• Document best practices, and promote and adopt global standards for the design, monitoring and implementation of high-impact NAPs, and other women, peace and security domestication tools, building on lessons learned across the areas of: a) leadership and coordination, b) inclusion and collaboration with civil society, c) costing and financing, d) monitoring and evaluation, and e) flexibility and adaptability of plans.

• Strengthen national and global reporting mechanisms for monitoring progress in the development and implementation of NAPs, to enhance transparency and facilitate exchange of learning, and scale up good practice.

• Support and invest in participatory processes, social accountability tools and localization initiatives to link global, national and local efforts and ensure the voices of the most affected and marginalized populations inform and shape relevant responses and monitoring of progress.

• Provide capacity building and support the development, financing, implementation and monitoring of NAPs in conflict-affected countries that lack the resources to initiate and sustain a NAP development and implementation process, through partnerships, bilateral and multilateral cooperation, including through North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation, and with civil society.

• Facilitate the establishment, by the UN Standing Committee on Women, Peace and Security, of a comprehensive and accessible database of NAPs to share good practices, lessons learned, and ensure transparency and accountability.

• Ensure the proposed new Assistant Secretary- General for Crisis and Conflict role at UN Women includes a specific focus on monitoring and reporting on NAPs.

• Ensure adequate funding and political will to effectively implement regional policies and action plans on women, peace and security, as well as other interrelated policies, sector-specific action plans and strategies.

• Support and fund the attendance and meaningful participation of civil society organizations in regional decision-making processes

• Appoint high-level women, peace and security representatives to drive implementation at the regional level, building on the experience of the AU and NATO.
• Establish channels for women leaders and civil society organizations to systematically contribute to the conflict-prevention and peacebuilding work of regional organizations, including by establishing regional advisory bodies of women peace leaders.
• Build regional capacity for monitoring and reporting on progress in the implementation of the WPS agenda.

• Increase engagement and interaction with international and regional human rights mechanisms to ensure full consideration of women’s human rights, a central component of the WPS agenda.
• Establish a network of women’s human rights and gender advisors and focal points to further mainstream gender perspectives across all workstreams.

• Collaborate to establish avenues for crosslearning and information exchange on gendersensitive priorities and concerns pertaining to the implementation of the WPS agenda, including by integrating these issues in joint dialogues and intergovernmental meetings on cooperation between the UN and regional organizations in the areas of peacemaking, preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and peacebuilding—such as the regularly scheduled meetings between the UN Security Council and AU and EU.

Harmonize, strengthen and refine existing monitoring and accountability frameworks (specifically strategic frameworks and indicators) on women, peace and security and humanitarian action by:

• Building on monitoring experience to date and taking into account new developments in gender statistics, information management systems and emerging priorities.
• Eliminating duplication and focusing on issues of utmost relevance to achieving commitments.
• Ensuring measurability of indicators, feasibility of data collection, and attaching to each indicator jointly agreed methodological guidelines that are in line with international statistical standards.
• Designing and setting up clear reporting mechanisms and enforcing periodic reporting requirements from key actors.

• Integrating system-wide women, peace and security commitments into policies, strategies, planning documents and monitoring and evaluation tools of all UN entities working in conflict and postconflict settings.
• Strengthening financial and technical capacity of UN entities—including in field missions and country teams—to regularly collect, analyze and report women, peace and security statistics in coordination with national statistical systems where relevant, and to use women, peace and security statistics to inform reports, statements, programme planning, budgeting and implementation.
• Sharing gender-specific information in code cables, periodic updates, data reporting mechanisms and early warning systems amongst all key actors, including UN field missions and country teams in a timely manner.

