Linking Feminist Sustainable Peace, Sustainable Development, and Postwar Infrastructure Reconstruction
About the event:
Infrastructure reconstruction in post-war and post-disaster contexts has the potential to transform gendered inequalities, empower marginalized groups, and lay the groundwork for peace and development that are truly sustainable. Unfortunately, however, that is not how it usually works. Instead, infrastructure reconstruction too often exacerbates a country’s pre-existing gendered inequalities and facilitates an extractive form of development which is unsustainable for both people and the planet.
This interactive panel discussion and workshop brought together women civil society leaders and scholars to show how feminist analysis and policymaking on issues such as roads, public transportation, water and energy infrastructure and urban planning can, alternatively, work to empower women and foster greater gender equality and sustainable peace and development.
Our emphasis was on decentralized and environmentally appropriate infrastructure solutions that can foster sustainable livelihoods and can be locally maintained and controlled. At the same time, we focused on how to create the enabling international policy environment to support those solutions, by bringing civil society perspectives to bear on developing a framework of engagement with the international financial institutions, international development organizations and governmental and intergovernmental institutions that shape postwar and post-disaster infrastructure development. The workshop also aimed to support and further develop the network of activists who see sustainable, gender-equitable infrastructure reconstruction as essential to their work integrating peacebuilding, gender equality and sustainable development.
Location:
Armenian Convention Center: Vartan Hall, 630 2nd Avenue, NY (btw 34th and 35th Str.)
