14 thoughts on “5 | Women, Peace and Security Agenda”
Alyssa Victorino
My greatest takeaway from reading about absolutionist feminism and alternatives to militarized security was the importance of asking questions rather than ticking boxes in efforts to advance gender equality and re-imagine the meaning of peace (Wright and Achilleos-Sarll, 2024). Building from the content of previous weeks, dreaming of better worlds requires questioning our realities— noticing the ways in which our everyday worlds have been shaped by militarized violence and demanding more from ourselves, each other, and institutions. This also requires fostering alternatives to carceral forms of justice, such as restorative justice, that bring people and communities together.
The readings highlighted the need for the abolishment of violent systems like policing, prisons, and borders as they exist as ongoing forms of colonial and capitalist violence. In this way, the perspective of the WPS Agenda is limited as it exists and operates within these structures. It takes part in genderwashing when it overemphasizes the efficacy of these institutions in protecting the individual (within the majority) while hiding their roles in maintaining the status quo through gendered narratives of war and conflict. Seen primarily as pacifists in need of protection and liberation, women’s bodies again act as objects to justify narratives that bolster the perceived need for these existing systems, which are primarily the source of their oppression (Otto, 2017). As Otto (2017) writes, “women are again conceived in protective terms and are “valued” for their chastity and honour, rather than for their humanity (pg. 111).” It is not enough to deserve peace as a woman and human being, rather it is the image of a woman in need of hyper-masculine and militarized saving that carries worth. At the same time, their perceived need undermines a lot of the meaningful work that grassroots movements are doing outside of the confines of bureaucratized agencies (i.e., states, IOs, and NGOs) that often adhere to neoliberal values (Otto, 2017).
Looking forward, I am left with many questions about what kinds of worlds can come out of critical and absolutionist frameworks. In envisioning an alternative understanding of peace that does not equate it to militarization or securitization, I allowed myself to dream with the Otto (2017) reading—I want my kids to ask what NATO was and why it existed. I want the word ‘army’ to feel as foreign to them as ‘rolodex’ does to me. I want all they come to know to be an absence of fear coupled with an undeniable presence of peace and community (Basu and Nagar, 2021). However, I ask myself, “What will it take to get here?” Wright and Achilleos-Sarll (2024) note how abolition does not necessarily equate to pacifism. Revolution is violent, and it is often black, brown, queer and gendered bodies that experience the most violence on the front lines of these movements. For example, in the upcoming US election, many are thinking about abstaining from voting because of Kamala Harris’ history of being a prosecutor and having a very active role in perpetuating violent institutions that police BIPOC bodies. People are calling for revolution, but what does that mean for marginalized people whose rights vanish first? How do we expand our systems and yet keep each other safe?
Additional Questions:
1. What can justice look like?
2. What would a “revolution in care, safety, and well-being (Wright and Achilleos-Sarll, 2024, pg. 6)” look like? How can we create communities of care?
Despite having worked at UN Women for almost two years, I have to admit I knew little about UNSCR 1325. The Women, Peace, and Security agenda was always something I would hear talked about by more senior colleagues, but I never had to engage with it formally.
Before getting through this week’s readings, it had never really clicked for me how central militarism is to the Security Council’s mandate. I had never thought about how the UN’s natural response to war and conflict was to make it “safer” through enhanced military presence, with peacekeeping forces for example, instead of abolishing or addressing the underlying conditions that led to war itself. The Security Council’s reactive processes also perpetuate the binaries of “peace and war” or “before and after” thinking discussed in class over the past few weeks, which fail to address the very present realities of continued systemic violence against racialized, gendered, sexed, and other marginalized bodies outside of more “formally declared” conflicts, every day. While I understand the significance of UNSCR 1325 and find value in its intention to recognize and promote the role of women in building peace and protecting women and girls from conflict-related sexual violence, I don’t agree with how the WPS has been mainstreamed through the Security Council. On one hand, I think mainstreaming the WPS agenda through such a powerful global institution has the potential to bring about change through awareness training, however, I also agree with the idea that “awareness does not entail effective implementation.”
In reflecting on my experience with resource mobilization and strategic partnerships at both UN Women and the World Health Organization, I have witnessed firsthand how departments within the UN are forced to compete with other International Organizations, NGOs, and internal offices, to receive funding for programming. This process can often involve tailoring program proposals to the priorities of member states, foundations, and private sector companies (like Meta) over the more urgent needs of the “beneficiaries.” I can imagine how this would/(has) resulted in gender-washing and leads to interventions focused on “best practices” rather than attempts to dismantle the “local manifestations of structural violence” in the UN’s WPS programming (Basu and Nagar, 219).
At the same time, while I really resonate with the abolitionist and non-reformist reform approaches discussed by Wright and Achilleos-Sarll, I feel a bit hopeless about the reality of militarism, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and other unequal power structures that continue to rule our everyday. I struggle to make sense of how far non-reformist approaches, or explorations of more creative feminist leadership through pop culture, art, and social media for example, could take the WPS agenda. I want to believe in it but I guess I have been feeling cynical lately and it takes me back to the idea that awareness doesn’t always equate to implementation or structural change.
Question:
Is it better to work within a powerful, highly militarized system and attempt to demilitarize from the inside, or to work outside the system in another system (the more meta, capitalistic, and militarized world) that actively silences unwanted voices of dissent? Aren’t the conditions (sort of) the same? Is there even a difference?
This week’s readings were tricky in the sense that they left me with more questions than I initially had (which is, in my opinion, a good thing). What I appreciated about this week’s readings were the ways they stretched my imagination and introduced more “but what about”s into my understanding of the WPS agenda; what I found challenging was that I was left with a lot of questions about how we move these theories into practice. I think that this reflection for this week will actually just be a list of the many questions I had.
The Otto and Wright Achilleos-Sarl readings were particularly thought provoking for me. The Otto reading, for example, made the point that the ways that we try to “humanize” war (through, for example, the development of local and customary conventions) will always fall short for a number of reasons, including that we’re essentially missing the point- Otto argues that what we should be doing is transforming the laws of war so that war can never be justified and conflict is unimaginable. Further, Otto’s argument that the security council’s resolutions “threaten to disempower women’s grassroots for peace” was persuasive. So, Otto argues that we need to reimagine peace outside of the frame of war. There’s many things in this article I agree with wholeheartedly, and I very much agree with the notion that we need to imagine peace outside of the frame of war- if we’re only defining peace against violence or conflict, I think we lose a lot of the imagination and creativity that is necessary to construct better, more equitable futures. However, the little pragmatist voice in my head also asks, if we haven’t managed to stop war entirely yet, shouldn’t we in the meantime also be worried about how it’s happening? Also (this is me speaking now and not the little pragmatist in my head), while I agree we need to look beyond defining peace against war, is it even possible to entirely divorce the idea of peace from the frame of war? Should we separate these two ideas? Where is it helpful to do this, and what do we gain? What do we lose? What would it look like to imagine peace outside of the frame of war? When I think about the idea of love and what it means for me to love, I don’t just think about love- I think about both what I do, and what I don’t do. So it makes sense to me that we should imagine peace within AND outside of the frame of war. Am I oversimplifying Otto’s argument?
This, alongside the Wright and Achilleos-Sarl paper, reminded me a lot of Audre Lorde’s question about whether we can dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools. This question has haunted me literally ever since I have heard it and it keeps me up at night. To me, the question Wright and Achilleos-Sarl raise about reform versus transformation echoes the same themes. The authors touch on this in their article when they argue that “feminist peace resists any singular definition”, and emphasize the importance of deliberation in abolitionist feminism. I truly appreciated these points, but I also find myself wondering about the extent to which revisiting the debate about reform versus transformation is actually helpful. Firstly, don’t we need both? Aren’t we a diverse group of people with different skills and strengths who might work better in different spaces and formats? Isn’t the range of work being done ultimately helpful, because a wide range of different solutions increases the odds that someone can find a solution that works for them, and there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach anyways? I of course recognize that there’s a difference between accepting a range of work and overlooking lenses that are blatantly exclusionary (like any project that takes even a slightly TERF-y approach), but I think the point still stands.
I’m thinking about this because the line between reform and transformation actually doesn’t seem so clear cut to me. I could see someone arguing that harm reduction in the drug poisoning epidemic doesn’t actually transform the harmful systems that produce the situation, but I could also argue that harm reduction is a transformative way to look at care, agency, and reducing barriers/responding to trauma on a community level. So if there’s subjectivity to what even counts as reform vs transformation, does the tension have to be so important?
I feel like it sounds from my reflection like I had an incredible amount of beef with the readings, but I did really love a lot of the points made- I just have many questions that I need to wrap my head around in relation to them.
For now, the two questions I will limit myself to are:
Do we have to choose between reform and transformation? Where does the tension actually exist between the two?
