This Guidance Paper provides practical programming guidance to mainstream gender into international efforts in support of peacebuilding and statebuilding processes. It finds that current thinking on the necessary features of state society relations includes the following: making political settlements and political processes more inclusive; strengthening core functions of the state (including security and justice provision, and delivery of basic services, and the regulation of economic activity); creating state capacity and political space to be responsive to public expectations about power and resource allocation and general policy preferences; fostering society’s ability to engage actively in public life; and working with locally embedded norms and institutions including outside the state system.
A review of the key literature on the linkages between promoting gender equality and advancing peacebuilding and statebuilding goals (Domingo et al. 2013) found that we still know very little about: a) what works to substantively integrate gender in peacebuilding and statebuilding in fragile and conflict affected contexts; and b) how gender responsive approaches specifically contribute to peacebuilding and statebuilding objectives. However, in looking more closely at sector specific experiences (such as support to peace agreements, post-conflict governance, justice and security reform, or service delivery), there is an emerging body of evidence that provides insights and lessons on what gender-responsive approaches that work might look like.
The key findings from this review of the evidence include the following:
- There is a more favourable international climate for more coherent support to gender-responsive approaches in FCAS reflected in the cumulative body of international norms and commitments (such as UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and associated resolutions) and recent policy documents.
- Peacebuilding and statebuilding processes can offer unique opportunities to embed gender-equality goals in emerging political settlements resulting from the redefinition of the rules of social, political and economic engagement. These are important to capitalise on, as often opportunities for gender equality become quickly retrenched.
- Working with a range of stakeholders (including gender advocates and decision-makers) at key points and processes of peacebuilding and statebuilding is important to facilitating change towards gender equality and women’s empowerment. For this, understanding conduct and attitudes, and working with “resistors” to alter incentives and belief systems is important to promote institutional (formal and informal) and political change.
- In FCAS the state is often weak, and there are competing institutions and norm systems that order social and political life. Working with non-state actors and informal institutions, including at community-level, may be the most effective entry-point for addressing gender-based inequalities and discriminatory social norms, and renegotiating women’s public and private roles.
- The international community needs to work better across sectors and thematic areas to promote gender equality in FCAS and in peace building and state building outcomes. This requires working in a less siloed and technical way, and being explicitly aware of how change in one sector affects outcomes in another from a gender perspective.
- ddressing gender inequalities is deeply political, but gender-responsive approaches are often dissociated from considerations of how they intersect with wider dynamics of social, political and economic change in transitional settings.
The theory of change that can inform programme design, intervention choice and implementation has five components:
- The first involves identifying the spheres of change relevant to peacebuilding and statebuilding activities operate from a gender perspective. This includes dealing with the legacies of conflict, political voice and governance and delivering core state functions (state-society relations). These are not separate spheres but are deeply interconnected – change in one area affects change processes in another.
- The second component includes identifying the inputs and activities necessary to achieve change in peacebuilding and statebuilding that advances gender equality objectives. This involves combining a political economy and a gender analysis approach to identify the types of programming activities and policy inputs that are needed to mainstream gender more strategically.
- The importance of adapting a theory of change to context specific opportunities and constraints is critical. There is a need to revisit and test underlying assumptions about entry-point and intervention choices, and how they contribute to intended change processes and outputs during the programme life.
- The fourth component describes the immediate and intermediate outputs that can be reasonably expected, given the concrete programmatic theory of change on which entry-point and intervention choices are made, and the specific realities of context.
- This component indicates broader goals of improved gender equality and more inclusive, participatory, equitable and legitimate peaceful states that the preceding stages can contribute to.