Women Peacebuilding In Africa

This volume re-centres African women scholars in the discourse on African women and peacebuilding, combining theoretical reflections with case studies in a range of African countries. The chapters outline the history of African women’s engagement in peacebuilding, introducing new and neglected themes such as youth, disability, and religious peacebuilding, and laying the foundations for new theoretical insights. Providing case studies from across Africa, the contributors highlights the achievements and challenges characterising women’s contributions to peacebuilding on the continent. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of peacebuilding, African security and gender.

This book explores and reflects on peacebuilding, which emerges from the experiences and realities of women’s lives in East Africa, specifically, in Uganda. The author argues that often these community based peacebuilding efforts are responses to women's struggles for survival — both individually and for their families and communities. Carefully analyzing education, women's roles, human rights, conflicts, disability and immigration, this book helps to understand African women's roles in development and peacebuilding in the region. The project will interest development studies and African politics scholars, graduate students, researchers and policy makers.

There is often a moment in time that acts as a rallying point around a particular issue. 2015 was one of those moments for women, peace and security as numerous landmark anniversaries were celebrated in the field. Africa has, in many ways, been the global laboratory for the gender, peace and security agenda, not only because of the number of conflicts occurring on the continent but also because African regional organisations, governments and civil society organisations have been at the forefront of striving for gender equality and implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. This book explores gender, peace and security in Africa from multiple angles, including: the conceptual and implementation challenges and shifts around women, peace and security in Africa over the last 15 years; women’s role as combatants in national liberation forces in South Africa; the dynamics of gender in the military through the lens of Kenyan women combatants; food security through a feminist lens; and a series of case studies on the nexus between gender and security in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Somalia. This book was previously published as a special issue of the African Security Review.

This book provides a nuanced understanding of an often neglected aspect of armed conflicts, namely the everyday structures that sustain lives during crises and, specifically, care-work performed by women. It showcases the work of women as key protagonists and stresses their role as knowledge producers in studies of conflict. The author brings an original voice to the literature on women in conflict and peace-building showing the unpaid and less visible care-work that women do in the context of conflict and post-conflict and peacebuilding in Africa.

Debates about security governance in Africa and about the place of women within it have moved in parallel despite their interconnection. In this book, the authors align the debates, locating African-specific and feminist analysis within the security discourse.

UNSCR 1325 affirms the importance of women in peacebuilding and urges member states to increase representation of women at all decision-making levels in national, regional and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention , management and resolution of conflict. The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) held a workshop on Women and Peacebuilding in Africa 24-25 November 2008. Participants from the region gathered to reflect critically on the engagement of women in peacebuilding initiatives and to think through ways of implementing the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 more effectively.