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European Journal of Politics and Gender • vol 5 • no 1 • 63–82
© European Conference on Politics and Gender and Bristol University Press 2022
Print ISSN 2515-1088 • Online ISSN 2515-1096
https://doi.org/10.1332/251510821X16354049461534
Themed Section: Toward a Feminist Peace
European Journal of Politics and Gender
2515-1088
2515-1096
10.1332/251510821X16354049461534
18December2020
5
1
63
82
© Policy Press 2022
12January2022
RESEARCH
A different Women, Peace and Security is possible?
Intersectionality in Women, Peace and Security
resolutions and national action plans
Sarah Smith, S.J.Smith1@lse.ac.uk
Elena B. Stavrevska, E.Stavrevska@lse.ac.uk
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
This article examines the incorporation of intersectional perspectives – using intersectionality
as theory and method – into the Women, Peace and Security agenda. We conduct a content
analysis of the ten Women, Peace and Security resolutions and 98 current Women, Peace and
Security national action plans. The analysis shows that intersectionality has been integrated
into the Women, Peace and Security agenda to only a limited extent, despite more recent
trends towards referencing the term in policy documents. Even where intersectionality or
intersectional concerns are referenced, these tend to reinforce hegemonic categorisations
based on sex difference. We therefore argue that policy and practice ought to incorporate
intersectionality in its view of both power and identities, as well as in its organising frameworks,
and thereby take into consideration how intersecting systems of power affect lived experiences
for groups and individuals, their access to justice, and their ability to exercise agency.
Key words intersectionality • feminism • peace • security • Women, Peace and Security
agenda • national action plans
Key messages
• Women, Peace and Security policy to date has not sufficiently incorporated the lessons of
intersectionality.
• Gender-just peace processes require the Women, Peace and Security agenda and
peacebuilding to complicate gender in policymaking.
• Intersectionality, as derived from Black feminist theory, goes beyond including those
marginalised by ‘difference’.
• Incorporating intersectionality prevents a single-axis approach, which is greatly needed in
responses to conflict-affected communities.
To cite this article: Smith, S. and Stavrevska, E. (2022) A different Women, Peace and
Security is possible? Intersectionality in Women, Peace and Security resolutions and
national action plans, European Journal of Politics and Gender, vol 5, no 1, 63–82,
DOI: 10.1332/251510821X16354049461534
2021
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Sarah Smith and Elena B. Stavrevska
64
Introduction
I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of
myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the
other parts of self. (Lorde, 2012: 120)
In this article, we use intersectionality – as theory and method – to examine the
United Nations’ (UN’s) Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. We argue that a
different WPS agenda – one that does not atomise and exclude categories of identity
and realms of experience in its efforts towards peace, justice and human security
– is both possible and needed. In analysing WPS resolutions and the text of WPS
national action plans (NAPs), we show the limited extent to which the lessons of
intersectionality have so far been integrated. We therefore argue that peacebuilding
policy and practice ought to incorporate intersectionality in its view of both power and
identities, as well as in its organising frameworks, and thereby take into consideration
how intersecting systems of power affect lived experiences for groups and individuals,
their access to justice, and their ability to exercise agency.
A consistent point of contention in WPS scholarship has been the productive
implications of WPS policy in terms of who is included or excluded, and
what experiences are flattened or marginalised, thus drawing on the lessons of
intersectionality, both implicitly and explicitly (Jauhola, 2016; Martin de Almagro,
2018a; Smith, 2019a; 2019b; Haastrup and Hagen, 2020; Stavrevska and Smith,
2020; Zürn, 2020; Giri, 2021; Yoshida and Céspedes-Báez, 2021). In its focus on
‘women’, the WPS agenda prioritises a binary and colonial understanding of gender1
in its analysis and subsequent policy, and has often segregated and isolated ‘women’
conceptually from their communities, thus missing their embeddedness in particular
places and contexts (Martin de Almagro and Ryan, 2019; Rodriguez Castro, 2020;
Giri, 2021).
In developing our arguments, we understand that there are inherent tensions
in bringing intersectionality to the WPS agenda. There are theoretical tensions
between intersectionality – a framework that decentres gender and argues against
mutual exclusivity in research and policy – on the one hand, and conceptualising
women as a distinct social group, exclusive of other identity categories and structural
inequalities, on the other (Ní Aoláin and Rooney, 2007: 341). The adoption and
development of the WPS agenda is in no small part thanks to the labour of diverse
women’s and feminist movements fighting for peace, (gender) justice and equality
(Hill et al, 2003; Cohn et al, 2004). Articulating their experiences of discrimination
and violence based on gender was and remains fundamental to this cause. As the
policy agenda has developed, however, especially within institutional halls of power,
it has attracted criticisms that the implementation of WPS has cemented structural
inequalities, accepted only flattened representations of experience and sidestepped
questions of violence and discrimination along intersecting identity categorisations
(Gibbings, 2011; Hudson, 2016; Haastrup and Hagen, 2020). In short, ‘woman’ has
been brought into focus but a flattened, homogenised and homogenising version.
A related question, then, is whether the WPS agenda could be a channel through
which intersectional approaches to and understanding of peace and peacebuilding
can be brought into practice. Independently, both intersectionality and the WPS
agenda have generated significant amounts of scholarship across disciplines, particularly
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A different Women, Peace and Security is possible?
