Women’s peacebuilding civil society organisations and empowerment: A case Study of Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Název práce v češtině: Ženské organizace občanské společnosti pro budování míru a empowerment: Případová studie Bosny a Hercegoviny
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Women’s peacebuilding civil society organisations and empowerment: A case Study of Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Klíčová slova: Budování míru, ženské organizace, politický empowerment, Bosna a Hercegovina
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Peacebuilding, women’s organisations, political empowerment, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2020/2021
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Katedra bezpečnostních studií (23-KBS)
• Vedoucí / školitel: prof. Mgr. Oldřich Bureš, Ph.D., M.A.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 17.08.2021
• Datum zadání: 17.08.2021
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 21.09.2022 09:00
• Místo konání obhajoby: Pekařská 16, JPEK313, 313, Malá učebna, 3.patro
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 02.08.2022
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 21.09.2022
• Oponenti: prof. PhDr. Emil Aslan, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

Diploma thesis project

Women’s local peacebuilding initiatives: A case study of Bosnian organisation ’Snaga žene’

Seznam odborné literatury

References

Adjei, M. (2019). Women’s participation in peace processes: a review of literature. Journal of Peace Education, 16(2), pp.133–154.

Antić-Štauber, B. (2017). Snaga Žene. Intervention, 15(3), pp.293–301.

Arostegui, J. (2013). Gender, conflict, and peace-building: how conflict can catalyse positive change for women. Gender & Development, 21(3), pp.533–549. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24697275 [Accessed 17 July 2021].

Bedigen, W. (2021). Honyomiji: the local women’s peacebuilding institution in South Sudan. Peacebuilding, 9, pp.1–20.

Boutros-Ghali, B. (1992). An agenda for peace: preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, and peace-keeping: report of the Secretary-General pursuant to the statement adopted by the summit meeting of the Security Council on 31 January 1992. New York, United Nations.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.

Caprioli, M. (2005). Primed for Violence: The Role of Gender Inequality in Predicting Internal Conflict. International Studies Quarterly, [online] 49(2), pp.161–178. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/49/2/161/1793002.

Çuhadar-Gürkaynak, E., Dayton, B. and Paffenholz, T. (2009). Evaluation in Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding. In: Handbook of conflict analysis and resolution. London ; New York: Routledge, pp.286–299.

Drulák, P. (2008). Jak zkoumat politiku: kvalitativní metodologie v politologii a mezinárodních vztazích. Prague: Portál.

Eagly, A.H. (1987). Sex differences in social behavior: a social-role interpretation. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Elshtain, J.B. (1995). Women and war. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Enloe, C.H. (2000). Bananas, beaches and bases: making feminist sense of international politics. Berkeley: Univ. Of California Press.

Galtung, J. (1976). Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping, Peacemaking and Peacebuilding. In: Peace, War and Defense: Essays in Peace Research. Copenhagen: Christian Ejlers, pp.282–304.

Gerring, J. (2004). What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good for? American Political Science Review, 98(2), pp.341–354.

Gizelis, T.-I. (2009). Gender Empowerment and United Nations Peacebuilding. Journal of Peace Research, 46(4), pp.505–523.

Gizelis, T.-I. (2011). A Country of their Own: Women and Peacebuilding. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 28(5), pp.522–542.

Goldstein, J.S. (2009). War and gender: how gender shapes the war system and vice versa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Höghammar, T., Bjertén-Günther, E., Tan de Bibiana, M. and Lejon Flodin, E. (2016). Women, Peace and Security Research Gaps: Implications for policymakers and advocates. SIPRI Forum Policy Brief, [online]. 14, pp.1-2. Available at: https://sipri.org/sites/default/files/2016-Forum-Policy-Brief-No-14.pdf [Accessed 17 July 2021].

Krause, J., Krause, W. and Bränfors, P. (2018). Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations and the Durability of Peace. International Interactions, 44(6), pp.985–1016.

Lamont, C.K. (2015). Research methods in international relations. Los Angeles: Sage.

Leonardsson, H. and Rudd, G. (2015). The “local turn” in peacebuilding: a literature review of effective and emancipatory local peacebuilding. Third World Quarterly, 36(5), pp.825–839.