Is it possible to imagine peace without considering war (“outside the frame of war”?
Harcourt’s article reminded me about a hotly talked about issue that I have long forgotten about for some years now, which was a hacker leaking Jennifer Lawrence’s private photos online. I remembered how shocking and controversial the incident was at the time to me and many I knew, but it definitely felt like most men that knew about it did not care and/or laughed at it instead.
That incident seems quite shallow in comparison to a recent development in South Korea over a s similar controversial issue the country faced recently which the article immediately reminded me of. Harcourt wrote about how Jennifer Lawrence’s labelled the obvious outrageous breach of her privacy as a ‘sex crime’ which “catapulted the issue of sexual harassment, feminism and women’s rights into the global press and online social media” (Harcourt, 2019, p. 617). I immediately connected this to the deepfake adult videos that have been surging since this summer in South Korea and the absurd number of everyday women that have been affected by it in the country. As someone who has followed the Korean 4B movement for at least two years now, that quote from Harcourt’s article made me realize that this deepfake incident in South Korea is even more problematic on a nation-wide scale, and it is shocking that women in South Korea have not been receiving more support from men both in South Korea and globally.
The only times I read about developments in this incident is due to following feminist South Korean accounts on X.com (formerly Twitter) which cover the issue extensively and keep posting about how many everyday women, including underage women, have been affected by deepfakes. Being able to track developments on this incident online brings me back to another point made by Harcourt in their article where the author mentions that the new generation of feminism expresses and exchanges ideas over social media and accordingly organizes to address societal struggles with new innovative strategies (Harcourt, 2019, p. 617) which was not available before. This seems true personally as I have noticed a lot of it anecdotally on various social media, and it is the only way to truly be aware of how feminists combat social issues across the globe that regular media does not usually cover. I have seen similar ways of organizing by a new generation of anarchists too.
It is incredibly disturbing for me to even read or think about and I simply cannot imagine what the women who’s lives have been impacted by this are going through. It is shocking how at times I feel like societies have been recently regressing rather than progressing further on many societal issues.
My question for this week is: How should societies and international institutions ensure feminist resolutions of peace and conflict? Simply having women be more appropriately represented in peace negotiations and conflict resolution does not guarantee that feminist perspectives will be actively and seriously considered when addressing and solving global issues and conflicts.
Whenever someone asks what I want to do with my Public Policy and Global Affairs degree, I think of working for the World Health Organization or the United Nations to really create change in this damaged world. However, the more articles I read and the more people I talk to, the more understanding I have of international organizations, and the more disappointed I am that all these “globally influential” organizations are the same—superficial, bureaucratic, and based on patriarchy.
As a social justice advocate, I’ve understood abolitionism as being crucial in not only challenging the structures of oppression but also confronting the underlying colonial and patriarchal ideologies that tend to sustain them. Reflecting on Wright and Achilleos-Sarll’s work while considering WPS, it is reasonably clear that our current global structures still operate within oppressive imperial frameworks. The WPS agenda and its four pillars, while “innovative” in its efforts to bring women into the decision-making and peace process, often fail to critique or even question the systems that we know cause violence and inequality in the first place.
Abolitionism encourages us to rethink how we approach peace and justice, and abolitionist feminism ultimately aims to dismantle militarism, capitalism, and carceral systems. While considering the roles of the UN and other international bodies, I observe how these institutions reinforce the same structures they claim to reform. Promoting women’s participation in security forces without actually addressing the violent nature of these forces echoes the disingenuous incorporation of marginalized voices into oppressive systems without transforming the systems themselves.
Abolitionism reminds me that real change isn’t about inclusion within broken structures but about dismantling those structures altogether. However, I have had trouble fully digesting the idea of moving to an abolitionist framework where there is a reality that immediate abolition could leave already vulnerable populations without the protections or support systems they currently rely on.
Questions:
• If the United Nations and other international governance bodies can’t take feminist action and criticism seriously, how can we expect other governing bodies and states to?
• At what point can abolition hurt and harm marginalized communities?
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work with Erin on the use of arts-based research methods and the lived experiences of women with disabilities in post-conflict Northern Uganda. All of this, within the context of UNSCR 1325 and the WPS agenda. It highlighted a few shortcomings of the drafting and implementation of the WPS agenda in post-conflict contexts, particularly that there are no mentions of women with disabilities and their unique lived experiences during and after conflicts. The conflict in Northern Uganda and the lived experiences of the women who survived said conflict, show a side of the story that the WPS agenda has not considered. As we have been discussing the past couple of weeks, particularly in terms of what is war and how the international system has viewed war as a binary (war and no-war, if there is no war therefore there is peace), conflicts seldom have a precise start date and the consequences of them live on for years. For many women in Northern Uganda, the war is still present and they continuously need to negotia. Women with disabilities have also been neglected in the post-conflict peace building processes. The WPS agenda fails to recognize all the nuances that exist in conflict and post-conflict contexts, it fails to recognize the many intersecting identities and how does justice looks for the people that will continue to live in post-conflict contexts.
Both Basu and Nagar (p. 214) and Otto (p. 109) touch on something that really made me reflect on the gendered aspects of war, peace, and security and the different concerns from various feminist perspective that have risen in regards to their institutionalization with the WPS agenda. That is when they are explaining how an increase in the number of female peacekeepers has been seen as necessary to decrease of cases of sexual violence committed by male peacekeepers and to ensure the protection of women and children where these operations are taking place. Why is it that the onus of decreasing GBV and sexual violence lies with the women? Which aspects of the peacekeeping and peacebuilding process are “acceptable” for women to participate, according to the international system? As with many other social and political instances where there is a call for greater women’s participation, their mere presence (meaning not necessarily their inputs or contributions and not necessarily guaranteeing that their concerns will be heard) is needed in order to tick a box.
Wendy Harcourt’s piece on imagining feminist futures reminds me a lot of Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is a movement that “expresses notions of Black identity, agency and freedom through art, creative works and activism that envision liberated futures for Black life.” (National Museum of African American History and Culture, n.d.). While the movement has taken place for the most part in artistic and literary circles and within the dystopic and sci-fi genres (think Octavia Butler or the movie Space is the Place), it offers an imaginary future that I think resembles what Harcourt is trying to convey in terms of a feminist future. I think currently, with the present state of the world, not everyone has been afforded the possibility of imagining a future. Yet, there is resilience in knowing that there is a constant fight so more people are able to afford imagining futures.
Questions:
What does peace mean? Who gets to have peace?
What do the debates surrounding women’s participation in the military and active combat say about the relationship between gender and war?
The readings this week provided a much-needed critique of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The authors noted that while the WPS agenda has granted legitimacy to a feminist engagement with issues of international peace and security (Basu & Nagar), the global security scene continues to rely on militarized approaches to peace, reform of existing institutions over abolition, and in many cases an unwillingness to look beyond the protection of women to the transformative potential of feminist thought.
I’m struggling to find the source, but in my first-year political science course, I remember reading a side blurb in the textbook that critiqued the UN’s approach to gender, the critique being that we don’t necessarily need to just add women to politics, we need to add feminists. While I don’t want to discount the value of representation, because it is incredibly important, I believe the readings this week reinforce the idea that simply including women in peace and security does not equal feminist peace. Feminist peace is rooted in anti-militarism, anti-capitalism, and decolonial approaches, well captured by Angela Davis’ quote, “How … can one expect the state to solve the problem of violence against women, when it constantly recapitulates its own history of colonialism, racism, and war?” (Wright and Achilleos-Sarll, 2). However, within the approach of the international system, Otto notes how while these values are seemingly accepted at face value, and even legitimatized at high levels, they are somewhat “ritualistic,” and consequently “undermined through inaction” (Otto, 106). As I shared on the first day of class, I have also noticed how thin the feminism of the UN feels, sometimes simply including photo-ops and an ‘insert women and stir’ approach.
Given my experience in disarmament, I was particularly struck by Wright, Achilleos-Sarll, and Otto’s exploration of how abolitionist movements connect to feminist peace. Especially for nuclear weapons, the literature is often dominated by realism, with institutions like the IAEA and CTBTO offering only a veneer of liberalism. Initially, I found feminist approaches to disarmament overly aspirational, but I began to question why. It reminded me of a friend who proposed abolishing nuclear weapons at a leadership conference, only to be dismissed as ‘unrealistic.’ This made me reflect on how stereotypes about women being too emotional or idealistic might fuel the disregard for feminist peace. Approaches like DDR and non-proliferation matter, but by not embracing the full potential of a feminist WPS agenda, we miss out on transformative possibilities, including dismantling systems of militarism, colonialism, and capitalism (Wright and Achilleos-Sarll).
My questions for this week:
To what extent do societal stereotypes and gendered assumptions contribute to the dismissal of feminist approaches to peacebuilding and disarmament as “unrealistic” or “too aspirational”?
