forum for Security Co-operation on 28 October 2009. Background Information on “Gendered Impact of SALW”(FSC.DEL/194/09/Add.1) and“Being Part of the Process: Women and SALW Control”(FSC.NGO/11/09/Add.1 and Add.2) can be found overleaf and is [also available on](also available on www.osce.org/gender)[ ](also available on www.osce.org/gender)[www.osce.org/gender](also available on www.osce.org/gender) FSC.DEL/194/09/Add.1 27 October 2009 ENGLISH only “Peace and Security without Women ? SCR 1325 as a means to tackle gun violence” Vanessa Farr, Senior Adviser on Gender Issues (UNDP) 2nd Round Table on Gender & Security Vienna, October 28th 2009 The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and are not to be ascribed to the United Nations In the early 1990s, at the beginning of the small arms policy and research debate, the humanitarian and human rights side of the received significant consideration. After 1998, as the debate moved into international fora, this concern was slowly eroded until most of the international and regional documents on small arms – the majority crafted after 1998 – failed to specifically mention humanitarian issues at all. Research and policy on the problem of small arms (mis)use, and discussions of the human beings responsible for it, were conspicuously absent. As conversations on small arms and light weapons have continued, however, the voices of non-mainstream actors who question the absence of analysis on the people behind the guns have become more audible, assessments of the problem are becoming more descriptive and complex, and more questions are being asked about why civilian demand for such weapons remains so high. i Current work on small arms has begun to look beyond simply “counting the weapons” and is, instead, increasingly focussing on the devastating human impact of their misuse. Nevertheless, until very recently, remarkably little attention was focused on the fact that gun ownership and misuse is a highly gendered phenomenon, and that it brutally reinforces unequal social hierarchies that not only give men dominance over women, but also exacerbate race and class tensions in violence-prone communities. ii Although rates of gender-based violence are universally high, there continues to be a general lack of political interest in the underlying causes of such violence. Rather, there remains a tendency to see “domestic” violence as a problem that can be overlooked because it so often occurs in the private domain, a perspective that often provides impunity for its perpetrators.iii Nor have the drafters of international agreements on small arms and light weapons (while they may refer in passing to the “devastating” consequences of armed violence on women) made any significant efforts, even to date, to align their work with Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) which calls for the inclusion of women in all aspects of peacebuilding, including small arms control.iv Indeed, as I have observed elsewhere, “[al]though weapons proliferation is often culturally sanctioned and upheld by the manipulation of gender ideologies, gender goes entirely unremarked in all documents which were not explicitly conceived to focus on gender mainstreaming.”v In this very new research field, a paucity of specific research on gender has meant an absence of broadly-based surveys and data production from year that the first significant global survey on the which to draw concrete conclusions. It is only this gend

FAQs

What meeting is referenced in the notice?

The notice informs about the 592nd Meeting of the OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation on 28 October 2009.

Who is scheduled to address the meeting?

Ms Vanessa Farr and Ms Sarah Masters are listed as speakers addressing the meeting.

How does the paper frame the gendered impact of small arms and light weapons?

It argues that gun ownership and misuse are highly gendered, reinforcing unequal social hierarchies and exacerbating race and class tensions, while policy and research rarely include gender and age considerations.

Oct 3, 2026

Upload by jayni