A Gendered International Law of Peace

The ambitious aim of this cutting-edge project is to develop the theoretical foundations for a ‘gendered international law of peace’. In so doing, the project will critically engage with the UN Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, first set out in resolution 1325, 2000. By 2015, the Security Council had adopted seven further resolutions, which together provide a political agenda for change in international relations. Notwithstanding the body of research that has been generated over the 17 years, conceptual ambiguity, normative indeterminacy and conceptual knowledge gaps continue to limit the transformative potential of the WPS agenda. In addition, a lack of political commitment has perpetuated its marginalisation from other contemporary agendas and initiatives relating to sustainable peace. This project will address some of these knowledge gaps through engaging feminist methodologies to provide an enriched, and gender-sensitive reading of the international legal obligations of states, international governmental organisations and other non-state actors, and in so doing produce research of academic excellence. In developing an innovative conceptual framework for interrogating through a gender lens what is implicated by ‘peace’ and ‘security’, the research will disrupt current international legal orthodoxy in its scope and approach. Through four distinct but inter-linked streams of study, this project will develop a new understanding of the WPS agenda within the changed (and changing) geo-political context and so provide additional tools for furthering gender equality and women’s empowerment during and following conflict that will form the building blocks of a gendered international law of peace.