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International peacebuilding paradigms represent women’s organizations as important peacebuilding partners. However, most conflict-affected states are authoritarian or hybrid regimes, where women’s peacebuilding work may be associated with both difficulties and danger. While feminist peacebuilding scholarship has focused its critique on the frictional encounters between local women’s organizations and international liberal peacebuilding, it has not sufficiently explored how women’s peacebuilding practices are shaped by authoritarian state policies. Bringing together feminist work on friction in global-local encounters and work on civil society-state relations in non-democratic settings, we argue that friction is manifested as tensions and conflicts in several relationships. Drawing on interviews with women activists in and from Sri Lanka and Myanmar, this article examines how women’s organizations negotiate the constraints and pressures emerging from their relationships with international peacebuilding partners and donors, as well as with state authorities. Women’s organizations engage in a delicate balancing act to navigate state tactics of repression, co-optation and legitimation, and this precarious position is often further complicated by the practices and norms of international peacebuilders. Exploring these multidimensional frictional dynamics, the article contributes to a fuller understanding of the political conditions that shape the peacebuilding practices of women’s organizations and the ways in which they mobilize to navigate these conditions.

Women are often at the forefront of high-risk struggles for peace and justice after war in contexts where the space for activism is severely restricted. This article explores how women’s organizations and activists involved in struggles for peace, justice and accountability in Sri Lanka navigate the repression and unpredictability that characterizes its hybrid post-war political order. Drawing on the concept of social navigation as an analytical lens, we show how women peace activists navigate risk and uncertainty through strategic decisions about and adaptation of how they organize; how they represent their activities and goals; and how they build networks with powerful allies who can provide protection and enhance their impact. These strategies enable activists to resist state surveillance, intimidation and repression and promote alternative, more inclusive and democratic forms of peace. Bridging scholarship on women’s peace activism and on civil society in authoritarian and hybrid regimes, we contribute to a better understanding of how state repression and uneven constraints on civil society shape women’s peacebuilding work, and respond to recent calls for more in-depth analysis of how civil society activists navigate constraints in contexts of restricted civic space.

Con frecuencia, las mujeres se encuentran en primera línea en luchas de alto riesgo por la paz y la justicia después de la guerra en contextos donde el espacio para el activismo está gravemente restringido. Este artículo analiza cómo las organizaciones de mujeres, así como las activistas involucradas en luchas por la paz, la justicia y la rendición de cuentas en Sri Lanka se enfrentan a la represión y a la imprevisibilidad que caracteriza su orden político híbrido posterior a la guerra. Demostramos, basándonos en el concepto de navegación social como una lente analítica, cómo las mujeres activistas por la paz gestionan el riesgo y la incertidumbre a través de decisiones estratégicas al respecto y de la adaptación de su organización, cómo representan sus actividades y objetivos y cómo construyen redes con aliados poderosos que pueden brindar protección y aumentar su impacto. Estas estrategias permiten a las activistas resistirse a la vigilancia estatal, la intimidación y la represión, y promover formas de paz alternativas, más inclusivas y democráticas. Conectamos la investigación sobre el activismo por la paz de las mujeres y sobre la sociedad civil en regímenes autoritarios e híbridos, lo que nos permite contribuir a un mejor entendimiento de cómo la represión estatal y las restricciones desiguales en la sociedad civil moldean el trabajo de las mujeres en la construcción de la paz, y responden a los recientes llamamientos relativos a realizar un análisis más profundo de cómo los activistas de la sociedad civil se enfrentan a las restricciones en contextos de espacio cívico limitado.

