Feminist Foreign Policy

Reclaiming the Women, Peace and Security agenda as an anti-colonial project demands amplifying long-ignored feminist voices from Central and Eastern Europe and challenging the rigid binaries that reinforce masculine geopolitical thinking.

For the Women, Peace and Security agenda to genuinely contribute to ending armed conflicts and fostering more sustainable peace, countries—including Slovakia—must ground their policies in dialogue and partnership with women’s and feminist organizations. However, the Slovak government is instead seeking to restrict the work of the non-governmental sector, and its recent constitutional amendment runs counter to its international commitments.

Ukrainian women have become indispensable in national defense and resilience, reshaping gender norms and taking on critical roles. Without direct support for local women’s groups, their impact risks being undermined by structural exclusion.

In an age marked by rising authoritarianism and anti-gender backlash, feminist peace in the Western Balkans stands as both an act of resistance and a re-imagining of security itself. The Women, Peace and Security Agenda needs to be reviewed.

Twenty-five years after its creation, the Women, Peace and Security agenda sounds hollow in the Arab World. Our author argues for radical action – to finally place women at the helm of the institutions that claim to champion them.

The steps taken by both Estonia and Latvia demonstrate a strong commitment not only to implementing comprehensive defence, but also embedding robust gender equality policies as an essential component for their armed forces. While notable progress has been made, especially in Latvia, where female participation rates are among the highest in NATO, persistent structural gaps remain, particularly in leadership representation, gender-sensitive planning, and strategic vision.

In the past decade, multiple states around the world have signed up to pursue a feminist foreign policy (FFP). Some, like Sweden and more recently also the Netherlands, have already retracted these promises. In the face of the surge of far-right parties and politicians in Europe and in the US, what does the future hold for FFP? Is there potential for FFP in the V4 countries? What makes a foreign policy truly feminist? An international conference organized by the Prague office of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (HBS) in cooperation with the Association for International Affairs (AMO) on 25 March 2025 brought together policymakers, government representatives, academics, think-tank experts, and civil society organizations to discuss these issues.

The rise of the far-right movement and recent shifts in global politics have led to significant cuts in foreign development assistance. What are the impacts on feminist and civil society organizations?