65
among feminist and critical race theorists; however, the two do not necessarily overlay
easily. In the following section, we outline our understanding of intersectionality,
its history in Black feminist thought and how we have applied it as a theory and
method to the study of WPS, which, in turn, deals with issues that have been core to
intersectionality: access to justice, political participation, agency and the prevention
of violence, both direct and structural.
We then conduct a content analysis of the use of intersectionality in WPS policy
documents, namely, the UN Security Council’s WPS resolutions and WPS NAPs,
adopted up to 2021. In the final section, we look at the implications of the discursive
constructions used in WPS policy documents and how women’s and other groups
have been included in the shaping of WPS policy. We conclude on how intersectional
considerations can make a different WPS agenda possible.
Intersectionality as theory and method
Intersectionality is rooted in Black feminist thought, centring Black women in feminist
theory and, importantly, emphasising that intersectional experience is greater than the
sum of racism and sexism (Combahee River Collective, 1977). Kimberlé Crenshaw’s
(1989; 1991) work is most often credited with ushering the term ‘intersectionality’
into the academic lexicon. Crenshaw critiqued the treating of gender and race (as
well as class, religion, sexual orientation and so on) as mutually exclusive, single-
axis categories in anti-discrimination legislation in the US. Echoing the Combahee
River Collective, Crenshaw also highlighted Black women’s marginalisation from
social justice movements of the time – with sexism present in anti-racist movements,
and with racism present in women’s movements. Intersectionality demonstrates that
‘race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability and age operate not as unitary,
mutually exclusive categories but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that shape
complex social inequalities’ (Hill Collins, 2015: 2). For research, this means that sex,
class or race (or otherwise) cannot be examined independently, and, moreover, that
these categories cannot be simply ‘added’ together to either: (1) capture a full range
of experience; or (2) develop policy, theory or advocacy frameworks that aim to
protect or empower.
As intersectionality has travelled across both disciplines and continents (Mügge et al,
2018), it has generated significant scholarship on what it is and what it does in research
practices and outcomes (McCall, 2005; Hancock, 2007). As Hancock (2007: 63–4,
emphases in original) explains, intersectionality ‘refers to both a normative theoretical
argument and an approach to conducting empirical research that emphasizes the
interaction of categories of difference’. ‘Categories’ and ‘categories of difference’
are primary organising frameworks in conceptualising intersectionality and its
epistemological operation. These categories are understood as mutually constitutive,
rather than exclusive, and indeed intersectionality helps conceptualise violence and
discrimination that touches on more than one predefined category (Hill Collins, 2015:
16). At its core, intersectionality does not simply identify and then ‘add’ different
social categories to one another, but provides a lens and tool to expose, first, how
these categories interrelate and, second, how this interrelation shapes and creates
experience that is more than the sum of its parts (Bowleg, 2008). Subsequently, in
both developing and examining policy, intersectionality ‘requires a comprehensive
diagnosis of the problem’ (Hancock, 2007: 71). As a critical praxis, intersectionality
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Sarah Smith and Elena B. Stavrevska
66
can ‘critique social injustices that characterize complex social inequalities, imagine
alternatives, and/or propose viable action strategies for change’ (Hill Collins, 2015: 17).
Bringing these tools to the WPS agenda, then, means more than adding
different identity categories to existing frameworks, but rather acknowledging their
mutual constitution and how these shape contributions to and processes of peace,
peacebuilding and conflict resolution (see Al-Ali and Pratt, 2016; Zu ̈rn, 2020;
Giri, 2021). To give one example, this might mean not only diagnosing conflict-
related sexual violence as a consequence of sex and gender discrimination, but
also understanding it as a manifestation of structural inequalities relating to class,
ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and so on, as well as contextualising it within
histories of colonial power (Aroussi, 2017: 493–4). Who experiences such violence,
when and by whom, and how conflict-related sexual violence connects with that
which happens before and continues after ‘conflict periods’ are questions that have
never been seriously tackled by WPS policy and practice. While there is increasing
acknowledgement that some women are ‘more vulnerable’ to conflict-related violence
and that it occurs on a continuum, this does not go as far as intersectionality would
suggest we do2: to acknowledge that this violence is a manifestation of historical
and contemporary racist and patriarchal oppression, and addressing it also entails
addressing the structural issues and inequalities that produce conflict.
WPS resolutions and their translation to policy by international institutions
have given a narrowed scope within which ‘women’ (essentialised) can operate.3
Throughout WPS resolutions, and indeed in many national implementations
such as NAPs, ‘women’ and ‘men’, wherever they are mentioned, are presented
as essentialised, that is, a ‘unitary, “essential” women’s experience can be isolated
and described independently of race, class, sexual orientation, and other realities of
experience’ (Harris, 1990: 5858). As Angela Harris (1990: 586) contends, while it
is necessary for some categorisation to occur to develop law and policy, ‘we [should]
make our categories explicitly tentative, relational, and unstable’. In the WPS agenda,
the process of essentialisation can obscure how WPS policy and practice are, in fact,
animated by race and class in a mutually constitutive manner in ways that perpetuate
rather than subvert systems of discrimination (Martin de Almagro, 2018a; Smith,
2019b; Haastrup and Hagen, 2020). To that end, an intersectional WPS agenda would
pay attention not simply to race and class as identities attached to bodies, but also
to how practices of intervention are premised on global racial and other hierarchies
that have long historical roots.
