Gender Peacebuilding And Reconstruction

This collection of articles explores conflict prevention through development projects in places where resources are scarce, and age-old agreements between groups come under strain.

Gender and Peacebuilding offers a comprehensive and up to date analysis of how and why gender matters in contemporary peace operations. It draws on a wide range of examples from across the world to offer a nuanced account of the UN's attempts to mainstream gender into peace operations via Security Council Resolution 1325, and assesses the successes and failures of this effort to enhance the participation and protection of women and girls in peacebuilding operations. In presenting this mixed picture of progress and ongoing challenges, the book argues for bold steps forward that will enable peacebuilding to contest the current neoliberal order, address structural inequalities, and bring about feminist visions of peace and security. It is only by focusing attention on the economic empowerment of women and its ability to temper the dangers of neo-liberalism in post-conflict contexts that feminists can hope to achieve these aims. Timely, critical and engaged, this book provides an invaluable guide to the issues for students of peace and conflict studies, and sets the agenda for future scholarship and advocacy.

Issues of socio-economic development, democracy and peace are linked to gender equality. This book argues that gender equality needs to be placed on the policy and programme agenda of the entire spectrum of peace and conflict-related initiatives and activities to achieve conflict transformation.

This book provides a critical assessment of the impact of UN Resolution 1325 by examining the effect of peacebuilding missions on increasing gender equality within conflict-affected countries. UN Resolution 1325 was adopted in October 2000, and was the first time that the security concerns of women in situations of armed conflict and their role in peacebuilding was placed on the agenda of the UN Security Council. It was an important step forward in terms of bringing women’s rights and gender equality to bear in the UN’s peace and security agenda. More than a decade after the adoption of this Resolution, its practical reality is yet to be substantially felt on the ground in the very societies and regions where women remain disproportionately affected by armed conflict and grossly under-represented in peace processes. This realization, in part, led to the adoption in 2008 and 2009 of three other Security Council Resolutions, on sexual violence in conflict, violence against women, and for the development of indicators to measure progress in addressing women, peace and security issues. The book draws together the findings from eight countries and four regional contexts to provide guidance on how the impact of Resolution 1325 can be measured, and how peacekeeping operations could improve their capacity to effectively engender security. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, gender studies, the United Nations, international security and IR in general.

This book defines the relationship between gender and international security, analyzing and critiquing international security theory and practice from a gendered perspective. Gender issues have an important place in the international security landscape, but have been neglected both in the theory and practice of international security. The passage and implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (on Security Council operations), the integration of gender concerns into peacekeeping, the management of refugees, post-conflict disarmament and reintegration and protection for non-combatants in times of war shows the increasing importance of gender sensitivity for actors on all fronts in global security. This book aims to improve the quality and quantity of conversations between feminist security studies and security studies more generally, in order to demonstrate the importance of gender analysis to the study of international security, and to expand the feminist research program in Security Studies. The chapters included in this book not only challenge the assumed irrelevance of gender, they argue that gender is not a subsection of security studies to be compartmentalized or briefly considered as a side issue. Rather, the contributors argue that gender is conceptually, empirically, and normatively essential to studying international security. They do so by critiquing and reconstructing key concepts of and theories in international security, by looking for the increasingly complex roles women play as security actors, and by looking at various contemporary security issues through gendered lenses. Together, these chapters make the case that accurate, rigorous, and ethical scholarship of international security cannot be produced without taking account of women’s presence in or the gendering of world politics. This book will be of interest to all students of critical security studies, gender studies and International Relations in general. Laura Sjoberg is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida. She has a Phd in International Relations and Gender Studies from the University of Southern California and is the author of Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq (2006) and, with Caron Gentry, Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics (2007)

Investigates the position of women in post-war situations throughout the world from three different perspectives which give emphasis to women as war-affected persons, social agents of change, and beneficiaries of assistance. Addressing political, economic and social reconstruction, the report examines how armed conflicts have influenced women's lives, how women in different war-affected countries have responded to the challenges and changes induced by war, and how external actors have attempted to address women's concerns in post-war situations. Bibliography.

Issues of socioeconomic development, democracy and peace are inextricably linked to gender equality. The main argument of Gender Mainstreaming in Conflict Transformation: Building Sustainable Peace is that gender equality needs to be placed on the policy programme of the entire spectrum of peace and conflict related initiatives and activities in order to achieve conflict transformation. These include conflict prevention and early warning mechanisms; peace negotiations and agreements; peacekeeping, disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration; truth and reconciliation commissions; post conflict reconstruction; and peace building and peace education. In the Commonwealth, as globally, armed conflict has moved into the village, the community, the street and the home, resulting in a gendered distribution of suffering among women and girls, and men and boys. What is less well known, however, is that women have been making significant contributions to peace processes and rebuilding their societies in all phases of the conflict. In recognition of this, in 2000 the United Nations Security Council made an urgent call in passing Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), for "the equal participation and full involvement of women in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security", and emphasised "the need to increase their role in decision making with regard to conflict prevention and resolution". Commonwealth Members Responsible for Women's/Gender Affairs, in their new Plan of Action for Gender Equality 20052015, reaffirmed the 30 per cent target for all women in all peace initiatives, which was endorsed by Heads of Government (CHOGM, Coolum, 2001), and encouraged member States to mainstream gender equality in all peace processes. Gender Mainstreaming in Conflict Transformation: Building Sustainable Peace is intended as a contribution to the achievement of these goals. It grew out of a series of symposia and workshops held by the Commonwealth Secretariat in the post Beijing decade in collaboration with other partners. These fora contributed a wealth of analysis and case studies that made it clear that women's participation in processes of democratisation, as well as in a broad spectrum of peace initiatives in Commonwealth countries, were not just an ideal but rather a reality that needed to be better understood by policy makers and other political and social actors working in fields including democracy, development, peace and conflict. This book brings together this body of work into an advocacy, capacity-building and policy tool to contribute to gender mainstreaming in all processes of conflict transformation and in building sustainable peace. As one of the Commonwealth Secretariat's publications on gender mainstreaming in key development issues, it will be of interest to those working to achieve gender equality, peace, democracy and sustainable development, particularly in situations of armed and other forms of conflict.