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Feminist Foreign Policy and WPS intersection in Latin America
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda and the more recent trend of Feminist Foreign Policies (FFPs) both claim to address gendered power relations in conflict and diplomacy. WPS, rooted in UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which was passed in 2000, played a crucial role in shaping FFPs. Many states that have adopted one acknowledge that without WPS, feminist foreign policies would not exist. Yet the relationship between these agendas often exposes the tension between the promise of promoting gender perspectives and the realities of the international security and foreign policy realms, limiting their transformative potential. Too often, WPS has been reduced to a technocratic exercise, prioritizing the inclusion of women within existing militarized structures rather than questioning the structures themselves. FFPs, in theory, promise to go further by reimagining foreign policy around feminist principles; yet, in practice, many states selectively borrow WPS language to appear progressive while leaving entrenched hierarchies intact. This selective adoption risks turning both FFP and WPS into instruments of tokenistic representation and foreign policy branding, where having “women at the table” and increasing women’s representation in conflict resolution processes substitutes for addressing the deeper patriarchal and colonial logics that generate insecurity.
The problem is particularly pronounced in Latin America. As Drumond and Rebelo (2020) highlight in “1325 and Beyond: Moving Forward the WPS Agenda in Latin America”, the WPS framework has largely reflected analyses developed in Europe and Africa, promoting a standardized perspective that often fails to consider the specific political, social, and violent realities of the region. Consequently, WPS policies in Latin America often remain disconnected from the realities they aim to transform. Feminist foreign policies in the region—adopted by countries such as Mexico, Colombia, and Chile, with others like Bolivia and Brazil expressing intentions to follow—seek to overcome these disconnections by creating more context-sensitive and locally grounded policies. In theory, these policies should support both institutional reform and the promotion of feminist principles externally through foreign policy agendas. In practice, however, their transformative potential has often been limited. One key reason lies in the flawed or limited involvement of civil society in the drafting and policymaking processes. Without meaningful consultation and engagement, FFPs risk replicating the same technocratic and tokenistic patterns that have long plagued WPS, turning feminist language into a mere branding tool rather than a means for structural change.
The Mexican Case – from Politica Exterior Feminista to First 1325 NAP (2020-2021)
While in many cases the 1325 National Action Plan preceded the adoption of a feminist foreign policy, the opposite occurred in Mexico. The first Mexico NAP was published in June 2021. Still, one year earlier, in January 2020, former Secretary Marcelo Ebrard announced Mexico as ‘the first country in the Global South’ to adopt a feminist foreign policy. In this case, the two initiatives not only converged in their recognition of some gendered power dynamics in diplomacy and security policies but also nearly aligned in terms of timeline. However, the difference between the Mexican NAP and the Mexican Política Exterior Feminista Strategy lies in the language and objectives outlined by the institutions responsible for drafting these documents. As noted by Philipson and Velasco (2021), the Mexican NAP, launched and drafted through a joint effort of the Secretariat of External Relations, the Secretariat of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of Security and Citizens, and the National Institute for Women, primarily focuses on external policies, leaving aside internal and domestic security concerns, and employs a standardized Western format to outline its operational objectives. In contrast, the earlier announced FFP utilizes more transformative language, including the concept of intersectionality in its final pillar, and sets internal goals aimed at changing the institutional culture of the Secretariat of External Relations, which was the sole state institution involved in drafting the FFP strategy.
They also differ in scope and ambition: Mexico’s 2021 National Action Plan on WPS remains primarily tied to security-sector institutions and is framed as a compliance measure under UN Resolution 1325, whereas the 2020 FFP announcement projected a broader ambition to mainstream gender equality across all foreign policy priorities. Nevertheless, in practice, both agendas suffer from fragmented implementation, limited funding, and resistance from entrenched bureaucratic and militarized logics. Most importantly, both lacked genuine, proactive, and fruitful involvement and participation of civil society organizations in the agenda-setting and drafting policy process, leading to superficial and performative policies that serve more as bureaucratic checkboxes than instruments for meaningful change, ultimately reproducing the very power imbalances they purported to address.
The importance of civil society in feminist policymaking
Civil society organizations are essential actors in feminist policymaking because they bring expertise, lived experience, and accountability to processes that risk being dominated by state-centric, bureaucratic logics. In the Mexican case, the development of both the National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security (NAP) and the Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) starkly illustrates the consequences of sidelining civil society. The NAP, despite being drafted through a multi-institutional effort involving the Secretariat of External Relations, the Secretariat of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of Security and Citizens, and the National Institute for Women (INMUJERES), largely treated civil society as peripheral, focusing on formal compliance with UN Resolution 1325 rather than on addressing structural inequalities or promoting transformative security policies. Similarly, the FFP, which introduced more ambitious and intersectional language and set also internal goals to change the institutional culture of the Secretariat of External Relations, was designed without meaningful consultation with feminist organizations or other civil society actors. This exclusion led to policies that, while rhetorically progressive, remain performative and limited in practice; they serve more as symbolic gestures or bureaucratic checkboxes than as instruments capable of challenging entrenched power structures. The Mexican experience thus exposes a fundamental paradox of feminist policy: even when institutions adopt feminist language or declare feminist ambitions, the absence of proactive and sustained engagement with civil society can render these policies superficial, reproduce existing hierarchies, and constrain their transformative potential. Genuine feminist policymaking, therefore, must go beyond declarations or top-down strategies, embedding civil society at the core of agenda-setting, drafting, and implementation to ensure accountability, legitimacy, and meaningful social impact.
Today there is a wealth of national and regional feminist networks and observatories—such as the RED Mexicana de Política Exterior Feminista (RED Mexicana PEF), the Observatorio de Política Externa Feminista Inclusiva (OPEFI) in Brazil, and the Plataforma de Política Exterior Feminista en América Latina (PEFAL) Research Centre based in Chile, among others —that provide rigorous expertise, policy analysis, and diverse perspectives. Their existence makes it increasingly difficult for the government to justify ignoring civil society input. These networks not only offer but also ensure that feminist policies are socially grounded and responsive to real needs. By actively engaging with these networks, the Mexican government, and Latin American governments in general, could move beyond performative gestures and develop policies that are truly transformative, intersectional, and capable of challenging entrenched hierarchies within both domestic and foreign policy arenas. Ignoring such organized expertise no longer reflects a lack of resources or knowledge, but a deliberate choice to maintain control over policy agendas, reinforcing the very bureaucratic and militarized logics that feminist policymaking seeks to dismantle.
The Mexican experience highlights a central challenge for feminist policymaking in Latin America: without the active and sustained participation of civil society, both WPS and feminist foreign policies risk becoming symbolic exercises rather than instruments of meaningful structural change. Genuine transformation requires moving beyond tokenistic gestures, embedding intersectional feminist principles at every stage of policy design, implementation, and evaluation, and valuing the expertise of networks, observatories, and grassroots organizations that bring lived experience to the table. Only by centering civil society, fostering accountability, and committing to substantive engagement can feminist foreign policies and WPS agendas fulfill their promise of challenging deep-seated hierarchies, reshaping security and diplomacy, and creating a more just, inclusive, and equitable world for all.
Author Bio: Isabel Hernandez Pepe is PhD Candidate in Transnational Governance at Scuola Normale Superiore and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. Her main research areas are feminist foreign policies (FFP), feminist international relations and feminist institutionalism.
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