In this article, we use intersectionality as a theory and method in our content analysis
of the ten WPS resolutions and of NAPs as the primary way of operationalising the
agenda at the strategic level.4 The first step was a basic word search through the WPS
resolutions of intersect* and associated words such as interrelate* and interconnect*.
Following this textual analysis, and given that the results are relatively limited, we
analysed how different categories of women and girls (as well as men and boys) were
constructed and framed in WPS resolutions.
Applying the same process as outlined earlier, we analysed a total of 98 NAPs
adopted up to 2021, though only the latest version from those countries that have
produced more than one available NAP. The NAPs were sourced and analysed by
cross-referencing those contained in the PeaceWomen (2021) database and Caitlyn
Hamilton and Laura Shepherd’s (2020) database. In some cases, the analysed NAPs
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A different Women, Peace and Security is possible?
67
were documents currently in force, while in other cases, it was the last NAP from
the country available in the database, even where it may no longer be active.5 In our
examination of NAPs, we also conducted proxy word searches and content analysis
to assess: (1) whether the NAPs provided a definition of gender that acknowledged
its co-constitution with race, class, ethnicity and so on; (2) whether the NAPs offered
categorisations of different groups of women; and (3) whether these framings were
translated into action points/implementation plans. The results of this analysis are
presented later in Table 2 and are discussed further in the following sections.
Intersectionality in WPS resolutions
In an initial textual analysis, intersect* or interconnect* do not appear in the ten UN
Security Council resolutions that constitute the WPS agenda to date. Interrelate*
appears once, in S/RES/2467 (preamble), in reference to the ‘continuum of
interrelated and recurring forms of violence against women and girls’, which is
exacerbated by conflict. Given this, to examine intersectionality in the WPS agenda,
we turned to a content analysis of how the resolutions demarcate and categorise
women, and how these categories and demarcations are placed in relation to each
other. These findings are summarised in Table 1 and explained in the following.
Different groups of women are categorised within the resolutions, generally in
relation to their vulnerability to violence or, to a lesser extent, their exclusion from
peace processes. For example, S/RES/2106 (preamble) and S/RES/2467 (para 16)
mention ‘groups that are particularly vulnerable or may be specifically targeted’ for
sexual violence; S/RES/1820 (para 10), S/RES/1889 (preamble) and S/RES/2467
(para 31) note that refugee and displaced persons are particularly vulnerable to rape
Table 1: Intersectionality in WPS resolutions
WPS resolution Includes intersect*,
interconnect*,
interrelate*
Defines gender
in relation to
other identities
Defines multiple
categories of women/
vulnerable groups
Mentions appear
in operative
clauses
S/RES/1325
(2000)

S/RES/1820
(2009)
* *
S/RES/1888
(2009)
* *
S/RES/1889
(2010)
*
S/RES/1960
(2011)
*
S/RES/2106
(2013)
* *
S/RES/2122
(2013)
* *
S/RES/2242
(2015)

S/RES/2467
(2019)
* * *
S/RES/2493
(2019)

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Sarah Smith and Elena B. Stavrevska
68
and sexual violence; S/RES/1820 (preamble) identifies that sexual violence is used
to instil fear in particular ‘ethnic groups’; S/RES/1888 (para 13) and S/RES/1960
(preamble) recognise the needs of sexual violence victims in rural areas; and S/
RES/1960 (preamble) and S/RES/2106 (para 19) are the only resolutions to reference
the specific needs of persons with disabilities.
Increased vulnerability in relation to forced displacement is specifically mentioned
in S/RES/2122 (preamble) and in relation to forceful abduction in S/RES/2106
(para 17). S/RES/2122 (para 7[a]) is the first to make mention of ‘socially and/or
economically excluded groups of women’ when requesting that special envoys and
special representatives to UN missions engage women’s organisations and women
leaders. Categorisation in reference to representation and participation in peace
processes is relatively scant. S/RES/1889 (preamble) references the participation
of refugee and internally displaced persons in peace processes. In addition to these
examples, S/RES/1325 (para 8[b]) is the only resolution to reference Indigenous
processes, asking those involved in negotiating and implementing peace agreements
to adopt measures that ‘support local women’s peace initiatives and [I]ndigenous
processes for conflict resolution’ when working with women’s organisations and
leaders.
The aforementioned examples demonstrate how the resolutions seek to categorise
some groups of women and that they do so through different levels of ‘vulnerability’.
Women and girls are generally already always assumed to be vulnerable (Cohn, 2014;
El-Bushra, 2017: 10), but in trying to account for different sets of experiences,
the WPS resolutions frame some women and girls as more vulnerable than
others. For example, S/RES/1820 (preamble) recognises that women and girls are
targeted by the use of sexual violence to instil fear in, humiliate and/or dominate
different communities and ethnic groups, while in encouraging a survivor-centred
approach, S/RES/2467 (para 16) especially emphasises ‘groups that are particularly
vulnerable or may be specifically targeted, and notably in the context of their health,
education and participation’. These references acknowledge how race, religion,
ethnicity or otherwise may compound vulnerability to sexual violence in conflict
(Stavrevska, 2019).
