The United Nations released its Navigating Challenges and Driving Change: Women, Peace and Security Highlights of UN Peacekeeping in 2023 on June 5. The report focuses on strategies towards achieving Women, Peace and Security (WPS) goals, as well as the progress made by the Secretary-General's Action for Peacekeeping Priorities on WPS.

Key areas of focus of the Secretary-General's Action for Peacekeeping Priorities on WPS include:

1. ensuring full, equal, and meaningful participation of women in all stages of peace and political processes;
2. systematically integrating a gender perspective into all stages of analysis, planning, implementation, and reporting; and
3. increasing the number of civilian and uniformed women in peacekeeping at all levels, and in key positions.

The report also provides key statistics and cases studies for the various missions around the world, detailing the missions' progress in achieving the above WPS goals. For instance, regarding progress made over the 2023 year, women's leadership was strengthened, as was their meaningful participation in conflict prevention and resolution processes and mechanisms in the United Nations Organization Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA). More specifically, two women were appointed to ministerial positions in local administrations. Women were also included among the signatories to the final communique of the Todach inter-communal peace dialogue in March. Twenty-eight women from Abyei also received training in early warning systems and were provided with communication and mobility tools for timely reporting and rapid response to become Early Warning Focal Points – now providing information on the gendered impacts of the situation on the ground.

Secondly, trust-building projects were implemented in the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) – largely by civil society organizations. These have focused on supporting gender-based violence (GBV) survivors, advocating for the provision of sustainable government services for victims, raising awareness on early marriage harms and other forms of violence against women and girls, and promoting tertiary education for economic empowerment. UNMIK also continued to support the construction of a sustainable shelter to safe house GBV survivors and at-risk women, girls, and children from all communities.

In the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), the mission facilitated 107 virtual and in-person intercommunal initiatives, meetings, and events with women’s civil society organizations and informal women’s groups, as well as with youth networks and the diplomatic community, aimed at strengthening women’s participation at all stages of the peace process and to support intercommunal trust-building.

Furthermore, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic sensitized 720 women on the mutualized peace process across 12 localities in the regions. Similarly, the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS) and the Government of South Sudan hosted the first-ever International Conference on Women’s Transformational Leadership.

Lastly, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo and UN agencies, together with local partners, advanced the implementation of a joint project to establish one-stop centers to provide judicial, medical, psychological support and economic empowerment to women survivors in 17 conflict-affected territories in the east of the country.

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To read the full report, see here