Peacebuilding

Citation:

Paarlberg-Kvam, Kate. 2021.“Open-Pit Peace: The Power of Extractive Industries in Post-Conflict Transitions.” Peacebuilding 9 (3): 289-310.

Author: Kate Paarlberg-Kvam

Abstract:

Three years after the peace accord signed by the Colombian government and the country’s largest guerrilla group, the guerrillas announced a return to arms. The announcement was met with dismay, but not surprise, as the numbers of murdered ex-combatants and social leaders rise and the government’s tepid commitment to the peace process sputters and stalls. At the centre of this violence have been the extractive industries. How should peace studies make sense of the power of extractivism, often described as a key element of postconflict reconstruction around the globe? This article focuses on Colombia as a case study of the contradictions of the postliberal peace, as stated commitments to gender justice and economic redistribution are undermined by commitments to mining and biofuel profits. A decolonial feminist lens, informed by Latin American anticapitalist feminists, sheds light on these contradictions and illuminates possibilities for a transformed peace in a postneoliberal world.

Keywords: extractivism, decoloniality, peacebuilding, Colombia

Topics: Armed Conflict, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Development, Extractive Industries, Gender Mainstreaming, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Peacebuilding, Security, Sexual Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2021

Citation:

Eschle, Catherine. 2016. “Faslane Peace Camp and the Political Economy of the Everyday.” Globalizations 13 (6): 912–14.

Author: Catherine Eschle

Annotation:

Excerpt:

"In what ways is ‘the everyday’ reproduced and reconfigured at protest camps? I pursue this question in my current research project, in which protest camps are defined as a ‘place-based social movement strategy that involves both acts of ongoing protest and acts of social reproduction needed to sustain everyday life’ (Feigenbaum, Frenzel, & McCurdy, 2013, p. 12). . . . buttressed by a feminist curiosity about the interconnections between the personal and political, I cling to the view that the reconfiguration of the everyday in protest camps is intrinsic rather than irrelevant to their political effect. In this short piece, I examine how daily life at Faslane Peace Camp, in Scotland, depends upon and fosters the critical interrogation of economic norms" (Eschle 2016, 912).

Topics: Economies, Care Economies, Feminist Economics, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Gender, Gender Roles, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Peace and Security, Peacebuilding, Rights, Women's Rights, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 2016

Citation:

Eschle, Catherine. 2017. “Beyond Greenham Woman?: Gender Identities and Anti-Nuclear Activism in Peace Camps.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 19 (4): 471–90.

Author: Catherine Eschle

Abstract:

This article investigates the discursive construction of gendered identities in anti-nuclear activism and particularly in peace camps. My starting point is the now substantial academic literature on Cold War women-only peace camps, such as that at Greenham Common. I extend the analysis that emerges from this literature in my research on the mixed-gender, long-standing camp at Faslane naval base in Scotland. I argue that the 1980s saw the articulation in the camp of the figure of the Gender-Equal Peace Activist, displaced in the mid-1990s by Peace Warrior/Earth Goddess identities shaped by radical environmentalism and reinstating hierarchical gender norms. I conclude that gendered identities constructed in and through anti-nuclear activism are even more variable than previously considered; that they shift over time as well as place and are influenced by diverse movements, not solely feminism; and that they gain their political effect not only through the transgression of social norms, but also through discursive linkage with, or disconnection from, political subjectivities in wider society. With such claims, the article aims to re-contextualise Greenham Woman in her particular place and time, and to contribute to a more expansive understanding of the gendering of anti-nuclear activism.

