Gender equality in Peacebuilding and Statebuilding
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to develop practical programming guidance on gender-responsive interventions in international efforts in support of peacebuilding (PB) and statebuilding (SB) processes, drawing on the DFID paper “Building Peace States and Societies: DFID Practice Paper”, (DFID 2010). For this it draws on a review of the literature on the state of knowledge regarding gender perspectives in the different components of peacebuilding and statebuilding (see Domingo et al. 2013), as well as on political economy and gender analysis approaches in order to develop a set of principles and guidance for policy-makers and advisors to better inform programme design in peacebuilding and statebuilding operations from a gender perspective.
The Guidance Paper is structured as follows:
- First, the paper draws attention to the reasons why integrating gender into mainstream peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts has intrinsic value in and also adds value to these efforts.
- Second the paper presents an overarching theory of change to inform programming for gender-responsive peacebuilding and statebuilding, addressing the different spheres of change and component features of state society relations.
- Third, the paper following, the theory of change framework, provide specific practical guidance on how to approach gender-responsive PBSB, combining political economy methods with gender analysis. This analytical approach is useful to develop guidance on the necessary building blocks to integrate gender meaningfully into policy and practice. Given the variability and breadth of peacebuilding and statebuilding in FCAS it is important for programming to be able to respond to the very specific gendered experiences of conflict and fragility which are also context specific.
- And finally, the paper presents sector specific guidance on how to approach programming, taking account of the theory of change framework and lessons learned from the evidence base. This is premised not on building prescriptive blueprints, but on providing a framework for analytical reasoning to guide the choice of decisions about entry points and programme inputs relevant to the particular constellation of political economy factors and gender relations in any given context.
Citation
Domingo, P.; Holmes, R. Gender equality in Peacebuilding and Statebuilding. ODI, London, UK (2013) vii + 42 pp.
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