Military AI and the WPS Agenda
By Kirthi Jayakumar
The emergence of technological advancements is reason enough to revisit the idea of “security” as it is defined, understood, and practiced under the WPS Agenda. No matter the interpretation and understanding of security as specific to armed conflict or as inclusive of broader contexts across the peacetime-wartime continuum, technology plays a significant role (Jayakumar, 2024). In armed conflict contexts, technology is altering and shaping war as we know it. In peacetime contexts, a state of negative peace prevails – in no small part due to the proliferation of tech-based surveillance and violence. Across the peacetime-wartime continuum, there are also major opportunities for technology to serve a positive purpose (Jayakumar, 2024).
The WPS Agenda does not explicitly name technology or address emerging technological developments within its scope. However, it is important to understand that cyberspace, which is the arena where AI operates, is both a key tool and sites where conflict can be and are being waged, making these areas that must be appropriately addressed, included, and governed by the WPS Agenda (Jayakumar, forthcoming; Winkler, 2020). The human cost of military AI and the gendered impacts it produces requires the meaningful engagement of a human security approach, which the WPS Agenda offers.
The WPS Framework
The Women, Peace and Security Agenda, established through UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000, marked the first official commitment on part of the international community to specifically address the gendered experience of armed conflict. The agenda rests on four pillars: women's participation in peace and security processes, protection of women's rights and prevention of gender-based violence, prevention of conflict through addressing root causes, and relief and recovery efforts that account for women's specific needs in conflict contexts. The framework recognizes that sustainable peace cannot be achieved without the meaningful inclusion of women and attention to gendered impacts of conflict.
Over nine additional resolutions, the WPS Agenda was expanded to cover areas such as training troops on preventing and responding to sexual violence and increased deployment of women in peace operations (Resolution 1820), engaging teams of experts where sexual violence occurs (Resolution 1888), creating indicators to measure implementation (Resolution 1889), building a “naming and shaming” mechanism to document perpetrators and enablers (Resolution 1960), enabling access to justice (Resolution 2106), addressing the root causes of armed conflict and security risks challenging women and providing multisectoral services to women affected by armed conflict (Resolution 2122), increasing funding and integrating the WPS agenda cross all country situations (Resolution 2242), recognizing conflict-related sexual violence as occurring on a continuum of violence against women and girls, addressing structural gender inequalities, prioritizing a survivor-centred approach, and acknowledging the vulnerability of men to sexual violence in armed conflict (Resolution 2467) and ensuring funding and the creation of a safe and enabling environment for civil society organizations to operationalize the WPS Agenda, and paying attention to context-specific approaches to enhance women’s participation in peace processes (Resolution 2493). The WPS Agenda is typically intended to be implemented by state governments through National Action Plans, although there have been regional action plans such as in the ASEAN (2022) and civilian action plans in Nigeria (Asante, 2024).
The WPS Agenda has been powerful in helping shift the understanding of conflict-related sexual violence as an unfortunate byproduct of war to the recognition of the phenomenon as a war strategy with structural and systemic underpinnings (Lippman, 2000; Campanaro, 2000). However, in practice, there is a restricted implementation that tends to binarize gender and even conflate gender and sex, a limited focus on women either as victims of conflict or as arbiters of peace owing to the condition of being women, the active sidelining of intersectionality, and a heavily restricted understanding of the idea of “armed conflict” (Jayakumar, 2022). A rigid interpretation of the WPS Agenda is less helpful in the face of emerging technologies that are altering lived experiences of gender and meanings of conflict in entirety. Thus, as we look toward applying the WPS Agenda to military AI, we are also creating an opportunity for the WPS Agenda to grow into a more meaningful resource and tool for advocacy and impact on ground.
AI and the WPS Agenda
Challenges posed by AI
Cyberspace, including AI, is the site of aggressive forms of gender-based and sexual violence that are either tech-based or tech-facilitated. Even as the security sector makes compelling arguments for the incorporation of AI into their fold, there is scant regard for the large-scale violence and harm these technologies can unleash on particular groups of people, often marginalized historically on gender, sex, sexual orientation, health, ability, race, religious, ethnic, and other lines. As a result, these technologies do little to serve human security, and instead, widen the chasm of inequity in society.