Manchanda, R. (2005). Women’s Agency in Peace Building: Gender Relations in Post-Conflict Reconstruction. Economic and Political Weekly, [online] 40(44/45), pp.4737–4745. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4417360 [Accessed 18 Jul. 2021].

Misra, J., Curington, C.V. and Green, V.M. (2020). Methods of intersectional research. Sociological Spectrum, 41(1), pp.1–20.

Munro, J. (2000). Gender and Peacebuilding. International Development Research Centre, [online]. pp.1–23. Available at: https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/bitstream/handle/10625/27182/114720.pdf?sequence=1 [Accessed 17 July 2021].

O’Reilly, M., Ó Súilleabháin, A. and Paffenholz, T. (2015). Report. International Peace Institute, [online], pp.1-42. Available at: https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/IPI-E-pub-Reimagining-Peacemaking.pdf [Accessed 18 Jul. 2021].

Paffenholz, T. (2015). Unpacking the local turn in peacebuilding: a critical assessment towards an agenda for future research. Third World Quarterly, 36(5), pp.857–874.

Paffenholz, T. (2021). Perpetual Peacebuilding: A New Paradigm to Move Beyond the Linearity of Liberal Peacebuilding. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 15(3), pp.1–19.

Porter, E. (2003). Women, Political Decision-Making, and Peace-Building. Global Change, Peace & Security, 15(3), pp.245–262.

Porter, E. (2013). Rethinking Women’s Empowerment. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 8(1), pp.1–14.

Ramnarain, S. (2014). Interrogating women’s peace work: community-based peacebuilding, gender, and savings’ co-operatives in post-conflict Nepal. Community Development Journal, 50(4), pp.677–692.

Shair-Rosenfield, S. and Wood, R.M. (2017). Governing Well after War: How Improving Female Representation Prolongs Post-conflict Peace. The Journal of Politics, 79(3), pp.995–1009.

Smith, J.M. (2016). Snaga Žene: Disrupting Discourses of Victimhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The International Journal of Conflict Engagement and Resolution, 4(2), pp.172–189.

Spahic-Siljak, Z. (2015). Women, citizens and believers as agents of peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In: Women, religion, and peacebuilding. Illuminating the unseen. Washington, DC: United States Institute Of Peace Press, pp.231–244.

Strickland, R. and Duvvury, N. (2003). From Rhetoric to Reality: Finding the Way Gender Equity and Peacebuilding. [online], : International Center for Research on Women, pp.1–40. Available at: https://www.icrw.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Gender-Equity-and-Peacebuilding-From-Rhetoric-to-Reality.pdf [Accessed 17 July 2021].

United Nations (n.d. -a). Goal 5 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs. [online] sdgs.un.org. Available at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal5 [Accessed 25 Jul. 2021].

United Nations (n.d. -b). Goal 16 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs. [online] sdgs.un.org. Available at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal16 [Accessed 25 Jul. 2021].

United Nations Security Council. (2000). Resolution 1325 on women and peace and security [Online]. S/RES/1325. Available at: https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N00/720/18/PDF/N0072018.pdf?OpenElement [Accessed 15 July 2021].

World Health Organization (2019). Gender and health. [online] www.who.int. Available at: https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender#tab=tab_1 [Accessed 11 Aug. 2021].

Předběžná náplň práce v anglickém jazyce

Introduction to the topic

It has been more than 20 years since the UN adopted Resolution 1325 which together with the resolutions that followed are referred to as the Women, Peace and Security agenda. The resolutions represent the commitment of all UN member states to incorporate a gender perspective and increase women’s participation in UN peace and security efforts. Although awareness of including women in peace processes has been increasing (Arostegui 2013, p. 535), participation of women in peace processes remains limited (Höghammar et al. 2016) Men tend to dominate the formal roles in peacebuilding processes whereas women’s role in peacebuilding often remains unrecognized (Munro 2000, p. 2).

