Grasping Local Participation: The Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the Western Balkans and North Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on those “points of fracture” (Kirby and Shepherd 2020, 12) that have manifested in the implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda in the Mediterranean region by examining National Action Plans (NAPs) in two distinct sub-regions – the Western Balkans and North Africa. We develop a comparative framework to shed light on the dimension of participation of these plans in four countries where the debate on WPS has reached different stages: Bosnia–Herzegovina, Kosovo, Tunisia and Morocco. By empirically investigating participation as both modality and focus of WPS debate and practice in these countries, we show that NAPs are unable to produce “meaningful local ownership” (Basini and Ryan 2016, 390) and that the international discourse on WPS should be re-thought to resonate with women’s needs, experiences and perspectives in post-conflict and post-revolutionary settings.