201210genderpeacebuilding en

7/31/2019 201210GenderPeacebuilding En

1/24

Understanding confict. Building peace.

Gender in

PeacebuildinGTkg stk

J e-bs

J 2012


2/24

at itt atInternational Alert is a 26-year-old independent peacebuilding organisation. We work

with people who are directly aected by violent conict to improve their prospects opeace. And we seek to inuence the policies and ways o working o governments,international organisations like the UN and multinational companies, to reduceconict risk and increase the prospects o peace.We work in Arica, several parts o Asia, the South Caucasus, the Middle East and LatinAmerica, and have recently started work in the UK. Our policy work ocuses on severalkey themes that inuence prospects or peace and security the economy, climatechange, gender, the role o international institutions, the impact o development aid,and the eect o good and bad governance.

We are one o the worlds leading peacebuilding NGOs with more than 159 sta basedin London and 14 feld ofces. To learn more about how and where we work, visitwww.international-alert.org.

The contents o this document are the sole responsibility o International Alert andcan under no circumstances be regarded as the position o DFID.

International Alert 2012All rights reserved. No part o this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval systemor transmitted in any orm or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orotherwise, without ull attribution.

Layout and illustration by D. R. ink, www.d-r-ink.com


3/24

Gender in PeacebuildinGTkg stk


4/24

2 International Alert

abouT The auThor

Judy El-Bushra is an independent consultant specialising in research and

programme design on conict and peace. She has over 35 years experience inthe feld o gender, peacebuilding and development, the last 13 o which she hasspent in senior-level management positions with International Alert and ACORDand engaging in Arican ragile state-ocused consultancy work.

acKnoWledGeMenTS

We would like to thank the UK Department or International Development (DFID),

who contributed to unding this research through a Programme PartnershipAgreement with Alert. We are also grateul to the participants o the Nepal andBurundi roundtables and the Alert Nepal and Burundi feld sta, and to MinnaLyytikainen, Charlotte Onslow and Ndeye Sow or their contributions to the feldresearch and to the report.


5/24

GENDER IN PEACEBUILDING: TAKING STOCK 3

conTenTS

Executive summary 4

Introduction 5

1. What light can a gender perspective throw on conict analysis? 7

2. How can an understanding o gender identities contribute to eectivepeacebuilding? 10

3. What does gender and peacebuilding mean to practitioners and

decision-makers in the feld? What do they do and what challengesdo they ace? 13

4. What are the dierent approaches that underlie gender andpeacebuilding work? 17

Conclusion 20


6/24


execuTive SuMMary

This report reects the fndings o the preparatory stage o a three-year research

project exploring the role o gender in peacebuilding. The starting point orthe research was International Alerts belie that a gender approach, as a keycomponent in the understanding o power dynamics, is critical to successulpeacebuilding. The research hypothesis was that gender dynamics orm aresource or peacebuilding which peacebuilders generally make insufcientuse o, but that examples o projects and research do exist rom which to drawlessons, and thereby improve peacebuilding practice.

This frst stage o research confrmed the hypothesis, but identifed a number

o conceptual challenges and contradictions in the feld o gender andpeacebuilding. To acilitate the urther exploration o these, a broad typology opeacebuilding programmes was proposed, based on the identifcation o threedierent approaches to gender:

Type 1: gender-blind approaches, in which the possibility o dierential outcomesor men and women, or o outcomes that impact on relations between them, iseither not acknowledged or considered to be incidental;

Type 2: approaches developed in the rame o UN Security Council Resolution1325, in which it is axiomatic that women are more vulnerable and marginalisedthan men, and which apply gender analysis with the specifc aim o counteractingthis tendency or the betterment o women and o society more broadly;

Type 3: gender-relational approaches, which take a context specifc relationalgender analysis as their starting point and which aim at better beneft sharinggenerally, on the assumption that this leads to more peaceul outcomes or all.

Programmes adopting a Type 3 approach are under-represented in peacebuildingportolios. As a result, little evidence is available on which to base discussiono the strengths and weaknesses o the approach. During the remainder othe research project, Alert will work with other organisations in a number opeacebuilding contexts to identiy and examine examples o gender-relationalprojects, and draw lessons about their design and implementation which can beapplied by peacebuilders.


