In commemoration of International Women’s Day, the Organization of American States (OAS) held an extraordinary session of the OAS’ Permanent Council devoted to the crucial role women play in driving digital transformation and its interplay with peace and security. Recognizing that this era of technological change holds the promise of enabling innovation, driving market competitiveness and reshaping the global economy, the extraordinary session was as much a call to action to dismantle barriers and promote women’s meaningful participation in digital life as a celebration of their contributions within this space across the Western Hemisphere.
In this context, with a focus on women’s pivotal role in the digital transformation of the Americas, OSF was invited to brief the 34 member states on its work advancing the women, peace and security agenda in the digital ecosystem. Vice President of Our Secure Future (OSF), Sahana Dharmapuri, framed her remarks before the permanent council to introduce innovative tools to advance women, peace and security efforts worldwide and strengthen implementation, while heeding blind spots amid the geopolitical technology race that call for swift responses from peace and security actors. If government, security and technology decision-makers incorporate WPS into the design of AI and digital technologies, and into evolving infrastructure at an early stage of this technological transformation, they will account for key WPS pillars. Pillars that include women’s full inclusion in peace and security decision-making, protection and prevention from online violence.
These initial blind spots fail to account for the long-term security implications this technology can have, jeopardizing the very progress we commemorated this March for Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day.
The newly launched Our Secure Future (OSF) report titled Women, Peace and Security and Technology Futures: What World Are We Building? outlines these blind spots and how applying a Women, Peace and Security (WPS) lens to digital innovations helps proactively identify these challenges and solutions. At the extraordinary session, OSF spoke alongside other expert panelists, including Lucía Velasco, former Head of AI Policy, United Nations Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies. In her remarks, OSF Vice President Dharmapuri put it succinctly “When we apply this WPS lens, we find that women are asking, who is making these decisions, who is designing these technologies and this whole technological ecosystem and who is left out?…It is women and civil society that are raising these questions and coming up with innovative technological solutions and answers to those problems.”
When Security is Written in Code
Security decision-making no longer occurs through diplomatic channels or by traditional military command structures. Increasingly, much of that decision-making relies on algorithms, data models, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems to evaluate risk and responses, rapidly transforming modern warfare. The growth of this trend and its swift, wide-reaching application has come with a lack of transparency into how these companies create data models and the data they use to determine their recommendations. In conflict environments, particularly in high-risk, and high-pressure decision-making scenarios, this technology can contribute to an overconfidence and to reliance on it with little to no human discernment, at a pace considerably faster than that of policy-making, as detailed in the report.
OSF Vice President Dharmapuri articulated the nature of this shift before the council. “Today, peace and security are more dependent on algorithms than diplomacy”
Adding that, “We are in a once-in-a-lifetime transformation geopolitically. I don’t think anyone can argue with the fact that we are witnessing a race for economic and military dominance through the push for the development of these technologies.”
These dangers are beyond just possibilities. OSF’s Women’s, Peace, and Security and Technology Futures report documents how in adequate training data, limited transparency, and algorithmic bias can lead to flawed results when the systems are applied in conflict environments. As security actors employ this emerging technology without a comprehensive, inclusive review and oversight process, they risk exacerbating the fragile and complex insecurity contexts this technology is intended to address. Much of this technological development has materialized without consultation with a broad range of stakeholders, including civil society leaders and policymakers with expertise in assessing social impact.
Representation Gaps and Their Consequences
Experts’ remarks at the OAS Special Meeting of the Permanent Council presented the ongoing sociocultural and structural barriers that disproportionately affect women’s access to opportunities and participating in the digital economy and wider digital life. Recent Deloitte research highlights “There’s a relative lack of women working in AI roles. Women only make up about 30% of the AI related workforce, which is comparable to their representation in STEM fields overall.” This underrepresentation of women in the AI workforce can have serious implications, as its application across sectors, including peace and security continues to expand.
Decision-making environments that lack diverse perspectives can encounter difficulties in detecting risks, including AI system biases that enable online violence against women. The study of these missing elements using digital systems is necessary because they pose risks that undermine institutional credibility, social cohesion and stability.
OSF Vice President Dharmapuri identified women’s meaningful participation in technology design and operations, in addition to consultations with women-led and security civil society organizations, as needing attention: “When we apply this WPS lens, we find that women are asking, who is making these decisions, who is designing these technologies and this whole technological ecosystem and who is left out?”
The lack of these viewpoints becomes evident through the distribution of targeted and strategic misinformation and disinformation campaigns directed at women political leaders. Addressing these challenges requires incorporating gender analysis into both policy frameworks and system design.
In 2000, the passage of the landmark UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security was the product of decades of multilateral and sectoral efforts to achieve women’s equal participation and meaningful involvement in all peace and security efforts. Technology companies should work to increase women’s leadership in the emerging technology workforce, or risk leaving out key metrics in hard-won, historic international agreements crafted to promote greater global stability and prosperity from the digital apparatus that informs today’s security decision-making. Doing so increases the risk of perpetuating online violence against women and girls, sociocultural biases and wider disinformation campaigns that undermine women’s political participation and further hinder democracies.
Integrating WPS Principles into Technology Policy
There is increased effort to integrate WPS principles with digital governance. OSF has been a key player in meeting the needs of the moment, providing convening opportunities for policymakers, civil society, and the private sector to assess WPS applications in technology and develop recommendations for leveraging new tools to bolster the WPS agenda. The latest symposium provided a forum for over 80 civil society leaders, policymakers and technologists to discuss the crossover between technology and WPS and innovative solutions.
During the briefing, Dharmapuri introduced the WPS Multi-Framework AI Tool to assist with integrating WPS considerations into institutional policy and operations. OSF Fellow Jesper Frant designed the AI agent to serve as a curated advisory and benchmark metric, informed by Women, Peace and Security national action plans, organizational commitments and security policy data. As a demo, the agent already produces more comprehensive, nuanced results than available AI models because it was designed with essential WPS framing questions in mind and a curated corresponding dataset.
This WPS AI Agent also showcases civil society’s technological expertise and is one of many initiatives leveraging technology to better address challenges and advance regional and global mandates, such as WPS. The urgency of implementing WPS principles into the development of emerging technologies correlates with broader geopolitical dynamics. Technologically-driven economic and security competition among nation-states demarcates a large component of this urgency.
OSF strongly believes that policymakers can develop and leverage technologies without compromising inclusive governance. Developing technology that adheres to the WPS principles at the outset can enhance accountability and reduce the likelihood of long-term negative peace and security implications, while supporting progress.
The consensus among the OAS member states for International Women’s Day was clear: advancing digital development across the Americas, requires a commitment to inclusive governance and technological development. Integrating WPS into digital frameworks helps serve to address current challenges and mitigate future security risks.
