The Challenge

The field of international peace and security suffers from a chronic lack of demographic and cognitive diversity, which harms its legitimacy, professional culture, and ability to solve complex global problems. This manifests in the under-representation of women in official and non-governmental positions (especially in senior management), discrimination, harassment, and exclusive research and communications. Such problems are amplified for women of colour and other minority groups. These problems need to be fixed today, and not reproduced in the next generation of professionals.

Our Approach

BASIC is a leading advocate for reforms to diversify the peace and security field, building on the norms set by the Women, Peace and Security and Youth, Peace and Security agendas, and parallel agendas in nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament forums. This not only means having more women ‘at the table’, eradicating ‘manels’, and enforcing diversity in policymaking, but also to ask more fundamental questions using a gendered analysis, like: ‘Who’s affected, who makes the decisions, and how are the health and lasting peace of a society impacted?’ In addition, we’re taking active steps to bake in this awareness through a robust and geographically diverse set of high-potential next generation stewards of the global nuclear order.

What we’re doing

1. The Emerging Voices Network: Each country has high-potential, next generation leaders on nuclear weapons issues who will eventually inherit the responsibility to manage the nuclear threat. Yet today they are siloed  and disconnected from each other, as there is no effective global network to enable cooperation, especially in the Global South. As a contribution to the 2020 NPT Review Conference, BASIC is organising two events specifically targeted at the NextGen of NPT stewards. These events are designed to springboard off the recent Youth, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation UN Resolutions, fostering a more robust dialogue and sense of purpose among like-minded youth from around the world. 
2. The Inclusive Think Tanks Toolkit: Launched in February 2021, the Inclusive Think Tanks Toolkit provides practical guidance to international affairs organisations who want to audit and improve their diversity, and has been developed jointly by BASIC, Chatham House and The Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP). The Toolkit was developed from a series of quarterly breakfast meetings on gender in international affairs bringing together experts and practitioners from academia and the international affairs community from around the UK for an open-ended conversation under Chatham House Rules.
3. Gender Champions in Nuclear Policy: BASIC has joined the Gender Champions in Nuclear Policy. As well as refusing to appear on all-male panels, BASIC’s Co-Directors have pledged the following commitments in 2020:
   • Increasing the diversity of our Executive Board, aiming for gender parity by 2021;
   • Ensuring that all BASIC staff feel skilled up on our gender work; and
   • Launching the Inclusive Think Tanks Toolkit and applying it internally. 
4. Overhauling our own HR Policies: As part of a wider refresh of our workplace policies, we are also reviewing and updating our HR policies to ensure we provide an equitable working environment to all staff members.
5. Publishing think pieces: BASIC looks to apply a gendered analysis across our programmes, as well as writing discrete analysis for the Outrider Foundation.

With thanks to our funders at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Global Affairs Canada and Outrider Foundation.