Jeremy Greenstock was involved in the formulation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 during his time as UK Permanent Representative to the UN. He was Britain’s ambassador to the UN during the preparations for the Iraq war in 2003 and the Prime Minister’s envoy to Iraq following the war. He is now Director of the international affairs institution, the Ditchley Foundation.

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As one of the sponsors of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, I am glad openDemocracy is taking the fifth anniversary of its adoption to assess its value, examine how well it has been implemented and discuss its implications for the role women must come to play in the national sphere and in global society.

The UN Security Council is not responsible for social issues. It is strictly responsible only for matters of international peace and security. As the UN’s most effective and most politically active intergovernmental institution, it both has enormous influence and raises hackles in various places. In introducing a wide-ranging text on gender issues, we were taking something of a risk. But the events of the 1990s produced volumes of evidence of the suffering caused to women and families by the breakdown of law and order, especially in the developing world, and pointed to the potential of women in resolving conflict and in turning round social and economic chaos. There were intakes of breath from the more traditional corners of the UN when they saw what we were attempting, but the UK Mission, bolstered by a gender issues expert from the UK’s Department for International Development, gained invaluable support from Security Council colleagues such as Canada and the Netherlands; and the United States and France also came on board to strengthen the work.