What do you do when WPS isn’t a viable option? Try critical feminist justpeace
By: Karie Cross Riddle (she/her/hers)
How can transnational feminist allies support women’s peacebuilding efforts in contexts like India, where the WPS agenda has failed to produce social change? I argue that a critical and feminist revision of John Paul Lederach’s theory of conflict transformation, grounded in diverse women’s peacebuilding praxis from Manipur, India, can serve as a promising alternative.
Feminist activists and scholars recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, prompting a great deal of reflection upon its successes and limitations (much of that appearing in the IFJP). While the WPS framework has created important new openings for women’s participation in international peace and security, scholars widely argue that it is not appropriate for every context. The WPS is an international agenda, implemented by UN women and built according to a particular set of norms that do not always capture cultural, religious, and gendered diversity or intersectional feminist commitments.
Alongside the WPS agenda, therefore, I propose a complementary approach termed critical feminist justpeace. Grounding my theorizing in diverse women’s peacebuilding praxis from Manipur, India, I revise John Paul Lederach’s locally-oriented approach to conflict transformation. I define critical feminist justpeace as an intersectional orientation towards conflict transformation that reduces structural power hierarchies and direct forms of violence, increases equitable justice outcomes across public and private life, and includes historically marginalized participants.
I argue that critical feminist justpeace is particularly relevant for countries like India, in which the WPS agenda has been deemed a failure by many observers. For example, Paula Banerjee wrote in 2020: “When Resolution 1325 [the founding document for the WPS agenda] was passed, there was genuine hope in India that the roles that women play in multiple conflict-mitigating processes would be honored. The resolution was neither enforced nor did it reward countries that adopted National Action Plans (NAP). In fact, countries [like India] often refused to have their own NAPs because they said they were not at war.”
Thus national politics discourage the use of 1325. Moreover, according to Banerjee, “UN Women, which has been mandated with instrumentalizing 1325, did not reach out to women activists beyond the capital.” Indeed, in my own research based in the northeastern state of Manipur, I found that of the five women’s peacebuilding groups that I worked with, only one—the professionalized NGO with headquarters in New Delhi—used the language of the WPS agenda.
Even though the language of the WPS agenda has not been embraced, peacebuilding activity flourishes among women in Manipur. Many peacebuilders display incredible courage and creativity as they call attention to violence, through controversial nude protests, 16-year-long Gandhian fasts, prayer vigils, lobbying, protests, and strikes. As we look beyond WPS activism, we can learn from women’s peacebuilding in Manipur, but we also need an intersectional and power-conscious approach to local-level peacebuilding that can reflect upon its own weaknesses. All peacebuilders conduct their work in the real world, and like all of us, they cannot escape power relations, competitiveness, and fear.
I argue that John Paul Lederach’s theory of conflict transformation, perhaps the best-known locally-oriented approach to conflict, serves as a suitable, alternative framework through which transnational allies can support and, as necessary, even critique local-level peacebuilding. But conflict transformation itself would benefit from careful theorization and more attention to gendered and intersectional experiences. Thus, I argue that women’s peacebuilding work and Lederach’s theory can carry on a fruitful conversation, producing alternatives for local peace when the WPS agenda is not a viable option.
Ima Nganbi, Meira Paibi peacebuilder, Manipur
For example, some women’s praxis suggests that conflict transformation needs a process for explicit reflection on social norms and gender roles. In Manipur, conflict widows should retain the rights to their property after their husbands die. However, some women with the peacebuilding group EEVFAM were denied their property “because our elders think that we may re-marry.” Informal norms blocked the realization of formal opportunities on paper. Other women noted the insufficiency of the equal opportunity approach to political organizing. Nandini Thokchom with the Women’s Commission noted that even when men tried to include women in organizing, they tended to overlook informal obstacles that would keep them from meetings:
We have a coalition for women’s development…at 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning which is really insensitive if they want women to be there, because we are busy in the house, cooking and everything… Men don’t realize it, though they are talking about gender inequality they don’t realize it. (Imphal, Manipur; July 2015)
Critical feminist justpeace is about building an intersectional orientation towards conflict transformation, which focuses on structural power hierarchies as well as direct forms of violence.It seeks to increase equitable justice outcomes across public and private life; and it includes historically marginalized participants, not only those who are well-positioned for social change.
This is a grounded normative theory that can serve as an important complement to the WPS agenda in places like India, where efforts to employ 1325 have achieved very little. When peacebuilding is necessarily local, external allies can support conflict transformation, but we must analyze local work for its own tendencies towards domination. The concepts and processes that I propose can serve as a flexible guide for local peacebuilders working within contestation and for external allies who strive to do no harm—supporting local peace work without contributing to further injustices.
Read the full article here: “Critical feminist justpeace”: a grounded theory approach to Women, Peace and Security
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Karie Cross Riddle is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University, with expertise in feminist theory, South Asian politics, peace and conflict studies, and global development. Riddle is developing a book manuscript entitled Critical Feminist Justpeace, which continues her work on women's peacebuilding in Manipur, India. In her research and teaching, she aims to promote positive, intersectional social change.