Difficult Encounters with the WPS Agenda in South Asia: Re-scripting Globalized Norms and Policy Frameworks for a Feminist Peace

Abstract

The chapter draws upon scholarship and gender expertise, primarily from South Asia, on the everyday resistance and resilience of local women negotiating multiple militarised patriarchies in the conflict continuum, to critically assess the limits and scope of leveraging the WPS agenda to build a transformative peace. It teases out the plural and contextual meanings of militarisation, peace and justice, emphasising the intersecting structures of disadvantage and discrimination which shape women’s experiences of insecurity. Confronting ‘post conflict’ transitions that likely deliver a violent peace or internal domination, the chapter questions the presumed apolitical engagement of women with peace and calls for attention to their resistance to the crisis of solutions delivered by the hegemonic neo liberal peace and development template. The chapter makes a case for bringing in the concept of ‘resistance’ into the WPS agenda, as it is integral to the collective mobilization of the region’s peace groups as well as women’s alliances with social movements for socio-economic justice and cultural rights. Finally, it outlines how the region’s gender equality and peace advocates have expanded openings for WPS practices in other institutional contexts such as CEDAW.