In the final reporting period we continued to develop alternative readings of key WPS concepts at the intersection with international law, making our outputs (journal articles, book chapters, reports, concept notes, blogs, podcasts, and documentaries) freely available and accessible through the project webpage. Peace and gender framed our writings (‘Women and the right to peace’; ‘Give peace a chance’; ‘Intersectionality and Peace’) and external and internal activities prompting scholars from other disciplines to engage with our ideas around gendered peace (British Academy workshop). Our publications challenged dominant conceptions of gender particularly by UN mandated fact-finding commissions which play a critical role in post-conflict peace-building. Through workshops and public events we argued for a more nuanced, expansive and embedded understanding of what a gender analysis entails including in the context of international criminal law (‘Bringing a gender perspective to crimes against humanity’; ‘Integrating gender into Commissions of Inquiry’.) Insights gained through direct engagements with women from conflict-affected areas fed into an enriched understanding of what peace means to differently situated women and helped to identify the gaps and failings in law and policy. Our work on trafficking demonstrated how trafficking contributes to and is exacerbated by armed conflict yet remains peripheral to the WPS agenda. Working with partners (Women’s Link Worldwide, the UN Special Rapporteur on human trafficking) we sought to make combatting trafficking a central concern of violence prevention and post-conflict peacebuilding (‘International human rights, criminal law and the women, peace and security agenda’; ‘Human trafficking and the women, peace and security agenda’) and provided expert opinions to the Security Council and judicial bodies. As with trafficking, our work on disarmament revealed how the topic is treated as of marginal relevance to the protection of women’s rights notwithstanding its centrality to conflict prevention. Our work disrupted this dominant narrow framing through a more expansive reading of WPS (‘Women and weapons’ concept note; ‘Women’s peace activism can end conflict’; ‘Nuclear weapons’ opinion).
We drew attention to the law underpinning the WPS agenda highlighting how securitisation limits the potential of WPS to protect women’s human rights and prevent interpersonal violence and structural violence (‘Women, Peace and Security: tackling violence against women in the contemporary world?’) and the need for states to adopt a rights-based framework (‘International human rights, criminal law and the WPS agenda’, ‘Information and communication technologies and the WPS agenda’). We elaborated on the responsibility of states, rejecting claims around ‘ungovernable spaces’ and urged for a more progressive agenda on the international responsibility of non-state actors that better aligns with the lived realities of women’s live (‘In times of crisis’). We identified lacunae in law to counter violence against women and drew attention to good practice (‘Preventing and combatting sexism). We provided legal analyses to reverse gender injustices in existing law (Colombia amicus brief) and argued for adoption of survivor-centric (‘Ending impunity and prioritising survivors’) intersectional, holistic approaches drawing links between human rights law and WPS. We emphasised the obligation on states to provide reparations, demonstrating how a gender analysis can ensure effective compliance, address the needs of survivors and facilitate structural change thereby preventing the violence in the first place (‘The right to reparations’; ‘Inter-American Court reaches landmark decision on torture and sexual slavery’). Through the cross-cutting theme of ‘space’ we addressed normative gaps (‘Protecting women and girls in refugee camps’; ‘Yemeni activists pay the price’) while the theme of ‘time’ allowed us to elaborate on the histories of feminist peace activism, including through archival work (100 years of peace activism; ‘The world is not organised for peace’; ‘Women’s peace activism and conflict’; Gender Justice and Gender Peace).
We have delivered significantly more than the objectives set out in the original proposal (two peer reviewed articles from each stream and two monographs). Our final output, a collection of essays on 'Gendered Peace and International Law' (Chinkin & Arimatsu) will be released in spring 2024.
