Women Peacebuilding

This book clarifies some key ideas and practices underlying peacebuilding; understood broadly as formal and informal peace processes that occur during pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict transformation. Applicable to all peacebuilders, Elisabeth Porter highlights positive examples of women’s peacebuilding in comparative international contexts. She critically interrogates accepted and entrenched dualisms that prevent meaningful reconciliation, while also examining the harm of othering and the importance of recognition, inclusion and tolerance. Drawing on feminist ethics, the book develops a politics of compassion that defends justice, equality and rights and the need to restore victims’ dignity. Complex issues of memory, truth, silence and redress are explored while new ideas on reconciliation and embracing difference emerge. Many ideas challenge orthodox understandings of peace. The arguments developed here demonstrate how peacebuilding can be understood more broadly than current United Nations and orthodox usages so that women’s activities in conflict and transitional societies can be valued as participating in building sustainable peace with justice. Theoretically integrating peace and conflict studies, international relations, political theory and feminist ethics, this book focuses on the lessons to be learned from best practices of peacebuilding situated around the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Peacebuilding will be of particular interest to peace practitioners and to students and researchers of peace and conflict studies, international relations and gender politics.

A key book for conflict and peace studies, reveals the gendered nature of peacebuilding, its consequences, and the importance of women playing a part in peace processes in Africa.Even in the best of circumstances, women are all too often excluded from formal peacemaking and peacebuilding processes and relegated to the sidelines as observers or limited to informal peacebuilding strategies. Yet there is enormous potential in these strategies as women often strive to build bridges across political, ethnic, religious, clan and other differences through alliances arising from common concerns around violence, land, access to resources, and protection of their families and communities, and address sources of conflict at both national and local levels. Drawing on cutting-edge research by scholars and women''s rights activists in South Sudan, Sudan, Algeria, northern Nigeria, and Somalia, this book focuses on the consequences of the continuing exclusions of women from peace talks and from post-conflict governance structures. The case studies reveal how peacebuilding is gendered and why this matters in developing meaningful and sustainable approaches to peacebuilding. Examining how women activists have made a difference through informal peacebuilding activities, the contributors explore women''s efforts to reshapethe post-conflict context by struggling for legislative and constitutional reforms and by advocating for political representation and political inclusion more generally within peacebuilding processes. They also look at how women have pushed back against the conservative Islamist forces that today dominate much armed conflict in Africa. Suggesting that women''s formal participation in peace negotiations is vital in bringing about an end to conflict and preventing its resumption, as well as the one of the most effective strategies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and NGOs involved in development, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The book is the product of a research project on Women and Peacebuilding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.tures. The case studies reveal how peacebuilding is gendered and why this matters in developing meaningful and sustainable approaches to peacebuilding. Examining how women activists have made a difference through informal peacebuilding activities, the contributors explore women''s efforts to reshapethe post-conflict context by struggling for legislative and constitutional reforms and by advocating for political representation and political inclusion more generally within peacebuilding processes. They also look at how women have pushed back against the conservative Islamist forces that today dominate much armed conflict in Africa. Suggesting that women''s formal participation in peace negotiations is vital in bringing about an end to conflict and preventing its resumption, as well as the one of the most effective strategies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and NGOs involved in development, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The book is the product of a research project on Women and Peacebuilding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.lding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.tures. The case studies reveal how peacebuilding is gendered and why this matters in developing meaningful and sustainable approaches to peacebuilding. Examining how women activists have made a difference through informal peacebuilding activities, the contributors explore women''s efforts to reshapethe post-conflict context by struggling for legislative and constitutional reforms and by advocating for political representation and political inclusion more generally within peacebuilding processes. They also look at how women have pushed back against the conservative Islamist forces that today dominate much armed conflict in Africa. Suggesting that women''s formal participation in peace negotiations is vital in bringing about an end to conflict and preventing its resumption, as well as the one of the most effective strategies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and NGOs involved in development, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The book is the product of a research project on Women and Peacebuilding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.tures. The case studies reveal how peacebuilding is gendered and why this matters in developing meaningful and sustainable approaches to peacebuilding. Examining how women activists have made a difference through informal peacebuilding activities, the contributors explore women''s efforts to reshapethe post-conflict context by struggling for legislative and constitutional reforms and by advocating for political representation and political inclusion more generally within peacebuilding processes. They also look at how women have pushed back against the conservative Islamist forces that today dominate much armed conflict in Africa. Suggesting that women''s formal participation in peace negotiations is vital in bringing about an end to conflict and preventing its resumption, as well as the one of the most effective strategies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and NGOs involved in development, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The book is the product of a research project on Women and Peacebuilding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.lding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.lding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.tures. The case studies reveal how peacebuilding is gendered and why this matters in developing meaningful and sustainable approaches to peacebuilding. Examining how women activists have made a difference through informal peacebuilding activities, the contributors explore women''s efforts to reshapethe post-conflict context by struggling for legislative and constitutional reforms and by advocating for political representation and political inclusion more generally within peacebuilding processes. They also look at how women have pushed back against the conservative Islamist forces that today dominate much armed conflict in Africa. Suggesting that women''s formal participation in peace negotiations is vital in bringing about an end to conflict and preventing its resumption, as well as the one of the most effective strategies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and NGOs involved in development, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The book is the product of a research project on Women and Peacebuilding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.lding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.olution and peacebuilding. The book is the product of a research project on Women and Peacebuilding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.lding in Africa, funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.

