Mar 19 2026

Will the U.S.-Facilitated Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Deal Advance the WPS Agenda?

03/19/2026 Roman Gojayev

Russia’s weakened position in the post-Soviet space, particularly in the South Caucasus, gave the United States the opportunity to mediate in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territorial dispute rooted in ethnic tensions and issues of regional control described by U.S. President Donald Trump as one of the “unendable wars”.

In August 2025, Trump announced a significant peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan in which Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a Joint Declaration for the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a corridor through Armenia connecting Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave.

While not a treaty, this major milestone aims to help establish a lasting peace after decades of conflict through both economic and political elements. It involves U.S. private companies in joint infrastructure projects along the corridor. With this agreement, Armenia gains partnerships on border security, diversification, and connectivity with Russia and Asia while Azerbaijan secures commitments in trade, energy, and digital infrastructure linking Türkiye and Europe.

Shared patriarchal norms and gendered governance practices in both countries raise important questions about women’s roles in implementing the TRIPP agreement. In particular, questions surround the countries’ meaningful engagement with the four pillars of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda: prevention, participation, protection, and relief and recovery.

Established in 2000, WPS refers to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, the landmark resolution recognizing the disproportionate impact of conflict on women and girls and asserting their equal participation in all security efforts, protecting them from violence, and incorporating gendered perspectives in peace processes. WPS’s pillars provide a useful framework for Armenia and Azerbaijan as they negotiate peace.

This analysis examines the extent to which the U.S.-facilitated TRIPP agreement is likely to advance the WPS agenda in the South Caucasus. It considers the conditions under which TRIPP could reinforce existing security practices or enable more gender-responsive peacebuilding by looking at the intersection of current government interventions, promises of the agreement, and local-global developments.

Caucasian Women in the WPS Framework

Although Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a “frozen conflict” since their independence, the WPS agenda did not receive much attention. It took more than two decades of peace and security not being on the table for both countries to consider establishing National Action Plans (NAPs) to implement that agenda, even though women on both sides of the conflict have been subjected to torture and sexual violence, taken hostage, and displaced. In the 1990s, 613,000 Azerbaijanis, including 316,000 women, were internally displaced from Karabakh. In 2020, control over the region changed, which drove more than 91,000 Armenians – 80% of them women – to flee the region.

The adoption of NAPs is often presented as evidence of commitment to the WPS agenda. In practice, however, these frameworks sometimes function as symbolic instruments to signal international compliance. The picture is slightly different in the Caucasus:

In 2019, Armenia adopted its first WPS NAP. However, implementation was limited due to renewed hostilities and security tensions. After 44 days of armed conflict in 2020, the Armenian government introduced a second NAP. While the plan emphasized women’s participation in decision-making, few concrete mechanisms or funding commitments were established. Women remained absent from official negotiation and peacebuilding processes, and most planned actions were not realized. With lessons learned and support from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), Armenia adopted its third NAP in 2025. As a part of the NAP creation process, Armenia collaborated with civil society actors to evaluate previous efforts and appointed female leaders as implementing partners.

Azerbaijan drafted its first WPS NAP for 2020-2022 shortly before the second Nagorno-Karabakh war. Simultaneously, government priorities shifted toward military spending and away from gender- and peace-related commitments. With revisions, the plan extended to 2025. Despite the fact that the Azerbaijani government organized public events promoting UNSCR 1325, and that civil society organizations (CSOs) established educational platforms for raising awareness, the NAP still remains in draft form. In 2025, Azerbaijan adopted the National Action Plan on Gender Equality for 2026–2028, combating national inequality measures separately from its WPS commitments. The only aspect that aligns with peace and security is research about the socio-economic circumstances of the formerly displaced women who returned to Karabakh within the “Great Return” resettlement project after Azerbaijan gained control.

While both countries’ NAPs were well-drafted, implementation remains a serious issue intersecting political insecurities and increasing militarization efforts.

Feminist Analysis of the Challenges and Opportunities

The involvement in this peace process by the U.S., historically known as a major development stakeholder, represents possible positive outcomes. However, a mediation process led by the current presidential administration, which has prioritized anti-rights rhetoric and policies in U.S. foreign relations, may risk sidelining potential WPS commitments by Armenia and Azerbaijan.

With the U.S. systematically weakening the implementation capacity of the WPS Act of 2017, and the lack of women representation in the TRIPP agreement, prospects for further feminist development in already patriarchal societies are increasingly sidelined. While diplomatic momentum creates openings for post-conflict recovery, the current framing of the peace process remains gender blind by reinforcing existing power hierarchies.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have both already taken significant steps toward commitments to peace. For example, Aliyev announced the lifting of all restrictions on cargo transit toward Armenia, and Pashinyan publicly blamed Soviet-era propaganda for fomenting Armenian hatred for Azerbaijanis. Importantly, Yerevan organized a “Peace Bridge” initiative to bring representatives of Armenian and Azerbaijani civil society together following an exchange in Baku. Such moves reflect a growing trust between the countries.

