Introduction

Background In October 2000, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on Women, Peace and Security, which was an important step forward in terms of bringing women’s rights and gender equality to bear on the UN’s peace and security agenda.1 It calls on member states to ensure that gender is mainstreamed throughout all conflict prevention and peacebuilding activities, and reaffirms women’s rights to be involved in decision-making and to access and take on leadership positions. This Resolution was the outcome of a long process of advocacy from civil society and several member states that were particularly committed to these issues, and it continues to be supported by an active, vibrant and extensive network of activists, researchers and practitioners. UNSCR 1325 has since been further strengthened by other gender-related policies adopted by the various UN bodies involved in conflict and security issues, as well as by other Resolutions including UNSCR 1820, 1880 and 1889. This forms the framework for bringing gender issues to the front and centre of conflict prevention and peacebuilding initiatives, including peacekeeping operations. Until recently, the key focus of research on gender and peacebuilding issues was either how to mainstream a gender approach or the operational and bureaucratic reasons behind the seemingly inevitable gap between policy and practice. While these analyses provide important insights and have been used to inform the international community’s efforts to implement gender-related programs within their peacebuilding activities, one of the main problems with the existing work on gender and peacebuilding, and particularly UNSCR 1325, is that advocacy outweighs substance. What has not been explored is the impact that UNSCR 1325 has had since it was passed in 2000, and whether or not it has made a difference at the national and regional level. While some positive changes have been made in terms of making token references to gender mainstreaming in peacekeeping mission mandates and setting up gender offices on the ground, much remains to be done. It is not clear that any real changes have occurred beneath the surface, or that gender issues have been brought into the mainstream of the international community’s security and development agendas. While it can be difficult to measure the

impact of such changes quantitatively, especially given the long period of time that it can take for gender equality-related ideas to filter through organisations and society as a whole, it should be possible to identify qualitative shifts in attitude and organisational practice. These shifts should then have an impact in terms of the way that peacekeeping operations are conducted and gender-related change is brought about. This book intends to amend this gap, and to question the assumptions on which UNSCR 1325 is based, as well as the ability, and legitimacy, of external actors to bring about gender-related structural changes in conflict-affected countries. Given that gender relations are often thrown into flux during conflict, a critical window of opportunity can exist at such times to reform these relations along more equitable lines during the peacebuilding phase. There are certain assumptions that the existence of UNSCR 1325, and other frameworks to promote gender equality and, by extension, the presence of a UN peace support operation and other external actors to implement it, will permit, or at the very least increase the chances of this process of reformulation. However, no research has yet explored these assumptions to determine whether or not, and if so, how, this is the case. Furthermore, local initiatives to promote gender equality within conflictaffected contexts are often overlooked or overshadowed by UN-led peace operations, and the insights and mechanisms they provide can be lost or undermined. Little attention has been focused on the interaction between the ‘formal’ peacebuilding process that exists within and is directed by UN structures and the more organic, ‘informal’ parallel processes that are being carried out by women’s organisations and other actors. While the amount of research and anecdotal evidence about the implementation of UNSCR 1325 has proliferated over the past ten years, understanding of the process whereby it is translated from a rhetorical commitment at the UN level into concrete progress on the ground is still lacking. In recognition of this need, this book seeks to address whether having a peacekeeping mission and the framework of UNSCR 1325 actually make a difference in terms of advancing gender equality within conflict-affected countries, and what lessons can be learned from the alternative local mechanisms that already exist in these contexts. The lack of empirical evidence of the impact of peacekeeping missions and UNSCR 1325 in advancing gender equality at the various national, regional and international levels is a major shortcoming of the literature on gender and peacebuilding issues. Without a more detailed understanding of this impact it is impossible to determine whether the ongoing marginalisation of women from conflict prevention and peacebuilding is a case of flaws in implementation or approach, or whether in fact the Resolution itself and the mechanisms in which to apply it are ill-matched for the objectives and structural changes that it tries to bring about. This differentiation is in turn important in terms of improving the UN’s capacity to engender security and promote an equitable, sustainable peace. Some of the latest research has begun to probe the discourse of gender mainstreaming that underlies UNSCR 1325 and other related initiatives, to determine

whether or not they are compatible with UN peacekeeping operations and the broader goals of peacebuilding.2 This volume seeks to build on these ideas to examine how (and indeed if ) UNSCR 1325 can be used strategically to drive systemic change at the national and regional levels, and whether the presence of a peacekeeping mission helps or hinders this process. Two sets of questions provide the broad guidance for the book. First, what is the relationship between formal peacekeeping structures and informal local structures? And how do the various mechanisms to promote gender issues adopted in each sphere interact? Do peacekeeping operations undermine or reinforce local initiatives? Second, how does UNSCR 1325 drive change at the national and regional level and how do the different domestic and regional actors use it? Does the presence of international actors make a difference in terms of advancing gender equality? As feminist theorists have argued, ‘the traditional privilege bestowed upon the military-political security of the state has effectively excluded the acknowledgement of gendered security problems.’3 While UNSCR 1325 provides the illusion that this is beginning to change, it is not at all clear that efforts to mainstream a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations have been successful on the ground in terms of bringing these gendered security problems to the fore. However, UN peace support operations do not enter countries in a vacuum, and peacekeeping only constitutes one part of the picture, albeit an important one. Local initiatives for building peace and promoting gender equality have usually been in place for a long time, often prior to the conflict itself. These initiatives are generally thought to fall within the ‘informal’ sphere and do not necessarily overlap or merge with the more ‘formal’ (i.e. UN-mandated) initiatives once the peace mission arrives. A crucial question then becomes what happens to these locally based initiatives? Could linking up with these grassroots processes help the UN to become more effective in its efforts to incorporate women’s rights in peacebuilding? By providing the first systematic attempt to analyse the impact of the international community’s attempts to support and advance gender equality within the framework of UNSCR 1325, it is hoped that this study will provide important insights to the academic and policy communities interested in the challenges of engendering security and empowering women in conflict-affected contexts.