Arsenal of Peace: Feminist Reflections on Gender-Responsive Disarmament and the Challenges of International Law’s Framework for Security

Abstract

This article seeks to examine the United Nations General Assembly’s 2023 Resolution on Gender-Responsive Disarmament (A/RES/78/101) as a case study in how international law posits the relationship between gender, security, and violence. The Resolution marks a significant discursive shift within the UN disarmament framework, namely in acknowledging that arms control and militarization are not gender-neutral processes but ones that inform and perpetuate social hierarchies. By urging states to implement gender perspectives into disarmament policy, it reflects the advancement of the institutionalisation of feminist advocacy within international law. Yet, despite this ostensible progress, the Resolution interpolates gender primarily through representation rather than systemic reform, producing a rhetorical veneer of development without substantive transformation.

Drawing on feminist international legal theory and reports by non-governmental organizations confronting the social and economic consequences of arms proliferation, this paper argues that gender-responsive disarmament prevails as restricted by international law’s state-centric and militarized understanding of security. The established framework favours sovereignty, deterrence, and bureaucratic authority, values historically coded as masculine, while curtailing feminist applications that prioritise human security and the protection of civilian life. This tension is demonstrable of the limits that are present when simplifying gender-based issues, as it becomes performative. It is the presence of gender-inclusive language without a tangible shift in institutional logic or tactile outcomes.

By positioning the Resolution within the wider Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, this paper illustrates how feminist visibility risks being absorbed into governmental processes that preserve the economic and political fabric of militarisation. In turn, it affirms a critical feminist reformation of disarmament that emphasises the foundational nature of gendered violence and calls for international law to depart from representational and inclusionary politics toward disarmament as a condition of justice. It concludes by reevaluating security with regard to equity, human rights protection, institutional accountability, and the redistribution of power.