Gender in Security Sector Reform

In a constantly changing security environment, sustaining peace worldwide, protecting human security and human rights cannot be achieved without women’s and men’s equal participation. Since 2009, SEESAC has been supporting governments in South East Europe to integrate a gender perspective in security sector policies and practice, in line with the Women, Peace and Security and Sustainable Development Goals Agenda. SEESAC facilitates regional cooperation among relevant security institutions to strengthen gender equality mechanisms, combat gender-based discrimination, implement evidence-based policies, and strengthen gender-responsive leadership. Since 2012, in the Western Balkans, transformational gender equality processes in the defence systems in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia were supported by facilitating knowledge exchange through unique regional cooperation platforms focusing on the root causes of gender inequality in the military and improving the implementation of the WPS Agenda.