Is it possible for the UN to ever truly embrace a feminist approach to peace and security, given its current structure and reliance on state-based, militarized approaches to conflict resolution?
The tension between reformist and abolitionist approaches to achieving feminist peace is a central theme in the readings. One key question the authors raise is whether giving women access to state security institutions, such as the military and police, can genuinely reduce violence or if it just strengthens systems that perpetuate gendered harm. Abolitionist feminism argues that dismantling systems of state violence, along with addressing capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism, is essential for real peace. In contrast, the reformist approach focuses on gradual change, such as improving prisons or increasing women’s participation in peacekeeping operations.
The tension persists because dismantling these violent systems is complex and challenging. Wright and Archilleos-Sarll point out that NGOs working on the WPS agenda often depend on government funding, which limits their ability to push for radical changes. In my opinion, this dependency creates a conflict of interest—while these organizations might want to pursue transformative reforms, they are constrained by the need to secure funding. I find this challenge particularly evident in authoritarian or oppressive regimes, where governments are unlikely to support efforts to radically restructure institutions that uphold systemic violence. As a result, NGOs may feel pressured to focus on more moderate reforms, like integrating women into security institutions, rather than advocating for deeper, transformative changes. This significantly limits what these organizations can achieve in promoting feminist peace.
Basu and Nagar also criticize the WPS agenda for its gender-essentialism, which portrays women as inherently peaceful and in need of protection, overlooking their diverse roles in conflict. This narrow view reinforces a militarized concept of peace, which upholds systems of violence. Otto furthers this critique, arguing that the WPS agenda overemphasizes women as victims of sexual violence, reinforcing harmful stereotypes and prioritizing militarized security over more transformative feminist goals, like disarmament and addressing the root causes of war.
In light of these challenges, Harcourt offers a more hopeful perspective, focusing on new feminist movements emerging outside traditional spaces. The author highlights how social media, pop culture, and artistic expression are being used by a new generation of feminists to challenge patriarchal norms. Celebrities like Beyoncé and Emma Watson are key in popularizing feminist ideals, using their influence to reach a wider audience. Although some criticize their involvement as superficial, I believe these influencers help increase the visibility of feminist movements, inspiring broader public engagement and potentially making these movements more successful.
Having grown up in a militarized state where the military’s claimed role of “protecting” citizens frequently justified violence and repression, I find the abolitionist approach, which aims to dismantle systems of state violence, to be a compelling alternative. It prompts some important questions: How can we go beyond reformist frameworks to achieve true feminist peace? And in what ways can new feminist movements help bring about this transformation?
I was particularly connected with Hannah’s “Towards an Abolitionist Feminist Peace,” where the author argues that abolitionism, as a concept, is designed to encompass “us,” including the poor and marginalized. It specifically aims to dismantle oppressive systems and promote alternatives that are human-centric, contrasting starkly with the reformist approach, which focuses on seeking minor improvements within existing structures. While Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) policies aim to reform institutions, abolitionists seek to dismantle them, often invoking carceral feminisms, which creates a never-ending dilemma that divides these two contrasting ideologies. This perspective resonates with the anti-caste sentiment promoted through the Constitution to dismantle the age-old practice of untouchability affecting Scheduled Tribes and Castes, voicing social oppression and violence with the intention of promoting equality and social justice. However, this approach is challenged by several religious institutions in India, and despite all the efforts through the Constitution, atrocities and violence against Scheduled Castes still persist today.
Basu’s Women, Peace, and Security aptly highlights how UNHCR’s resolution conflates “women” and “gender,” overlooking the complexities of gender as a socially constructed and relational identity. I particularly resonated with the author’s critique of the resolution’s essentialist portrayal of women as inherently passive victims in need of protection, which also limits the understanding of men as either perpetrators or protectors. This fundamentally reinforces gendered power dynamics and fails to address the structural violence and militarism that affect both men and women during conflicts. Moreover, the author raises important questions about the role of women’s participation in peacebuilding, especially as the WPS agenda expands to include issues such as sexual violence and economic rights. I can easily relate to the argument that gender equality is often sidelined when it comes to women’s political participation, despite many nations claiming to adopt a gendered approach to policymaking.
The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security highlighted how, by the mid-1990s, the UNHCR realized that so-called technically sound solutions for refugee camps often had serious social consequences for women and children. One example was the design of water jugs that led to sexual exploitation because they were too heavy for women and girls to carry alone. The “Do No Harm” approach became a key tool to address such unintended consequences. The author also referenced the 2015 High-Level Panel’s call for a more “people-centered approach” in UN peace operations, urging the UN to actively listen to local communities and incorporate their insights into protection strategies. “Sit and talk to the communities” is the first lesson I learned when I started my career as a development professional. I can recall those early days when I was initially hesitant to engage in field-based work, as all my family members had desk-based jobs. Over time, I realized the power of the “sit and talk” strategy in building effective solutions for adolescent girls and women in rural areas of India, and I still consider it one of the first steps toward creating impactful solutions.
It made me deeply visualize the strength of art through Wendy’s Palgrave Handbook on Gender and Development, particularly where the author discusses Murals and Mirrors, which explores how women are portrayed in legal, cultural, and pedagogical contexts through the lens of art. For me, art has always been a powerful tool of expression and communication—something that showcases the reality of our world. Reading about the story of female prisoners requesting color to transform their monochromatic prison walls made me immediately connect with the idea that something we often take for granted, like color, can become precious. I was particularly moved by their belief that four walls could bring color into their lives, reminding me of the power of fostering collective identity, trust, and empowerment for women, even within four walls of prison.
Basic questions that came into my mind:
• I align myself with abolitionism as the true solution for bringing change and saying “enough is enough.” However, how and why can reformist approaches actually promote social justice for vulnerable groups?
• Considering that the social narrative and gender are often entangled with biological differences, how can Women, Peace, and Security initiatives and humanitarian efforts be improved in this complex dilemma?
What I thought about the most after finishing this week’s readings was the difference between peace and security. In popular discourse, these concepts are often conflated. Security = peace. Countries must defend and uphold their security to maintain peace. These readings have helped untangle these two concepts in my mind. Security does not mean peace. Just as the absence of conflict does not mean peace. At the very beginning of the reading Wright and Achilleos-Sarll (2024) explain the feminist peace agenda outlining prominent calls to action including “transformation of the UN Security Council into a Peace Council” (pg. 4). When I read this I immediately stopped reading because it triggered head for lack of better term, a lightbulb in my head. I think I have been subconsciously equating security to peace. The purpose of the UN in my mind was to mitigate conflict and promote “peace”. Now thinking about security as separate from peace changes my understanding of a lot of things.
When I was reading and then reflecting on this weeks topics, I thought about the Cold War, specifically the nuclear arms race and the still-growing count of nuclear weapons accumulated by countries in the name of “security”. The need to produce these weapons is often touted as part of a national security agenda. I’ve always associated “national security” with peace but now I am starting to understand this concept differently. How can we live in peace when nations have weapons of mass destruction armed and ready to detonate? Otto (2017) speaks to a similar sentiment. The positive peace and feminist anti-war sentiment has been trivialized in the WPS agenda, particularly in ways that justify conflict rather than dismantling current practices of international security that “conceive of peace primarily in military terms” (Otto, 2017, p. 106).
We spoke last week at how entrenched militarization is in society. After doing the readings this week it struck me how entrenched this is even in peacekeeping/ building. Global peacekeeping is intertwined with militarization. These two concepts should be opposite, yet they are completely intertwined in international policy agendas.
As part of another class, I am writing a critical analysis of the 2023/24 UNDP Human Development Report. The report warns that despite the world being deeply interconnected, countries struggle to cooperate on global issues. De-militarization and disarmament are global issues. We cannot pursue permanent peace without global cooperation. The arms race was and is still fueled by fear of one state or actor’s power dominance over another. In such a polarized and untrusting world, cooperation on the specific issue of disarmament seems like an impossible task.
This thought leads into my question this week; how can we incentivize de-militarisation and disarmament when this process is seen as a security risk for nations who fear being left defenceless? Is there a future where armed conflict isn’t a constant fear?
I was not expecting a concert I attended this week to connect with our Wendy Harcourt reading, but I was proven wrong! Last night I went to the Hans Zimmer concert, where Zimmer proclaimed with joy that “the women are the strength of this band.” The lead drummers, lead violinists, singers, lead cellists, and majority of the band were women who hailed from all parts of the globe, and they all exhibited unique strengths within the band. Some played tenderly and softly, others (especially the singers) growled out lyrics like warriors, and many expertly shifted between the two. Tina Guo, the first cellist, had three dark, jagged lines drawn in makeup going down her neck and would wince at times when her music speeded up in tempo. The violinists, drummers, and orchestra played strong, rallying, heart-thumping music in unison, physically leaning on each other’s backs and feeling the music with their whole bodies. It was clear that these experts were having fun doing what they loved, and there was no need to hide it or make themselves small. Truly, it was a spectacular moment of feeling the power, brilliance, artistry, and joy that women can bring to the world when we thrive in environments that value us in our wholeness and complexity. I would like to imagine a future in which this environment is the standard and not the exception for everyone; the ability to exist as our full selves, with no social conditioning that renders our hard work and talents as small or inconsequential.
