Clara Della Valle
The United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325/2000 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) is the first resolution to explicitly mention war’s impact on women and their contribution to conflict resolution for lasting peace. Over the past two decades, the so-called “WPS Agenda” has progressively acted as the vector of a transnational discursive trend towards gender mainstreaming in conflict management and peacebuilding fields. Based on the “pillars” of participation, prevention, protection, relief and recovery (UN 2000), the Agenda’s normative framework was consolidated by adopting 9 subsequent UNSCRs, 108 National Action Plans (NAPs), and 11 Regional Action Plans (WILPF 2024). The global WPS debate has been growing; however, there is broad international consensus that much remains to be done. As Paul Kirby and Laura Shepherd (2020, p. 12) highlight, “points of fracture” have emerged in the WPS architecture that undermine both the conceptualisation and operationalisation of its principles while hampering the implementation of initiatives and programmes at (trans)national level.
Since 2000, one of the subjects that has animated scholarship on the WPS Agenda is the question of space and location. Situating the WPS Agenda at the UN headquarters or ‘on the ground,’ ‘locally’ generates different political, and research, possibilities. In recent years, embracing the so-called “local turn” in International Relations (IR) and endeavouring to “globalise” the discipline (Hoffman 1997; Ashley 1987; Holsti 1985; Cox 1984), an increasing number of scholars have called for “centering the local as a site of knowledge production in the WPS Agenda” (Shepherd 2020, p. 456).
Moving from these considerations, this research project aims at re-centralising ‘Global South’ discourses and practices WPS, by focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It investigates how the WPS Agenda has been discussed, promoted and adapted in three post-revolution settings (Tunisia, Morocco and Lebanon) by looking at the national strategies used to operationalise UNSCR 1325 objectives and bring about the adoption and implementation of specific actions plans. In particular, the research aims at answering the following questions: “To what extent the WPS Agenda has incorporated the active role of women’s agencies in Tunisia, Morocco and Lebanon?” and “To what extent it has informed change at local level?”. In addressing these questions, the research looks at both national specificities (e.g. the post-2011 political transitions) and transnational challenges (e.g. the multiple security crises stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic and most recent conflicts).
The comparative study draws on the public policy approach of the “policy cycle model” (Howlett, Ramesh and Perl 2009; Hill and Varone 2021), that lends itself to capturing any disruptions that may occur in the policy chain between UN headquarters and local communities in Tunisia, Morocco and Lebanon. Methodologically, the research is informed by the Grounded Theory perspective (Glaser and Strauss 1967). By building a bridge between Comparative Politics and IR, the project contributes to both literatures while adding to the critical literature on WPS.