7/24


inTroducTion

This report reects the fndings o the preparatory stage o a three-year research

project exploring the role o gender in peacebuilding. The report is the outcome othe two main activities undertaken in the preparatory phase: the frst a review ocurrent literature relevant to the roles o men and women, and o gender relations,in violent conict and peacebuilding; and the second a series o workshops inBurundi and Nepal which explored how practitioners, government representativesand donors viewed the issues. The report summarises the fndings o these twoactivities, and presents tentative conclusions that will be urther explored in laterphases o the research.

The starting point or the research was International Alerts belie that a genderapproach, as a key component in the understanding o power dynamics, is criticalto successul peacebuilding. International Alert ormulated its initial thinking orthis research project in the ollowing terms:

I we are to be eective as peacebuilders, we need to respond to the power

dynamics and norms that infuence peace and violent confict at the household,

community, national and international levels. To do this, we need to be aware o

the diversity o gender and other identities across groups o men and women.Thereore, gender analysis is key in helping us understand identity and violence,

and, as a result, act eectively.

The feld o gender and development has gained increasing legitimacy andacceptance since the Beijing Conerence on Women in 1995. In relation to thepeacebuilding and humanitarian felds, the passing o the UN Security Councils(UNSC) Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security in 2000 put women andpeace frmly on the map. This was ollowed by a rapid escalation o policies

and projects devoted to promoting and protecting women and girls. However,progress has been disappointing. In 2010, ten years ater the passing o Resolution1325, and responding to widespread demands to galvanise the internationalcommunity into a more tightly targeted response, the Secretary-General in hisreport Womens participation in peacebuilding elt obliged to propose a seven-point plan to address outstanding blockages to womens participation in peaceprocesses and in post-conict recovery. Alerts observation, based on interactionswith donor, government and civil society organisations working on the ground,suggests that the issue is not just a lack o ocus on the task; there is also arange o conceptual and practical divisions and conusions, leading to missedopportunities both or delivering results and or learning rom them. Divergentperspectives on what gender is as a conceptual dimension o peacebuilding are


8/24


paralleled by conusion on what peacebuilders are expected to do to integrate itinto their work.

International Alerts three-year research project seeks to identiy and clariy someo the challenges and contradictions within the gender and peacebuilding feld.At the same time, it aims to develop a re-ormulation that contributes more clearlyto a transormative peacebuilding approach. This report outlines some initialthoughts on how such a re-ormulation might be approached, and addresses ourbroad questions:

What can gender analysis tell us that would help us understand conict andpeace better?

In what ways would the design and implementation o peacebuilding work beenhanced i it incorporated a gender approach?

What progress do peacebuilders on the ground (in donor, government andnon-government agencies) think they have achieved in engendering theirwork?

What are the dierent approaches that underlie gender and peacebuildingwork?

These our questions are addressed in turn and orm the structure o the report.


9/24


QueSTion 1

Wt gt g pspt tw tss?

Are women peaceable?

A number o assumptions about the relationship between men, women andviolent conict are common in peacebuilding. For example, it is oten saidthat women are the frst and main victims o conict, and are at the same

time the most active advocates or peace; that a type o solidarity existsbetween women that transcends social and political divisions. One view isthat the archetypal distinction between nurturing womanhood and aggressivemasculinity is real, that male aggression is genetically and hormonallydetermined (i.e. by sex not gender), and that war is by defnition war againstwomen that the purpose o war is to appropriate both womens propertyand women as property. For others, however, the issue is more structural,and the behaviour o individual actors needs to be understood through a

historical and cultural lens, examining the impact on them o global andhistorical trends such as colonialism, aid and militarisation. A prevalent ideaamongst both these groups is that military-economic alliances dominate at aglobal level, mobilising patriarchal structures in dierent parts o the world;these are supported by global institutions that encourage militarism, and byglobal communications media which manipulate gendered imagery to managepopular acceptance o militarism.

Globally, men do predominate not only as actors in war but also as perpetrators

o violence, practitioners o extreme physical eats, and decision-makers ininstitutions that underpin violence. Women (with some exceptions) are lesscommonly engaged directly in combat or violence, yet they support violence inmany indirect ways, e.g. by providing services to fghters, through the way theyeducate their children, and by encouraging men to engage in violence. As suchthey may be key players in the creation o murderous ideologies. A review odata rom dierent parts o the world and dierent historical periods showsthat both men and women can be both victims and perpetrators o violence,and both men and women can exert extraordinary eorts, overcoming earulodds, or peace.