Additionally, they actively promoted equality efforts by involving women in security interventions. In 2024, Azerbaijan deployed women deminers to clear land contaminated with 1 million indiscriminately planted mines. In the same year, Armenia appointed its first female minister of Internal Affairs. These developments indicate the willingness of both governments to pursue further progress.

That said, the following developments should be taken into consideration when integrating relevant policy interventions in the South Caucasus:

Financing Development: The U.S. was one of the top providers of development finance globally until recently. According to a congressional report, Washington allocated $415 million to WPS-relevant programming globally between 2019–2024. In 2025, when the Trump administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and suspended 83% of its programs, government agencies and CSOs in Armenia and Azerbaijan lost a large source of key funding and support.

Integrating Feminist Political Economy: Justice should be central to WPS policy implementation. Peace processes centered on transport corridors and economic connectivity risk reproducing extractive models of development by relying on women’s unpaid care work as informal labor. Studies show women in Nagorno-Karabakh pay the cost of reinforced militarism that reproduces gender stereotypes with unpaid labor for decades.

Empowering Participation: WPS’s participation pillar cannot be meaningful if women continue to face significant barriers to access participation. Given that the governmental institutions assigned to deliver the outcomes of the NAPs were led by mostly men in both countries, it is important to consider alternative women’s leadership involvement. However, Armenia curtails freedom of _expression_, and Azerbaijan suppresses human rights defenders, making it difficult for women to be part of peacebuilding dialogue, normalization, and post-agreement  reconstruction.

Strengthening Accountability: Armenia and Azerbaijan have tended to use patriarchal narratives to justify women`s exclusion, reflecting entrenched norms that paint security as a male domain. These narratives position women only as caregivers or medical workers. Despite the agreement’s existence, women have remained absent from Track 1 diplomacy, and the WPS agenda remains largely ignored.  

Transforming Agency: Both countries understand women in the context of conflict as “victims,” depriving women of their agency. Research demonstrates that mothers from each side oppose the continuation of a war  that puts their sons’ lives at risk. Women’s opposition to renewed conflict emerges not from biological essentialism of maternal identities but from their structural position as caregivers who absorb the long-term social costs of militarization.

For the United States:

Condition TRIPP implementation benchmarks on compliance with UNSCR 1325, including minimum thresholds for women’s representation in corridor governance bodies and dispute-resolution mechanisms.

Appoint special envoys to U.S. Embassy political teams in Baku and Yerevan to monitor NAP commitments by involving local municipalities, the U.N. and CSOs.

Ring-fence gender-responsive funding within all TRIPP-related infrastructure contracts (74% U.S. stake), requiring contractors to include gendered impact assessments, local women’s employment protections, and safeguards.

Actively promote women’s leadership in mediation, reconstruction, and post-conflict governance in the corridor by integrating feminist political economy measures.

Provide sustainable funding for local CSOs and IDP leaders in border regions, such as Syunik and Gazakh;

Promote peace in local communities; empower cross-border women journalists, artists, and filmmakers to document  developments; support regional dialogue platforms for trust-building; organize academic conferences (including Georgia and Türkiye).

For the Government of Armenia:

Armenia should revise its third WPS NAP by:

involving women economists in the monitoring of the corridor infrastructure;  

understanding the needs of local women in the corridor-crossing areas;

involving internally displaced persons (IDPs) in peacebuilding initiatives;  

providing sustainable finance for long-term impact;

assigning specific CSOs to be part of the commissions of implementing actors.
 

For the Government of Azerbaijan:

Azerbaijan should officially adopt its first WPS NAP by:

integrating the means of the recent peace deal;

enlarging stakeholder engagement with young CSOs and local IDP communities;  

evaluating  the needs of returned women in the corridor-crossing areas;  

providing returned women digital citizenship education and entrepreneurship skills

involving women in the “Great Return” resettlement program design and implementation.

For Both Armenia and Azerbaijan

Legislate NAPs into policy instruments, including dedicated budget lines, parliamentary oversight, and sanctions for noncompliance by implementing ministries.

Establish joint Armenia–Azerbaijan Peace Councils in corridor-affected regions with formal consultative authority over resettlement and land use.

Institutionalize accountability through publicly accessible annual reporting, independent monitoring of WPS commitments and gender responsive early warning systems led by CSOs.

Invest in services for women and veteran men affected by war, including psychosocial and economic reintegration programs.

Partner with informal education experts and policymakers to integrate gender-sensitive, peace-focused education curricula.

Organize large-scale civil society dialogue involving youth, IDPs, researchers, and artists for co-creation of an intergenerational peace process.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not an official policy or position of New Lines Institute.

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