Keywords: Anti-nuclear, peace camps, gender identities, discourse analysis, Faslane peace camps

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Women, Peace and Security, Peacebuilding, Rights, Women's Rights, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2017

Citation:

Harvey, Kyle. 2014. “Personal Politics: Radical Feminism, Difference, and Anti-Nuclear Activism.” In American Anti-Nuclear Activism, 1975–1990, 68–92. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Author: Kyle Harvey

Abstract:

In the late 1970s, as the anti-nuclear movement began its large-scale revival, an array of women’s protest collectives and activist organizations formed, aiming to offer feminist perspectives on the nuclear threat and define an appropriate activist response. These new groups built upon, extended, and challenged the legacy of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), formed in 1915, Women Strike for Peace, formed in 1961, and a host of other women’s organizations and feminist groups involved tangentially in peace activism, women’s liberation, and related activity. In the 1980s, some female activists situated their peace protests within political and legislative institutions, drawing a great deal from the successes of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Others, more radical in their approach, used ideas about militarism, ecology, and personal expression to oppose nuclear arms as merely one of a myriad of crises threatening women the world over. Mirroring the meeting of women’s liberation and radical feminism in the late 1960s, these very different strands of feminist thought—and their expression within the anti-nuclear movement—reflect how much second-wave feminism changed during the 1970s. They also demonstrate the significance of the rise of cultural feminism in the 1970s and the subsequent marginalization of radical feminists from the wider women’s peace movement.

Topics: Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Peace and Security, Peacebuilding, Weapons /Arms Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2014

Citation:

Erzurum, Kemal and Berna Eren. 2014. “Women in Peacebuilding: A Criticism of Gendered Solutions in Postconflict Situations.” Journal of Applied Security Research 9 (2): 236–56.

Authors: Kemal Erzurum, Berna Eren

Abstract:

Women are the most suffering part of populations in conflicts. They are required to fulfill different responsibilities during and after conflicts. Considering this fact, participation of women at peacebuilding efforts in postconflict areas has been considered as sine qua non requirement. However, active participation of women at these efforts, particularly decision-making activities, has been hampered due to diverse reasons. The barriers that block women involved in peacebuilding processes as decision-makers should be reexamined and eliminated by eradicating inequalities. In this article, gender-based violence, underestimated plight of women in conflicts, gendered approach of peacebuilding efforts, and the barriers in front of women's active participation in decision-making processes are examined.

Keywords: women, peace, peacebuilding, conflict, decision making, gender

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Peacebuilding, Political Participation, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone

Year: 2014

Citation:

Yoshida, Keina, and Lina M Céspedes-Báez. 2021. “The Nature of Women, Peace and Security: A Colombian Perspective.” International Affairs 97 (1): 17–34.

Authors: Keina Yoshida, Lina M Céspedes-Báez

Abstract:

On 12 November 2019, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), handed down a landmark decision in the case of ‘Katsa Su’ concerning the Awa indigenous group in Colombia. The Colombian conflict has particularly affected indigenous groups, such as the Awa people, and has also affected the territory in which they live. In this article, we explore the decision of the JEP, within a broader analysis of the Colombian peace agreement and consider how it might help us to think about the place of the environment in the Women, Peace and Security agenda and in international law. We call for a gendered and intersectional approach to environmental peacebuilding which is attentive to the importance of gender and different groups. Further, we highlight how the Colombian example shows how concepts such as relief, recovery and reparations are often confined in international law to women's recovery and redress with respect to sexual violence and yet, this conceptualization should be much broader. The Katsa Su case provides an example of the fact that reparations and redress must address other forms of violence, spiritual and ecological, which women also suffer in times of conflict.

Keywords: Americas, Energy and Environment, International Governance, Law and Ethics, conflict, Security and Defence

Topics: Conflict, Environment, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Infrastructure, Energy, International Law, Peacebuilding, Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2021

Citation:

Cohn, Carol, and Claire Duncanson. 2020. “Women, Peace and Security in a Changing Climate.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 22 (5): 742-62.