Les femmes se trouvent souvent au premier plan des luttes à haut risque pour la paix et la justice après une guerre dans des contextes où l’espace pour le militantisme est très restreint. Cet article s’intéresse à la façon dont les organisations féminines et militantes impliquées dans des luttes pour la paix, la justice et la prise de responsabilité au Sri Lanka gèrent la répression et le caractère imprévisible de son ordre politique hybride d’après-guerre. Nous fondant sur le concept de navigation sociale comme angle analytique, nous montrons comment les militantes pour la paix gèrent le risque et l’incertitude par le biais de décisions stratégiques et d’une adaptation quant à leur organisation, comment elles représentent leurs activités et objectifs et comment elles construisent des réseaux avec de puissants alliés qui peuvent les protéger et accentuer la portée de leurs actions. Ces stratégies permettent aux militantes de résister à la surveillance étatique, l’intimidation et la répression et de promouvoir d’autres formes de paix, plus inclusives et démocratiques. En rapprochant la recherche sur le militantisme féminin pour la paix et sur la société civile dans des régimes autoritaires et hybrides, nous contribuons à enrichir notre compréhension de la façon dont la répression étatique et la présence de contraintes inégales sur la société civile façonnent le travail de consolidation de la paix des femmes, et répondons à des appels récents à davantage d’analyses approfondies de la navigation des contraintes dans des contextes d’espace civique restreint par les militantes de la société civile.

International actors working to implement the UN's Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda emphasize the importance of partnership with local women's organizations and activists. Building on data from Myanmar, this study examines how and when women in conflict contexts are understood as ideal participants in - and vehicles for - the WPS agenda. Drawing on interviews with international donors, gender experts, and Myanmar women activists, the analysis demonstrates how both desirable and undesirable participant subject positions are produced through the discourses and funding choices of WPS donors. In particular, we identify and discuss three undesirable subject positions prominent in donor-driven discourses: the oppositional woman, the fearful woman, and the apolitical woman. We also find that how (un)desirability is framed depends on changing factors that include shifts in local political context and in the foreign policy goals of international donors - shifts that may be particularly dramatic and abrupt in conflict-affected contexts. Critically examining the production of these three undesirable subject positions, we discuss what kinds of local women can be recognized as desirable participants in the implementation of the WPS agenda and draw attention to persistent power relations that shape political space and inclusion in peacebuilding.

This article explores the encounter between the Women, Peace and Security agenda and rebel institutions in Mindanao. The analysis highlights that activities aiming to support women’s participation in peacebuilding often exist in parallel with and fail to fully recognise women’s existing forms of mobilisation within Non-State Armed Groups. This gap is bridged by civil society brokers who are associated with armed groups but speak the language of international peacebuilding frameworks. The findings point to the important role of such intermediaries in translating international norms, and to rebel groups and institutions as arenas for women’s political mobilisation and empowerment.

For decades, women in and from Myanmar have engaged in documentation of human rights abuses by the Myanmar military, report writing and international advocacy campaigns as key strategies in pursuit of political change. Approaching these practices of knowledge production as expressions of narrative agency, this chapter examines how bearing witness has allowed women from marginalized ethnic minority communities to gain significant influence. It traces the evolution of human rights documentation targeting international audiences as a key strategy for the Burmese women’s movement in exile, and explores the politics of how narratives about violence and human right abuses are produced, circulated, silenced and heard. The chapter notes that constraints regarding which narratives can be heard and amplified in an international political context have led to an emphasis on conflict-related sexual violence at the expense of more complex narratives of structural gendered violence and insecurity. Further, after the onset of a political reform period in Myanmar in 2011, the interest of international actors shifted towards collaboration with government, which made them less receptive to oppositional narratives of still ongoing, state-sponsored human rights abuses. This demonstrates the sensitivity of women’s narrative agency to geopolitical shifts and changes in the international politics of aid.

This article explores the political space of the border through the experiences of Myanmar women activists, for whom the borderlands in Thailand have provided refuge as well as a conducive environment for political mobilization. At the same time, the border renders refugee activists insecure and precarious. Drawing on life history interviews, our analysis expands conceptualizations of the border as a dynamic political space by illustrating its dual capacity to both facilitate and constrain the political agency of refugee women from Myanmar. In particular, the spatial and temporal fluidity and in-betweenness of the border is shown to foster both repression and resistance. Exploring the character and salience of the border as a space for activism over time, we demonstrate how the political space of the border is relational, constituted in interaction with other political spaces, such as politics and governance in Myanmar, transnational activist networks, and the politics of international aid. 

