Peacebuilding

Citation:

Tachou-Sipowo, Alain-Guy. 2010. “The Security Council on women in war: between peacebuilding and humanitarian protection.” International Review of the Red Cross 92 (877): 197-219.

Author: Alain-Guy Tachou-Sipowo

Abstract:

Having established that massive human rights violations in armed conflict constitute a threat to peace and that women are the most severely affected by the scourge of war, the Security Council has since 1999 adopted a number of resolutions intended specifically for this group. These instruments contribute to the development of humanitarian law applicable to women and acknowledge the value of active participation by women in peace efforts. The following article first analyses the foundations on which the Council has been able to assume responsibility for protecting women in situations of armed conflict, and then considers the actual protection it provides. It concludes that the Council has had varying success in this role, pointing out that the thematic and declaratory resolutions on which it is largely based are not binding and therefore, they are relatively effective only as regards their provisions committing United Nations bodies. The author proposes that the Council’s role could be better accomplished through situational resolutions than through resolutions declaratory of international law.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, International Law, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Peacebuilding, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS

Year: 2010

Citation:

Pratt, Nicola, and Sophie Richter-Devroe. 2011. “Critically Examining UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 13 (4): 489–503.

Authors: Nicola Pratt, Sophie Richter-Devroe

Abstract:

Here, we introduce the articles that comprise this special issue of IFJP, entitled, 'Critically Examining UNSCR 1325'. The aim of this special issue is to examine the implementation of UNSCR 1325 and its implications for women's activism and for peace and security. Given that the articles in this volume approach UNSCR 1325 from various perspectives and in different contexts, our aim in this introduction is to point out a number of conceptual, policy and practical issues that are crucial in the debates around UNSCR 1325 specifically, and women, peace and security more broadly. We do this in four parts: first, problematizing the resolution in relation to changes in global governance; second, examining the Resolution's assumptions about (gendered) agency and structure; third, examining the Resolution's assumptions about the links between conflict and gender; and, fourth, comparing different contexts in which 1325 is implemented. To some degree, differences between contributors may be accounted for by different understandings of feminism(s) as a political project. Different feminisms may underpin different visions of peace and, consequently, different projects of peacebuilding. Ultimately, this volume, while answering the questions that we originally posed, throws up new questions about transnational feminist praxis.

Keywords: UNSCR 1325, Gender, gendered security, war, peace, participation

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Governance, Peacebuilding, Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325

Year: 2011

Citation:

McLeod, Laura. 2015. “A Feminist Approach to Hybridity: Understanding Local and International Interactions in Producing Post-Conflict Gender Security.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 9 (1): 48–69. doi:10.1080/17502977.2014.980112.

Author: Laura McLeod

Abstract:

Recently, the concept of hybridity has become popular within critical peacebuilding scholarship to explain the interplay of power between local and international actors in post-conflict contexts. However, a nuanced gender lens has often been missing from these analyses. This article develops a feminist critique and approach to hybridity in order to achieve a deeper sense of the effects that experiences and perspectives of international and local actors have upon peacebuilding initiatives. It begins to develop a feminist approach to hybridity via a case study of a gender security initiative concerned with challenging the prevalence of small arms and light weapons (SALW) abuse in domestic violence in Serbia. The article concludes by highlighting how this feminist perspective allows a richer understanding of the power relations shaping local and international interactions.

Keywords: feminism, hybridity, gender security, local, international

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Security, Weapons /Arms Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Serbia

Year: 2015

Citation:

Moola, Sarifa. 2006. "Women and Peace-Building: The Case of Mabedlane Women.” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 69 (21): 124-33.

Author: Sarifa Moola

Abstract:

This focus discusses the concept of peace-building and how women contribute to a culture of positive peace-building, contributions that have largely gone unnoticed and are generally undermined, compromised or destroyed by the culture of valuing money and greed. This culture is informed by the negative impacts of economic and cultural globalisation and by our government's economic policies which perpetuate poverty amongst women and children, particularly in rural areas. This focus will draw on a case study of a project in the Mabedlane community based in rural KwaZulu-Natal. The idea is to show how top-down peace-building programmes flounder because they fail to address unequal gender relations and power dynamics that exist in communities. As its methodology, this focus employed literature review, observation and personal interview.

Keywords: peacebuilding, bottom-up approach, women

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, NGOs, Peacebuilding, Race, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2006

Citation:

Guenther, Katja M. 2011. "The Possibilities and Pitfalls of NGO Feminism: Insights from Postsocialist Eastern Europe." Signs 36 (4): 863-87.

Author: Katja Guenther

Abstract:

This article identifies the problems and opportunities facing feminist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Drawing on the cases of feminist organizing in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and eastern Germany, I discuss the strategic advantages and disadvantages of NGO feminism, or feminism organized largely around service provisioning for women and the receipt of funds from state agencies and private foundations. I synthesize and move beyond existing scholarly and activist critiques of NGO feminism to identify and evaluate four potentially troubling aspects of this model of organizing, namely, formalization as a path to feminist neutralization, the inhibition of feminist countercultures, the loss of movement autonomy to develop agendas and make claims, and the lack of confrontation with existing structures of power. The article demonstrates the consequences of this type of movement development.

Keywords: NGO, systematic feminism, gendered politics, non-governmental organization, power structures, feminist neutralization

Topics: Democracy / Democratization, Development, Economies, Feminisms, Gendered Power Relations, NGOs, Peacebuilding, Political Economies, Political Participation, Post-Conflict Regions: Europe, Central Europe Countries: Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland

Year: 2011

Citation:

Björkdahl, Annika, and Johanna Mannergren Selimovic. 2014. “Gendered Justice Gaps in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Human Rights Review 15 (2): 201-18.

