Description
The United Nations Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda has become internationally recognised framework within the field of peace and conflict studies over the past 20 years. A lot of hope was invested in the WPS Agenda’s ability to address gendered exclusions, forms of discrimination, and violence that is generated by conflict; however, many argue that the agenda has not proved to be as transformational as was originally thought (Shepherd, 2016; Basu, 2016; Basu et al., 2020). The paper goes to argue how the WPS Agenda’s application and focus in mainly on internationally recognised conflicts, and specifically armed conflicts hinders its transformative potential. The experience of violence continues for women even after the signing of peace agreements and therefore the use of terms such as ‘war’ and ‘peace’ renders women’s experiences of conflict and post-conflict invisible (Ní Aoláin and Valji, 2019). Drawing on interview data with Palestinian civil society organisations and reflecting on feminist views of security, the paper examines how is "security" defined by WPS Agenda and what are the implications of this definition to the implementation process – can it be a tool for feminist peace? The findings demonstrate how the definitions and norms discussed and agreed internationally with regard to women’s security actually affect how the scope of the Agenda is understood at national and local level.