10/24


Do gender relations change as a result o violent confict?Further assumptions are oten made about the potential impact o violentconict on gender relations. On the one hand, a backlash against women is

oten thought to exist in the immediate post-conict period. On the other, thepost-conict moment is oten believed to be one where windows o opportunitypresent themselves or radical change in womens status. The literature suggeststhat both assumptions may be justifed. Whereas gender roles adjust quickly tonew circumstances, gender identities are not so much changed as thwarted, asboth men and women are prevented by circumstances rom living up to their ownand other peoples expectations (a development which may trigger interpersonalviolence on a wide scale).

Changes in the gender division o labour (gender roles) are a societys practicaland immediate response to managing crisis. However, they do not in themselvesalter the institutional or ideological underpinnings o gender relations. I thingsare not to go back to how they were beore, change may need to be institutionalisedthrough active policy. However, institutions (that generate policy) are themselvesgendered, in that they are both products and shapers o existing gender relationsin the society rom which they draw their individual members. The nation-state,or example, is made up o male and emale citizens, and at the same time shapes

their gendered identities through the promotion o ideals such as patriotism andcitizenship, which may have dierent meanings or men and or women. Globalinstitutions, too are gendered, and signifcantly inuence local processes asclassically evidenced by the way global military-economic alliances impact ongender relations ound in societies located around military bases.

Under what circumstances do conficts turn to violence? Do gender relations

themselves contribute towards violent confict?Sociologists have suggested that violence (most notably but not exclusively by

men) is the result o gender identities being thwarted, i.e. conditions (e.g. opoverty, conict, disaster, political oppression) prevent gendered aspirationsrom being ulflled. The idea o a continuum o violence is another conceptthat oers a ramework or describing how dierent types and levels o violenceinteract with each other, showing how the behaviour o individuals is conditionedas much by structural as by individual actors. Some scholars suggest that genderrelations have changed as a unction o changing patterns o violence, althoughopinions dier as to the direction o causality does reduction o violence lead togender equality, or the reverse?

While academics (especially eminist academics) have grappled or some timewith the issue o where men ft in an understanding o gender, policymakers


11/24


and activists have tended to ocus instead on advancing womens protectionand participation, as evidenced by the passing o UNSC Resolution 1325. Thelatter group has tended to view men as either perpetrators to be excluded, as

gatekeepers whose support has to be sought, or as potential active championso womens cause. There is a small but growing stream o work acknowledging thepotential vulnerabilities o men, and seeking re-interpretations o mainstreamthinking on specifc topics such as sexual violence as a weapon o war.


12/24


QueSTion 2

hw stg g tts tt tt pg?

Activists stress the importance and variety o womens roles in peacebuildingand the need to support womens peace organisations. UNSC Resolution 1325echoes this concern, and represents a global policy commitment to supportwomens role in peacebuilding and in post-conict reconstruction. Resolution

1325 is seen as a tool to promote womens empowerment, as well as a basis ormobilising women as a resource to render peace processes more eective.

Womens peacebuilding activities encompass a wide range, and indeed what womendo or peace is sometimes said to expand the view o peacebuilding itsel. Forexample, reconciliation fgures high in what womens peacebuilding organisationsdo, yet it receives little attention rom ormal donor-supported peacebuildinginitiatives. Womens work in reconciliation includes mediating in localised conicts

within amilies (such as husbands rejecting their wives ater rape, or disputesbetween siblings over inheritance), bringing estranged communities together, andsupporting mechanisms to resolve inter-communal conicts. Women engaged inormal peace negotiations oten bring a non-partisan, process-oriented approachto bear, ensuring that the needs o a broad range o stakeholders, rather than justthe previously violent protagonists, are on the agenda. Many womens organisationswhich promote the role o women in community-level reconciliation and dialogueview their work as having a secondary but important outcome o enhancing popularperception o womens potential contribution, leading to greater acceptance o

womens empowerment generally.

While Resolution 1325 is generally viewed as an important milestone in theinternational acknowledgement o the need or womens empowerment inthe peacebuilding arena, some reservations have been expressed about whatit actually achieves. It has been critiqued on the grounds that it de-politiciseswomens political agency and presents an unproblematic view o women ashaving an innate capacity or peace. On the other hand, some, especially someeminist academics, see womens peace activism instead as being a reaction tooppressive global structures o violence, and thereore the basis or a movemento anti-war eminism.