As war enhances stereotypical gender roles, the inequality between men and women becomes more striking during conflicts (Munro 2000, p. 2-3). However, women can not be considered only conflict’s victims but can have many different roles. Women are peacebuilders, politicians, or activists but they also support conflict, are active in combat and agitate violence (Arostegui 2013, p. 535). And women can benefit from the post-conflict periods to reshape societies and advance women’s rights (ibid.).

Furthermore, both peacebuilding and gender equality have gotten more attention within the last years as both the notions became incorporated in the Sustainable development goals that the UN aims to achieve by the year 2030. Goal 16 of the UN is to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” (United Nations n.d. -b). SDG 5 calls for gender equality and women empowerment (United Nations n.d. -a).

The chosen topic of my thesis would be the role of women in local peacebuilding initiatives. Therefore, I consider this topic politically and socially relevant as women are still underrepresented in peacebuilding processes (Höghammar et al. 2016, p. 1) and the topic has got important attention. Despite the international commitments, there are still gaps in knowledge about the causal mechanisms and how gender can in peace activities influence the positive or negative outcome.



Research target and research question

According to Strickland and Duvvury (2003 p. 28), there is a need for a further inquiry into the enabling factors required by sustainable women’s peace initiatives. Moreover, there is not sufficient research on how women’s voice can be included in peacebuilding at multiple levels without exploiting the pre-existing power asymmetries (Ramnarain 2014, p. 689) and only a few researchers addressed the issue of the nature of women’s participation in peace processes (Höghammar et al. 2016, p. 1). As Bedigen (2021, p. 2) states, majority discussions exclude women’s institutions which suggests they remain underrepresented and not sufficiently conceptualised. With my research I aim to help to close the gap.

The target of my research is women’s grassroots peacebuilding initiatives and what enables them to successfully sustain their peacebuilding activities work. Based on the case of the Bosnian organisation ‘Snaga žene’, I will try to find answers for my research questions.

My main research question is: How do the local women’s grassroots initiatives achieve positive changes in society?

There is a significant gap in the knowledge of intersectionality of gender in peacebuilding (Adjei 2019, p. 147) and it is fundamental to gain an understanding of how gender interacts with variables such as class, race, religion, or age in the context of peacebuilding (Höghammar et al. 2016, p. 2). Therefore, my other research question is: How does gender interact with religion in peacebuilding activities?


Literature review

The area of research belongs to the field of security studies, conflict and peace studies, sociology and gender studies. Although the research would be multidisciplinary, there is a growing body of literature that discusses the role of gender in peace processes and peacebuilding.

The UN Resolution 1325 and the resolutions that followed represent a legal framework for promoting gender equality during peace processes, protecting women and ensuring that they participate in formal processes (UNSC 2000). One of the calls of the Resolution has also been to include “measures that support local women’s peace initiatives and indigenous processes for conflict resolution” (ibid., p. 3). The UNSCR 1325 is a binding document for all UN member states. However, there are remaining gaps in the implementation (Arostegui 2013, p. 537) and the progress is slow (O’Reilly, Súilleabháin and Paffenholz 2015, p. 2).

Women are perceived as more trustworthy than men, naturally caring or nurturing (O’Reilly, Súilleabháin and Paffenholz 2015, p. 9-10). However, such essentialist perception of women has origins in patriarchy and socially constructed gender roles and does not automatically apply to all women (ibid., p. 10).

Women are often portrayed as victims that need to be trained educated and empowered (Bedigen 2021, p. 9-10). As Ramnarain (2014 p. 677) finds, this approach to women in peacebuilding can neglect the structural inequalities that cause conflict. In reality, women are often powerful agents and their contributions to peacebuilding are often overlooked (Strickland and Duvvury 2000, p. 2). According to (Arostegui 2013, p. 533) the roles of women during conflict alter and expand and conflict provides women with new responsibilities.

Conflict offers an opportunity for change and can lead to a long-term transformation in societies (ibid.; Manchanda 2005, p. 4739). However, to achieve sustainable peace, a lasting transformation of society is necessary (Strickland and Duvvury 2000, p. 25). Even though gender-sensitive approaches to peacebuilding have become common, they alone can achieve limited results as they do not address the underlying norms defining power dynamic and gender relations (ibid., p. 2).