During the intermission, my sister made a comment to me that I think lines up with the abolitionist feminism I learned about in the Wright reading. “Instead of spending our time appreciating this,” she pointed to the stage, “we [humans] fight and go to war instead. What a shame.” The institutions we exist in assume war so readily that other ways of conflict management seem impossible, rather than difficult but achievable. As Wright says, “where wholesale resolution is not imminent, certain reforms can advance revolutionary goals” (Wright pg. 9). Reformist reforms can pave the way for non-reformist reforms. Another line that rang true to me was in the Soumita and Nagar reading: the “international community positions itself as the saviour of the ‘brown woman’ from the ‘brown man’ evoking the language of colonialism” (Soumita & Nagar pg. 218). Colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and so many other oppressive systems contribute to war-making, and white feminism is often used as the veil for making people conform to the Global North’s idea of what a woman in the Global South should be.
My question for this week is specific to the Wright reading, as I found the intersection of WPS advocate-critics who had an anti-militarist approach to be especially interesting. I wonder whether other common types of advocate–critics exist for WPS (ex. WPS supporters who are anti-incarceration)? I also wonder what we can do in our everyday lives to exercise abolitionist feminism?
My GP2 project will be in Northern Uganda, under the umbrella of work taking place to implement the National Transitional Justice Policy (NTJP), which was adopted in 2019 as a response to decades of conflict in the region. This policy was largely influenced by certain pledges the government made to implement transitional justice measures during the Juba Peace Talks of 2006-08, and while the development of the NTJP is evidence of progress on the issue, one of the debates around the NTJP is on the extent to which the Government of Uganda actually intends to (and is capable of) implement(ing) it.
So, while reading this week’s articles, I was struck by Diane Otto’s discussion of “ritualism,” “whereby states subscribe to institutionalized rituals that repeatedly affirm certain goals, despite having little or no commitment to their substantive realization” (Otto, 2017, 108). This gets at the heart of the debate described above, as well as describing many other issues whereby institutions and their leaders say one thing and do another. Take the criticism land acknowledgements have received for example, at times being called performative, especially when no actions are taken beyond this acknowledgment to further reconciliation. Or, look at Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, which labels itself feminist but then essentializes “women-and-girls” (my opinion), reducing them down to their “use-value” (term from Cohn et al, 2004, cited in Basu and Nagar, 2021, 213) in perpetuating the neoliberal economic order.
This essentialization of women – in the context of peace and security, as peaceful and pacifist beings – reduces women’s agency and co-opts the feminist project into the perpetuation of the same pre-existing structures and systems that led to conflict in the first place. I appreciated the way Otto framed the women, peace, and security dilemma: “mobilizing as women, to demand inclusion in peacemaking processes on the basis of women’s present gendered experience, as mothers, as victims, and, more broadly, as marginalized from elite power structures, works against the feminist agenda for peace, which requires disrupting those same gender identities because they have served to legitimate militarism and women’s inequality” (Otto, 2017, 109).
I remember debating as a young girl with my classmates whether it was better to advocate for change from the outside or inside of a system – on the outside you may have agency, I thought, but on the inside you have influence. It never occurred to me then that the lines between inside and outside aren’t so clear and systems self-perpetuate by absorbing us into them so that we have a stake in their maintenance.
I appreciated that the Harcourt reading presented “feminist imaginaries” as a creative and hopeful path forward. Although reading her imagined utopia seemed at times more like a dystopia to me (I admit I have techno-anxiety), I liked the concept.
My questions for the week are:
1. What are the costs of being admitted to the inner sanctum of power circles? (drawing from Otto and Basu and Nagar)
2. What would an international system look like in which a resort to arms becomes unthinkable? (drawing from Harcourt and Otto)
The idea of the United Nations Security Council legislating an agenda for Women, Peace, and Security seemed, to some extent, performative to me. As I read this weeks content, I found myself wondering how current systems of justice can bring us to a feminist conception of justice. I found the discussion of the decision to use the term ‘women’ rather than ‘gender’ in UNSCR 1325 interesting, yet unsurprising. Modern conceptions of justice are built on binary understandings of self and being. Gender is in fact a more accurate term to describe the goals of 1325 (in my opinion) but when we use gender, we lose the ideological ties the word woman has to motherhood, victimhood, and innocence, as mentioned in the Basu and Nagar reading. I began to think about different ‘categories’ of justice and security: Letter of law, Policy, Society, and Conceptual. UNSCR 1325 is a policy which seeks to shape society and the letter of law. However we can recognize its inefficacy, for example, many nations have including the goals of this resolution in subsequent policy, and yet gender based violence and discrimination continue; society has not changed in a meaningful way, our conceptions have not changed.
I wonder how we can hope to achieve these social justice goals in a carceral system of justice. For this reason, I really enjoyed Wright’s work on Abolitionist Feminist Peace. I often think about the idea of non-reformist reform in the context of state sanctioned or war enacted violence. We saw how 1325 pushes for more women peacekeepers in order to reduce violence. While this is an evidence based reform, I see this as a response to a symptom rather than a cure to the disease. More women in law enforcement goes hand in hand with increasing law enforcement systems, growing the power of the military industrial complex. As Wright’s piece discussed, these non reformist reforms entrench rather than dismantle structures of power. Can we expect an institution like the United Nations which introduces so much bureaucracy and western ideology into global society to be the source of answers to such problems? The UN may seek to achieve justice and to improve our planet, however we have to recognize the huge limitations of acting within existing structures and systems built on colonialism and patriarchy.
Within these existing power structures, I think gender is an ideal concept to demonstrate how reform cannot provide an answer to so many modern problems. The current justice system exists in a binary, in the context of gender, this binary exists as woman and man. This system not only harms people who fall outside of the binary, but those within as well. Women and men alike are forced into categorizations and stereotypes which can harm them and exclude them from opportunities and protections alike. Basu and Nagar highlight the fact that gender is relational, discursive, and socially constructed. A policy is not the only answer to gender equality and inclusivity. Today’s readings leave me wondering what that answer is.
Questions
1. Can feminist conceptions of justice exist in a carceral justice system?
2. What would non-binary systems of justice look like?
I’m not sure why I write this with some guilt. In thinking through a feminist lens, I sometimes find some discomfort in saying, I too am thinking of men. This week’s readings made me think of bell hook’s book “The Will to Change”, where she writes,
“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves”.
Frameworks rooted in gender essentialism and as noted in the Basu and Nagar readings, gender is a discursive power relation in which binaries result in hierarchies. That in the conflation, women are instead depicted “vulnerable, mothers, and civilians” (212). And that in its reductionism, it would assume that the opposite is true: the the men are the perpetrators, antagonists, and allies to get us out of this mess that “they” got us in. I don’t find that to be true. The quote by hooks (read it again), is beautiful because it recognises that men are not just allies, but enduring these ontological frameworks as well. This is not to shift focus away from women or diminish their central role in our discussions; rather, it offers a way to view social constructions as seeds that generate distinct implications for everyone involved.
In security studies, Muslim bodies have often been a salient issue (as migrants, as threats, as feminist discourse for victimhood and choice). I think I am thinking of this especially as it is an anniversary for a great shift that has happened over the past year—of how people have come to terms with conflict, genocide, war in the Middle East through the frames of gender. 10% of Gaza’s population has been killed, wounded or rendered missing by the unrelenting attacks by Israel over the past year. 24,620 Palestinians. 70 percent of whom were women or children. Almost 2 million displaced.
When trying to negotiate for people’s empathy, I found myself citing these statistics that center women—that people will care for these creatures because of a normative and gendered idea of what we can endure. Specifically for Arab men, I assumed, assume that people’s empathy for them stirs very little. They do not see what I see—my father, brother, friends, community members, grieving their blood, enduring a war, suffocated like any other.
I conclude, with art, because Erin taught me that sometimes I have no words, but i do have colors, pens, markers, and something prosaic to say.
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish writes in his poem “He Embraces His Murderer”:
He embraces his murderer.
May he win his heart: Do you feel angrier if I survive?
Brother…My brother!
What did I do to make you destroy me?
Question
How can we expand frameworks like the Women, Peace, and Security agenda to encompass the nuanced impacts of conflict on men, especially those marginalized within global narratives, without diverting focus from women?
What would it take for collective empathy to truly embrace all individuals affected by conflict, especially those, like Palestinian men, who are often dismissed or vilified within mainstream discourse?