Accelerate action to reach the Organization’s staffing gender parity goal at all levels, by:

• Removing obstacles to the recruitment, promotion and retention of women staff in all categories and levels, and—with the support of Member States—investing in the implementation of recommendations put forward in previous reviews and in reports of the Secretary-General on the improvement in the status of the representation of women in the UN system.
• Integrating gender-balance targets as an indicator of individual performance in all compacts with senior management. The gender-balance targets in the HRM scorecard should be reviewed every quarter at the senior level by mission and country teams.
• Investing in making mission life and spaces more friendly and safe for women (e.g., special family or leave arrangements for women, adequate and appropriate mission facilities for women, from accommodation quarters and sanitary facilities to welfare and recreational spaces and activities, special medical and gynecological care), and making contract benefits better known to potential women candidates, as well as improving outreach and communications activities regarding life and work in peacekeeping missions.
• Facilitating women’s representation among national staff contracts in missions through better childcare policies and facilities, and revising experience requirements in countries where women have limited education opportunities or access to the workforce.
• Actively mentor and groom women in P2-P4 posts to promote career advancement and prepare them for management positions.

• Introducing greater flexibility in some requirements until parity is reached: for example, allowing for current P5s to be directly eligible for D2 positions if they are eligible for D1 positions, and for D1s to be eligible to apply for ASG positions; reconsidering the non-reversion policy, by which staff at the D2 level are asked to relinquish their right to return to their parent UN organization when assuming head and deputy head of mission positions for a limited duration.
• Auditing missions who have remained stagnant or regressed, instituting a system of sanctions and rewards for performing and under-performing missions, and holding leaders accountable for progress or lack of progress with regards to gender targets.
• Since many of the women that leave the organization may have partners but no children, providing full consideration to adding a third category of duty stations that are conducive for couples without children, or staff with healthy adult dependents.
• Ensuring all review processes integrate a gender perspective, and appoint more women to High- Level Reviews and panels.

Make senior leadership accountable for implementing women, peace and security commitments, including recommendations put forward in this Study, through:

• Inclusion of concrete performance measures in senior managers’ Compacts between the Secretary-General and his/her Special Envoys, Representatives, Advisors and other Senior Managers, and revision of senior managers’ Terms of Reference to reflect women, peace and security as a key priority. This should include Resident Coordinators in conflict-affected countries.
• Full compliance with the UN-SWAP commitments demonstrated by marked progress across all indicators by the 2017 deadline.

• Routine inclusion of gender, conflict and crisis analysis in thematic and country-specific briefings and reports to the Security Council and other key UN bodies..

• Ensure the presence of gender expertise in missions at the senior decision-making level and all relevant substantive units, by placing senior gender advisors in all peace operations missions, from the outset and for the whole duration of missions, situated directly in the office of the SRSG, supported by hybrid gender expertise in each of the technical units of the mission (e.g., rule of law, human rights, DDR, SSR, elections).
• (Member States should) invest in DPKO and DPA gender units at HQ, to increase the resources, seniority and number of staff, ensuring a minimum number of posts are included in the regular budget and giving due consideration to the placement of these units in the Office of the USG.
• (Member States should) invest in strengthened UN Women country offices in conflict-affected contexts to further inter alia support to women’s organizations, women’s leaders, and strengthen the UN’s implementation of women, peace and security commitments.
• Strengthen the UN’s gender architecture to promote women’s full participation in efforts to advance peace and security by expanding the support base for gender work within the missions, and maximize the impact of existing resources, by establishing a formal cooperation arrangement between DPKO, DPA and UN Women so that existing missions have access to UN Women’s technical, political and policy expertise. Through this arrangement, UN Women would bring its existing resources, capacities, expertise, and staffing as the lead on women, peace and security to support the relevant components of peace operations missions.

