Page 29 - A Gender-Sensitive Indian Foreign Policy- Why? and How?

Indian Council
of World Affairs

India’s stated commitments to mainstreaming gender in peace
operations can be potentially strengthened through further
attention to the “prevention” pillar of the WPS agenda.

to women and peacekeeping. A second example relates to India’s shifting
stance on the coming together of the WPS and the countering terrorism
agendas. India cautioned against this in 2015, but by 2018 it was calling
for the Council’s Sanctions Committees to ‘address the issue of proactively
listing terrorist individuals and entities involved in sexual and gender-based
violence in armed conflict’.

So, peacekeeping and terrorism are the two main thematic issues that
stood out to me. I will focus on these as I move on to the second point
about moving forward in this current (2021-2022) term. We can expect
peacekeeping to remain central to this discussion. At the recent ICWA-
USI webinar on India and UN peace operations, more than one speaker
brought up issues relating to women’s participation and protection. In
that sense, WPS appears to have been mainstreamed to some extent in
the Indian approach. I would add here, inferring from India’s statements,
that the FFPU’s work in Liberia was aimed to prevent recurrence of conflict
as well; India’s stated commitments to mainstreaming gender in peace
operations can be potentially strengthened through further attention to the
“prevention” pillar of the WPS agenda.

With terrorism identified as a major area of concern, and with India chairing
two sanctions committees this year and poised to chair the counterterrorism
committee in 2022, there may be further developments with regard to
WPS as well. I should add here that feminist scholars have advised caution
when bringing together the WPS and counterterrorism agendas, as it may
– among others – increase vulnerabilities of women in
some cases. I am sure that Dr. Parashar, who studies
terrorism, can add to this in the question and
answer session.

On my part, I will highlight two issues
that India would need to consider, as it
continues with its engagement with
the global WPS agenda. This is my
third and concluding point. First,
India’s attention to gender-sensitive
foreign policy in the security sector
would draw attention to domestic issues. At the
Security Council, domestic references by India 29
have mainly highlighted women’s political

A GENDER-SENSITIVE INDIAN FOREIGN POLICY Why? and How?