Description
Over the last two decades of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, National Action Plans (NAPs) have been used as a measure of states’ commitment to the implementation of the agenda. Whereas states in the Global North have been consistent in producing these NAPs, their content has tended to reproduce racist and gendered global power hierarchies (Haastrup and Hagen, 2020; 2021). This is especially visible where states have ignored their own domestic blind spots, while criticising the records of others, especially in the Global South. These critiques of the coloniality of power of Global North countries has had an impact on policymakers. In new commitments to the WPS, Canada and the United States now acknowledge their own histories as settler colonial societies. Ireland’s NAP also acknowledges these global power hierarchies, situating the nation as a post-conflict postcolony. Our contribution reflects on the implications of these recent acknowledgements by states for gender, peace and security initiatives. Through our analysis, we observe both the approaches and results of decoloniality within the WPS agenda. By drawing on decolonial feminist insights we consider the potential/limitations for state-based policy actions to pave the way for more inclusive and transformative spaces of global governance.
