Leaving No One Behind: Addressing gender inequalities in conflict

In April, UN Women published its new flagship report, Progress of the World’s Women 2015-16. The report is an impressively lucid account of the state of the world’s women, seen through the lens of a ‘human rights-based approach to economic policy’: that is, one which sees the economy not as an end in itself but as a means to improve people’s everyday lived experiences.

The three priorities identified for change – transforming work to benefit women, improving social policies, and creating an enabling macro-economic environment – left this reader wondering to what degree the report’s ‘Agenda for Action’ is relevant to fragile and conflict-affected states, given that they often lack control over such factors.

A large and increasing share of the world’s poor live in fragile and conflict-affected states. Conflict, for many people around the world, is not an anomaly but an enduring state of affairs. If the international community is to respect its commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ in the context of the post-2015 development agenda, addressing gender inequalities cannot be reserved exclusively for the aftermath of conflict.