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) shows the same systemic and structural underpinnings of gender-based violence that happens outside of cyberspace. Sociocultural and political attitudes around gender produces stereotypes that provide the foundational substratum for gender-based harm. In conflict zones, TFGBV receives a fillip because they can be weaponized to deliver targeted attacks with the motive of feeding into strategic plans to carry out war crimes, ethnic erasure, and even genocide. The use of fake information and falsified image-based content can also be a calculated strategy in conflict zones to destabilize societies by playing on gender stereotypes.
TFGBV also serves as an entry point for broader cybercrime through several interconnected mechanisms that are often overlooked in cybersecurity. The infrastructure used to carry out TFGBV is similar, if not entirely the same, as the infrastructure used to carry out other cybercrimes. Not addressing the human security cost of these infrastructures can mean that these crimes go unaddressed, and the culture of impunity can pave the way for these infrastructure to commit larger scale crime by treating TFGBV as a learning ground. Systematic TFGBV operations are extensive data collection exercises, which can generate intelligence for other cybercrimes. When personal information is harvested through TFGBV, it can enable criminals to craft convincing attacks against extended networks of potential victims.
Opportunities unlocked by AI
AI is rapidly transforming security landscapes through applications ranging from predictive analytics for conflict early warning systems to autonomous weapons systems and peacekeeping operations (De Agostini & Giovanardi, 2025). Machine learning algorithms analyse vast amounts of data to identify patterns, predict threats, and optimize resource allocation in ways that exceed human analytical capacity. Military and peacekeeping organizations increasingly rely on AI for intelligence gathering, strategic planning, and operational decision-making (Hofstetter et al., 2025). This technological revolution in security governance is occurring largely without a systematic consideration of human security and gender implications. The development and deployment of AI systems in security contexts often proceed with little to entirely no attention to how these technologies may and indeed do affect different people differently (Al-Hosni & Ramadan, 2025). Most critically, AI systems frequently perpetuate and amplify existing biases present in their training data, potentially institutionalizing discrimination against marginalized groups in security decision-making (Mmaduekwe, 2024). The integration of AI into security governance produces impacts that can be addressed by core WPS principles.
On the other hand, AI can unlock unprecedented capabilities for advancing WPS objectives. In terms of preventing and protecting women from conflict-related sexual violence, AI-powered early warning systems can also identify conflicts in their early stages before they escalate, creating opportunities for preventive interventions that protect civilian populations, particularly women and girls who often bear disproportionate costs of armed conflict (Bogojevic, 2024). In terms of enhancing the participation of women in peace and post-conflict processes, technology can expand on the inclusion of women in peace and post-conflict processes and offer women ways to document war crimes (including but not limited to conflict-related sexual violence) in conflict contexts.
Technology has already proven particularly useful in facilitating and enabling movement-building and active mobilisation across borders (Conley et al., 2021). Digital platforms enhanced by AI can facilitate women's participation in peace processes by enabling remote engagement, real-time translation services, and secure communication channels that overcome traditional barriers to inclusion. These technologies can connect women peacebuilders across geographic and linguistic divides, amplifying their voices and expanding their influence on security decision-making.
Reconciling the opportunities and challenges
The emergence of AI in the security space brings both promise and potential on the one hand, and reasons for significant caution on the other hand. Unlocking the advantages of AI for the WPS Agenda necessarily requires effort to address the limitations in the technology as it is used in both security and military spaces. Reconciling the two sides of AI and its implications for the WPS Agenda through a feminist lens could involve the feminist “third space” that acknowledges the limitations of technology in its current form and advocates for change, while also recognizing its potential for inclusion and empowerment. Without deliberate intervention to ensure gender-inclusive development processes that prioritise human security and intersectionality, AI systems risk perpetuating the very exclusions that the WPS agenda seeks to address. This also necessitates a simultaneous commitment to address the critical limitations in the WPS Agenda, especially in implementation.
The intersection of AI and the WPS agenda represents a critical juncture for both technological development and gender equality in peace and security. While AI technologies offer remarkable potential for advancing WPS objectives, their current trajectory threatens to undermine any progress made toward women's equal participation in peace and security processes. Ensuring that AI serves rather than subverts WPS goals requires immediate and sustained attention from policymakers, technologists, and civil society actors. The choices made today about how to develop and deploy AI in security contexts will fundamentally shape prospects for inclusive and sustainable peace for generations to come.
References
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