This article primarily assesses feminism’s achievements and challenges, particularly within the framework of the UN gender mainstreaming policy. The first part of the article explored different feminist inquiries into general law to question whether such inquiries have been successfully or properly reflected in the UN gender mainstream process. The second part focused on the progress made by the UN Security Council through its series of resolutions on Women, Peace and Security to examine the ways in which international institutions and international legal categories tend to exclude women and the issues of most concern to women. This analysis, owing much to the extensive literatures on female analyses on international law in the last two decades, led to the conclusion that despite the significant progress that has been made by feminist international lawyers, there remain many ongoing challenges before international law may fully embrace and reflect ‘true’ feminist values.

While a broad consensus exists over the necessity of reforming the Security Council, the disagreement among the different groups of member States prevails in great part due to the enlargement and category of membership and the working methods. Such divergence in views attributed to the stalemate in the debate over the Security Council’s reform. However, the recent discussion has gained momentum since the launch of the intergovernmental negotiation at the UN level. The key issues surrounding the UN Security Reform include the size of an enlarged Council, categories of membership with proper regional representation, the veto, working methods and relations with the General Assembly. It is essential not only to properly assess the content of the different proposals to bring out the most‘ sensible’solution, but the attitude of the five permanent members should also be closely examined. In any case, the potential changes in the structure of the Security Council would ultimately require a unanimous decision of the 5P States. This article aims to review the historical development of the Security Council’s reform debate and concentrate on the most contentious questions by analyzing the content of the relevant proposals to test the feasibility of each option.