United Nations

Moving past the theoretical by drawing together the real-life experiences, reflections and lessons of male leaders from the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police and civilians.

The United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has emerged over the past decade and a half as a significant cross-cutting thematic program for achieving global peace and security.

This document affirms the principles that guide the Australian Government and its stakeholders in international multiagency response efforts. It captures the best of the learning that has come from the Australian experience of contemporary operations overseas.

Australia’s peacekeeping and peace-building experiences in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, and in Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.

We need the powerful outcomes generated by the United Nations Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security agenda to assist us as we reconstitute our societies and institutions, and as we resist the temptation to allow conflict to take root in the uncertainty we are all facing.

Between November 2018 and November 2019, the primary author conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 100 Syrian women in Jordan and Lebanon – host countries for large numbers of Syrian refugees (along with many Palestinian and Iraqi refugees) – and in Australia. The women were between the ages of 18 and 63; most were in their 30s and 40s. The primary author also interviewed people working with Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon.

In August 2014, the United Nations (UN) Security Council declared the Ebola virus outbreak in the West African subregion a ‘threat to international peace and security’. The UN’s request for assistance from member states resulted in the mobilisation of technical expertise, medical capacity, humanitarian assistance, and military and civil defence assets.