On 5 December 2022, ASEAN released the Regional Plan of Action on WPS. This milestone indicated that ASEAN is committed to strengthening the WPS as a crucial part of achieving sustainable peace and prosperity in the region. It is also evidence of how ASEAN concerned about women’s empowerment issues since 2004 when this organization created the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in the ASEAN region. The escalation of WPS was also signaled when the ASEAN leader adopted the Joint Statement on Promoting Women, Peace, and Security in ASEAN at the 31st ASEAN Summit in November 2012. Subsequently, at the ministerial dialogue in September 2020, ensured the integration of WPS into regional policies and frameworks across the three ASEAN community pillars.
There are six main components to the RPA WPS. An overview of pertinent contextual aspects is provided in the first section. The RPA WPS is intended to respond to both established and new security concerns, including climate change, disasters, pandemics, and violent extremism. It acknowledges the overlapping and intersecting threats and challenges associated to peace and security. The fundamental international and ASEAN regional frameworks are covered in Section 2. The RPA WPS seeks to close gaps and increase the effect of ongoing work related to WPS by building on regional and global frameworks that are already in place. By providing an overview of the advancements, difficulties, and prospects associated with WPS in the ASEAN area, Section 3 fills up some of these gaps.
Section 4 of the RPA WPS provides an explanation of its goals and reasoning, and Section 5 provides a thorough procedure for creating the regional plan. A results-based implementation strategy with prioritized actions, expected outputs, and desired outcomes is presented in the following sections. Clear guidelines for WPS implementation throughout the area that allow for flexibility in order to fit with national and sub-national peace and security priorities are one of the main objectives. The initiative aims to display and encourage the wider implementation of ASEAN’s history of creative local approaches to peace and security, especially those spearheaded by women. By showcasing effective practices across ASEAN, the RPA WPS aims to build new connections between local projects and regional WPS strategies. In the end, the strategy hopes to make a meaningful difference for a variety of groups within the ASEAN area, including women, men, youth, children, and marginalized people.
Source: https://wps.asean.org/resources/asean-rpa-wps/
Source of image: https://images.app.goo.gl/ZAVBt7f5KE5N9UFM7
Link to the RPA on WPS ASEAN : https://wps.asean.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/FINAL_ASEAN-Regional-Plan-of-Action-on-Women-Peace-and-Security_reduced.pdf