My greatest takeaway from reading about absolutionist feminism and alternatives to militarized security was the importance of asking questions rather than ticking boxes in efforts to advance gender equality and re-imagine the meaning of peace (Wright and Achilleos-Sarll, 2024). Building from the content of previous weeks, dreaming of better worlds requires questioning our realities— noticing the ways in which our everyday worlds have been shaped by militarized violence and demanding more from ourselves, each other, and institutions. This also requires fostering alternatives to carceral forms of justice, such as restorative justice, that bring people and communities together.
The readings highlighted the need for the abolishment of violent systems like policing, prisons, and borders as they exist as ongoing forms of colonial and capitalist violence. In this way, the perspective of the WPS Agenda is limited as it exists and operates within these structures. It takes part in genderwashing when it overemphasizes the efficacy of these institutions in protecting the individual (within the majority) while hiding their roles in maintaining the status quo through gendered narratives of war and conflict. Seen primarily as pacifists in need of protection and liberation, women’s bodies again act as objects to justify narratives that bolster the perceived need for these existing systems, which are primarily the source of their oppression (Otto, 2017). As Otto (2017) writes, “women are again conceived in protective terms and are “valued” for their chastity and honour, rather than for their humanity (pg. 111).” It is not enough to deserve peace as a woman and human being, rather it is the image of a woman in need of hyper-masculine and militarized saving that carries worth. At the same time, their perceived need undermines a lot of the meaningful work that grassroots movements are doing outside of the confines of bureaucratized agencies (i.e., states, IOs, and NGOs) that often adhere to neoliberal values (Otto, 2017).
Looking forward, I am left with many questions about what kinds of worlds can come out of critical and absolutionist frameworks. In envisioning an alternative understanding of peace that does not equate it to militarization or securitization, I allowed myself to dream with the Otto (2017) reading—I want my kids to ask what NATO was and why it existed. I want the word ‘army’ to feel as foreign to them as ‘rolodex’ does to me. I want all they come to know to be an absence of fear coupled with an undeniable presence of peace and community (Basu and Nagar, 2021). However, I ask myself, “What will it take to get here?” Wright and Achilleos-Sarll (2024) note how abolition does not necessarily equate to pacifism. Revolution is violent, and it is often black, brown, queer and gendered bodies that experience the most violence on the front lines of these movements. For example, in the upcoming US election, many are thinking about abstaining from voting because of Kamala Harris’ history of being a prosecutor and having a very active role in perpetuating violent institutions that police BIPOC bodies. People are calling for revolution, but what does that mean for marginalized people whose rights vanish first? How do we expand our systems and yet keep each other safe?
Additional Questions:
1. What can justice look like?
2. What would a “revolution in care, safety, and well-being (Wright and Achilleos-Sarll, 2024, pg. 6)” look like? How can we create communities of care?
Despite having worked at UN Women for almost two years, I have to admit I knew little about UNSCR 1325. The Women, Peace, and Security agenda was always something I would hear talked about by more senior colleagues, but I never had to engage with it formally.
Before getting through this week’s readings, it had never really clicked for me how central militarism is to the Security Council’s mandate. I had never thought about how the UN’s natural response to war and conflict was to make it “safer” through enhanced military presence, with peacekeeping forces for example, instead of abolishing or addressing the underlying conditions that led to war itself. The Security Council’s reactive processes also perpetuate the binaries of “peace and war” or “before and after” thinking discussed in class over the past few weeks, which fail to address the very present realities of continued systemic violence against racialized, gendered, sexed, and other marginalized bodies outside of more “formally declared” conflicts, every day. While I understand the significance of UNSCR 1325 and find value in its intention to recognize and promote the role of women in building peace and protecting women and girls from conflict-related sexual violence, I don’t agree with how the WPS has been mainstreamed through the Security Council. On one hand, I think mainstreaming the WPS agenda through such a powerful global institution has the potential to bring about change through awareness training, however, I also agree with the idea that “awareness does not entail effective implementation.”
In reflecting on my experience with resource mobilization and strategic partnerships at both UN Women and the World Health Organization, I have witnessed firsthand how departments within the UN are forced to compete with other International Organizations, NGOs, and internal offices, to receive funding for programming. This process can often involve tailoring program proposals to the priorities of member states, foundations, and private sector companies (like Meta) over the more urgent needs of the “beneficiaries.” I can imagine how this would/(has) resulted in gender-washing and leads to interventions focused on “best practices” rather than attempts to dismantle the “local manifestations of structural violence” in the UN’s WPS programming (Basu and Nagar, 219).
At the same time, while I really resonate with the abolitionist and non-reformist reform approaches discussed by Wright and Achilleos-Sarll, I feel a bit hopeless about the reality of militarism, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and other unequal power structures that continue to rule our everyday. I struggle to make sense of how far non-reformist approaches, or explorations of more creative feminist leadership through pop culture, art, and social media for example, could take the WPS agenda. I want to believe in it but I guess I have been feeling cynical lately and it takes me back to the idea that awareness doesn’t always equate to implementation or structural change.
Question:
Is it better to work within a powerful, highly militarized system and attempt to demilitarize from the inside, or to work outside the system in another system (the more meta, capitalistic, and militarized world) that actively silences unwanted voices of dissent? Aren’t the conditions (sort of) the same? Is there even a difference?
This week’s readings were tricky in the sense that they left me with more questions than I initially had (which is, in my opinion, a good thing). What I appreciated about this week’s readings were the ways they stretched my imagination and introduced more “but what about”s into my understanding of the WPS agenda; what I found challenging was that I was left with a lot of questions about how we move these theories into practice. I think that this reflection for this week will actually just be a list of the many questions I had.
The Otto and Wright Achilleos-Sarl readings were particularly thought provoking for me. The Otto reading, for example, made the point that the ways that we try to “humanize” war (through, for example, the development of local and customary conventions) will always fall short for a number of reasons, including that we’re essentially missing the point- Otto argues that what we should be doing is transforming the laws of war so that war can never be justified and conflict is unimaginable. Further, Otto’s argument that the security council’s resolutions “threaten to disempower women’s grassroots for peace” was persuasive. So, Otto argues that we need to reimagine peace outside of the frame of war. There’s many things in this article I agree with wholeheartedly, and I very much agree with the notion that we need to imagine peace outside of the frame of war- if we’re only defining peace against violence or conflict, I think we lose a lot of the imagination and creativity that is necessary to construct better, more equitable futures. However, the little pragmatist voice in my head also asks, if we haven’t managed to stop war entirely yet, shouldn’t we in the meantime also be worried about how it’s happening? Also (this is me speaking now and not the little pragmatist in my head), while I agree we need to look beyond defining peace against war, is it even possible to entirely divorce the idea of peace from the frame of war? Should we separate these two ideas? Where is it helpful to do this, and what do we gain? What do we lose? What would it look like to imagine peace outside of the frame of war? When I think about the idea of love and what it means for me to love, I don’t just think about love- I think about both what I do, and what I don’t do. So it makes sense to me that we should imagine peace within AND outside of the frame of war. Am I oversimplifying Otto’s argument?
This, alongside the Wright and Achilleos-Sarl paper, reminded me a lot of Audre Lorde’s question about whether we can dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools. This question has haunted me literally ever since I have heard it and it keeps me up at night. To me, the question Wright and Achilleos-Sarl raise about reform versus transformation echoes the same themes. The authors touch on this in their article when they argue that “feminist peace resists any singular definition”, and emphasize the importance of deliberation in abolitionist feminism. I truly appreciated these points, but I also find myself wondering about the extent to which revisiting the debate about reform versus transformation is actually helpful. Firstly, don’t we need both? Aren’t we a diverse group of people with different skills and strengths who might work better in different spaces and formats? Isn’t the range of work being done ultimately helpful, because a wide range of different solutions increases the odds that someone can find a solution that works for them, and there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach anyways? I of course recognize that there’s a difference between accepting a range of work and overlooking lenses that are blatantly exclusionary (like any project that takes even a slightly TERF-y approach), but I think the point still stands.
I’m thinking about this because the line between reform and transformation actually doesn’t seem so clear cut to me. I could see someone arguing that harm reduction in the drug poisoning epidemic doesn’t actually transform the harmful systems that produce the situation, but I could also argue that harm reduction is a transformative way to look at care, agency, and reducing barriers/responding to trauma on a community level. So if there’s subjectivity to what even counts as reform vs transformation, does the tension have to be so important?
I feel like it sounds from my reflection like I had an incredible amount of beef with the readings, but I did really love a lot of the points made- I just have many questions that I need to wrap my head around in relation to them.
For now, the two questions I will limit myself to are:
Do we have to choose between reform and transformation? Where does the tension actually exist between the two?
Is it possible to imagine peace without considering war (“outside the frame of war”?