Research discovers that women’s participation in peace processes increases the chances that there would be an agreement in a shorter term and the peace would be more sustainable and durable (O’Reilly, Súilleabháin and Paffenholz 2015; Krause, Krause and Bränfors 2018). Also, to build sustainable peace, it is logical to include women as they represent half of the society (O’Reilly, Súilleabháin and Paffenholz 2015, p. 1). Furthermore, the findings of Shair-Rosenfield and Wood (2017) suggest that higher female representation in national legislature participation prolongs the durability of a negotiated peace. Nonetheless, the inclusion of women must be effective, their voices are heard and they have a real opportunity and power to influence the outcome (Adjei 2019, p. 134).

It is necessary to acknowledge that not all women experience conflicts in the same way. Although, their experience is generally different from the one of men. Women are more likely to die from indirect effects of conflict such as the breakdown of social order, human rights violations, economic issues or diseases, and men from direct ones. During conflicts, there is more sexual and domestic violence which remains high above average in post-conflict periods. (O’Reilly, Súilleabháin and Paffenholz 2015, p. 5). Quantitative findings show that there is a correlation between women’s security and positive peace in states (Caprioli 2005). Furthermore, as Gizelis (2011) found out based on a dataset of UN-led peacebuilding operations, women’s status in a society correlates with the effectiveness of a peacebuilding operation as in societies where women have higher social status, women have more opportunities to influence the peace process.

Women can participate in peace processes as individuals or as part of a women’s group. According to research, women’s groups can make significant contributions to peace and transformation processes (O’Reilly, Súilleabháin and Paffenholz 2015, p. 32). Furthermore, based on research by Krause, Krause and Bränfors (2018), a collaboration between female signatories and women civil society groups positively impacts peace processes.

One of the challenges of my research is unclear definitions of the notions ‘peacemaking’ and ‘peacebuilding’ and common unclear usage of these terms in the literature. Limitations to research on gender can be caused by a lack of gender-disaggregated data.


Conceptual and theoretical framework

The conceptual frameworks that will be used for the research are grassroots peacebuilding and gender. I have chosen these concepts as both are important for the thesis. I will discuss how ‘gender’ is constructed to understand what role it can play in grassroots peacebuilding initiatives.

Grassroots peacebuilding

Peacebuilding has been announced a priority by the UN report from 1992, An Agenda for peace (Boutros-Ghali 1992). However, there is no one definition of what peacebuilding is. The Agenda for peace defines peacebuilding as “sustained, cooperative work to deal with underlying economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems” (ibid., p. 15). According to Adjei (2019, p. 136), “peacebuilding involves long-term efforts to reconstruct, reconcile and restore post-conflict communities”. According to Johan Galtung (1976), peacebuilding is different from both peacekeeping and peacemaking. Yet, the distinction between these terms is not always clear.

The local turn in peacebuilding originated in the 1990s based on the work by John Paul Lederach (Paffenholz 2015, p. 857). Leonardsson and Rudd (2015) divide the current critical ‘local turn’ into two (interacting) groups; firstly, scholars that see including the ‘local’ in peacebuilding as means to effective peacebuilding. The second category is a critical approach to peacebuilding that focuses on the ‘local’ as a way of emphasizing the local voices from below. A lot of the critical approach is aimed at the conceptualisation and implementation of liberal peace which remains the main imperative of international peacebuilding discourse and its exclusion of the ‘every day' (Leonardsson and Rudd 2015, p. 834). According to Paffenholz (2015, p. 867), the local turn in peacebuilding is no longer a marginal approach but belongs to the mainstream. She further claims that there has been many a significant rise of civil society initiatives (ibid.).

The current local turn in peacebuilding analyses power and resistance and stems from post-structuralist and postcolonial theoretical frameworks (Paffenholz 2015, p. 857). Among leading critical peacebuilding scholars are Richmond, MacGinty, Chandler, Fetherston, Autesserre, Jabri, Duffield or Paffenholz. The literature focuses on the inclusion of local minorities and women in peace processes (Leonardsson and Rudd 2015, p. 832).