These mentions notwithstanding, the resolutions fail to grasp or acknowledge
the historical and political structures within which conflicts unfold and gendered
violence (direct and structural) occurs. Focusing on vulnerability is an indirect and
limited recognition of power structures, and ‘communicates that … by virtue of
their membership in some group, some demographic category, certain people are
… inherently vulnerable’ (Cohn, 2014: 61). While war is especially devastating to
those already vulnerable, vulnerability is neither confined to nor universal among
women (El-Bushra, 2017: 10). Moreover, such an approach makes vulnerability
‘ontological, rather than existential’ (Cohn, 2014: 61), and closes the possibility
of seeing vulnerability as externally produced. Focusing on vulnerabilities ignores
what María José Méndez (2018: 9) labels the ‘intersectionality of the structures of
subordination’, meaning that it is a depoliticised version of intersectionality devoid of
the structures and institutions of power that produce insecurity and the connections
between them.
Additionally, the focus on vulnerability, particularly in relation to sexual violence,
without considering other forms of gendered harm and other forms of violence
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A different Women, Peace and Security is possible?
69
can have a detrimental impact on women living in conflict-affected societies. This
prioritisation of sexual harm, as Sahla Aroussi (2017: 488) shows in the case of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, ‘has delivered neither justice nor security
for victims’. The narrow focus of the WPS resolutions ignores the other types of
violence that impact women, with environmental destruction being but one example
(Yoshida and Céspedes-Báez, 2021), and, relatedly, the visions for peace of women
who live with that violence. As Fany Kuiru Castro, leader of the Uitoto people, has
explained in discussing Indigenous visions of peace, “for the Indigenous women
from Amazonia, peace is territories rid of violence, of armed groups, mining, clean
rivers without mercury…. Peace is harmony in the territory, living well [buen vivir],
living fully, in a good environment.”6
This has significant implications for thinking through intersectionality in the
WPS agenda. Black, Indigenous and critical feminists have used intersectionality to
demonstrate how not only experiences of violence, but also subsequent access to
justice and the ability to live in peace and harmony, are marred by the structures of
colonialism, patriarchy and neoliberal capitalism (Méndez, 2018; see also Kuokkanen
and Sweet, 2020). It is these structures of power and hierarchy, as well as histories
of occupation and oppression, that produce othered and marginalised bodies and
attendant ‘vulnerabilities’. Locating vulnerability as something inherent to being
female encourages paternalist protection (Cohn, 2014: 62) rather than working to
make structural, political and cultural changes that could neutralise historical and
contemporary inequalities, and/or empower individuals and collectives.
Intersectionality in WPS NAPs
‘Intersectionality’ as a term has appeared in WPS NAPs since 2016. The words
‘intersectionality’, ‘intersectional’ and/or ‘intersecting’ have featured in the latest NAPs
from Canada (Global Affairs Canada, 2017a), Finland (Ministry for Foreign Affairs
of Finland, 2018), Germany (Federal Foreign Office, 2021), Ireland (Government of
Ireland, 2019), Italy (Inter-ministerial Committee for Human Rights, 2020), Mexico
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2021), the Netherlands (NAP 1325 Partnership in the
Netherlands, 2020), the Philippines (Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace
Process, 2017), South Africa (Department of International Relations and Cooperation
Office, 2020) and Sweden (Government Offices of Sweden, 2016).
In addition to these uses of ‘intersect*’, our content analysis also revealed: how
some NAPs offer a mediated definition of ‘gender’, one that understands it as
intersecting with and/or co-constituted by other structures and identities7; how
some NAPs offer a categorisation of different groups of women or gender identities,
highlighting that these are not homogeneous groups8; and that some NAPs translated
these into their implementation frameworks, action points and/or metrics for
monitoring and evaluation.9 Table 2 summarises these findings.10 The aim here is
not to hierarchise these NAPs, and given the number of NAPs analysed, it is not
possible to provide a comparative case analysis. Several other factors would need to
be taken into consideration if so, in particular, that each NAP emerges from a wide
range of contexts and countries, with each differently impacted by conflict, with
some that face intervention while others intervene, and with varied engagements
with regional and international bodies and donors. Rather, the purpose here is to
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Sarah Smith and Elena B. Stavrevska
70
examine whether and how intersectionality or intersectional concerns have appeared
in NAPs as representations of WPS policy, and, in turn, the implications of this for
the productive capacities of WPS discourse.
