UN Peacekeeping Operations as Sites of Caregiving? Notes for a Feminist Approach to the ‘Summit of the Future’

The 2024 United Nations Summit of the Future offers an opportunity for peace feminists to influence the reform of peacekeeping operations. To take full advantage of this moment, the women, peace and security agenda could be expanded by incorporating the ideas of activists who work on care and caregiving. This will revitalize the intention of Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) to overcome the negative impacts of exclusionary peace-making, and transforming peacekeeping operations into sites in which insecurity is answered with care and caregiving rather than militancy and machismo. Drawing from evidence that a peacekeeper’s personal commitment to democratic values strengthens peacekeeping operations, this paper proposes that Indian feminists, as members of a troop-contributing country, should amplify their experiences of domesticating SCR1325 and contributing to India’s own demilitarization, to strengthen India’s official position at the UN as a champion of WPS and invigorate feminist efforts to transform peacekeeping into a praxis of care.