A Moment of Renewal for the WPS Agenda in the Non-NATO Balkan States: Spotlight on Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo

During the 75^th NATO anniversary and latest NATO summit in July, the alliance renewed its Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) policy, with implications for Balkan countries both inside the alliance (Albania, Montenegro, and North Macedonia) and outside of it (Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Kosovo, and Serbia). Two countries that aspire to join NATO – BiH and Kosovo – have faced challenges wrought by the gendered legacy of war, but recent advancements suggest a promising path forward. In this moment of renewed interest in the WPS agenda, implementing further WPS reforms can provide NATO hopefuls with strategic advantage in their efforts to join the alliance.

The WPS agenda was launched in 2000 with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, which connected gender to the global peace and security agenda. Nearly 25 years and 10 resolutions later, the core messages of the WPS agenda have become common sense: Armed conflict has an inordinate impact on women and girls, and achieving a lasting, positive peace requires the meaningful inclusion of women in peacemaking, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding efforts.  

What Is The WPS Agenda, and Why Is It Important? 

Gender inequality is not a “woman’s issue.” Empirical research has demonstrated a statistically strong relationship between women’s physical security and the security of states. In other words, women’s security is a matter of global security. 

UNSCR 1325 was the first Security Council resolution to put gender on the global peace and security agenda. It is the hard-won achievement of feminist anti-militarists working through civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The resolution, drafted in the 1990s, was shaped in part by the wars of Yugoslav succession, in which gender-based violence was widely used as a weapon of war, and women were overwhelmingly excluded from high-level diplomatic negotiations even as they spearheaded local-level peacebuilding initiatives. UNSCR 1325 conveys the lessons of those wars: Women must be involved in defining what counts as a security issue and achieving a resolution.  

Today, the WPS agenda extends far beyond UNSCR 1325 and the nine resolutions that followed. More than a bundle of norms, or a set of policy prescriptions, the WPS agenda “is the most significant collective effort to reform international security practices in accordance with feminist principles.” It consists of four pillars that were established by UNSCR 1325: (1) the participation of women in decision-making; (2) the role of women in conflict prevention; (3) the protection of women and girls during and after armed conflict; (4) the needs and capacities of women during post-conflict recovery. 

NATO and WPS 

NATO adopted a WPS policy in 2007. This year, it renewed its policy in the context of a strained Euro-Atlantic security environment as Russia continues to wage its war against Ukraine, and reports of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) share headlines with stories of Ukrainian women taking up arms to defend their country. As Russia’s war in Ukraine brings the gendered dimensions of conflict into focus around the world, NATO is showing a revitalized interest in gender security. The alliance’s updated Strategic Concept (launched in 2022, only months after Russia’s invasion) is the first NATO Strategic Concept to include mention of the WPS agenda. It marks NATO’s commitment to “integrating … the Women, Peace and Security agenda across all our core tasks,” which are deterrence and defense; crisis prevention and management; and cooperative security.  

In 2012, NATO created a position on its international staff, the secretary-general’s special representative for Women, Peace and Security, whose role is to facilitate the implementation of the WPS Action Plan. The alliance has focused on increasing the representation of women in NATO operations, crafting policies to prevent the sexual exploitation and abuse of women within NATO-led operations, and deploying gender advisers on missions to help integrate gender perspectives. In NATO’s mission to Kosovo (commonly known as KFOR), for example, this led to the establishment of Victim-Centered Interview Rooms, which are rooms designed according to trauma-informed standards to help victims of CRSV feel safer to talk about their experiences and seek justice. 

Yet, the architects of UNSCR 1325 have sharply criticized NATO’s embrace of the WPS agenda. Scholars see NATO’s engagement with it as a case of norm distortion, the militarization of feminist ideas that are at their core anti-militarist. In the words of feminist researcher and writer Cynthia Cockburn, “it’s an enraging example of how good feminist work can be manipulated by a patriarchal and militarist institution.” She notes that UNSCR 1325 does not actually call for more women to serve in armies, but rather calls for their increased participation as “military observers, civilian police, (and) human rights and humanitarian personnel.” Notably, unlike other actors who engaged the WPS agenda, NATO did not consult civil society when it initially engaged WPS policy in 2007. In 2014, however, NATO began such consultations on WPS policy, formally establishing a Civil Society Advisory Panel on WPS in 2016, with the secretary-general’s special representative playing a crucial role.  