Authors: Carol Cohn, Claire Duncanson

Abstract:

In this article, we argue that the effort to get the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda implemented in a series of bureaucratic institutions has pulled the agenda quite far from its original motivating intent. Indeed, going down the bureaucratic implementation rabbit hole has made it almost impossible for advocates to stay in touch with the foundational WPS question: how do you get to gender-just sustainable peace? As we approach the twentieth anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, we argue that WPS advocates need to return to that question, but in doing so, must also acknowledge the changed context. One striking change is that climate breakdown is both more acute and more apparent than in 2000, and any attempt to build gender-just sustainable peace will face serious climate-induced challenges. However, the climate crisis creates not only challenges for the WPS agenda, but also opportunities. The sustainability of peace and of the planet are inextricably linked, and we argue that the realization of the WPS agenda requires transformations to social, political, and, most importantly, economic structures that are precisely the same as the transformations needed to ward off greater climate catastrophe.

Keywords: women, peace and security, UNSCR 1325, feminist political economy, climate, peacebuilding

Topics: Economies, Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Peace and Security, Peacebuilding, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325

Year: 2020

Citation:

Cohn, Carol, and Claire Duncanson. 2020. “Whose Recovery? IFI Prescriptions for Postwar States.” Review of International Political Economy. 27 (6): 1214-34.

Authors: Carol Cohn, Claire Duncanson

Abstract:

In this article we argue that a feminist political economy (FPE) approach is critical in understanding why standard policy prescriptions for postwar economic recovery fail to support the building of sustainably peaceful countries and secure lives for their citizens. Whilst many scholars criticize the IFIs’ policies in war-affected countries, our FPE approach provides two overlooked but crucial insights. First, it reveals the disjunction (indeed, chasm) between a country’s economic recovery from war and the IFIs’ focus on the recovery of the economic system. Second, it locates the conceptual underpinnings of this chasm in the profoundly gendered assumptions of neoclassical economics. That is, we find the IFIs’ failure to prioritize financing the social infrastructure that could repair war’s damages, enhance human security, and support the ecosystems on which human security depends has its roots in the fundamental misconception of human reproductive, caring and subsistence labor, and of nature, as external to the economy rather than as central to the ability of the formal economy to function. We illustrate these points with a focus on one pervasive example of the IFIs’ approach to postwar recovery, their encouragement of the large-scale extraction and export of natural resources. Finally, we show how adopting the work of feminist economists who emphasize care, social reproduction and the value of nature, though not without its challenges, can offer radically new visions for postwar economies.

Keywords: feminist economics, feminist political economy, IFIs, peacebuilding, postwar economic recovery, security, sustaining peace, women, natural resources, extractivism, gender, World Bank, IMF

Topics: Economies, Feminist Economics, Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Gender, Women, International Financial Institutions, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Security, Human Security

Year: 2020

Citation:

Mueller-Hirth, Natascha. 2019. “Women’s Experiences of Peacebuilding in Violence-Affected Communities in Kenya.” Third World Quarterly 40 (1): 163–79.

Author: Natascha Mueller-Hirth

Abstract:

Despite the attention to gender and conflict in empirical positivist peace research, and the interest in local agency in recent peacebuilding literature, women’s understandings and lived experiences of peacebuilding are not necessarily well accounted for. This article, drawing on interviews, focus groups and observation research with 57 female victims/ survivors of post-election violence in Kenya, provides an ethnographic study of women’s largely informal peacebuilding activities, ranging from mediation and dialogue to economic empowerment. It analyses women’s constructions and ways of making sense of being peacebuilders, demonstrating that, while participants employed dominant gender frames, they exerted considerable transformative agency in their communities. It argues that their ‘gendered responsibility for peace’ at community level is simultaneously empowering and disempowering. The research aims to increase understanding of the gendered nature of peacebuilding and the ways in which women exercise peacebuilding agency through a focus on their own voices and lived experiences.

Keywords: gender, peacebuilding, women, Kenya, political violence, post-election violence

Topics: Gender, Gender Analysis, Women, Governance, Elections, Peacebuilding, Political Participation Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya

Year: 2019