“The year 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) (UNSC 2000).1 Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, meetings to mark these anniversaries have been put on hold. Although all regions are affected by Covid-19, the consequences are unevenly felt. Emerging research and lessons from previous pandemics indicate that women are disproportionately affected by Covid-19. Generally speaking, times of crisis tend to reveal and reinforce socio-economic inequalities, reflecting the distribution of power in societies (Wilèn 2020). Lack of resources generally impacts women more than men (Tryggestad 2020);2 during the current lockdown, reports of sexual and gender-based violence, particularly domestic violence against women and girls, have spiked (UN 2020b:2). The UN has recently announced that the Covid-19 crisis threatens ‘to push back the limited gains on gender equality and exacerbate the feminizing of poverty, vulnerability to violence, and women’s equal participation in the labour force’ (UN 2020a:8; UN Women 2020b).”
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