13/24


Mens role in high-level peace negotiations, and in post-conict reconstructionand state-building, is assumed as the norm and hence barely commented on.However, peace activism by men can sometimes be regarded as either treasonable

or eeminate, or both; pacifst men are oten derided and excluded, especially inhighly militarised societies.

To what extent can gender equality be seen as a component o peace?Lasting peace, as described in Alerts peacebuilding ramework, is anaspirational vision: a society that resolves the conicts and contradictions withinit in a constructive and inclusive ashion and which is thereby rendered relativelyimmune to mass or systemic violence. In this approach, values such as inclusionor gender equality are an inherent and indissoluble part o lasting peace. Building

peace then is a transormative process which comprises, amongst other things,the promotion o womens rights and empowerment. At the same time, thebroader processes o peacebuilding can also be used as a means o leveringsocial change. This might include according women a more prominent place inpost-conict reconstruction, as well as the idea o reconstructing masculinitiesthrough security sector reorm, and promoting a human rights agenda as part ohumanitarian interventions and governance reorms.

How can gender equality be incorporated into post-confict reconstruction interventions?The international policy ramework around peacebuilding is currently dominatedby donor concerns with state-building in ragile and conict-aected states.The state-building, governance and ragile states agenda has in the past beendominated by the technical approaches o international donors; however, theseapproaches have been challenged as being donor-driven, top-down, technicistand divorced rom reality. As various civil society organisations have argued, oneo the starting-points or reconstruction must be the re-establishment o peaceulinteraction and equitable resource management at the community level, building

up rom there. Gender critiques o state-building have urged it to go beyond addwomen and stir, instead aiming to ensure womens ull participation in post-conict recovery. State-building approaches should aim to create a state ft orwomen as well as or men, and to take advantage o the opportunities state-building oers or advancing womens political involvement. A gender approachto state-building would bring it down to earth or example, by helping to ensurecivilian oversight o security sector reorm, making interventions locally relevant,prioritising state-civilian relations, and supporting local, rather than external,drivers o change.

These critiques have led to a reormulation o the peacebuilding and state-building agenda, spelled out most recently or example in the Monrovia Roadmap


14/24


produced as part o the International Dialogue or Peacebuilding and Statebuilding.This consensus identifes fve key state-building objectives politics, security,justice, economy, and revenues and services, with gender as a cross-cutting theme.

Although there has as yet been little attention to ormally engendering the state-building ramework, some o the more obvious aspects o a gender dimension tothe state-building agenda are summarised in the table below, which is based on asimilar table prepared recently by Alert or the Development Assistance Committee(DAC) o the Organisation or Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

T: a g ms t stt-g jts

State-building

objectives

Some possible gender dimensions

Pts Women are absent rom ormal peace negotiations and havelimited opportunities or political participation.

St Men predominate in security orces, although it is otenassumed (without evidence) that recruiting women wouldchange the ethos and the behaviour o the military. A newvision o security is required, one that meets the needs o allcitizens, including women, men, girls and boys, rather thanthe state-centric model that currently dominates.

Jst Transitional justice mechanisms are generally poor inaddressing war-time abuses o women, although crimeso sexual violence receive increasing attention, andconict-related sexual violence has now entered the RomeStatute o the International Criminal Court as a breach ointernational humanitarian law.

em Women play important economic roles during and aterconict, but post-conict reconstruction devotes littleattention to supporting them, or to reinorcing the gains in

status and equality they may have attained during phases oviolence.

rs ss

There needs to be a better balance between peopleseconomic contribution and the level o services they receiverom the state. Gender-sensitive budgeting (measuringthe proportion o budgets allocated to activities that meetthe dierent needs o women and men) is one way ochecking how ar services respond to womens concerns.This can be extended to raising other equality concerns(such as regional allocations) in respect o state spending.


15/24


QueSTion 3

Wt s g pg m t ptts s-mks t f? Wt t wtgs t ?

What themes are most critical or Alerts partners and collaborators in Burundi and

Nepal?