Ultimately, NATO’s embrace of the WPS agenda has been guided less by feminist objectives than by the idea that understanding the role of gender in armed conflict improves military operational effectiveness. For instance, NATO began deploying Female Engagement Teams in its mission in Afghanistan to increase the effectiveness of counterinsurgency and intelligence-gathering objectives, noting that female teams could better “develop trust-based and enduring relationships with the Afghan women they encountered on patrols,” leading to increased access to information.  

WPS in the Balkans 

It took more than a decade after the adoption of UNSCR 1325 for the WPS agenda to make it onto the national policy agendas of governments in the Western Balkans. The moment of political opportunity coincided with increased international support for WPS surrounding the 10th anniversary of the adoption of UNSCR 1325, as the United States, Canada, and a host of other countries adopted National Action Plans (NAPs). NAPs and Regional Action Plans are the primary implementation mechanisms of UNSCR 1325. They are documents that states and regional organizations, including NATO, adopt to guide the translation of UNSCR 1325 into practice within their own contexts.  

In the Balkans, BiH and Serbia adopted their first NAPs in 2010, followed by Croatia in 2011, Kosovo in 2014, North Macedonia in 2013, Montenegro in 2017, and Albania in 2018. While several states have updated their NAPs since, the current situation is that all but two NAPs (Montenegro and North Macedonia) are currently out of date. 

Country NAP adoption Years Covered 

Albania 2018 (for 2018-2020) 

Bosnia-Herzegovina 2017 (for 2018-2022); 2013 (for 2014-2017); 2010  

(for 2010-2013)  

Croatia 2019 (for 2019-2023); 2011 (for 2011-2014)  

Kosovo 2014 (for 2014-2017) 

Montenegro 2023 (for 2024-2025); 2018 (for 2019-2020);  

2017(for 2017-2018) 

North Macedonia 2020 (2020-2025); 2012 (for 2013-2015)  

Serbia 2017 (for 2017-2020); 2010 (for 2010-2015) 

Not all NAPs are created equal, however. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe finds that the best NAPs share four features: They are inclusive of civil society actors at all stages; they are results-oriented with specific monitoring and evaluation plans; they are bolstered by genuine political will; and they specify a budget. States that have drafted updated versions have been able to learn from and build on initial plans. 

BiH was the first country in the region to adopt a NAP, creating a model that has served as an example of good practice. In fact, following NAP Academy training workshops in Vienna, BiH’s Gender Equality Agency was invited to provide NAP development support to Finland, Moldova, and Albania. A key feature of BiH’s NAP protocol was the establishment of a robust monitoring mechanism: the Coordination Board for Monitoring the Implementation of the NAP, consisting of representatives from defense and security sectors and non-governmental associations. In the 2017 NAP, it was noted that the board had become “a key actor in mobilizing competent authorities,” providing a lesson that can be taken up by other states facing challenges of political will.  

Where NAPs have been drafted through extensive consultation with civil society, the creation process has been considered as valuable as the final product, For instance, Serbia’s 2017 NAP details a methodology of collaboration between government agencies, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders, which has had the effect of strengthening inter-sectoral partnerships, promoting transparency, and expanding implementation to include the grassroots level in addition to the national policy level. In other Balkan countries, however, NAPs have been drafted with limited involvement from civil society, even as they place responsibility for monitoring and evaluation on civil society.  

With the implementation of NAPs, the representation of women in the armed forces has increased significantly in Balkan states, where few women served in the armed forces during the wars of the 1990s. Albania and Croatia lead the way with 15% and 14%, respectively, surpassing the NATO average of 11%. Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia each hover around 11%, and BiH sits at 8%. The representation of women in peacekeeping missions has also increased as a result of NAPs. In BiH, the Ministry of Security promoted women’s recruitment to those missions by decreasing the “work experience” requirement for women from eight years of service to five years (while keeping the criterion at eight years for men), ultimately elevating the representation of women in peacekeeping missions to 14%. While these numbers represent an upward trend, they obscure the stagnant and low rates of women in leadership roles in the armed forces and in the broader security sector, where they continue to face sexual harassment and discrimination.  

