National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security are among the most visible commitments a government can make to the women living under its authority. They signal intent. They structure resources. They name priorities. And they are supposed to be accountable.

Yet most NAPs, particularly across Africa, are rarely read critically. 

The Beyond 1325 NAP tracker focuses exclusively on Africa. It is grounded in the conviction that the Women, Peace and Security agenda, as it has been operationalised through NAPs, has too often been shaped by donor expectations, international templates and UN system frameworks that do not adequately reflect African women's lived realities, African conflict typologies, or the African regional normative architecture that should be informing these plans. The result, across too many NAPs, is documents that perform WPS compliance without driving WPS change.

The Beyond1325 NAP Tracker is analytical, evidence-based and committed to holding the gap between what NAPs promise and what they deliver.

What We Assess

Every NAP entered in the Beyond1325 tracker is assessed across three domains, fourteen questions, and a set of analytical fields that together produce both a quantitative score and a qualitative profile.

The three domains reflect the full lifecycle of a NAP:

Domain 1 — Design and Grounding ask whether the NAP was built with and for the women it claims to serve. A well-designed NAP should reflect genuine consultation with diverse women's groups, engage seriously with the country's specific conflict landscape including everyday insecurities beyond armed conflict, draw on African regional frameworks alongside UN instruments, and integrate civil society meaningfully rather than symbolically.

Domain 2 — Accountability and Implementation asks whether the NAP was built to be implemented. This means examining whether a dedicated budget exists, whether the implementing structure has the political weight and operational mechanisms to function, whether baseline data grounds the targets, whether indicators measure outcomes rather than activities and whether accountability flows downward to affected communities rather than exclusively upward to government and outward to international reporting cycles.

Domain 3 — Evidence of Impact asks whether implementation happened and whether it changed anything. This domain is scored only where independent evidence exists — government progress reports, civil society monitoring, academic evaluations. NAP self-reporting is not treated as sufficient evidence of impact.

Each of the fourteen questions is scored on a 0 / 1 / 2 scale:

• 2 — Substantial or clearly evidenced
• 1 — Partial or weak
• 0 — Absent or not evidenced

The maximum score is 28. Scores are intended to be read comparatively across NAPs and over time, not as absolute judgements on any single country or government. A low score reflects the design and implementation architecture of the plan, not a verdict on the state of women's peace and security in that country.

The full scoring guide, including precise descriptions of what earns a 0, 1 or 2 for each question is available here. [link to scoring framework document]

A notes column accompanies every score. The note is the evidence. Readers are encouraged to follow the cited sources and form their own judgements.

Beyond the scoring table, each NAP entry includes a section called Beyond the Document. This is a set of analytical fields that capture dimensions the numerical score cannot fully convey:

• Everyday security issues named — what non-conflict insecurities the NAP acknowledges, however briefly
• Local grounding — whether the NAP follows a donor template closely, adapts it meaningfully, or departs from it with a country-specific architecture
• Independent feminist or civil society analysis available — whether external critical scrutiny of the NAP exists beyond the government's own reporting
• Community-level reach evidence — whether any evidence exists that implementation reached the communities most affected
• Donor influences visible — whether the fingerprints of international funding and donor expectations are visible in the document's framing, structure or priorities
• International language dominance — whether the NAP's normative foundation is drawn primarily from UN system frameworks or whether African regional instruments are substantively integrated

These fields are not scored. They are analytical observations supported by evidence. Together with the scoring table they produce a profile. A picture of what kind of document the NAP is, not just how well it performs against a checklist.

Beyond1325 applies particular analytical attention to whether NAPs engage with Africa's own normative WPS architecture. This includes the Maputo Protocol, the ECOWAS Regional Action Plan on UNSCR 1325, the AU Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, the AU Continental Results Framework on Women Peace and Security and AU Agenda 2063.

These instruments are not peripheral to WPS in Africa. They are foundational. A NAP that references CEDAW and UNSCR 1325 but not the Maputo Protocol is a NAP oriented toward New York and Geneva rather than toward Addis Ababa and the women it serves.

No analytical framework is complete. Beyond1325's tracker does not measure:

• The broader political context within which a NAP was developed or implemented
• The individual commitment or capacity of implementers within government or civil society
• Factors shaping women's security that fall outside the NAP's scope or mandate
• The quality of women's lived security conditions independent of the NAP

A country may have a weak NAP and strong WPS outcomes driven by factors beyond the plan. A country may have a strong NAP and poor outcomes driven by political instability, funding collapse or institutional failure. The tracker assesses the plan and its implementation architecture, not the full complexity of women's peace and security in any given country.

This framework will be refined as more NAPs are analysed. Patterns across the African NAP landscape may reveal questions that need adding, distinctions that need sharpening or fields that need reconsidering. Each tracker entry notes the version of the framework under which it was assessed. Where the framework is updated substantially, existing entries will be reviewed and updated accordingly.

Beyond1325 welcomes critical engagement with this methodology from researchers, practitioners, civil society organisations and most importantly, from the regular woman these plans are meant to serve.

P.S.: Beyond1325 is an independent analytical platform. It is not funded by any government, donor or international organisation. All assessments reflect the independent judgement of the Beyond1325 team based on publicly available evidence.