• Pilot in two future missions: UN Women’s more effective integration into missions—including in the strengthening of rosters, joint selection of staff, training, support through communities of practice, surge capacity and rapid deployments and technical support. The final say on recruitment would rest with the SRSG as well as accountability—there would be a single line of reporting to the SRSG with access to UN Women for information sharing, and gender staff would be backed technically and have a link to the entity responsible for gender equality.63 The model should be carefully monitored and assessed on challenges and successes after 2 years.
• (The Secretariat should) explore the possibility of joint rosters with UN Women for rapid and targeted deployment of technical gender expertise, and open new avenues for using existing rosters managed by agencies, funds and programmes.
• Establish the position of Assistant Secretary- General, with a dedicated budget, at UN Women, with responsibility for work in the area of conflict, crises and emergencies, under the guidance of UN Women’s Executive Director. This ASG would drive the implementation of the recommendations of this Study, help scale up the programming good practice described, and strengthen UN Women’s field presence in conflict and emergency settings, with the support of Member States and partners.

• Commit to accurately portray women and men in all their diverse roles in conflict and post-conflict settings, including as agents of conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding.
• Increase women’s representation and voice in newsrooms, in decision-making and leadership roles.
• Monitor media content, including information which may harm or stigmatize victims of sexual violence in conflict, and take into account special protection measures when covering stories on women and children.

• Create a code of ethics drafted by media personnel for media personnel as guidance with regard to sensitive issues.

• Protect, when threatened, the reputations and lives of women and men human rights defenders and journalists by strengthening legal frameworks, providing security and addressing impunity of perpetrators.
• Appoint more women in state-owned media structures, and allocate funding to increase women’s participation and leadership of media initiatives, including community radio, in fragile, conflict and post-conflict contexts.

• Develop and enforce laws and mechanisms to prevent, investigate and punish harassment, threats and hate speech published on internet and mobile platforms.

• Support initiatives to increase training on gendersensitive reporting and how to use, produce and disseminate media materials, taking into consideration that some women have limited access to assets and ICT, and restrictions on mobility.

• Institutionalize the participation and consultation of civil society and conflict-affected women, including from the grassroots, in local, national and global decision-making processes, including the development, implementation and monitoring of national action plans.
• Establish, finance and support knowledge-sharing mechanisms to ensure timely and transparent sharing of information between civil society and government, with special efforts made to reach and engage local communities.

• Create and maintain, in law and in practice, a safe and enabling environment ensuring access to justice, accountability, and end of impunity for human rights violations against civil society advocates and women human rights defenders, so they are able to operate free from hindrance and insecurity, and exercise fully their rights to freedom of opinion and expression, association and peaceful assembly.

• Build strategic alliances across civil society networks to strengthen constituencies and impact on emerging global, regional and national issues regarding human rights, sustainable development, and peace and security.
• Develop joint advocacy strategies.

• Broaden engagement with the multi-lateral system, in particular the Universal Periodic Review and treaty body mechanisms, to draw attention to implementation of the WPS agenda and the human rights elements that underpin it.

• Review and revise existing women, peace and security monitoring frameworks to eliminate overlap and enhance the measurability and relevance of indicators.
• Establish, under the auspices of the UN Standing Committee on Women, Peace and Security, a partnership comprising international, regional and national data producers for the creation of an online gender, conflict and crisis database to bring together and disseminate available data.
• Utilize the gender, conflict and crisis database to inform programming and to facilitate sharing of knowledge and good practice.
• Further disseminate data through the use of an online repository.

• Focus women, peace and security monitoring efforts towards measuring outcomes and impact on the ground by:
  • Providing technical and financial support to national statistical systems and civil society organizations working in coordination with these systems for the production of women, peace and security statistics;
  • Enhancing collaboration with existing statistical coordination mechanisms at the international level, including those within the auspices of the UN Statistical Commission and in preparation for SDG monitoring; and
  • Engaging statistical experts within relevant organizations.

• Prioritize the production of national women, peace and security statistics, including by allocating sufficient financial, technical and human resources, integrating them into existing statistical efforts and ensuring their use for policy formulation.
• Include gender statistics in work programmes of existing statistical coordination mechanisms working on issues related to governance, peace and security

• Ensure relevant national statistics are systematically disaggregated by sex and other key variables and timely reported to the international statistical system.