This report is based on a three-year research project on gender in peacebuilding, which involved field research in four countries (Burundi, Colombia, Nepal and Uganda), with a thematic focus on four areas of peacebuilding:
- access to justice (including formal, informal, traditional and transitional justice);
- economic recovery (especially of ex-combatants and of returnee populations of refugees, abductees or internally displaced persons (IDPs));
- inter-generational tensions and conflict; and
- permutations and continuums of violence (e.g. self-inflicted, interpersonal, domestic, sexual and gender-based, criminal, communal and political violence).
- Understanding the context: Gender analysis should be seen as key in the preparation of peacebuilding programmes and policy development, and requires the investment of time and resources. A gender-relational approach to gender analysis for peacebuilding implies a broadly based description of how gender roles and relations work in each particular context, including how gender difference intersects with other identities. It also involves an assessment of how these roles and relations influence a society’s propensity for violent conflict, the extent to which these gender roles and relations might themselves be shaped by violent conflict, and the opportunities they present for transformative change.
- Identifying who to work with and how: A gender-relational approach to gender analysis suggests a broad range of possible interventions; it also enables a sharper focus on groups of people (not necessarily women) who are particularly vulnerable, as well as on those whose attitudes and practices most need to be changed and those most amenable to change. In doing so, it allows policies and interventions to be more precisely targeted and thus more effectively implemented and evaluated. In our case studies, an issue arising across the board has been the vulnerability of men as well as of sexual and gender minorities, something that might be revealed by a relational gender analysis but is often overlooked by programming that assumes vulnerability to be associated with women and children. In different contexts, a gender-relational analysis might suggest focusing, for example, on the particular vulnerabilities or strengths of young, rural, widowed women in a particular location; elderly, lower-class urban men; or educated, well-connected female political change-makers.
- Identifying best ways of working: Adopting a gender-relational approach to peacebuilding means understanding how gender relations and identities influence peace possibilities in a given situation, as well as facilitating transformational change based on that understanding. The experiences documented in our case studies suggest that those approaches that result in positive transformations seem most often to be characterised by inclusivity, dialogue and empowerment. Initiatives that impressed us are inclusive in that they involve women and men, young and old, powerful and powerless, capturing a wide variety of perspectives and knowledge. They use dialogue as one of their main methods, promoting capacities for dialogue and creating the necessary spaces, so that potentially conflicting components of a community can move forward in concert. They are also designed and managed in such a way that programming is driven by some of the women, men and sexual and gender minorities most directly affected by violent conflict, empowering them to promote sustainable change.
- Applying a gender-relational approach to different sectors and themes: The four themes on which our research focused should not be seen as limiting but rather as illustrating the sort of enrichment that a relational approach to gender analysis can bring to peacebuilding work generally. Such an analysis can both inform and be intensified by programming across all areas of work in peacebuilding situations, and can be mainstreamed across all sectors. Building gender analysis and change goals into other peacebuilding initiatives may be just as effective a way of achieving transformation as separate ‘gender programming’. The gender change goals should be just as prominent, and be taken just as seriously in implementation, monitoring and evaluation, as the ‘sectoral’ goals alongside which they sit.
In addition to examining the particular gendered dynamics of peacebuilding in the four countries around these four issues, the project also had a more conceptual aim of broadening and deepening the understanding of gender in peacebuilding.
The research confirmed the starting hypothesis that peacebuilding can be more effective if built on an understanding of how gendered identities are constructed through the societal power relations between and among women, men, girls, boys and members of sexual and gender minorities. This ‘gender-relational’ approach is, on the one hand, broader in the sense that it moves away from equating gender with women (and girls) and, on the other hand, deeper in that it examines the interplay between gender and other identity markers, such as age, social class, sexuality, disability, ethnic or religious background, marital status or urban/rural setting. While such an approach requires more nuanced and better-researched interventions, it can also allow for more effective and sustainable targeting of programming.
The following lessons for peacebuilding practice emerged from the research: