The United States adopted its most recent Women, Peace and Security (WPS) National Action Plan (NAP) in October 2023, in the form of a WPS National Strategy. The Strategy is rooted in existing national legislation, the WPS Act of 2017, which mandates a government wide strategy on WPS (p.3). The core drafting team in the development of the NAP consisted of advisors from the Department of State’s Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues, the Department of Defense’s Office of the Secretary of Defense Policy and Joint Staff, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization (p.50). Civil society organizations, including members of the U.S. Civil Society Working Group on WPS, shared input into the strategy as well (p.50).
The Strategy identifies five ‘Lines of Effort’ (LOE): participation; protection; relief, response and recovery; integration and institutionalization; and partnerships (p.4). The participation LOE aims to seek and support preparation and participation of women and girls in civil and political leadership and in institutions related to peace and security (p.4). The protection LOE promotes the protection of human rights of women and girls and responds to GBV (p.4). The relief, response and recovery LOE prioritizes gender-responsive policies and programs to support participation and leadership of women in US government responses to conflict, crises and disasters (p.4). The integration and institutionalization LOE seeks to integrate WPS principles across US policies and programmes (p.4). Finally, the partnerships LOE encourages partners to mainstream WPS principles and strengthen capacity to improve gender equality in processes and institutions connected to peace and security decision-making (p.4).
The Strategy does not include an allocated budget, instead noting that the technical and financial contributions of implementation departments will submit their anticipated budgets at a later date (p.21). Additionally, the US NAP states that the government recognises the interconnectedness of domestic and international implementation of the WPS agenda, acknowledging the need to implement the WPS agenda ‘at home’ in order to build trust and encourage partner nations to implement similar priorities (p.5).
The US National Strategy is preceded by three other NAPs, adopted in 2011, 2016, and 2019, for the periods 2011-2015, 2016-2018, and 2019-2023 respectively.