The project held workshops, in Bujumbura and in Kathmandu, in March 2012, toinitiate discussion amongst people working on gender and peacebuilding rom

dierent perspectives. In each case, separate workshops were held or practitioners(working in NGOs) and or ofcials (donor and government representatives). InBurundi, where the NGO participants made the decision to orm a communityo practice to take the discussion orward, a delegation rom the group made apresentation to the ofcials group, based on the discussion at their workshop.Economic recovery: In both countries, there was a dominant concern thatwomen are largely excluded rom access to economic resources (most notably

land and credit) as well as to decision-making about resources. There was aparticularly acute concern in both countries about the depth o poverty presentin the two countries and the act that women are strongly represented withinthe ranks o the extremely poor. High levels o illiteracy and womens generallack o awareness o their rights perpetuate this exclusion. Both country groupsnoted that despite some policy commitments, interventions are not currentlyocused on identiying and overcoming the barriers women ace to economicempowerment. In Burundi, the consultation process on the most recent PovertyReduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) has been more gender-sensitive than previous

iterations o the process, in the sense that women, including grassroots women,have taken part in ofcial consultations around the PRSP and many o theirconcerns have been incorporated into the fnal document. It remains to be seenwhether the implementation o the strategy will live up to its promise to enablewomen, and especially poor, vulnerable (or example, disabled) and rural women,to gain advantage rom poverty alleviation strategies. In Nepal, there is currentlya preoccupation with reintegration o ex-combatants, and a concern that theopportunity has been missed to design the standard reintegration package withwomens priorities in mind. These would have eatured psycho-social counsellingas well as support or income-generation and marketing.


16/24


Justice:Womens lack o access to justice is a second major concern in bothcountries. In Nepal, the problem was associated with inadequate legal aid, alack o emale lawyers, and limited access to crisis support services outside

district capitals. In Burundi, where women are ofcially acknowledged toconstitute 60 percent o victims o war-related human rights violations,transorming their legal status (or example in relation to inheritance) andremoving the social stigma attached to the victims o sexual violence are keysteps to enabling them not only to access justice, but also to challenge theunderlying conditions which make abuse possible. The Tripartite Commissionon transitional justice, in which international bodies and the Burundiangovernment made recommendations or the ormation o a Truth and JusticeCommission, recommended womens involvement in the proposed transitional

justice mechanisms. However, it is yet to be seen whether gender balance willbe upheld when the mechanisms are set up.

Political participation and leadership: In Nepal, womens rights are enshrined inthe interim constitution, particularly in terms o reproductive rights, inheritanceand citizenship. However, in practice there are limitations on womens politicalparticipation, and there is a need to fnd the right political structures andprocesses to acilitate it, in parliament, in political parties, and at the level o

decentralised government. In Burundi, the debate was around the issue othe myth o womens solidarity the expectation that, once in positions oleadership, women will pursue a common womens agenda. Women haveguaranteed places in parliament and in state institutions, yet this has madelittle dierence so ar to the lives o ordinary women, who oten have divergentidentities and interests. Some activists saw the lack o solidarity between womenas being an impediment to their work, while others considered an acceptance odiversity as being part and parcel o a gender approach.

There were some dierences between the priorities o workshop participantsrepresenting government and donors and those o civil society. In Burundi,the representative o one donor agency suggested that security be seen as anadditional thematic priority. The agency concerned is currently engaged on alarge security transormation programme working with both the police and themilitary, which has enhancing womens security as a substantial sub-theme.Alert has conducted research on womens perceptions o security in Burundi inthe past and identifed it (especially domestic violence) as an important threat totheir well-being. Similarly, Alerts research on security in Nepal has shown thatsecurity interventions have largely ailed to acknowledge the breadth and deptho security-related issues aecting women. However, civil society participants, ineither Nepal or Burundi, did not identiy security as a theme.


17/24


What other concerns did they express?In addition to thematic interests, participants at the workshops raised anumber o general issues, which again showed much similarity between the

two cases.

