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It took the international community a long time to finally recognize what peacebuilders, and feminists, had been saying all along: war and peace are not gender neutral. The adoption of the UNSC Resolution 1325 in 2000 was groundbreaking, because it officially recognized that women and girls had been excluded from conflict response measures. Fast forward to today, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) has become a global framework, influencing not only the UN, but also regional actors like the EU. However, the road from resolutions on paper to concrete actions has proven to be difficult. This gap is evident in Kosovo, where the EU’s largest civilian mission, EULEX, exemplifies the limits of the Union’s gender agenda.
The EU’s Gender Agenda: all words, no action?
The EU formalized its commitment to the WPS agenda by adopting the Council document Comprehensive Approach to the EU Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820 on Women, Peace, and Security (CA 1325). With this move, the EU sent a clear message that gender was something that mattered to Brussels. Over the years, it strengthened its commitment to the agenda by endorsing more ambitious documents, like the current Gender Action Plan III, which aims to make 85% of EU external actions gender equal by 2025.
While the EU has made strong commitments on gender equality, the implementation has been slow and patchy, and the gender glass ceiling remains an issue in the EU’s external action. The lack of implementation at national level is not the only challenge, because if one looks inside EU institutions themselves, the gender gap is still shockingly present. In the European External Action Service (EEAS), the diplomatic body of the EU, women continue to be underrepresented: they hold only 31.3% of middle-management positions and 26% of senior management positions. Moreover, despite modest progress, women continue to be underrepresented in civilian and military EU-led missions, accounting for just 21% of personnel in civilian CSDP missions and less than 10% in military operations. So, who is sitting at the negotiations table? Not the women, who made up only 16% of negotiators in active peace processes led or co-led by the EU in 2022, a decrease from previous years. These figures expose not only institutional gaps, but also the persistence of male-dominated power hierarchies.
The EU’s gender agenda has often been criticized for being too vague and symbolic. Rather than addressing the structural causes of gender inequality, the agenda often focuses simply on increasing the number of women in existing roles, without altering decision-making hierarchies or institutional cultures. In practice, this means women may enter decision-making spaces but remain confined to their margins. Most Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions, for example, still lack systematic gender mainstreaming, with gender advisors often sidelined or under-resourced. Feminist scholars have described this as the “add women and stir” approach, which risks turning inclusion into a symbolic gesture, with women being present in meetings or consulted formally, but lacking real authority to shape mission priorities.
Kosovo and the case of EULEX: a gender test for the EU
Kosovo has represented a groundwork test for the EU’s gender agenda. In 2008 the EU established EULEX, the largest and first civilian mission under the CSDP. Its goal is to support the rule of law, stabilize post-conflict institutions and integrate gender equality across its operations and by mandate and duration it operates at the core of institutional peacebuilding, where the translation of GAP III and the WPS resolutions must be visible in outcomes, not just in procedures. Particularly, the extensive occurrence of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence makes Kosovo a significant mission to look at in terms of implementation of the EU’s gender agenda. EULEX’s mandate embraces key WPS resolutions, not only Resolution 1325, but also subsequent ones such as Resolution 1820 (2008) on sexual violence in conflict and Resolution 1889 (2009) on women’s participation in post-conflict reconstruction. Formally, the mission has integrated a gender perspective on several levels, institutionally through the creation of the Gender Resource Centre which provides training and research support and operationally by appointing international gender advisors to shape mission-wide strategies and gender focal points which operate in all mission activities, from capacity building to legal monitoring. However, in 2013, EULEX gender advisors were downgraded to a national role in an attempt on behalf of the EU to reframe gender as a technical and localized issue, reflecting the union’s tendency to depoliticize gender mainstreaming in its missions. Their mandate was reduced accordingly, which significantly limited their influence on the policy-making process. The consequence was clear, as gender advisors became isolated, underfunded, and excluded from key-decision making fora.
This stands in contrast to EULEX’s ambitious formal commitments. The reality on the ground reveals a recurring pattern: gender is consistently marginalized and treated as secondary, rather than being considered as an integral part of security and peacebuilding efforts. Estimates suggest that cases of wartime sexual violence in Kosovo number in the tens of thousands, yet the courts have handled only a very small fraction of them. Prosecutor Drita Hajdari has publicly addressed this issue, noting that after the war, local prosecutors were not allowed to handle conflict-related sexual violence cases, as this was entrusted to EULEX. She further stated that these missions “did very little despite the opportunities they had”. Moreover, survivors described the process as retraumatizing and distressing, as they have often had to recount their trauma in detail and sometimes in public or formal settings.