Harcourt’s article reminded me about a hotly talked about issue that I have long forgotten about for some years now, which was a hacker leaking Jennifer Lawrence’s private photos online. I remembered how shocking and controversial the incident was at the time to me and many I knew, but it definitely felt like most men that knew about it did not care and/or laughed at it instead.
That incident seems quite shallow in comparison to a recent development in South Korea over a s similar controversial issue the country faced recently which the article immediately reminded me of. Harcourt wrote about how Jennifer Lawrence’s labelled the obvious outrageous breach of her privacy as a ‘sex crime’ which “catapulted the issue of sexual harassment, feminism and women’s rights into the global press and online social media” (Harcourt, 2019, p. 617). I immediately connected this to the deepfake adult videos that have been surging since this summer in South Korea and the absurd number of everyday women that have been affected by it in the country. As someone who has followed the Korean 4B movement for at least two years now, that quote from Harcourt’s article made me realize that this deepfake incident in South Korea is even more problematic on a nation-wide scale, and it is shocking that women in South Korea have not been receiving more support from men both in South Korea and globally.
The only times I read about developments in this incident is due to following feminist South Korean accounts on X.com (formerly Twitter) which cover the issue extensively and keep posting about how many everyday women, including underage women, have been affected by deepfakes. Being able to track developments on this incident online brings me back to another point made by Harcourt in their article where the author mentions that the new generation of feminism expresses and exchanges ideas over social media and accordingly organizes to address societal struggles with new innovative strategies (Harcourt, 2019, p. 617) which was not available before. This seems true personally as I have noticed a lot of it anecdotally on various social media, and it is the only way to truly be aware of how feminists combat social issues across the globe that regular media does not usually cover. I have seen similar ways of organizing by a new generation of anarchists too.
It is incredibly disturbing for me to even read or think about and I simply cannot imagine what the women who’s lives have been impacted by this are going through. It is shocking how at times I feel like societies have been recently regressing rather than progressing further on many societal issues.
My question for this week is: How should societies and international institutions ensure feminist resolutions of peace and conflict? Simply having women be more appropriately represented in peace negotiations and conflict resolution does not guarantee that feminist perspectives will be actively and seriously considered when addressing and solving global issues and conflicts.
Whenever someone asks what I want to do with my Public Policy and Global Affairs degree, I think of working for the World Health Organization or the United Nations to really create change in this damaged world. However, the more articles I read and the more people I talk to, the more understanding I have of international organizations, and the more disappointed I am that all these “globally influential” organizations are the same—superficial, bureaucratic, and based on patriarchy.
As a social justice advocate, I’ve understood abolitionism as being crucial in not only challenging the structures of oppression but also confronting the underlying colonial and patriarchal ideologies that tend to sustain them. Reflecting on Wright and Achilleos-Sarll’s work while considering WPS, it is reasonably clear that our current global structures still operate within oppressive imperial frameworks. The WPS agenda and its four pillars, while “innovative” in its efforts to bring women into the decision-making and peace process, often fail to critique or even question the systems that we know cause violence and inequality in the first place.
Abolitionism encourages us to rethink how we approach peace and justice, and abolitionist feminism ultimately aims to dismantle militarism, capitalism, and carceral systems. While considering the roles of the UN and other international bodies, I observe how these institutions reinforce the same structures they claim to reform. Promoting women’s participation in security forces without actually addressing the violent nature of these forces echoes the disingenuous incorporation of marginalized voices into oppressive systems without transforming the systems themselves.
Abolitionism reminds me that real change isn’t about inclusion within broken structures but about dismantling those structures altogether. However, I have had trouble fully digesting the idea of moving to an abolitionist framework where there is a reality that immediate abolition could leave already vulnerable populations without the protections or support systems they currently rely on.
Questions:
• If the United Nations and other international governance bodies can’t take feminist action and criticism seriously, how can we expect other governing bodies and states to?
• At what point can abolition hurt and harm marginalized communities?
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to work with Erin on the use of arts-based research methods and the lived experiences of women with disabilities in post-conflict Northern Uganda. All of this, within the context of UNSCR 1325 and the WPS agenda. It highlighted a few shortcomings of the drafting and implementation of the WPS agenda in post-conflict contexts, particularly that there are no mentions of women with disabilities and their unique lived experiences during and after conflicts. The conflict in Northern Uganda and the lived experiences of the women who survived said conflict, show a side of the story that the WPS agenda has not considered. As we have been discussing the past couple of weeks, particularly in terms of what is war and how the international system has viewed war as a binary (war and no-war, if there is no war therefore there is peace), conflicts seldom have a precise start date and the consequences of them live on for years. For many women in Northern Uganda, the war is still present and they continuously need to negotia. Women with disabilities have also been neglected in the post-conflict peace building processes. The WPS agenda fails to recognize all the nuances that exist in conflict and post-conflict contexts, it fails to recognize the many intersecting identities and how does justice looks for the people that will continue to live in post-conflict contexts.
Both Basu and Nagar (p. 214) and Otto (p. 109) touch on something that really made me reflect on the gendered aspects of war, peace, and security and the different concerns from various feminist perspective that have risen in regards to their institutionalization with the WPS agenda. That is when they are explaining how an increase in the number of female peacekeepers has been seen as necessary to decrease of cases of sexual violence committed by male peacekeepers and to ensure the protection of women and children where these operations are taking place. Why is it that the onus of decreasing GBV and sexual violence lies with the women? Which aspects of the peacekeeping and peacebuilding process are “acceptable” for women to participate, according to the international system? As with many other social and political instances where there is a call for greater women’s participation, their mere presence (meaning not necessarily their inputs or contributions and not necessarily guaranteeing that their concerns will be heard) is needed in order to tick a box.
Wendy Harcourt’s piece on imagining feminist futures reminds me a lot of Afrofuturism. Afrofuturism is a movement that “expresses notions of Black identity, agency and freedom through art, creative works and activism that envision liberated futures for Black life.” (National Museum of African American History and Culture, n.d.). While the movement has taken place for the most part in artistic and literary circles and within the dystopic and sci-fi genres (think Octavia Butler or the movie Space is the Place), it offers an imaginary future that I think resembles what Harcourt is trying to convey in terms of a feminist future. I think currently, with the present state of the world, not everyone has been afforded the possibility of imagining a future. Yet, there is resilience in knowing that there is a constant fight so more people are able to afford imagining futures.
Questions:
What does peace mean? Who gets to have peace?
What do the debates surrounding women’s participation in the military and active combat say about the relationship between gender and war?
The readings this week provided a much-needed critique of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The authors noted that while the WPS agenda has granted legitimacy to a feminist engagement with issues of international peace and security (Basu & Nagar), the global security scene continues to rely on militarized approaches to peace, reform of existing institutions over abolition, and in many cases an unwillingness to look beyond the protection of women to the transformative potential of feminist thought.
I’m struggling to find the source, but in my first-year political science course, I remember reading a side blurb in the textbook that critiqued the UN’s approach to gender, the critique being that we don’t necessarily need to just add women to politics, we need to add feminists. While I don’t want to discount the value of representation, because it is incredibly important, I believe the readings this week reinforce the idea that simply including women in peace and security does not equal feminist peace. Feminist peace is rooted in anti-militarism, anti-capitalism, and decolonial approaches, well captured by Angela Davis’ quote, “How … can one expect the state to solve the problem of violence against women, when it constantly recapitulates its own history of colonialism, racism, and war?” (Wright and Achilleos-Sarll, 2). However, within the approach of the international system, Otto notes how while these values are seemingly accepted at face value, and even legitimatized at high levels, they are somewhat “ritualistic,” and consequently “undermined through inaction” (Otto, 106). As I shared on the first day of class, I have also noticed how thin the feminism of the UN feels, sometimes simply including photo-ops and an ‘insert women and stir’ approach.
Given my experience in disarmament, I was particularly struck by Wright, Achilleos-Sarll, and Otto’s exploration of how abolitionist movements connect to feminist peace. Especially for nuclear weapons, the literature is often dominated by realism, with institutions like the IAEA and CTBTO offering only a veneer of liberalism. Initially, I found feminist approaches to disarmament overly aspirational, but I began to question why. It reminded me of a friend who proposed abolishing nuclear weapons at a leadership conference, only to be dismissed as ‘unrealistic.’ This made me reflect on how stereotypes about women being too emotional or idealistic might fuel the disregard for feminist peace. Approaches like DDR and non-proliferation matter, but by not embracing the full potential of a feminist WPS agenda, we miss out on transformative possibilities, including dismantling systems of militarism, colonialism, and capitalism (Wright and Achilleos-Sarll).
My questions for this week:
To what extent do societal stereotypes and gendered assumptions contribute to the dismissal of feminist approaches to peacebuilding and disarmament as “unrealistic” or “too aspirational”?