In both cases, discussion at the workshops illustrated a divide betweenwhat might be termed political and apolitical approaches to gender andpeacebuilding. For example, some in Nepal were keen to adopt socialharmony as a goal, while others worried that such vague expressions ogeneral good might be used as a way o limiting diversity and perpetuatingconservative values. In Burundi, a range o opinions was expressed on theissue o reconciliation. For some, reconciliation is an aspect o post-conict

recovery, to be addressed technically through decisions on, or example,reparations, rehabilitation o victims, and transitional justice. For others, it isan overarching goal, under which all other themes can be subsumed. A similarrange o concerns arose about the roles and goals o womens peacebuildingorganisations: do they have a role in changing womens sel-perception,developing solidarity between women, and shiting attitudes towards womenin the community at large; or do they promote a stereotypical view o womenssolidarity, thrit and willingness to volunteer, which precludes a broader

evolution towards womens agency?

A number o institutional capacity issues came to the ore in both countries.NGO partners in Burundi had the perception that policymakers have madeprogress in acknowledging womens role in post-conict recovery processes,as evidenced in the extent o consultations with womens civil societyorganisations. However, they did not eel that there was evidence o change onthe ground. Nepali NGOs believe there are still big policy gaps and ailures toacknowledge what womens priorities are or to ask their opinion. For their part,

some sta members o donor and government agencies, including those romagencies considered to have relatively advanced policy approaches, expressedconusion about basic concepts o gender and peacebuilding, claiming thatgender as a policy agenda is imposed within their organisations without clarityas to what it means in practice. In both countries, there were calls or clarityin the gender and peacebuilding discourse, and or urther capacity building.

Participants in the consultations in both Burundi and Nepal took a defnitivelywomen-ocused perspective, with little reection on involving men. Wheremen were discussed in terms o their participation in gender activists work,it was largely to fnd ways o mitigating mens negative role. The predominantramework explores diversity between men and women, rather than amongst


18/24


men and amongst women. However, there was some unresolved discussionabout how womens equality advocates should see men. While many peopleagreed that gender is not just about women, it was difcult, especially or

womens rights activists, to move on rom this idea and see what else it couldbe about, or to envisage men as anything other than barriers to womensadvancement.


19/24


QueSTion 4

Wt t t pps tt g pg wk?

In summary, the conceptual basis or taking a gendered approach to peacebuildingis raught, and the conusions inherent in it spill over into its practical applicationin peacebuilding. Not only is gender a complex, multi-layered and contestedconcept which is poorly understood, but it is to some extent imposed, throughdonor conditionality a combination o actors which eectively excludes a high

proportion o peacebuilding actors rom having confdence in using the approach.Barriers exist between those who understand and accept the need in principle todistinguish the impacts o policies on men and on women, and those ew remainingdinosaurs who do not, or who simply pay lip-service to it as a policy demand. Butequally, they exist between those or whom gender mainstreaming is an area oproessional competence and those or whom it is a passionately ought campaignor womens rights; and equally between those or whom womens advancementtakes precedence over all other policy goals, and those who see gender as a concept

that inorms an understanding o exclusion and marginalisation more broadly.Further distinctions can be made between activists, policymakers, peacebuildingpractitioners and academics, each o whom have their own gender discourses, aswell as shared understandings and proessional structures and career paths.

Amongst all the conusions and contestations, what emerges is that dierent wayso interpreting gender lie at their root. There is little disagreement about the basicdefnition o gender as the socially and culturally constructed identities o men andwomen, but there is very little consensus on its applications. For some, the prevalence

o womens subordination is a given, and overcoming the barriers to the respecto womens human rights is a clear priority; this is an uncontested commitmentin international policy, and urther justifcation is considered unnecessary. Genderanalysis then is a way o exploring the orm which that subordination takes in anyparticular context. For others, gender analysis posing open-ended questionsabout how men and women relate to each other is the starting point, and it mayor may not lead to the conclusion that overcoming womens subordination is thepriority. Our conclusion is not that either o these positions is wrong, but ratherthat the second proposition has not yet been given enough o an airing. It mighthowever be o particular relevance in relation to violent conict, since it enables anexploration o how men and women both relate to conict and violence as victims,perpetrators and supporters, and o how they might contribute to lasting peace.


20/24


Based on the above analysis, we can identiy three broad approaches to gender thatare evident in peacebuilding:

Gender-blind approaches: In the frst approach, the notion that interventions involveand impact on men and women in dierent ways is not recognised. These gender-blind projects assume that what works or people in general works or both menand women and that there is no need to distinguish between them. Some gender-blind projects do have specifc women-centred projects, triggered perhaps by theinsistence o a donor. However, these projects tend to be managed by a separateand junior department or run by gender specialists whose work is not understoodor supported by the rest o the team. Others do work with women, but do so toaddress womens specifc practical and/or biological needs (or example in the

health sector), rather than as an outcome o a gendered analysis.

