Localizing the Women Peace & Security Agenda

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda arising from United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 has reached a critical juncture in its short 20-year history. Despite comprising ten resolutions designed to bolster the agenda and expand its scope and normative power, serious challenges to the implementation of WPS remain.

Full project title

Localizing the Women Peace & Security Agenda Across Multiple Governance Challenges

Project description

Competing visions of what the WPS agenda is and should be make it a contested concept within states. The governance challenge that emerges is how this increase in global conventions on the status of women is institutionalized and implemented in different ways at local levels. While there are an increasing number of case studies related to the implementation of the WPS agenda at local levels, there remains little cross-fertilization and knowledge accumulation in this field. This project seeks to address this challenge by bringing together scholars working in this field from different perspectives and regions.

In this project we ask the following questions: What do WPS implementation processes look like at the local level? What ideas and assumptions on the one hand, and resource constraints on the other drive such implementation processes? How are new norms and institutions created by that process? What local conditions challenge WPS implementation?

This project has two main components.  The first is a workshop which will be held in September 2022 which will bring together scholars working on the implementation of WPS. The outcome of this workshop will be an edited book and a podcast series. The second component is a report on the feasibility of developing a global digital networking platform for open-access dissemination of research and practice in WPS across the global south and north. The next step will then be to develop a grant proposal seeking funding to build and develop a digital networking platform for scholars and scholarship on WPS implementation.