Women, Peace and Security: Bridging the global–local divide through contextual relevance

With the 25th anniversary of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda approaching in 2025, practitioners are reflecting on whether the agenda is still fit for purpose, what lessons have been learned and how to ensure its continued relevance across diverse contexts.

Driven by civil society activism and enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 1325, the WPS agenda highlights the importance of women’s participation in peacebuilding and the distinct, often-overlooked, impact of conflict and violence on women and girls. 

Despite having originally been shaped by feminist activists from many parts of the world, the WPS agenda has often been critiqued by activists, researchers and governments alike as a Western imposition in both its framing and its implementation. Many practitioners, however, have taken the agenda beyond Resolution 1325’s remits and demonstrated how to deeply contextualize WPS implementation. This has sometimes led to a divide between the global and local levels in how the agenda is understood, practised and articulated—thus hampering effective conversations and mutual learning between practitioners working at grassroots level and global policymakers.

This divide can be bridged. Recent research and programme implementation by Mercy Corps and the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) across Iraq, Mali and Nigeria has demonstrated the importance of drawing on the experiences and priorities of local partners, balancing the need for localized approaches with the benefits of cross-contextual learning, and centring inclusion at every level of engagement. This blog explores two of these approaches to bridging the global–local divide: prioritizing inclusion within participation and strengthening the ‘connective tissue’ between global and local WPS movements.

Participation must prioritize inclusion

Although participation is one of four pillars of the WPS agenda, the spectrum of participation varies greatly. For example, policy language has evolved to highlight ‘meaningful’ or ‘effective’ participation, emphasizing the need to go beyond women being simply present to ensuring that they are able to contribute to and influence the outcomes of negotiations and peace processes. Yet international organizations often lead in setting agendas, objectives and structures in peacebuilding and simply invite those most affected to attend rather than giving them a chance to help shape the processes. By doing so, the organizations undermine their own participation principles, delivering tokenistic access rather than transformational inclusion. 

The principle that processes should be shaped by the needs and priorities of women from conflict-affected communities has been central to the WPS agenda since its inception. The policy framework itself was the result of decades of lobbying and activism by women peacebuilders worldwide. This collaborative approach, however, has become diluted, leading to a perception of the agenda as a Western imposition despite its globally diverse roots. Designing programmes and conflict-resolution processes with women in the driver’s seat returns to these fundamentals and grounds WPS approaches in the reality of women’s daily lives, challenges and priorities. 

Mercy Corps and FBA prioritize both inclusion and meaningful participation as essential and interlinked components of effective WPS implementation. This means involving those affected by the policy or programme from the first stages of project design. In Iraq, Mercy Corps conducted participatory research to inform the design and implementation of a peace and reconciliation initiative. After being trained in research and data collection, women from affected communities designed the research objectives and questions. This approach led researchers to ask different questions and identify contextual realities that may otherwise have been overlooked. By working directly with women to design the research, the team identified practical approaches to increase women’s participation, such as holding meetings in schools—a socially permissible location for women. 

Working with women and marginalized groups at the community level on the delivery of peacebuilding programmes can open further avenues for influence and inclusion. In Nigeria, Mercy Corps’ peacebuilding programme supported the establishment of women’s peacebuilding groups at the community level, taking on leadership roles in local conflict resolution, raising challenging topics on women’s rights and equality on radio talk shows, and engaging with faith leaders and traditional authorities in peacebuilding efforts. Mixed-methods research at the end of the five-year programme found that its approach had led to nearly 90 per cent of community members believing that women’s dialogue groups had improved community peacebuilding efforts. 

Through an inclusive approach that meets communities where they are, rather than where we want them to be, WPS programmes can engage through alternative spaces. In Mali, Mercy Corps’ research into women’s participation in peacebuilding found that strategies using women’s existing roles in communities, rather the creating new ones, can advance peacebuilding efforts. Women’s roles are often somewhat behind the scenes and reflect traditional gender norms around women’s caring or maternal roles, an approach that could be seen as counterproductive as it ties women to the home. Yet through organizing social or civic events such as community health or sports days, the leadership of female griots (West African poets, musicians and storytellers) or participation in village savings and loans committees, women were able to access a status that leveraged their peacebuilding contributions and helped to strengthen social cohesion. In a highly gender-unequal context, where women’s visible participation in community decision making and peacebuilding is not permitted, women found safe, acceptable ways to influence discussions and promote peace. 

Such inclusion also enables programmes to identify and utilize context-sensitive language. In many countries, using contextually inappropriate language can be counter-productive. In Iraq, for example, translations for terms like ‘gender’ are considered inappropriate and their use can restrict discussions on issues around equality and rights rather than open up new forums for discussion. In some cases, contextually inappropriate language can even put women and marginalized communities at risk. Furthermore, if Westernized language and concepts are seen as clashing with cultural norms it can contribute to the perception of WPS as a foreign policy agenda and entrench the growing polarization of values and norms. 

Practitioners trying to straddle the global–local divide face a dilemma: how should they balance the need to adapt language to the contextual realities with the risk of diluting international policy, which could roll back hard-won commitments established in the WPS resolutions. In fact, differentiated approaches at the local and global levels can be complementary rather than contradictory. Supporting the protection of policy language that upholds a legal and normative framework at the international level can enable organizations and activists to lobby their governments and push for greater gender equality. Simultaneously, being led by practitioners at the grassroots level by adapting language, approaches and expectations allows women and marginalized groups to define goals for their WPS work that are safe, realistic and relevant. 

Strengthening the ‘connective tissue’

Mercy Corps and FBA value the importance of building movements and networks in promoting women’s participation. However, the importance of these networks and movements in connecting the different levels is often overlooked. Effective adaptation requires the flow of knowledge from local to national to global and back. The interconnection between local and national layers is a particular challenge facing the WPS agenda today.
 

Through its work supporting the development of Mali’s third WPS national action plan (NAP), FBA learned the impact of creating this information flow and meso-level connection, recognizing the plurality of actors that operate between the highly local and the national levels and their importance in generating connections between and within levels. Consultations were held with local women’s groups and other civil society organizations and activists across Mali. Their priorities and needs informed the NAP’s development, and drafts of the NAP were then shared back with those consulted for their validation. Through this combined bottom-up and top-down approach, Mali’s NAP was elaborated and then decentralized through regional and local action plans to respond to diverse needs. 

As international organizations supporting the WPS agenda’s localization, Mercy Corps and FBA are constantly learning how to be better partners. Taking the back seat and building long-term, trustful relationships at all levels, sharing good practices between contexts, and facilitating dialogue for both like-minded and sceptical actors are all essential.

Mercy Corps and FBA’s research demonstrates how to translate a global policy agenda effectively and appropriately to contextual realities—specifically, through taking an inclusive and timely approach to participation and ensuring communication and knowledge sharing across the ‘connective tissue’ between the global, national and local systems. While some may perceive this as a dilution of WPS principles, being led by those who know the context best, understand the risks and live with the consequences, can, in fact, be both impactful and even radical.

SIPRI is pleased to share a series of guest blog posts from partners of the 2024 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development. This blog builds on a dialogue session entitled ‘Bridging the Global–local Divide: Women, Peace and Security Lessons from Iraq, Mali and Nigeria’, which was organized by Mercy Corps and the Folke Bernadotte Academy.