INTRODUCTION: INCORPORATING GENDER IN THE WORLD OF PEACEBUILDING

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the extent to which United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (Resolution 1325) has been integrated into the international community's post-conflict reconstruction policies and actions in Africa, to reflect on the factors that impede the realisation and further advancement of the gender equality agenda contained in this instrument, and suggest ways forward.

Resolution 1325 is a landmark instrument adopted by the UN Security Council in October 2000. Its objective is to address comprehensively efforts to address the impact of conflict on women with processes that promote their participation in peace making negotiations, security and state building. The enormous obstacles that remain in making reality Resolution 1325 (2000) are also highlighted in this chapter. These obstacles are not exclusive to post-conflict African societies but are also found in the agendas of members of what Mark Duffield defines as the ‘liberal peace complex’. The article argues that in order to transform UN Resolution 1325 rhetoric into reality, not only obstacles within African societies must be addressed but also serious dilemmas within the liberal peace complex need to be tackled.

In the post-Cold War era, the ‘gender’ agenda emerged assertively in global peacebuilding discourse and policies. Thus in 2000, the United Nations (henceforth UN) adopted four significant documents urging that the gender perspective be incorporated in the peacebuilding world: ‘Mainstreaming a gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Operations’, the Windhoek Declaration and the Namibia Action Plan and, above all, Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security.

There are many explanations for the consolidation of the gender discourse in the agenda of the multiple international peacebuilding actors that constitute what Mark Duffield calls the ‘liberal peace complex’, a composite, mutable and stratified transnational network formed by the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, regional organisations such as the African Union and the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS), as well as states, donor agencies, NGOs and armed forces. Actors with different agendas, values, and interests that ‘make possible world liberal governance in the field of peacebuilding.