Among those that mention ‘intersectionality’ and ‘intersectional’, Finland’s NAP
includes a definition of the concept in explaining the basis of the NAP (Ministry for
Foreign Affairs of Finland, 2018: 19), while the Netherland’s NAP defines the term
in its glossary (NAP 1325 Partnership in the Netherlands, 2020: 71) the same way
that Canada’s NAP does in reference to ‘multiple and intersecting discrimination’
(Global Affairs Canada, 2017a: 19). Two recent NAPs highlight intersectionality
Table 2: Intersectionality in WPS NAPs
Country Includes
‘intersect*’
Defines gender in
relation to other
identities
Defines multiple
categories of women/
vulnerable groups
Translated
to action
points
Argentina (2015) * *
Australia (2021–31) *
Bangladesh (2019) * *
Bougainville (2016) * *
Canada (2017–22) *
DR Congo (2019–22) * *
El Salvador (2017) *
Finland (2018–21) *
Georgia (2018) * *
Germany (2021–24) * * *
Guatemala (2017) * * *
Ireland (2019–24) *
Italy (2020–24) * *
Japan (2019–22) * *
Mali (2019–23) * *
Mexico (2021) * *
Nepal (2011–16) *
Netherlands (2021–25) * *
Norway (2019–22) *
Palestine (2020–24) * *
Philippines (2017–22) * *
Serbia (2017) * *
Slovenia (2018–20) * *
South Africa (2020–25) * * * *
Spain (2017–23) * *
Sudana (2020) *
Sweden (2016–20) *
Switzerland (2018–22) *
Timor-Leste (2016–20) * *
UK (2018–22) * *
Notes: NAPs where none of these frameworks/mentions appear are excluded from the table.
a References development of ‘feminist groups’ in indicators.
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A different Women, Peace and Security is possible?
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as one of their key principles: the use of an intersectional lens in listening and
responding to ‘the needs of women, girls and gender non-conforming persons’ voices’
is among the guiding principles in South Africa’s NAP (Department of International
Relations and Cooperation Office, 2020: 60); and the implementation of Germany’s
NAP is informed by ‘[a]n approach that considers compound discrimination and
an intersectional perspective’ (Federal Foreign Office, 2021: 16). The Philippines’s
NAP, in discussing the new features of the third generation of WPS NAP, mentions
the aim to support initiatives where ‘women empower other women’ and recognise
‘the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, and religion’ (Office of the Presidential
Adviser on the Peace Process, 2017: 9).
In those NAPs that do mention it, ‘intersect*’ appears in different sections of
the NAPs: sometimes as a ‘guiding principle’ in the introduction; other times
embedded within the pillars for action of the NAP. For example, Ireland’s NAP has
a paragraph on an ‘intersectional approach’ in the section about women’s meaningful
participation (Government of Ireland, 2019: 16–17), while the Netherlands’ NAP
mentions the use of ‘an intersectional gender analysis’ in promoting gender-responsive
conflict prevention, their protection efforts being guided by a ‘a survivor-centred,
holistic and intersectional approach’ (NAP 1325 Partnership in the Netherlands,
2020: 23, 26), and paying attention to intersectionality in mainstreaming WPS in
all national and international peace and security processes. Similarly, Italy’s NAP
commits the country to increasing efforts to ‘prevent and protect against all forms
of discrimination … [i]ncluding multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination’
(Inter-ministerial Committee for Human Rights, 2020: 16). In the case of Italy, this
action is accompanied by specific indicators and responsible stakeholders.
Germany’s NAP also includes a ‘special consideration of intersectionality and
compound discrimination’ as part of the crisis prevention measure in order to promote
‘an understanding of gender that is based on gender equality, encourag[e] positive
images of masculinity and eliminat[e] asymmetric power relationships between the
genders, to include people of diverse sexual orientation and non-binary gender
identities’ (Federal Foreign Office, 2021: 42). Mexico’s NAP, grounded in its 2020
feminist foreign policy, is another example of intersectionality being included in
the planned actions, along with indicators and responsible stakeholders, related to
prevention, entailing activities to ‘train and integrate specialised police units in the
prevention, investigation and prosecution of crimes of violence against women in
order to establish comprehensive actions aimed at guaranteeing the life, security
and human rights of women and girls with a gender and intersectional perspective’
(Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2021: 19 [translation: Elena Stavrevska]).
Canada’s NAP goes slightly further. In outlining the barriers to achieving peace, it
notes that ‘women and girls face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination’
(Global Affairs Canada, 2017a: 4). It further acknowledges the intersecting
discrimination and violence faced by Indigenous women and girls, which is ‘based on
gender, race, socioeconomic status and other identity factors’ (Global Affairs Canada,
2017a: 4). Outlining Canada’s vision for WPS in the international context, the NAP
recognises that ‘inequalities exist along intersectional lines’ (Global Affairs Canada,
2017a: 4), and it is firmly grounded in what Canada frames as its broader feminist
approach to foreign policy.11 While there are still issues, the NAP acknowledges that
Canada was founded through the oppression, exclusion and killing of Indigenous
peoples (Global Affairs Canada, 2017a: 5). While not explicitly linked to its use of
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Sarah Smith and Elena B. Stavrevska
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intersectionality, it does hint at a more holistic understanding of WPS that challenges
traditional inside–outside, peace–war, us–other binaries that animate security
policymaking (Väyrynen, 2004; Enloe, 2014).12
As mentioned earlier, some NAPs define gender in relation to other identities and/
or define multiple categories of women and vulnerable groups, even if not using
the term ‘intersectionality’, as shown in Table 2. Guatemala’s 2017 NAP provides a
useful case in point, as it perhaps goes furthest in this direction. It explicitly defines
gender equality as ‘the ownership and full enjoyment and exercise of human rights
and fundamental freedoms of women and men, without discrimination based on their
social origin, ethnicity, nationality, religion, political opinion, age or marital status,
among others’ (Inter-agency Roundtable on Women, Peace and Security, 2017: 59).
