Men, Peace, Security Event Summaries

PeaceWomen has attended several events on Men, Peace and Security in the last month, which we covered on our social media. “Gender roles are dynamic and peace and security is gendered”, stated of our tweets from the Men, Peace and Security Symposium (Washington DC) which offered an important time to discuss an often-silent aspect of SCR 1325: masculinities and engaging men. The discussions and panels attempted to apply the lens of gender to the broader issues surrounding peace and security, and understand how the ascribed norms of men and masculine identities contribute to, and could help mitigate violent conflict and post-conflict.

Several of the panelists did this and explored root causes, power, prestige, “positive masculinities” and shared real examples of their work from the field in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, the Balkans, South Sudan and many others.

Participants included a wide range of people: men and women from conflict situations working on peace and gender equality, international NGOs, Washington types, military and ex-military, and many others. The Symposium was formatted in all panels (see agenda for details) as well as few keynote speakers including SRSG Bangura (see list of speakers and event videos). The conference discussions were often challenging, especially for a peace activist listening to Chief of Staff from the U.S. Army speak.

Terminology such as “gender” “masculinities” “men” even “peace” was frequently used differently and inconsistently, and sometimes incorrectly which reminds us of the importance of avoiding generalisations and inaccurate use of these words. In addition to WILPF, there were many other like-minded peace organisations including, Promundo, Sonke and Abbad, all setting out clearly how this work builds upon and complements the work of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda, especially as seen through the UN Security Council Resolution 1325.

The event entitled 'Taking UNSCR1325 to The Next Level: Mainstreaming, Masculinities And Movements' (held at the Netherlands Mission in New York) similarly emphasised the need to engage men and incorporate masculinities into the Women, Peace, Security agenda. Speakers emphasised the need to utilise the language of “masculinities and femininities” rather than “men” and “women” in order to highlight the social constructivist nature of gender behaviour embedded in global gender power relations. Moreover, all of the speakers reiterated how crucial women's empowerment and participation is for the effectiveness of DDR (Disarmament, Demobilisation, Reintegration), security sector reform, and economic recovery.

The WPP speaker Isabelle Geuskens proposed a two-fold approach for engaging men in gender mainstreaming and implementing of UNSCR 1325, which consists of adopting an instrumental approach to get men on board before proceeding to construct alternative masculinities. The first part of this strategy entails treating men as stakeholder of UNSCR1325 and showing them how they lose out under the current gender order. The second part involves fostering new masculinities invested in active non-violence and the reconceptualisation of power as power with, not power over.

Anand Pawar from the South Asian Network to Address Masculinities (SANAM) echoed the need to treat men as stakeholders who can benefit from an integration of a gender perspective proposed by the WPP by calling for the politicisation of male experience from a feminist perspective. Sanne Tielemans from Conciliation Resources highlighted the difficulties of implementing UNSCR1325 and warned about the danger of adopting an ‘add women and stir approach' instead of gender mainstreaming. Both Ms. Tielemans and Rosa Emilia Salamanca from CIASE spoke about the need to modify the focus of security to that of human security in order to achieve a genuine paradigm shift in peacebuilding and conflict prevention policy and practice.