Engaging men and boys in the Women, Peace and Security agenda: beyond the "good men" industry

Since the signing of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) in October 2000, there have been two explicit references to men in resolutions on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. For the first 13 years of the agenda resolutions included men by default without naming them directly, referring to gender broadly and many particular instances of violence presumably caused by men.1 The first explicit mention appeared in 2013 in Resolution 2106, which mentioned “the enlistment of men and boys in the effort to combat all forms of violence against women.” Resolution 2106 was followed up in 2015 by Resolution 2242, which reiterated “the important engagement by men and boys as partners in promoting women’s participation in the prevention and resolution of armed conflict, peacebuilding and post-conflict situations”. These direct mentions of men within the WPS architecture limit the agenda to that of “enlisting” or “engaging” men and boys in achieving the goals of WPS, rather than a more sustained treatment of men and masculinities. While the focus on men and boys has entailed a broad effort to expand WPS to the “other side of gender”, the majority of current actions appear to follow the language within UNSCRs 2106 and 2242 by focusing on “engaging men and boys”.

Should policy-makers align attempts to transform violent masculinities?

As part of a series exploring continuums of violence, David Duriesmith looks at policy responses to men’s violence against women and to (men’s) violent extremism, urging policymakers to see beyond the notion of ‘toxic’ masculinity and the ‘bad man’ and acknowledge structural causes

Returning to the root : radical feminist thought and feminist theories of International Relations

Feminist International Relations (IR) theory is haunted by a radical feminist ghost. From Enloe's suggestion that the personal is both political and international, often seen as the foundation of feminist IR, feminist IR scholarship has been built on the intellectual contributions of a body of theory it has long left for dead. Though Enloe's sentiment directly references the Hanisch's radical feminist rallying call, there is little direct engagement with the radical feminist thinkers who popularised the sentiment in IR. Rather, since its inception, the field has been built on radical feminist thought it has left for dead. This has left feminist IR troubled by its radical feminist roots and the conceptual baggage that feminist IR has unreflectively carried from second-wave feminism into its contemporary scholarship. By returning to the roots of radical feminism we believe IR can gain valuable insights regarding the system of sex-class oppression, the central role of heterosexuality in maintaining this system, and the feminist case for revolutionary political action in order to dismantle it

Engaging or changing men? Understandings of masculinity and change in the new ‘men, peace and security’ agenda

The harmful and inequitable implications of men’s actions have always been a central focus of the United Nation’s Women, Peace and Security agenda. Despite this, until recently, there have been few programmes in the agenda which attempt to directly work with men. The past five years have seen a rapid growth of programming that explicitly targets men and even calls for a ‘Men, Peace and Security’ agenda. This article analyses how these programmes understand their work. Drawing on expert interviews and documentary analysis it argues that current programming reflects two fundamentally different approaches, engaging or changing men. While these two perspectives are not mutually exclusive, they reflect different understandings of what and ‘Men, Peace and Security’ agenda should prioritise. In exploring the tension between these two approaches the article concludes that without greater coherence and clarity the MPS agenda risks being ineffective or even producing harmful outcomes

Transforming masculinities after scandal: the response to Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan and the possibility of change in military masculinities

This article focuses on what role masculinities might be playing in Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, and whether it is possible to shift such masculinities after the revelation of scandals. It makes the argument that although masculinities have been central to these war crimes, attempting reform at the moment of scandal is unlikely to lead to necessary structural reform. Rather, this article argues that responses focused on masculinity at the moment of scandal are likely to constitute what Jamie Johnson (2016, 705) refers to as ‘line-drawing manoeuvres’, thereby singling out extreme acts of excessive violence to re-legitimise the institution which produced such violence. Therefore, the Brereton Report demonstrates the need for structural changes addressing the foundations of violent masculinities within the Australian Defence Force and not ad hoc efforts to remedy its most extreme excesses

The masculine logic of DDR and SSR in the Rwanda Defence Force

Since the 1994 genocide and civil war, the Rwandan government has implemented an externally funded Demobilisation, Demilitarisation and Reintegration (DDR)/Security Sector Reform (SSR) program culminating in the consolidation of armed groups into a new, professionalised Rwanda Defence Force (RDF). Feminists argue that DDR-SSR initiatives that exclude combatant women and girls or ignore gendered security needs fail to transform the political conditions that led to conflict. Less attention has been paid to how gendered relations of power play out through gender sensitive DDR and SSR initiatives that seek to integrate women and transform hyper-masculine militarised masculinities. This article investigates how Rwanda’s DDR-SSR program is governed by an oppressive masculine logic. Drawing on critical studies on men and masculinities and feminist work on peacebuilding, myths and the politics of belonging, it is argued that Rwanda’s locally-owned DDR-SSR program places the military and militarisation at the centre of the nation-building program. Through various ‘boundary construction’ practices, the Rwandan government attempts to stabilise the post-1994 gender order and entrench the hegemony of a new militarised masculinity in Rwandan society. The case study draws on field research conducted in 2014 and 2015 and a discourse analysis of RDF historical accounts, policy documents and training materials

From ‘It rarely happens’ to ‘It’s worse for men’ : dispelling misconceptions about sexual violence against men and boys in conflict and displacement

Sexual violence against men and boys in conflict and displacement has garnered increasing attention over the past decade and has been recognised in UN Security Resolution 2467. Despite increased evidence and understanding of the issue, myths and misconceptions nevertheless abound. The authors of this article – practitioners and academics with extensive experience in the field – aim to dispel ten of the most common misconceptions that we have encountered, and to highlight the current evidence base regarding sexual violence against men and boys in humanitarian settings. We argue that just as there is no universal experience of sexual violence for women and girls, there is no universal experience for men and boys, or for nonbinary people. In order to address the complexities of these experiences, a survivor-centred, intersectional approach is needed

Hybrid warriors and the formation of new war masculinities: a case study of Indonesian foreign fighters

At the heart of new wars are economic structures, patterns of violence and formations of collective meaning, which appear to blend localised and globalised practices of gender. While new wars appear to mirror the kind of warrior masculinity that preceded the modern state, they also draw on new technologies and symbolism to give meaning to acts of war. In the case of foreign fighters, armed groups increasingly draw on globalised cultural products (film, electronic publications and images) to entice volunteers to fight on the battlefields of the 21st century. The use of masculine models and gendered discourses to recruit men to fight in these conflicts has been well studied. However, the process through which 'local' and 'global' practices of gender are blended by highly mobile fighters to forge the practices of new war has received far less attention.Drawing on the notion of cultural hybridity, this article asks how interactions between different configurations of gender make new wars possible. To do this, it empirically explores encounters between notions of militarised manhood through the lives of four Indonesian former foreign fighters. By utilising life history interviews, this article makes the case that the masculinity of these 'new warriors' relied on the tensions between, and synthesis of, anti-colonial notions of organised violence that are rooted in Indonesian history and globalised jihadi discourse on war