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This project is based on the premise that sustaining peace and security requires addressing the inequalities, marginalizations and exclusions that underlie armed conflicts. Current peacemaking and peacebuilding practices too often leave these inequalities untouched, or even deepen them. And current economic recovery paradigms largely rely on extractive, rather than sustainable forms of development. The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, although crucial in highlighting the importance of women’s participation in peace processes and security decision-making, itself needs broadening and deepening if it is to meet the goal of creating gender equitable, sustainable peace.

This is because in the aftermath of even the most socially inclusive peace processes, a series of predictable, transnational processes and dynamics are set in motion which have the effect of undermining the gains and goals of the WPS agenda, many other progressive aspects of peace agreements, and the durability of peace itself. Thus, for the WPS project to be a truly potent tool in building sustainable peace, it requires:

• Forward-looking expert knowledge of post-war transnational political-economic processes and dynamics
• Analysis of ways in which they impact gender relations and other structural inequalities
• Recommendations for how to engage and modify those processes in ways more supportive of the societal transformations critical to building sustainable peace

That knowledge and analysis, along with policy recommendations useful to a full range of actors, from multilateral organizations and national governments to civil society organizations and activists, is what the Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace will provide. What are the key post-war transnational political-economic processes and dynamics the Feminist Roadmap will address?

• Infrastructure reconstruction (including transportation, energy, water, communications, and so-called “massive infrastructure projects”)
• Natural resource exploitation and extraction
• Large-scale land acquisition / “land-grabbing” for agricultural production
• Environmental degradation and climate change
• Disaster risk reduction and response
• Livelihoods
• The economic recovery policy prescriptions of international lenders and donors
• Public finance (how post-war states raise, allocate and expend financial resources)

How is the Feminist Roadmap being constructed?

The project uses an innovative, collaborative international knowledge-building process to generate new ideas and strategies that will have real policy impact in supporting the aim building gender-equitable, sustainable peace. Each of the Roadmap’s Knowledge-Building Workshops brings together thinkers from South and North, from the worlds of research, policy and practice, and with very different fields of expertise.

The project is spearheaded by the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights (CGSHR). In the pilot phase of the project, CGSHR, in partnership with and supported by the Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution (NOREF), convened a first international meeting to test the project concept and to begin laying out the pieces of the Roadmap. CGSHR and NOREF also collaborated in convening a pilot thematic workshop, on “Gender, Public Finance and Peacebuilding.” A third, experimental feeder workshop, organized with the support Official Development Assistance research funds through the University of Edinburgh, addressed “Economies that Work for Women in Post-War Settings.”

In Phase Two, additional institutional partners will be added, including the African Leadership Centre (Nairobi, Kenya and London, UK), the Swedish Defense University (Stockholm, Sweden), Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica (Bogotá, Columbia), Azim Premji University (Bangalore, India), and Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lahore, Pakistan).

We are grateful for support for Phase Two of the Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace from the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Compton Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Feminist Roadmap for Sustainable Peace Resources