What Works in Relief and Recovery

Abstract

Women’s economic participation and empowerment are submerged within the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, yet both are crucial to the success of its core goal to bring gender equal and lasting peace. Relief and Recovery (R&R) is the one of four pillars of the WPS agenda that most strongly aligns with the goal of economic empowerment. Among all the WPS pillars, however, it is the most ambiguous and under-researched. In this chapter, we examine how R&R features in the United Nations Security Council Resolutions on WPS and in wider United Nations frameworks on peace-building. We suggest that the current siloing of humanitarian relief responses, sustainable development approaches focused on resilience building, and securitized approaches addressing women’s participation and protection represent a major challenge to realizing gender-just peace and security in relief and recovery from conflict and other crises. At the same time, the R&R pillar has the most transformative potential to connect both short-term and long-term goals to achieve sustainable peace, development, and resilience, while also promoting women’s participation and socioeconomic rights.