The letter draws attention to the failures of states to date to deliver on the promises of their forefathers at the founding of the United Nations and, in doing so, sets out a path forward to meet the twin aims of equality and peace, advocated for by decades of feminist activism. This film captures that letter in both voice and illustration; it is read by feminist and women’s rights activists in many languages and is interpreted through illustration.
In September 2019, the Feminist International Law of Peace and Security project convened a workshop involving 19 legal academics and practitioners with the idea of drafting an alternative “Security Council” resolution to coincide with a number of anniversaries in 2020, including the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda at 20, the Beijing Declaration at 25 and the half way point to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
The aim of the exercise was to reclaim the WPS agenda and to recast it as a transformative peace agenda, as originally envisaged by many women’s civil society groups at the time of its adoption in 2000.
A year later, members of the team finalised the wording of a letter to the Member States of the General Assembly to be released on 21 September, International Peace Day, to coincide with the adoption by the Assembly of the Declaration on the Commemoration of the Seventh-Fifth Anniversary of the United Nations.
Read the letter in full here, and reflections on the methodology here.
The illustrations featured in the video are done by . You can read Rose’s rationale behind here drawing here.