Is it possible for the UN to ever truly embrace a feminist approach to peace and security, given its current structure and reliance on state-based, militarized approaches to conflict resolution?
The tension between reformist and abolitionist approaches to achieving feminist peace is a central theme in the readings. One key question the authors raise is whether giving women access to state security institutions, such as the military and police, can genuinely reduce violence or if it just strengthens systems that perpetuate gendered harm. Abolitionist feminism argues that dismantling systems of state violence, along with addressing capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism, is essential for real peace. In contrast, the reformist approach focuses on gradual change, such as improving prisons or increasing women’s participation in peacekeeping operations.
The tension persists because dismantling these violent systems is complex and challenging. Wright and Archilleos-Sarll point out that NGOs working on the WPS agenda often depend on government funding, which limits their ability to push for radical changes. In my opinion, this dependency creates a conflict of interest—while these organizations might want to pursue transformative reforms, they are constrained by the need to secure funding. I find this challenge particularly evident in authoritarian or oppressive regimes, where governments are unlikely to support efforts to radically restructure institutions that uphold systemic violence. As a result, NGOs may feel pressured to focus on more moderate reforms, like integrating women into security institutions, rather than advocating for deeper, transformative changes. This significantly limits what these organizations can achieve in promoting feminist peace.
Basu and Nagar also criticize the WPS agenda for its gender-essentialism, which portrays women as inherently peaceful and in need of protection, overlooking their diverse roles in conflict. This narrow view reinforces a militarized concept of peace, which upholds systems of violence. Otto furthers this critique, arguing that the WPS agenda overemphasizes women as victims of sexual violence, reinforcing harmful stereotypes and prioritizing militarized security over more transformative feminist goals, like disarmament and addressing the root causes of war.
In light of these challenges, Harcourt offers a more hopeful perspective, focusing on new feminist movements emerging outside traditional spaces. The author highlights how social media, pop culture, and artistic expression are being used by a new generation of feminists to challenge patriarchal norms. Celebrities like Beyoncé and Emma Watson are key in popularizing feminist ideals, using their influence to reach a wider audience. Although some criticize their involvement as superficial, I believe these influencers help increase the visibility of feminist movements, inspiring broader public engagement and potentially making these movements more successful.
Having grown up in a militarized state where the military’s claimed role of “protecting” citizens frequently justified violence and repression, I find the abolitionist approach, which aims to dismantle systems of state violence, to be a compelling alternative. It prompts some important questions: How can we go beyond reformist frameworks to achieve true feminist peace? And in what ways can new feminist movements help bring about this transformation?
I was particularly connected with Hannah’s “Towards an Abolitionist Feminist Peace,” where the author argues that abolitionism, as a concept, is designed to encompass “us,” including the poor and marginalized. It specifically aims to dismantle oppressive systems and promote alternatives that are human-centric, contrasting starkly with the reformist approach, which focuses on seeking minor improvements within existing structures. While Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) policies aim to reform institutions, abolitionists seek to dismantle them, often invoking carceral feminisms, which creates a never-ending dilemma that divides these two contrasting ideologies. This perspective resonates with the anti-caste sentiment promoted through the Constitution to dismantle the age-old practice of untouchability affecting Scheduled Tribes and Castes, voicing social oppression and violence with the intention of promoting equality and social justice. However, this approach is challenged by several religious institutions in India, and despite all the efforts through the Constitution, atrocities and violence against Scheduled Castes still persist today.
Basu’s Women, Peace, and Security aptly highlights how UNHCR’s resolution conflates “women” and “gender,” overlooking the complexities of gender as a socially constructed and relational identity. I particularly resonated with the author’s critique of the resolution’s essentialist portrayal of women as inherently passive victims in need of protection, which also limits the understanding of men as either perpetrators or protectors. This fundamentally reinforces gendered power dynamics and fails to address the structural violence and militarism that affect both men and women during conflicts. Moreover, the author raises important questions about the role of women’s participation in peacebuilding, especially as the WPS agenda expands to include issues such as sexual violence and economic rights. I can easily relate to the argument that gender equality is often sidelined when it comes to women’s political participation, despite many nations claiming to adopt a gendered approach to policymaking.
The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security highlighted how, by the mid-1990s, the UNHCR realized that so-called technically sound solutions for refugee camps often had serious social consequences for women and children. One example was the design of water jugs that led to sexual exploitation because they were too heavy for women and girls to carry alone. The “Do No Harm” approach became a key tool to address such unintended consequences. The author also referenced the 2015 High-Level Panel’s call for a more “people-centered approach” in UN peace operations, urging the UN to actively listen to local communities and incorporate their insights into protection strategies. “Sit and talk to the communities” is the first lesson I learned when I started my career as a development professional. I can recall those early days when I was initially hesitant to engage in field-based work, as all my family members had desk-based jobs. Over time, I realized the power of the “sit and talk” strategy in building effective solutions for adolescent girls and women in rural areas of India, and I still consider it one of the first steps toward creating impactful solutions.
It made me deeply visualize the strength of art through Wendy’s Palgrave Handbook on Gender and Development, particularly where the author discusses Murals and Mirrors, which explores how women are portrayed in legal, cultural, and pedagogical contexts through the lens of art. For me, art has always been a powerful tool of expression and communication—something that showcases the reality of our world. Reading about the story of female prisoners requesting color to transform their monochromatic prison walls made me immediately connect with the idea that something we often take for granted, like color, can become precious. I was particularly moved by their belief that four walls could bring color into their lives, reminding me of the power of fostering collective identity, trust, and empowerment for women, even within four walls of prison.
Basic questions that came into my mind:
• I align myself with abolitionism as the true solution for bringing change and saying “enough is enough.” However, how and why can reformist approaches actually promote social justice for vulnerable groups?
• Considering that the social narrative and gender are often entangled with biological differences, how can Women, Peace, and Security initiatives and humanitarian efforts be improved in this complex dilemma?
What I thought about the most after finishing this week’s readings was the difference between peace and security. In popular discourse, these concepts are often conflated. Security = peace. Countries must defend and uphold their security to maintain peace. These readings have helped untangle these two concepts in my mind. Security does not mean peace. Just as the absence of conflict does not mean peace. At the very beginning of the reading Wright and Achilleos-Sarll (2024) explain the feminist peace agenda outlining prominent calls to action including “transformation of the UN Security Council into a Peace Council” (pg. 4). When I read this I immediately stopped reading because it triggered head for lack of better term, a lightbulb in my head. I think I have been subconsciously equating security to peace. The purpose of the UN in my mind was to mitigate conflict and promote “peace”. Now thinking about security as separate from peace changes my understanding of a lot of things.
When I was reading and then reflecting on this weeks topics, I thought about the Cold War, specifically the nuclear arms race and the still-growing count of nuclear weapons accumulated by countries in the name of “security”. The need to produce these weapons is often touted as part of a national security agenda. I’ve always associated “national security” with peace but now I am starting to understand this concept differently. How can we live in peace when nations have weapons of mass destruction armed and ready to detonate? Otto (2017) speaks to a similar sentiment. The positive peace and feminist anti-war sentiment has been trivialized in the WPS agenda, particularly in ways that justify conflict rather than dismantling current practices of international security that “conceive of peace primarily in military terms” (Otto, 2017, p. 106).
We spoke last week at how entrenched militarization is in society. After doing the readings this week it struck me how entrenched this is even in peacekeeping/ building. Global peacekeeping is intertwined with militarization. These two concepts should be opposite, yet they are completely intertwined in international policy agendas.
As part of another class, I am writing a critical analysis of the 2023/24 UNDP Human Development Report. The report warns that despite the world being deeply interconnected, countries struggle to cooperate on global issues. De-militarization and disarmament are global issues. We cannot pursue permanent peace without global cooperation. The arms race was and is still fueled by fear of one state or actor’s power dominance over another. In such a polarized and untrusting world, cooperation on the specific issue of disarmament seems like an impossible task.
This thought leads into my question this week; how can we incentivize de-militarisation and disarmament when this process is seen as a security risk for nations who fear being left defenceless? Is there a future where armed conflict isn’t a constant fear?
I was not expecting a concert I attended this week to connect with our Wendy Harcourt reading, but I was proven wrong! Last night I went to the Hans Zimmer concert, where Zimmer proclaimed with joy that “the women are the strength of this band.” The lead drummers, lead violinists, singers, lead cellists, and majority of the band were women who hailed from all parts of the globe, and they all exhibited unique strengths within the band. Some played tenderly and softly, others (especially the singers) growled out lyrics like warriors, and many expertly shifted between the two. Tina Guo, the first cellist, had three dark, jagged lines drawn in makeup going down her neck and would wince at times when her music speeded up in tempo. The violinists, drummers, and orchestra played strong, rallying, heart-thumping music in unison, physically leaning on each other’s backs and feeling the music with their whole bodies. It was clear that these experts were having fun doing what they loved, and there was no need to hide it or make themselves small. Truly, it was a spectacular moment of feeling the power, brilliance, artistry, and joy that women can bring to the world when we thrive in environments that value us in our wholeness and complexity. I would like to imagine a future in which this environment is the standard and not the exception for everyone; the ability to exist as our full selves, with no social conditioning that renders our hard work and talents as small or inconsequential.