Despite EULEX’s formal commitment to gender mainstreaming, the actual implementation of gender-sensitive policies has often been fragmented, demonstrating that EULEX’s prioritization gap lies at the mission level. While gender features prominently in official mandates and strategic documents, it is rather absent from mission leadership’s public rhetoric and political prioritization. Brussels-level documents mandate gender mainstreaming and even “gender-responsive leadership.” Yet in Kosovo, gender appears in EULEX communications mainly in the context of their outreach efforts, rather than as part of the overarching political strategy. A review of EULEX public statements shows that senior leaders rarely refer to gender as a mission priority when outlining strategic aims, despite the fact that they endorse it in principle. As a result of the fact that gender is framed as peripheral to EULEX’s core agenda, engagement with local women’s organizations is treated as a box-ticking exercise rather than as part of strategic decision-making. In fact, local women organizations, like the influential Kosovo Women’s Network, have reported that their interactions with EULEX are often performative rather than participatory. Even when formal avenues for engagement exist, CSOs claim these interactions are tokenistic, with limited influence on the decision-making process. While formal support exists, gender remains marginalized in strategic and operational planning because EULEX’s design and practice have reproduced patriarchal and militarized structures, which in turn constrain who is invited to shape decisions and keep gender off the core agenda. In Kosovo, post-war political structures remain male-dominated, with women underrepresented in key ministries and parliaments, limiting their influence on peacebuilding agendas. Moreover, when EU missions privilege security and military expertise, fields that are traditionally male-dominated, they mirror and reproduce existing power structures. As a result, in Kosovo, women lived through the horrors of the war, and are still locked out of the room where peace is negotiated.
From performative to transformative: what needs to change
The gap between the EU’s formal commitments and the day-to-day realities of its peacebuilding missions is a credibility issue, but most importantly a matter of effectiveness. Research shows that peace agreements are more durable and reconciliation more sustainable when women participate as active decision-makers and communities own the outcome. Yet the EU, especially at higher levels of decision-making, sees gender as a secondary objective, rather than an essential element to the success of peacebuilding. When taking a close look at the case of Kosovo makes these dynamics appear blatantly clear. During and after the 1998-1999 conflict, women experienced the full weight of violence, displacement and the collapse of social and economic structures, yet they were systematically excluded from formal peace negotiations. Most importantly, EULEX was the Union’s largest and longest-running civilian mission, with a mandate squarely focused on rule of law, policing, prosecution, and corrections, precisely the sectors where gendered harms are most acute. Kosovo also offered unusually strong conditions: an organized women’s movement capable of policy engagement, progressive gender-equality laws, and over a decade of EU leverage and resources. Yet despite these favorable factors, gender remained marginal. Advisors lacked the authority to influence strategic documents or budgets; performance was measured in conventional outputs rather than gendered outcomes; civil society consultations were staged but rarely consequential; and frequent staff rotations reduced continuity.
In Kosovo the EU has had time, leverage, willing local partners, and a mandate where WPS principles should be most visible, in policing, prosecution, courts and corrections. If gender remains marginal under these favorable conditions, the problem is structural, built into the way missions are designed, staffed, and measured. Kosovo shows that gender is the first casualty when geopolitical priorities take over, and that formal commitments from Brussels rarely withstand the realities of mission politics. To bridge the gap between rhetorical commitments and the reality on the ground, the EU needs to adopt a transformative, context-specific approach that confronts existing male-dominate power hierarchies, both within its institutions and in the societies where it operates. That means giving gender advisers real authority and budgets, integrating gender expertise at every stage of planning and operations, and ensuring women from conflict-affected communities move from consultation to decision-making. The EU’s experience in Kosovo serves as a wake-up call: if the Union wants to become a global leader in gender issues, it must start by confronting the uncomfortable realities within its own missions and learn from its mistakes.
Author Bio: Amy Kokalari is a researcher and policy analyst specializing in European integration, digital governance, and the Western Balkans. She is currently working at the Italian Senate, at the International Affairs Service, while pursuing a Master’s in European Transformation and Integration at the College of Europe in Tirana. She holds also a Master’s in Transnational Governance with a specialization in digitalization from the EUI in Florence. Amy has contributed to research at CEPS and the EUI. Her work focuses on EU enlargement policies, digital transformation, and geopolitical strategies.
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