Resolution 1325 approaches: In the second approach, it is axiomatic that womenare more vulnerable than men and more marginalised rom decision-making.Thus, interventions are required which counteract this tendency, making womensprotection, promotion and participation explicit goals o all activities, as is requiredby UNSC Resolution 1325. Such projects are mandated by international, andrequently national, law and policy. In addition to being justifed in terms o womens

human rights, womens advancement is now widely recognised as bringing generalbenefts to society at large, including, or example, benefts to the micro economyand to child health, and to governance in general.

Gender-relational approaches:The third type o approach is based on a strategy obeneft sharing and solidarity building between men and women, using a genderedpower analysis to identiy the appropriate modalities or the context. A key part othis analysis would be to look at socialisation mechanisms, as they relate to bothmen and women, within major societal institutions such as the household, the

school, the state, and religious systems, which are sites o reproduction o genderrelations in a given time and place. The resultant activities might involve dialoguebetween men and women (or example to address violence against women) oraddress vulnerabilities experienced by men that are oten overlooked (or exampleas victims o sexual violence or as potential recruits into militias or gangs). Thepresumption is that men and women will equally contribute to, and beneft rom,this relational approach, and that it will avoid the risks o backlash and malealienation, sometimes incurred by women-ocused initiatives.

This typology is an oversimplifcation o the varied approaches that exist, many owhich could ft under more than one heading: however, it appears useul as a toolor assessing experience to date and developing new insights. The key dierence


21/24


between types 1 and 2 is to do with women: the problem at the heart o type 1 is that,given pre-existing power imbalances between men and women, ew interventionscan realistically be considered gender-neutral, but will rather reinorce existing

imbalances, in possibly undesirable ways. In contrast, the key dierence betweentypes 2 and 3 is to do with men. What role should men play in projects that aim totransorm gender relations? Should they be seen as spoilers, gate-keepers orchampions o womens advancement, as co-contributors to a transormed genderorder? Or are the gendered vulnerabilities o men also worthy o being addressedas a priority? The link between masculinity and violent conict emerges as a keyconceptual and practical issue. It also raises the possibility that men too might bethe ocus o gender and peacebuilding programmes, perhaps by fnding ways odiscouraging their recruitment into militias, or by providing services to male victims

o sexual violence.

Each o the three types approaches the issue o gender analysis in adierent way. For type 1 projects, there is no need to separate out the needs orperspectives o dierent stakeholders, as the projects benefts are assumed toaccrue to all without distinction. For type 2 projects, the starting point is womensexclusion, which the project aims to overcome: once this goal has been fxed,gender analysis is a means to this end, as it involves mapping the particular

orms o disadvantage aced by women in the context under discussion. For type3 projects, gender analysis is the starting point, and consists in asking a rangeo open-ended questions about the nature o gender relations and roles in thecontext concerned. Gender analysis is then a preparatory step towards defningthe problem to be addressed, and might result in addressing the needs o eithermen or women, or both, in a variety o ways. The approach to gender analysis isthereore a key determinant o the projects outcome.

Type 3 approaches are at present under-explored, both in terms o theory and

policy, and in terms o practice. Moreover, although lip-service is oten paid to theidea that gender is not just about women, many people who express that viewfnd it difcult to identiy what an approach that goes beyond just women wouldmean in practice. And yet it does have potential relevance or peacebuilding, asit holds out the prospect o maximising the engagement in social transormationprocesses o both men and women, who, as we have seen above, can be bothvictims and perpetrators o violence, and exert extraordinary eorts, overcomingearul odds, or peace. This should not be taken to imply that type 2 projects arenot legitimate, or not o interest, or not really gender. On the contrary, or anorganisation to espouse a gender approach to peacebuilding, it needs to havean overarching rame into which both types 2 and 3 can ft, as well as having aportolio o projects that reect both.


22/24


23/24


24/24

itt at.346 Clapham Road, London SW9 9AP, United KingdomT +44 (0)20 7627 6800, F +44 (0)20 7627 6900

[email protected]

ISBN 978 1 906677 99 2

201210genderpeacebuilding en

Documents