It also defines multiple categories of women and specifically acknowledges the rights
of Indigenous women, recognising ‘their particular vulnerability and defenselessness
in the face of double discrimination as women and as [I]ndigenous people, with the
aggravating circumstance of a social situation of particular poverty and exploitation’
(Inter-agency Roundtable on Women, Peace and Security, 2017: 58). This NAP
notes the historical exclusion and racism that Indigenous peoples in Guatemala have
faced, as well as the work Indigenous women have done in defending the rights of
Indigenous peoples and of women (Inter-agency Roundtable on Women, Peace and
Security, 2017). The Guatemalan NAP stresses the existence of different identities
in the country, stating that as a ‘pluricultural, multilingual and multiethnic country’,
all actions derived from the NAP should ‘correspond to the different realities of the
people, considering local customs and practices for the implementation of strategies
and promoting cultural and ancestral wealth and wisdom of the different peoples’
(Inter-agency Roundtable on Women, Peace and Security, 2017: 60). In other
words, the Guatemalan NAP argues for context-based approaches in collaboration
with local peoples, which can be led by intersectional considerations. As this and
other NAPs included in Table 2 exemplify, a significant intersectional understanding
of gendered power and inequality can be found in some documents even when the
term ‘intersectionality’ does not appear itself.
Another example is the Bougainville NAP, which foresees the inclusion of
differently positioned women in their ‘Policy for women’s empowerment, peace,
and security’ by recognising the ‘ongoing need to support the involvement of a
plurality of women’s voices and to build the capacity of women’s advocates and
representative bodies so they can fully and effectively participate in consultations at
all levels and in all regions around land, agriculture and land development projects’,
and further emphasising that ‘[i]t is also a principle under International Law that
Indigenous peoples have prior, free and informed consent to resource development
projects, and this necessitates the consent of women as a component of the Indigenous
population’ (Office of the Bougainville Executive Council, 2016). This points to
the NAPs providing an opening for intersectional considerations to be included in
the participation pillar and different women’s agency to be recognised, not limiting
the intersectional approach solely in relation to vulnerabilities in the protection and
prevention pillars.
Even where NAPs use ‘intersect*’ or acknowledge intersectional concerns in
the ways we outline earlier, the grounding of NAPs in the WPS pillars (which is
understandable given that they are implementations of the WPS agenda) significantly
shapes NAP frameworks and action points. Outcomes and indicators in NAPs remain
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A different Women, Peace and Security is possible?
73
centred on increasing women’s participation in security sectors, training and services
to prevent sexual violence in war, and engaging women’s organisations in Track 2 and
3 peace processes.13 Outcomes and indicators therefore carry over the militarisation of
security that has been problematised within the WPS agenda and eschew a ‘feminist
politics of peace’ that would ‘define security in the terms proposed by women’s peace
activists’ (Shepherd, 2016: 333). Therefore, while the move to diversify understandings
of ‘women’ seems to be increasing, with 30 of the 98 analysed NAPs being included
in Table 2, the ability to translate this into meaningful, context-specific indicators
and practices has not kept pace.
Our content analysis of NAPs further noted a number of documents where the
language from of the WPS resolutions had been carried over almost verbatim. This is
particularly the case with S/RES/1325 (para 8[b]), calling for measures to be adopted
to ‘support local women’s peace initiatives and [I]ndigenous processes for conflict
resolution’. In that direction, The Gambia’s NAP, for example, includes the adoption
of ‘affirmative measures to involve more women in peace initiatives and [I]ndigenous
conflict resolution processes’ as one of its strategic issues when it comes to prevention
(Republic of The Gambia, 2012: 6). This demonstrates the weight of the language
of the WPS resolutions and the possibilities and limitations that come with it.
Even though not all NAPs include action points on how to put these
conceptualisations into practice when implementing the NAP, the preceding examples
highlight the importance of taking into consideration intersectionality in a meaningful
way in WPS policy and practice, as they can then also serve as tools for different
groups in conflict-affected societies to advocate for security, well-being and justice.
Where WPS processes circumscribe who or what ‘counts’ – as they often do (see
Shepherd, 2017) – they reinforce inequalities and exclusions, as lack of recognition
imposes an invisibility on some experiences and subsequent possible protections/
remedies in law and policy.
Is a different WPS possible? Incorporating political
intersectionality
Moving from the text of resolutions and NAPs, an intersectional approach encourages
us to look at the engagement of different actors in developing these documents and
policies, as well as in WPS more broadly. In this section, we turn to what Crenshaw
has termed ‘political intersectionality’, which refers to how transformative social
movements have reproduced political and representational exclusions. As already
noted, WPS resolutions and NAPs utilise intersectionality to highlight, for the most
part, the relative vulnerability of different groupings of women in conflict and post-
conflict settings. This means that women’s existing peacebuilding labour and processes
of alliance building appear in much more limited form in WPS policy and discourse.
This section, then, deals with the implications of the discursive constructions we
extrapolated earlier, examining how women’s and other interest groups gain access
to institutional peacebuilding via WPS (see Basu, 2016).
