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International Women’s Day Celebration Afghanistan

Women, Peace, and Security

Initiatives

The United States faces a complex global security environment characterized by instability, conflict, record levels of displacement, well-armed non-state actors, and great power competition.

The United States’ Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) of 2019 focuses on improving the effectiveness of our foreign policy and assistance efforts across the board by proactively integrating the needs and perspectives of women, and empowering women to contribute their talents and energies to international peace, security, and prosperity.

Through the passage of the Women, Peace, and Security Act  of 2017, the United States became the first country in the world with a comprehensive law on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS). The U.S. Government also released the 2019 U.S. Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security , and the State Department Implementation Plan in 2020, which has strengthened the U.S. priorities of protecting and supporting women in efforts to prevent conflict, promote peace, and countering violent extremism. The Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues is proud to serve as the lead coordinating office for the State Department’s WPS efforts.

  • The guiding principles for the Department of State’s WPS Implementation Plan are:
  • The Department of State is uniquely positioned to reinforce America’s global leadership in promoting the women, peace, and security agenda through policy, diplomacy, partnership, and modeling transformation.
  • Our priority targets are partner countries that are currently experiencing armed conflict, violent extremism or gross, systemic abuses of women and girls; emerging from such conflict, violence or abuse; and most at risk of such conflict, violence or abuse. Countries with histories of atrocities with severe incidences of sexual violence and/or systemic and widespread discrimination against women will be of particular concern.
  • WPS Strategy implementation is inextricably linked with women’s economic empowerment, and the Department of State’s WPS Implementation Plan should therefore be consistent with and coordinated across the Department’s Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) efforts, which seek to advance women’s economic empowerment globally.

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U.S. Department of State

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