Authors: Annika Björkdahl , Johanna Mannergren Selimovic

Abstract:

A gendered reading of the liberal peacebuilding and transitional justice project in Bosnia–Herzegovina raises critical questions concerning the quality of the peace one hopes to achieve in transitional societies. By focusing on three-gendered justice gaps—the accountability, acknowledgement, and reparations gaps—this article examines structural constraints for women to engage in shaping and implementing transitional justice, and unmasks transitional justice as a site for the long-term construction of the gendered post-conflict order. Thus, the gendered dynamics of peacebuilding and transitional justice have produced a post-conflict order characterized by gendered peace and justice gaps. Yet, we conclude that women are doing justice within the Bosnian–Herzegovina transitional justice project, and that their presence and participation is complex, multilayered, and constrained yet critical.

Keywords: Gender, gender-just peace, transitional justice, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Critical agency

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Justice, International Tribunals & Special Courts, Transitional Justice, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina

Year: 2014

Citation:

Gizelis, Theodora-Ismene. 2011. “A Country of their Own: Women and Peacebuilding.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 28 (5): 522-42.

Author: Theodora-Ismene Gizelis

Abstract:

Research on women and post-conflict reconstruction tends to focus primarily on women as victims and passive targets for aid rather than conceptualizing peacebuilding as a process where greater participation by women may help increase the prospects for success. Here, I argue that women’s social status is a dimension of social capital that is largely independent of general economic development. Societies and communities where women enjoy a relatively higher status have greater prospects for successful peacebuilding, as cooperation by the local population with peacebuilding policies and activities increases. Thus, in the presence of a UN-led peacebuilding operation, women’s status has a direct and independent impact on post-conflict reconstruction. The theoretical claims are empirically assessed by looking at variation in levels of cooperation and conflict during the UN peacebuilding missions within the countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Keywords: peacebuilding, United Nations, women's organizations

Topics: Gender, Women, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia, Sierra Leone

Year: 2011

Citation:

Brown, Kris, and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin. 2015. "Through the Looking Glass: Transitional Justice Futures through the Lens of Nationalism, Feminism, and Transformative Change." The International Journal of Transitional Justice 9: 127-49.

Authors: Kris Brown, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Abstract:

In reflecting on the contemporary challenges and future directions of transitional justice theory and practice, this article addresses causality, accountability and political form in a triangulated assessment of nationalism’s power and ‘stickiness’ in the present formulations of transitional solutions. Addressing the identity politics of transitional justice brings us to assess the political forms that enable, define and consume transition with a particular hew to power-sharing and consociationalism-type arrangements in the aftermath of systematic atrocity. The authors provide a pragmatic, perhaps cynical account of the triumph of consociationalism as the preferred transitional accommodation, and point to the ‘dark side’ of governance arrangements in postconflict settings with implications for understanding cycles of violence and repeat conflict patterns. In both contexts, we deploy a feminist lens to understand the implications for women and gender transformation emerging from our framing of the politics of transitional justice in the contemporary moment.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Justice, Impunity, Transitional Justice, Nationalism, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Year: 2015

Citation:

Rimmer, Susan Harris. 2010. “Sexing the Subject of Transitional Justice.” The Australian Feminist Law Journal 32: 123-47.

Author: Susan Harris Rimmer

Abstract:

In the absence of the requisite political will at both the domestic and international level, transitional justice mechanisms can be manipulated or rendered impotent, whilst creating false expectations, waylaying the efforts of human rights advocates and costing millions of donor dollars. A feminist strategic legalist approach would focus on gaining the full participation of women in peace negotiations and key decisions about transitional justice processes and the development of a justice sector, and preserving evidence and acquiring data in relation to international and domestic gender crimes for the day when fair trials can be held. The formal ending of violence does not necessarily mean the achievement of peace, rather it provides a 'new set of opportunities that can be grasped or thrown away'. Law in a transitional period might hold an 'independent potential for effecting transformative politics' and 'liberalising' change. On the other hand, in the context of the societal breakdown caused by armed conflict, feminist scholars may be asking international law to engage in too much 'heavylifting'. If transitional justice represents theory and praxis in a liminal zone between international relations and international law, both of which have proved resistant to feminist analysis, why are many feminists so confident that transitional justice represents an opportunity for transformative change?

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, International Law, International Criminal Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Organizations, Justice, International Tribunals & Special Courts, War Crimes, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Political Participation, Post-Conflict, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights

Year: 2010

Citation:

Cook, Sharon Anne. 2007. “‘Sisters are Doin’ it for Themselves’: The Price of Ignoring Gender in Modern Peace Education.” Peace Research 39 (1-2): 59-74.

Author: Sharon Anne Cook

Abstract:

This article argues that the scholarly literature underpinning global and peace education largely ignores gender with troubling results. This omission makes incomprehensible a number of world crises, all of which could benefit from global and peace education. To chart the implications of this omission, this article first surveys peace education and pedagogy, demonstrating some of the intersections with the broader field of global education. Secondly, the article surveys the history of peace education, demonstrating the close interplay between women's activism and peace education. Finally, the article considers some of the effects of a gender blind analysis of peace education for students, for teachers, and for our collective future. In conclusion, the article calls us to reconsider and include gender issues within peace and global education, and to broaden what we define as peace education.

Topics: Education, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Health, HIV/AIDS, Peacebuilding Regions: Americas, North America, Europe

Year: 2007