In reviewing the use of intersectionality where it is explicitly referenced in the
documents we cited earlier, the concept is used to reiterate that women and men, or
boys and girls, are not homogeneous groups; however, difference is always highlighted
within these already-existing predefined groupings (women/men/boys/girls). Such
an approach to intersectionality disconnects women from men, or boys from girls, in
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Sarah Smith and Elena B. Stavrevska
74
ways that are inconsistent with the definitions of intersectionality and, in particular,
political intersectionality. For example, hooks (1981) and Crenshaw (1989) write
about how Black women had, and wanted to keep, an alliance with Black men
struggling for civil rights, though patriarchy existed in these movements and often
pushed Black women and their concerns to the periphery. In WPS specifically,
women peacebuilders build and draw on diverse allegiances to gain traction in
different circles (Martin de Almagro, 2018b; Smith, 2019a: 138–57). To understand
and seek to implement intersectionality as only ‘inter-group difference’ leaves intact
sex-based groupings that limit the possibility of seeing complex and intertwining
threats to individual and collective security. Moreover, and linking with the previous
discussion on vulnerabilities, it keeps the focus on marginalisation and vulnerability,
rather than on existing labour, alliances and movement building.
As intersectionality work shows, categorisation based on sex-based difference does
not provide a sufficient platform, or sufficient protection, for all women, or all men.
Intersectionality work has shown how categorisation and subsequent policy based
only on sex-based comparison/difference works in favour of those whose race/age/
sexuality/ethnicity concerns are already appeased. As Méndez (2018: 10–11) explains:
‘[t]he move to intersect these categories [sex and race] is to show what they exclude.
What becomes visible is not the presence of women of color, but their absence,
since these categories depend on their exclusion.’ This critique also aligns with those
that problematise liberalism and liberal approaches to anti-discrimination legislation
(Thornton, 1991). In WPS, then, to categorise differently vulnerable women only
in relation to ‘women/gender’ makes it difficult to account for their interests and
needs that may fall outside gender concerns, and makes visible that marginalisation
only where it intersects with ‘gender’.
Even though WPS resolutions and NAPs call for greater inclusion of women’s
organisations and civil society groups, this inclusion is foregrounded on particular
understandings of what constitutes gender or women’s issues. In peacekeeping and
peacebuilding practices, for example, women’s organisations are engaged to work
on specific, marginalised, policy areas (Shepherd, 2017; Smith, 2019b). Women’s
organisations are not consulted on military, economic or political issues, for example,
but are instead engaged as experts on ‘gender’ and ‘gender issues’, which are considered
of less priority within the peacebuilding matrix generally (Smith, 2019b). This is
an active rather than a passive process, with women’s organisations asked to drop or
reframe some programming priorities, and shift their engagement into depoliticised,
underfunded and deprioritised institutional locations.
Collectives undertake significant labour in seeking to challenge movements and
platforms that continuously exclude their experiences and desires, as they do not fit
neatly into different agendas of peacebuilding or international security policy. This
work often occurs because policy agendas are not grounded in or reflect different
lived experience. For example, as explained by Victoria Neuta, a leader of the Muisca
people and a former Indigenous women’s representative in the High-Level Forum
for Gender in Colombia:
[The women in the High-Level Forum for Gender] do not understand the
importance of the concept of women, family and generations [mujer, familia
y generación] for Indigenous women, the focus on the collective, instead of
the individual. And we have the same struggle with our brothers at the
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A different Women, Peace and Security is possible?
75
High-Level Forum for Ethnic Peoples, to understand that women have
specific, different needs.14
Inclusive peace processes must be led by the experiences and knowledges of those
impacted by the types of violence that are sought to be redressed. In thinking about
how a different WPS might be possible, then, a starting point would be to remove
the institutional impetus to ‘arrive’ in conflict-affected spaces with a pre-existing
WPS agenda and/or gender priorities and targets, and instead reformulate WPS into
a platform designed by those affected by violence and subsequently utilised to impact
decision-making that will shape economic, political and social potentials after war.
The issue of recognising existing activism and activities for peace, women’s rights
and environmental justice by human rights and land defenders is especially pertinent.
Women’s human rights defenders face significant threats to their safety and are being
killed for their work (Dwyer, 2020; GAPs et al, 2021: 26–9; Peace Track Initiative,
2021). While all rights and land defenders face threats, women’s human rights and
land defenders face gendered threats to their security, such as threats to life, as well
as online gender-based violence and sexual violence (Dwyer, 2020). Despite this,
and despite the significant work they undertake, women’s human rights defenders
are regularly excluded from peace processes and garner less visibility within WPS
resolutions (Dwyer, 2020).15 Women human rights defenders do however appear
as a category in some of the NAPs discussed earlier and are framed as a particularly
vulnerable group.
Additionally, an intersectional WPS provides scope to adopt a feminist
understanding of violence, acknowledging the interconnectedness of the global
structures that have paved the way for that violence, and to address its root causes as
well as its consequences. In that sense, despite WPS policy being ‘part of a liberal
peacebuilding framework that is racialised, patriarchal, classist, heteronormative and
Western-centric at its core’ (Martin de Almagro, 2018a: 412), some NAPs, even
without using the term, have shown the possibility of including an understanding of
intersectionality in WPS that is rooted in lived experiences, recognises the structures
that inform those experiences, moves beyond conceptualising the agenda solely in
relation to vulnerability and creates space for the agency of a plurality of groups and
individuals to be exercised.
