Heidi Hudson

‘Doing’ Security As Though Humans Matter: A Feminist Perspective on Gender and the Politics of Human Security

A feminist perspective can make security discourse more reflective of its own normative assumptions. In respect of an expanded human security concept, a feminist perspective highlights the dangers of masking differences under the rubric of the term ‘human’. A critical feminist perspective is geared towards addressing the politics of multiple overlapping identities. Since gender is intertwined with other identities such as race, class and nationality, the dichotomy between universalism and cultural relativism is overcome by connecting individual experiences in a particular location to wider regional and global structures and processes. An overview of a number of feminist and security-studies schools of thought reveals the extent of universalizing tendencies and gender silences within such discourses. The conceptual and political commensurability of the gender and security constructs is often overlooked. An emphasis on identity politics may thus help to clarify the ambivalence of human security as both a political project of emancipation and an analytical framework. A case is therefore made for more fluid context-based interpretations of gender in human security. In this regard it is posited that alternative feminist approaches, such as those rooted in the African context, could facilitate dialogue within and across supposedly irreconcilable standpoints.

Mainstreaming gender in peacekeeping operations: Can Africa learn from international experience?

Peacekeeping issues in all their diversity have enjoyed persistent priority on the agenda of many African security specialists and practitioners. Increased attention, however, has contributed much more to reveal the complexity of the subject, rather than to the implementation of workable models. Despite a plethora of lessons learned from specific international and regional cases, many matters in this field of study remain unresolved. Training of African peacekeepers and much of the official doctrinal thinking still rely heavily on United Nations-type approaches. Also, in situations where western approaches to peacekeeping are being questioned the momentum is lost due to a lack of doctrinal consensus on the continent1 Africa has yet to come up with a truly indigenous approach to peacekeeping. The fluid and insecure nature of conditions on the ground and the divergent motives of the warring parties can often be traced back to centuries of tension and conflict. The situation on the ground therefore increasingly renders the UN peacekeeping doctrine irrelevant and necessitates a critical look at traditional assumptions.

Decolonising gender and peacebuilding: feminist frontiers and border thinking in Africa

Abstract The article seeks to theorise an integrated decolonised feminist frame for peacebuilding in an African context. Arguing that a decolonial-feminist lens has the potential to change the way we look at peacebuilding practices, I propose the notion of ‘feminist frontiers’ – an engaged yet stabilising heuristic tool for analysing racialised and gendered relations post-conflict. The argument is structured around three pillars, namely: metageographies as metaphoric mental-space constructions of a colonial peace; masks that constrain the introduction of complicated and intersected human subjecthoods; and mundane matter that elicits ambivalent engagements between human and post-human subjectivities in the areas of everyday political economies and infrastructural rule of peacebuilding. I conclude that such feminist frontiers represent intermediate and mediated spaces or epistemological borderlands from where the undertheorised and empirically understudied discursive and material dimensions of peacebuilding from a gender perspective can be investigated.

Gender and the globalisation of violence: the treacherous terrain of privatised peacekeeping

abstract This article examines how globalisation has transformed the states security functions and monopoly over violence. The expansion of the global arms dynamic and privatisation indicate increased (re)militarisation which threatens a norm-driven and people-centred global security order. A feminist conceptualisation of globalised security is necessary to remind us not to overestimate the extent to which power has become removed from the state and to offer theoretical and practical insights on how a fusion of masculine and feminine values may assist human and state security. Progress has recently been made in mainstreaming gender in peacekeeping operations, but much still needs to be done regarding implementation. Progress is also threatened by the increased use of private military companies which operate outside of generally acceptable accountability norms. Regulating these companies through international law is a possible solution which could also serve gender mainstreaming objectives. This option may be costly since it entrenches using force in conflict resolution. This could only prove detrimental to the fostering of comprehensive security based on gender justice.