About the Centre for Women, Peace and Security

The Centre for Women, Peace and Security is a leading academic space for scholars, practitioners, activists, policy-makers and students to develop strategies to promote justice, human rights and participation for women in conflict-affected situations around the world.     

Through innovative research, teaching, and multi-sectoral engagement, the Centre aims to promote gender equality and enhance women’s economic, social and political participation and security.  

The creation of the Centre in the Institute of Global Affairs demonstrates the international reach of LSE and its focus on issues of global concern.

The Centre for Women Peace and Security is grounded in two initiatives: 

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, adopted in October 2000, recognises the disproportionate impact conflict and post-conflict situations have on women and girls. It also acknowledges the importance of the participation of women and the inclusion of a gender perspective in preventing, managing, and resolving conflicts and maintaining international peace and security. 

The Centre will play a leading role in developing the multi-sectoral approach required to further the aims of the women, peace and security agenda:                   

• • promoting women’s participation in decision-making and the resolution of conflict
  • preventing sexual and gender-based violence
  • integrating a gender perspective throughout peacekeeping and peacebuilding
  • increasing accountability and ending impunity of perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence.  

The Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) was launched by William Hague, then UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Angelina Jolie, UNHCR Special Envoy, in 2012. The focus of the Initiative is on ending sexual violence in armed conflict, achieving accountability, and ending impunity for harms committed. The PSVI has identified the magnitude of the task of ending sexual violence in armed conflict, brought new thinking into the foreign policy of a number of states, and recognised a need for both new research knowledge and better vetting and synthesis of existing research knowledge as important for guiding action on the issue of sexual violence in armed conflict. The Centre draws much of its initial focus from these important developments of the PSVI.

The Centre was launched with the support of the PSVI in February 2015.