UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTION 1325: WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY

On 31 October 2000 the Security Council of the United Nations indicated preoccupation regarding the fact that civilians, especially women and children, constitute the vast majority of those who are harmed in armed conflicts.

The patriarchal and militaristic character of Resolution 1325 is reflected in the fact that it deals almost exclusively with the theme of war and military conflict as a permanent state of affairs, natural and inevitable, which is contradictory with the role of the UN to maintain peace and security in the world. We believe that with this Resolution, the UN is attempting to glamorize war and at the same time offers war as an alternative for the resolution of conflicts and wars, in short, perpetuating them. We maintain that war and the militarism that it generates are the main enemy of civil society, of women and children, with the result that war will always be their principal enemy.

After cease fire in a war, the UN sends in the Blue Berets, humanitarian armies, to the conflict zones. Instead of protecting the women, in many parts of the world these forces abuse women and young girls sexually, taking advantage of the prostitution to which they feel doomed by the extreme poverty in which they live, or by taking advantage of female sex slaves forcibly retained by mafias that exploit them; sometimes raping them, which the women on only rare occasion dare to denounce, rapes that remain in impunity because of the protection afforded to the soldiers.

Human security goes beyond military intervention. As recognized by the UN itself, speaking about security one must also speak about security regarding food, the environment, community, economy, etc.

In family and work environments, women also live an existence conditioned by the violence exercised on them. A woman is killed or mistreated for not fulfilling the results expected of her. While governments consider that this sort of violence belongs to the private sector, it will always be present in our societies. Security is absence of violence against women, equality of access to power (political, economic and social). The struggle against violence towards women must be incorporated into the national security strategies.

Women in Black against War of Madrid, on the 13^th anniversary of Resolution 1325, consider that all wars are illegal and illegitimate and we ask the United Nations:

• To consider that wars are a burden for the entire ecosystem and demand that governments demilitarize their respective countries.
• To abolish the impunity of the members of UN missions for peace, as well as sanction sexual and other offenses, putting an end to impunity.
• To consider violence against women as a security problem of the States and to demand that the governments pass legislation that will ensure the women will one day be able to live in security.
• To designate military expenditures instead for social, expenditures, education, health, culture, cooperation and the security of women. The military expenditure of Spain for 2014, distributed in various entries, is 14.513 million euros and the budget for gender violence is 23 million euros.

Translation: Trisha Novak, USA