Critically Examining UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security

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. © 2011 Taylor & Francis

To settle for a gendered peace? Spaces for feminist grassroots mobilization in Northern Ireland and Bosnia-Herzegovina

“…1 I take the cue from recent debates that gesture towards the need to critically interrogate UNSCR 1325 in terms of its applicability to widely different conflict and post-conflict scenarios and in relation to its relevance to women's activism and everyday life in these contexts (Farr 2011;McLeod 2011). I am particularly interested in engaging with the tensions between the Resolution's commitment to highlighting the significance of women's agency and inclusion in peace and security, and the structural factors that may constrain women's agency and perpetrate gendered exclusions (Pratt and Richter-Devroe 2011;Shepherd 2011).…”

UNSC Resolution 1325 national action plans in Liberia and Sierra Leone: An analysis of gendered power relations in hybrid peacebuilding

“…They point out the double bind faced by local women's groups, such as when they are perceived as being 'deviant' or 'angry' (Gibbings 2011) if they do not follow the international agenda for how to implement Resolution 1325 while also facing difficulties mobilizing their own grassroots when relying on the international framework of the resolution. This results in limitations to who participates in implementation and how they participate (Pratt and Richter-Devroe 2011).…”

“…Gendered institutions, norms, and values therefore determined the answer to the question of 'how' participation happened in drafting of and advocating for Resolution 1325 (Cohn 2004, 13). Pratt and Richter-Devroe (2011) raise the question of who participates and how they participate during the implementation of Resolution 1325: 'When 1325 calls for empowering women and supporting so-called indigenous women's peace strategies, we thus need to ask critically which women and which indigenous strategies?' (498).…”

“…Reflecting on the previous respondents' comments on their use of the NAPs, it is a disheartening possibility that NAPs may benefit the international interveners and donors more than the local women they are supposed to support; it may therefore be an example of cooption of the 'national' by the 'international', as referenced in the incentivizing power of Mac Ginty's model (2011). Furthermore, this clearly represents an example of how the gendered power in hybridity privileges certain ways of implementing Resolution 1325 over others (Pratt and Richter-Devroe 2011). This is not to say that the groups in question have no genuine concern for the needs and issues facing women, but instead that their work and dedication had been redirected by the international through the gendered incentivizing power of the hybrid peace.…”

“…Those involved had been trying to revive the committee and extend its reach, but with little current success due to capacity constraints. 6 This illustrates the present critique of hybridity's inattention to gendered power relations; the question of which women's groups did or did not participate reflects the privileging of groups who could access the 'international' compared to groups who were less connected or who 'deviated' from the international agenda (Pratt and Richter-Devroe 2011). Inclusions and exclusions of those involved with the production and implementation of NAPs produces highly gendered divisions of public/private wherein groups with international connections are more likely to be a part of public discourses about women, peace and security in Liberia and Sierra Leone.…”