During the intermission, my sister made a comment to me that I think lines up with the abolitionist feminism I learned about in the Wright reading. “Instead of spending our time appreciating this,” she pointed to the stage, “we [humans] fight and go to war instead. What a shame.” The institutions we exist in assume war so readily that other ways of conflict management seem impossible, rather than difficult but achievable. As Wright says, “where wholesale resolution is not imminent, certain reforms can advance revolutionary goals” (Wright pg. 9). Reformist reforms can pave the way for non-reformist reforms. Another line that rang true to me was in the Soumita and Nagar reading: the “international community positions itself as the saviour of the ‘brown woman’ from the ‘brown man’ evoking the language of colonialism” (Soumita & Nagar pg. 218). Colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and so many other oppressive systems contribute to war-making, and white feminism is often used as the veil for making people conform to the Global North’s idea of what a woman in the Global South should be.
My question for this week is specific to the Wright reading, as I found the intersection of WPS advocate-critics who had an anti-militarist approach to be especially interesting. I wonder whether other common types of advocate–critics exist for WPS (ex. WPS supporters who are anti-incarceration)? I also wonder what we can do in our everyday lives to exercise abolitionist feminism?
My GP2 project will be in Northern Uganda, under the umbrella of work taking place to implement the National Transitional Justice Policy (NTJP), which was adopted in 2019 as a response to decades of conflict in the region. This policy was largely influenced by certain pledges the government made to implement transitional justice measures during the Juba Peace Talks of 2006-08, and while the development of the NTJP is evidence of progress on the issue, one of the debates around the NTJP is on the extent to which the Government of Uganda actually intends to (and is capable of) implement(ing) it.
So, while reading this week’s articles, I was struck by Diane Otto’s discussion of “ritualism,” “whereby states subscribe to institutionalized rituals that repeatedly affirm certain goals, despite having little or no commitment to their substantive realization” (Otto, 2017, 108). This gets at the heart of the debate described above, as well as describing many other issues whereby institutions and their leaders say one thing and do another. Take the criticism land acknowledgements have received for example, at times being called performative, especially when no actions are taken beyond this acknowledgment to further reconciliation. Or, look at Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy, which labels itself feminist but then essentializes “women-and-girls” (my opinion), reducing them down to their “use-value” (term from Cohn et al, 2004, cited in Basu and Nagar, 2021, 213) in perpetuating the neoliberal economic order.
This essentialization of women – in the context of peace and security, as peaceful and pacifist beings – reduces women’s agency and co-opts the feminist project into the perpetuation of the same pre-existing structures and systems that led to conflict in the first place. I appreciated the way Otto framed the women, peace, and security dilemma: “mobilizing as women, to demand inclusion in peacemaking processes on the basis of women’s present gendered experience, as mothers, as victims, and, more broadly, as marginalized from elite power structures, works against the feminist agenda for peace, which requires disrupting those same gender identities because they have served to legitimate militarism and women’s inequality” (Otto, 2017, 109).
I remember debating as a young girl with my classmates whether it was better to advocate for change from the outside or inside of a system – on the outside you may have agency, I thought, but on the inside you have influence. It never occurred to me then that the lines between inside and outside aren’t so clear and systems self-perpetuate by absorbing us into them so that we have a stake in their maintenance.
I appreciated that the Harcourt reading presented “feminist imaginaries” as a creative and hopeful path forward. Although reading her imagined utopia seemed at times more like a dystopia to me (I admit I have techno-anxiety), I liked the concept.
My questions for the week are:
1. What are the costs of being admitted to the inner sanctum of power circles? (drawing from Otto and Basu and Nagar)
2. What would an international system look like in which a resort to arms becomes unthinkable? (drawing from Harcourt and Otto)
The idea of the United Nations Security Council legislating an agenda for Women, Peace, and Security seemed, to some extent, performative to me. As I read this weeks content, I found myself wondering how current systems of justice can bring us to a feminist conception of justice. I found the discussion of the decision to use the term ‘women’ rather than ‘gender’ in UNSCR 1325 interesting, yet unsurprising. Modern conceptions of justice are built on binary understandings of self and being. Gender is in fact a more accurate term to describe the goals of 1325 (in my opinion) but when we use gender, we lose the ideological ties the word woman has to motherhood, victimhood, and innocence, as mentioned in the Basu and Nagar reading. I began to think about different ‘categories’ of justice and security: Letter of law, Policy, Society, and Conceptual. UNSCR 1325 is a policy which seeks to shape society and the letter of law. However we can recognize its inefficacy, for example, many nations have including the goals of this resolution in subsequent policy, and yet gender based violence and discrimination continue; society has not changed in a meaningful way, our conceptions have not changed.
I wonder how we can hope to achieve these social justice goals in a carceral system of justice. For this reason, I really enjoyed Wright’s work on Abolitionist Feminist Peace. I often think about the idea of non-reformist reform in the context of state sanctioned or war enacted violence. We saw how 1325 pushes for more women peacekeepers in order to reduce violence. While this is an evidence based reform, I see this as a response to a symptom rather than a cure to the disease. More women in law enforcement goes hand in hand with increasing law enforcement systems, growing the power of the military industrial complex. As Wright’s piece discussed, these non reformist reforms entrench rather than dismantle structures of power. Can we expect an institution like the United Nations which introduces so much bureaucracy and western ideology into global society to be the source of answers to such problems? The UN may seek to achieve justice and to improve our planet, however we have to recognize the huge limitations of acting within existing structures and systems built on colonialism and patriarchy.
Within these existing power structures, I think gender is an ideal concept to demonstrate how reform cannot provide an answer to so many modern problems. The current justice system exists in a binary, in the context of gender, this binary exists as woman and man. This system not only harms people who fall outside of the binary, but those within as well. Women and men alike are forced into categorizations and stereotypes which can harm them and exclude them from opportunities and protections alike. Basu and Nagar highlight the fact that gender is relational, discursive, and socially constructed. A policy is not the only answer to gender equality and inclusivity. Today’s readings leave me wondering what that answer is.
Questions
1. Can feminist conceptions of justice exist in a carceral justice system?
2. What would non-binary systems of justice look like?
I’m not sure why I write this with some guilt. In thinking through a feminist lens, I sometimes find some discomfort in saying, I too am thinking of men. This week’s readings made me think of bell hook’s book “The Will to Change”, where she writes,
“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves”.
Frameworks rooted in gender essentialism and as noted in the Basu and Nagar readings, gender is a discursive power relation in which binaries result in hierarchies. That in the conflation, women are instead depicted “vulnerable, mothers, and civilians” (212). And that in its reductionism, it would assume that the opposite is true: the the men are the perpetrators, antagonists, and allies to get us out of this mess that “they” got us in. I don’t find that to be true. The quote by hooks (read it again), is beautiful because it recognises that men are not just allies, but enduring these ontological frameworks as well. This is not to shift focus away from women or diminish their central role in our discussions; rather, it offers a way to view social constructions as seeds that generate distinct implications for everyone involved.
In security studies, Muslim bodies have often been a salient issue (as migrants, as threats, as feminist discourse for victimhood and choice). I think I am thinking of this especially as it is an anniversary for a great shift that has happened over the past year—of how people have come to terms with conflict, genocide, war in the Middle East through the frames of gender. 10% of Gaza’s population has been killed, wounded or rendered missing by the unrelenting attacks by Israel over the past year. 24,620 Palestinians. 70 percent of whom were women or children. Almost 2 million displaced.
When trying to negotiate for people’s empathy, I found myself citing these statistics that center women—that people will care for these creatures because of a normative and gendered idea of what we can endure. Specifically for Arab men, I assumed, assume that people’s empathy for them stirs very little. They do not see what I see—my father, brother, friends, community members, grieving their blood, enduring a war, suffocated like any other.
I conclude, with art, because Erin taught me that sometimes I have no words, but i do have colors, pens, markers, and something prosaic to say.
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish writes in his poem “He Embraces His Murderer”:
He embraces his murderer.
May he win his heart: Do you feel angrier if I survive?
Brother…My brother!
What did I do to make you destroy me?
Question
How can we expand frameworks like the Women, Peace, and Security agenda to encompass the nuanced impacts of conflict on men, especially those marginalized within global narratives, without diverting focus from women?
What would it take for collective empathy to truly embrace all individuals affected by conflict, especially those, like Palestinian men, who are often dismissed or vilified within mainstream discourse?