Gender

Gender will be studied through the social constructivist lens. I argue that the essentialist approach is problematic and enforces patriarchy. After conceptualising gender, I will discuss the role of gender in international relations based on the liberal feminist theory.

As WHO (n.d.) puts it: “Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.” One of the first scholars to contribute to study gender roles was Alice Hendrickson Eagly who came up with her social role theory (1987).

Gender and sex interact but differs. Gender is socially constructed, whereas sex is based on biological and physiological characteristics. For the research, the gender binary will be applied. Although, this can be criticized to be a simplification, the current literature on the topic works to a large degree only with ‘men’ and ‘women’. Also, the scope of the thesis is a limitation to the issue.

Among notable feminist scholars who discuss the role of gender in international relations is for instance Judith Butler with her famous work “Gender trouble” (1990). Cynthia Enloe (2000) was one of the first feminist scholars who asked: “where are the women” in international politics. Ann Tickner is another influential feminist academic who focuses on the role of gender in IR. Goldstein (2009) and Elshtain (1995) contributed to the role of gender in wars.


Empirical data and methodology

The research design for the thesis will be an instrumental single-case study that will allow me to analyse in detail my case and provide a complex understanding of the causal mechanisms (Drulák 2008, p. 30; Lamont 2015). As Lamont (2015, p. 147) writes rather than to make theoretical claims, “case studies are better (…) to generate a rich and detailed understanding about how certain processes work”. The goal of a case study is to both come up with a new knowledge about the specific case and to add to the broader knowledge about the phenomena (Lamont 2015, p. 158). To demonstrate causality in the case, Lamont (2015, p. 156) suggests to apply the process-tracing qualitative analysis technique which according to the literature helps to illuminate how different variables interact and can, therefore, highlight the causal mechanisms. According to Gerring (2004, p. 349) “case studies are more likely to shed light on causal mechanisms and less likely to shed light on true causal effects”.

The case will be the organisation ‘Snaga žene’ (in English “the power of a woman”) which focuses on peacebuilding among Bosnian and Serbian women living in Srebrenica where one of the most infamous massacres of the Bosnian war took place. I chose to study this case as there seems to be enough information that I can build my research on. The organisation has its own website and its projects are discussed on other English speaking sites. Furthermore, there have been academic papers published discussing this organisation and its activities (Antić-Štauber 2017; Smith 2016).

Evaluation of how the chosen initiatives contributed to peacebuilding can be challenging. As Çuhadar-Gürkaynak, Dayton and Paffenholz (2009, p. 286) claim, evaluation of peacebuilding “takes time, consumes scarce resources, requires a relatively high degree of expertise, and can result in evaluation results that are already self-evident or that do not capture the nuances of conflict transformation work”. Furthermore, it would be difficult to assess the impact of my chosen initiatives as many variables can influence the outcome. However, the ‘attribution gap’ is unfortunately common in impact assessment (ibid., p. 289).

The goal of the evaluation of the peacebuilding initiative would be to assess and document its achievements, therefore, it would be a summative kind of evaluation (Çuhadar-Gürkaynak, Dayton and Paffenholz 2009, pp. 287)

For answering my questions, I will use primary data in the form of documents and other information published by the organisation ‘Snaga žene’ on its website and social media. I further believe it would be possible to conduct an online semi-structured interview with some of the representatives of the organization and local women who have been active in its projects in order to obtain multiple observations for the case (Gerring 2004, p. 353). Therefore, my methods would be a comprehensive review of the literature and semi-structured interviews. For complexity, I will analyse the secondary sources on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina that have been published.

To analyse the data, I will study programming and achieved results with the use of the process-tracing technique. The interviews will help to evaluate the effectiveness of the peacebuilding activities.


Planned thesis outline

- Introduction
- Literature review
- Methodology
- Theoretical and conceptual framework
o Grassroots peacebuilding
o Gender and gender roles
- Legal framework
o UN Women, Peace and Security Agenda
o BiH’s women’s rights legal framework
- War in BiH and further political development
o Srebrenica
o Women in BiH
- Case - ‘Snaga žene’
- Discussion of the findings
- Conclusion
- References