International Women’s Day is when the international community recognizes women’s achievements, raises awareness about gender inequalities and drives future action on the core areas to address these challenges.
What is the theme for 2024?
The global theme for International Women’s Day 2024 is Invest in women: Accelerate progress.
The United Nations has called for action in five key areas to accelerate progress in achieving gender equality and women’s well-being, in order to support prosperous economies and a healthy planet:
- Investing in women, a human rights issue
- Shifting to a green economy and care society
- Ending poverty
- Implementing gender-responsive financing
- Supporting feminist change-makers
Allied Command Transformation, as NATO’s Warfare Development Command, will focus on one of the key areas of this year’s theme by raising awareness on the nexus between gender equality, climate change and security.
Watch the Allied Command Transformation video to learn more about this nexus:
Following the commitment made by the Heads of State and Government in the 2022 NATO Strategic Concept, NATO will continue to advance gender equality as a reflection of its values. This document also identified climate change as a “defining challenge of our time, with a profound impact on Allied security”.
As part of the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation’s priorities for 2024, General Philippe Lavigne stressed the importance of supporting cross-cutting efforts as part of the successful execution of ACT’s five Warfare Development Imperatives from the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept. One of the cross-cutting efforts identified in his priorities focuses on “taking into account societal and environmental evolutions: we will continue to promote and communicate NATO’s common values, and we will keep integrating gender perspective, climate change and human security across all activities that contribute to the Alliance’s Warfare Development effort.”
Looking to the future operating environment, Allied Command Transformation identified in its Strategic Foresight Analysis 2023 that humans will continue to be at the centre of future crises and conflicts, as decision makers, planners, direct or indirect actors, influencers, and as victims of the consequences of war and crisis. Climate change and security is recognized as a threat multiplier by exacerbating instabilities, disruptions, violence, inequalities, marginalization, and poverty. This fosters pervasive competition and increasing risks of social unrest, crisis and armed conflict. Consequences of climate change include, but are not limited to, mass migration, displacements, humanitarian crises, gender-based violence and human trafficking. Thus, also contributing to fuelling organized crime, extremist and terrorist groups.
Therefore, NATO needs to better understand this trend, how it affects people, societies and the NATO Military Instrument of Power (MIoP) in order to remain adaptive, resilient and effective in facing future security challenges. Thus, recognizing and better understanding gender roles, dynamics, and inequalities and their relationship with the impacts of climate change and security challenges, today and tomorrow, will help prepare our Nations and our armed forces to face these future challenges.
Mr. Mathieu Bussières, Director of the newly established NATO accredited Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence (CCASCOE) in Montreal, Canada, highlighted how “Climate change affects everyone, including vulnerable populations, in particular women and girls. At CCASCOE, we are committed to bringing down the gender barriers and leveraging the leadership, wisdom, and resilience of all to overcome the challenges posed by climate change. This is how we will create a future where climate action is not just impactful but inclusive.” (Watch his video statement here)
Finally, it is key to recognize that women, men, girls and boys are impacted differently by climate change around the world and to acknowledge that women and girls are amongst the most vulnerable segments of the population, due to different gender roles and gender inequalities. But it is also crucial to ensure that women are active and meaningful actors, as both women and men have to be part of the discussions, decision-making processes and conflict prevention and management.
Because women are equally part of the solution!
Let’s ACT collectively for gender equality, sustainable development and therefore a more stable and secure world. Let’s invest in women!
How is Allied Command Transformation recognizing International Women’s Day in 2024?
The Command is raising internal awareness on March 8th through communication activities and increased engagement with leadership and staff to discuss the nexus between gender equality, climate change and security. Stay tuned to find out more in an upcoming article.