The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (UNPBC) was established in December 2005 to develop outlines of best practice in post-conflict reconstruction, and to secure the political and material resources necessary to assist states in transition from conflict to peacetime. However, a 2010 review found that the hopes of the UN peacebuilding architecture had yet to be realized. Laura J. Shepherd draws upon original fieldwork that she conducted with the UNPBC to argue that the spatial politics of peacebuilding are not only gendered - such that they further marginalize and disadvantage indigenous.

Along with provocative theoretical and critical analyses of gender in Peace and Conflict Studies, this book shares concrete examples of peacebuilding work by women from various corners of the world book and highlights the need for a gendered lens in peacebuilding work

How and why do women's contributions matter in peace and security processes? Why should women's activities in this sphere be explored separately from peacebuilding efforts in general? Decisively answering these questions, Sanam Anderlini offers a comprehensive, cross-regional analysis of women's peacebuilding initiatives around the world. and highlights the endemic problems that stunt progress. Her astute analysis, based on extensive research and field experience, demonstrates how gender sensitivity in programming can be a catalytic component in the complex task of building sustainable peace and provides concrete examples of how to draw on women's untapped potential.

This book clarifies some key ideas and practices underlying peacebuilding; understood broadly as formal and informal peace processes that occur during pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict transformation. Applicable to all peacebuilders, Elisabeth Porter highlights positive examples of women’s peacebuilding in comparative international contexts. She critically interrogates accepted and entrenched dualisms that prevent meaningful reconciliation, while also examining the harm of othering and the importance of recognition, inclusion and tolerance. Drawing on feminist ethics, the book develops a politics of compassion that defends justice, equality and rights and the need to restore victims’ dignity. Complex issues of memory, truth, silence and redress are explored while new ideas on reconciliation and embracing difference emerge. Many ideas challenge orthodox understandings of peace. The arguments developed here demonstrate how peacebuilding can be understood more broadly than current United Nations and orthodox usages so that women’s activities in conflict and transitional societies can be valued as participating in building sustainable peace with justice. Theoretically integrating peace and conflict studies, international relations, political theory and feminist ethics, this book focuses on the lessons to be learned from best practices of peacebuilding situated around the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Peacebuilding will be of particular interest to peace practitioners and to students and researchers of peace and conflict studies, international relations and gender politics.

This book explores the peacebuilding ideas and experiences of Maasai and Gusii women of faith in Kenya. Women of faith across the world have long demonstrated their leadership in peacebuilding. They have achieved this despite their underrepresentation in formal peacebuilding systems and the persistent lack of consideration for their critical contributions, and in the face of insecurity and violence against their very bodies. Their efforts include daily practices of sharing resources, building social cohesion, promoting human relations, and interlinking psychological, social, political, and spiritual encounters. This book provides a gender-responsive peacebuilding framework that leverages the intersectionality of womens diverse identities and roles as they navigate both secular and religious spaces for peace. The book will appeal to researchers and teachers as well as practitioners and activists. Jaqueline Ogega (Ph.D., University of Bradford, UK) is a social scientist with extensive experience in international development, peacebuilding, and humanitarian relief programming and field research. She is the Senior Director of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion at World Vision USA, and the Co-Founder and president of Mpanzi: Empowering Women and Girls. She is the author of Home Is Us, a story about hope and resilience.