In recent years, liberal peacebuilding has been increasingly displaced by illiberal peacebuilding – illiberal norms and practices that prioritise regime control, stability, and order through economic co-optation, repression of dissent, and the promotion of hegemonic narratives. While studies have examined how illiberal peacebuilding is practiced in various contexts, few have thus far asked how people respond to, and possibly resist, illiberal ideas and practices of peacebuilding. Rather, the existing research on resistance and peacebuilding has primarily focused on local resistance to top-down, often internationally driven liberal peacebuilding. In this article, we address this gap by bringing resistance studies and peacebuilding into greater dialogue and by exploring civil society resistance to illiberal peacebuilding in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. We examine how civil society and social movement actors have resisted regime efforts to build peace through illiberal norms and practices and instead worked to imagine and construct alternative forms of peace that are more inclusive and egalitarian, though not necessarily liberal.

Conventional assumptions locating peacebuilding temporally after violence have largely prevented exploration of how peacebuilding is practised amidst conditions of ongoing violence and insecurity. This chapter discusses the concept of women-to-women diplomacy as a framework which captures women's peacebuilding practices during, after, and alongside armed conflict. Drawing on a case study of the multi-ethnic alliance Women's League of Burma (WLB) from Myanmar, the chapter proposes that women-to-women diplomacy is a distinct type of peacebuilding by women grounded in a commitment to gender justice as an intrinsic aspect of a legitimate and sustainable peace. Embracing such a peacebuilding approach, WLB has contributed to transforming conflict divides long before the initiation of formal national peace negotiations in Myanmar. This chapter reveals how practices of women-to-women diplomacy are deployed, adapted, and modified in relation to changing conflict dynamics and offers an analytical framework to analyze women's peacebuilding practices in other political landscapes and in various stages of armed conflict.

Hur kan politik studeras i en tid där styrning kommit att handla om att hitta rätta lösningar på förgivettagna problem? I denna artikel argumenterar vi för governmentality som ett användbart perspektiv för att analysera makt och fånga ”det politiska” i politik och styrning. Utifrån exempel från vår forskning belyser vi hur governmentality-perspektivet kan synliggöra hur två till synes obestridligt goda mål, trygghet och jämställdhet, opererar som styrningsverktyg som bidrar till att dölja motsättningar och motstridiga intressen. Governmentality-perspektivet erbjuder en användbar analytisk verktygslåda för att undersöka hur politiska problem görs styrbara samt hur styrningen legitimeras och görs begriplig. Perspektivet gör det också möjligt att synliggöra den ofta outtalade problemförståelse som ligger bakom olika sätt att angripa politiska problem. Detta perspektiv öppnar således upp för analytiska frågor som vi ser som helt centrala för statsvetenskaplig forskning i en tid som präglas av en utbredd avpolitisering av i grunden politiska problem som exempelvis jämställdhet och trygghet

How can politics be critically explored, at a time when governing is increasingly seen as a matter of technical problem-solving? In this article, we argue that a governmentality perspective provides a fruitful analytical approach for capturing power and the political in processes and practices of governing. Drawing on our respective research, we highlight how two seemingly indisputable and desirable policy goals – safety and gender equality – operate as governing tools in ways that conceal political conflict and contestation. A governmentality perspective offers a useful analytical toolbox for exploring how political problems are constructed and rendered governable, and how governing practices are legitimated as a particular problem representation is naturalized. This analytical approach thus draws attention to questions of particular relevance in an era of post-politics and widespread de-politicization of fundamentally political issues, such as safety or gender equality.