Strange Bedfellows: Interrogating the Unintended Consequences of Integrating Countering Violent Extremism with the UN's Women, Peace, and Security Agenda in Kenya

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>In October 2015, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2242 calling on member states to work toward the greater integration of the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda with efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism. While the rapprochement between counterterrorism and WPS may appear to be a step forward, particularly for those seeking to increase women's participation in areas traditionally dominated by men, it is also potentially dangerous. This article makes a significant contribution to the larger debate on the WPS agenda by studying the impact and unintended consequences of linking WPS with countering violent extremism on the ground in Kenya. Based on original research in the field, including key informant interviews, I argue that in the Kenyan context, connecting WPS with violent extremism has had several damaging consequences for women and their communities. Far from advancing the WPS agenda, this new policy shift has caused tension between local and international priorities, precipitated the redirection of donor funding away from important gender initiatives and toward countering violent extremism, and resulted in women's additional stigmatization, insecurity, and exclusion.</jats:p>

Emerging Trends Within the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda

“…UNSCRs have linked WPS with counterterrorism since 2013. For example, UNSCR 2242 (2015) called for a gender-sensitive approach to counterterrorism, consultation with women's organisations and increases in the number of women in leadership positions (Aroussi 2020). However, counterterrorism measures tend to focus on a small number, which therefore do not address many WPS perspectives.…”

“…UNSCRs contain no agreed upon definition of violent extremism, which leaves them open to appropriation by particular states (Aroussi 2020). For instance, Aroussi (ibid.…”

“…There is a lot of research on sexual violence, and not much on state violence against indigenous people and gender minorities (ibid.). Countering violent extremism (CVE) policies drawing on WPS also fail to consider the complex dynamics of power and histories of conflict in many contexts (Aroussi 2020;Parashar 2019).…”

Women, Peace and Security Agenda

“…These concerns are as valid today particularly as WPS has explicitly included actions on the sphere of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) with the passing of Resolution 2242 which envisions women's pivotal role in fighting radicalization (Ni Aolain 2016). This development has been met with opposition from women's organisations in the Global South, often the "targets" of CVE interventions, who experience the unintended consequences of such priorities (Coomaraswamy 2015; see also Aroussi 2020). Arguments against this uneasy coupling point out that instrumentalising women as actors for international security and counter terrorism can contribute to engender further militarization and insecurities for women who navigate complex situations shaped by political violence and competing narratives of conflict, security and terrorism (Parashar 2019).…”

Gender at the crossroads: the role of gender in the UN’s global counterterrorism reform at the humanitarian-development-peace nexus

“…. ] to alter the priorities of many UN funds, agencies and programmes" (Altiok and Street 2020, i), and led to the securitisation of existing gender agendas (GAPS 2018;Shepherd 2017;Heathcote 2018;Aroussi 2020).…”