Gendering Security Reform in the Balkans: Spotlight on BiH and Kosovo 

Security sector reform is considered a necessary precondition for future membership in the European Union or NATO. However, for states emerging from conflict, such as BiH and Kosovo, the establishment and reform of the security sector have occurred in tandem.  

BiH  

BiH emerged from the war as a newly independent state composed of two semi-autonomous entities (the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republika Srpska) and a third self-governing administrative unit (Brčko district). Women were excluded from formal peace negotiations and ultimately from state building; an annex to the Dayton Peace Accords serves as the country’s constitution, and it fails to address gender equality. The constitution, which was drafted with the main aim of being palatable to warring parties, doesn’t comprehensively address the topic of national security, instead leaving security issues to each political entity. In the reform process, building a national security infrastructure has thus meant dissolving entity-level security institutions and transferring their competencies to the national level, an internationally-sponsored process for which there was little local support. The two entities’ armies were officially united in 2005 through significant pressure from the international community, but police forces remain disaggregated across the country: The Federation of BiH has a decentralized system with a distinct police force for each of its 10 cantons, and Republika Srpska and the Brčko district both have their own centralized police forces. 

In the first postwar decade of security sector reform, gender security issues were largely marginalized. However, civil society organizations built a national legal framework for gender equality – namely the Gender Equality Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina (passed in 2003) – among other laws on elections and domestic violence protection. Following the first postwar decade, additional advances in gender security reform took place, although the status of women in BiH remains troubling, with low levels of participation in formal politics, a 27.7% gender gap in the formal employment rate, and rising rates of reported domestic violence. The issue of state inaction on femicide has made headlines recently, after the live-streamed murder of woman by her male ex-partner. Demonstrators, mostly women, are demanding that authorities legislate femicide as a criminal offense. Currently, the state does not even keep official statistics on femicide. 

Advancements in gender security are obstructed by conflict between its constituent entities. For instance, the latest NAP notes that while Republika Srpska initially provided representatives for the coordination board in 2010, it withdrew its representative from the Gender Center of Republika Srpska in 2017 without explanation and has not responded to invitations to appoint new ones. Additionally, since each entity has its own judicial system, citizens of BiH endure an uneven rights landscape where a person’s “access to rights depends on (their) place of residence.” This is particularly uneven for survivors of CRSV, since Republika Srpska’s laws do not recognize them as a separate category with distinct entitlements. 

In the Federation of BiH, however, a game-changing advancement for victims’ rights has recently taken place. As of Jan. 1, 2024, the law recognizes children born of wartime rape as a special category of civilian victim of war, thus helping to close a significant protection gap in the WPS agenda. The Law on the Protection of Civilian Victims of War was passed following a similar but largely symbolic law passed in 2022 in the Brčko district, which recognized the special status of children born of war but did not extend material benefits. The federation’s law stipulates concrete rights in the areas of education funding, enrollment priority, and access to medical care.  

Kosovo 

Kosovo was under U.N. administration from 1998-2008 and declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Its security sector was built up with significant support and oversight from international actors. A legislative framework was also built up to support gender issues, including laws on gender equality, discrimination, domestic violence, and human trafficking. Legal status and protections have not translated into gender equality in practice, however. For instance, women are marginalized in property ownership despite legal equality in property rights; only 19% of properties are owned by women. 

Notable advances for victims of CRSV are a key feature of Kosovo’s NAP. A law was passed in 2015 to enable women and men who experienced CRSV during a narrow window of time in the 1998-99 conflict to apply for survivor status, and through this, to apply for a pension. In 2018, the government established a Commission for the Verification and Recognition of the Status of Victims, which has since granted survivor status to over 1,200 applicants.  