Conclusion
Is a different WPS possible? Our analysis suggests that it is but that WPS remains an
imperfect platform, within a racialised, classist, colonial and patriarchal framework, to
currently advocate for or from intersectional experiences that may or may not prioritise
what are seen as ‘gender’ and/or ‘women’s issues’. An intersectional lens, however, reveals
more than a multiplicity of experiences or identities; it also reveals the interlocking
power of states and institutions – the ‘larger ideological structures in which subjects,
problems, and solutions [are] framed’ (Cho et al, 2013: 791). Intersectionality in WPS
requires that the policy that emanates from the agenda be aware of both how power
sustains itself within institutions and perpetuates exclusion (Hill Collins, 2017).
We also note here that the analysis presented in this article is not exhaustive, and
we see it as a basis for further research. In remaining hopeful, we see the significant,
laborious and underfunded work undertaken by men, women and queer and non-
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Sarah Smith and Elena B. Stavrevska
76
binary people of all ages to achieve peace and security for themselves and their
communities, to protect the environment, and to hold states and institutions to
account, whether or not these are acknowledged as WPS work or priorities. An
intersectional approach allows for this fluidity and flexibility – to have ‘tentative’
categories – and it is here that a different, more tentative and yet responsive and
intersectional WPS might be possible.
Notes
1 María Lugones (2008; 2010) uses the descriptor of the ‘coloniality of gender’ in
demonstrating how modern capitalist colonial and gender systems are enmeshed, and
that colonial power relied on and was exercised through a co-constitutive gender
system.
2 For example, Crenshaw (1991: 1242) writes:
Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream
liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination – that is, as intrinsically negative
frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are
different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty
such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and
racial liberation movements, for example is the view that the social power in delineating
difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of social
empowerment and reconstruction.
3 This is to say nothing of the equating of ‘gender’ with ‘women’, which not only renders
certain people’s vulnerabilities and experiences invisible, but further strengthens a binary
understanding of gender and reaffirms patriarchal expectations related to gender roles
(Myrttinen, 2019).
4 At the operational level, the WPS agenda is expected to be translated into peace
agreements (Aroussi, 2015) and UN mission mandates, but the latter has not always
been the case (Kenny Werner and Stavrevska, 2020).
5 We decided to include out-of-date NAPs where a current one had not been produced
or was not available, as they would provide the foundation for the development of
further NAPs in those countries and are still potentially used as advocacy tools.
6 Personal interview with Fany Kuiru Castro, leader of the Uitoto people and coordinator
for women, youth, children and family at the Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of
the Colombian Amazon, 12 March 2020, Bogotá, Colombia (interview and translation
by Elena Stavrevska).
7 For example, by providing definitions of gender that went beyond sex-based and binary
understandings, and of acknowledging women’s presence in other marginalised groups,
such as Indigenous peoples, where their interests may not foreground their gender
concerns.
8 For example, by listing multiply marginalised groups of women, such as those belonging
to Indigenous groups, ethnic, religious or racial minority groups, disabled women,
gender non-conforming individuals, and so on.
9 For example, by: requiring data disaggregated by more than sex or gender; including
the word ‘intersectional’ in their frameworks for action; or measuring the number of
groups that self-identify as feminist in their outcomes.
10 Due to space constraints, we are unable to engage in detail with every NAP listed in
Table 2 and instead discuss examples of the patterns that our analysis has revealed.
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11 Canada has framed its feminist international assistance policy around closing ‘gender
gaps’ as the best means to produce more peaceful and more inclusive societies (Global
Affairs Canada, 2017b). The development of feminist foreign policy, both in Canada
and elsewhere, is not uncomplicated however and has attracted debate on whether
it constitutes a welcome development or the co-optation of feminism for neoliberal
capitalist, militarist and interventionist aims (see Aggestam et al, 2019; Thomson,
2020).
12 However, as Morton, Muchiri and Swiss (2020) suggest, Canada’s broader feminist
international assistance policy adopts a mainstream liberal feminist framework that
continues to present women and girls as monolithic categories. They also argue that
analysis needs to ‘go beyond intersectional categories to look at the broader social
landscape of power and hierarchy’ (Morton, Muchiri and Swiss, 2020: 337).
13 We also note here that many NAPs do not include sufficient budget lines and/or
oversight bodies to ensure implementation.
14 Personal interview with Victoria Neuta, a leader of the Muisca people and a former
Indigenous women’s representative in the High-Level Forum for Gender, 12 March
2019, Bogotá, Colombia (interview and translation by Elena Stavrevska) (see also
Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism, 1995]).
15 Women peacebuilders and human rights defenders appeared for the first time in the
most recent WPS resolution (S/RES/2493, para 6).
Funding
This article is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research
Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme (Grant Agreement No. 786494).
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank: the anonymous reviewers and the journal editors for
their generous reviews of and feedback on earlier versions; the Indigenous women leaders
in Colombia whose work and insights advanced our thinking on this topic; and the team
at LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security for their ongoing support.
Author contributions
The authors have contributed equally. Their names appear in alphabetical order.
Author biographies
Sarah Smith is a Research Officer at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security.
She is currently researching vulnerability and recognition in data for peace and security.
Elena B. Stavrevska is a Research Officer at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and
Security. She is currently researching feminist political economy perspectives to peace
and violence.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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