Research on security sector reform suggests that the increased recruitment of women to the armed forces and police force has not been accompanied by gender-sensitive policies, provisions, or training. Women face sexual harassment and stigmatization from men in the security sector, and the system designed to report complaints is leaky and cannot ensure confidentiality. Additionally, structural issues such as a lack of child care prevent women from attaining leadership positions. 

Nevertheless, significant top-down support for gendering security reform exists. Kosovo has hosted the WPS Global Forum for the past three years at the initiative of Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani Sadriu. And this year, Kosovo was granted a WPS Regional Center of Excellence: “a hub of expertise in partnership with the U.S. State Department to advance the WPS agenda at local, national, regional, and international levels” supported by the U.S. Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues, or S/GWI. Kosovo’s center is part of a pilot program that includes Colombia and Indonesia and stands alongside established centers in the United Arab Emirates and Namibia. WPS Centers of Excellence have four core objectives: to enhance government technical capacity to implement WPS policy, to expand regional multisectoral collaboration, to advance locally-led research, and to integrate grassroots and civil society expertise in WPS decision-making spaces. 

This achievement by Kosovo gives the Balkan region a tangible mechanism for cooperation that includes technical learning exchanges, training, and developmental support. Already in 2017, BiH’s NAP noted that regional cooperation on gender security issues had promoted reconciliation and strengthened the possibility of sustainable peace among states that were at war in the 1990s. Through regional engagement with the Kosovo WPS Regional Center of Excellence, Balkan states will be able to take advantage of S/GWI-supported training, technical learning exchanges, and NAP-development support. The center will also foster a collaborative perspective for tackling issues that affect the entire region, such as high rates of domestic violence. 

Policy Recommendations 

Focusing on the implementation of the WPS agenda and updating NAPs will give Balkan states aspiring to join NATO some strategic advantages. And for states already in the alliance, these steps will help bring them into closer alignment with their NATO allies.  

• Balkan states with outdated NAPs (Albania, BiH, Croatia, Kosovo, and Serbia) should draft updated plans that build on lessons learned in the first phases of NAP implementation. In particular, efforts to increase the rates of women’s participation in the security sector should focus on supporting women in attaining leadership rather than administrative roles. Moreover, given the high rates of sexual harassment and discrimination faced by women, measures to protect women from these threats should be bolstered, including increased behavioral training for men in the security sector.  

• Femicide is a growing problem in the Western Balkans. In a region that was plagued by CRSV during the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, violence continues to be directed against women by husbands or intimate partners at the alarming rate of one woman killed each week. In April 2024, Osmani declared a national day of mourning to commemorate femicide victims. During that week, two Kosovar women were murdered, allegedly by their husbands. No country in the Western Balkans is exempt from this violence. The WPS Regional Center of Excellence based in Pristina offers the region an opportunity to address and effectively interdict the violence by also including training for police, prosecutors, and judges on how to legally address femicide through the courts. Through the WPS Center, a regional lens on the issue can be developed, which is crucial for this endemically entrenched public safety problem. 

• Balkan states should capitalize on the opportunities for regional cooperation afforded by the Kosovo WPS Regional Center of Excellence by developing a Regional Action Plan to identify and monitor regional WPS, including the effective full implementation of the U.N.’s 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and enforce the legal application of the Istanbul Convention where it is applicable in advancing women’s equality and protection from discrimination. While a focus on national plans prevails in the WPS agenda, Regional Action Plans (or kindred documents) have been developed by entities including NATO, the European Union, the African Union, and others.  

• Finally, the United States should finally ratify CEDAW. It is the only established democracy in the exceedingly short list of countries that have not ratified CEDAW (Sudan, Somalia, Nauru, Palau, and Tonga). Given the United States’ outsized role in NATO, ratifying CEDAW would not only help legitimize NATO as a WPS actor but would also send a strong and overdue message that would bolster the important work of gender advocates everywhere. 

Jelena Golubović is an assistant professor of anthropology and international affairs at Northeastern University. She previously held a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Fletcher School of Global Affairs. Her research has been published in Journal of Refugee Studies, Ethnicities, Anthropological Quarterly, and American Ethnologist, and has won multiple awards from the International Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, the Canadian Historical Association, and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, among others.  

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not an official policy or position of the New Lines Institute.