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Research
Project: Transcending Conflict: Gender and
Non – Traditional Security In
2003, WISCOMP initiated a South Asian Research Project titled Transcending
Conflict: Gender and Non-Traditional
Security. Comprising scholars and
practitioners from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India, the project
explores the theoretical spaces where non-traditional security issues intersect
with those of gender. Here, ‘non–traditional security’ is not seen as an
alternative discourse, but as a nuanced refining input to arrive at an expanded
and holistic notion of what must constitute security concerns of nation states,
both as accountable for the security and well-being of their citizens and as
participants in a vastly changed international scenario. The idea is also to map
the areas of convergences and divergences between traditional and
non-traditional formulations on security and appreciate how they feed into each
other. In this context, WISCOMP does not see gender as just another
‘non-traditional’ variable in the growing menu of security concerns, but an
integral factor that shapes the manner in which they play themselves out. Feeding
into WISCOMP's larger vision of a people-oriented and gender-sensitive discourse
on issues of security, the research project is shaped by the empirical mapping
that emerges from case studies highlighting major ‘non-traditional’ security
concerns in the countries of the South Asian region, through the lens of gender. The
research studies, which will be published as part of the WISCOMP Engendering
Security series, include the following themes:
This
study analyzes how human flows negotiate borders and impact the meta-discourses
of security. It comments on resource and identity politics in the region in the
context of displacement, and invokes the Feminist lens in critiquing and
genealogizing questions of security.
This
study articulates, in the context of Bangladesh, an alternative narration of
conflicts and insecurities based on the notion of fear of violence even during
apparent “peacetime.” It analyzes what happens when a hitherto economically
marginalized group (women) starts contributing to the labor force and claiming
public spaces without concomitant changes in social hierarchies that are biased
against them. Placing women at the center of the non-traditional security
discourse, this study looks at gender violence as a non-traditional security
issue.
This
study analyzes the genesis and contours of the farmers’ movement (Anjuman-e-Mazareen)
in Pakistan’s Punjab on issues of land ownership, rights of livelihood and
survival. It foregrounds women’s activism in the peasant uprising and looks at
how gender cuts across religion and ethnicity (Muslim and Christians, Punjabis
and Sindhis) when faced with the awesome might of a militarized state.
This
study examines the evolution of identity from a Kashmiri ethnicity to an Islamic
and pan-Islamic identity, and the intersection between Azadi
(the call for independence), Jehad and
Kashmiriyat (a distinct syncretic
culture of Kashmir). It looks at how Kashmiri women (Muslim and Pandit) have
experienced the different strands of nationalism - religious, secular and ethnic
- embedded in the notion of Kashmiriyat,
and asks the question: How do Kashmiri women view security and does security
look different through the lens of gender?
This
study examines the experiences of Sri Lanka and India to explore the contours of
a South Asian perspective on terrorism and how it has reconfigured the
traditional notions of conflict and war. In this context, it asks the question:
Is there a unique gender perspective or agenda on terrorism? Is there a gender
input to the international discourse on terrorism? If not why?
This
study examines the experience of peacekeeping in Cambodia and East Timor to
understand its impact on conflict transformation processes. It focuses on the
dynamism of gender relations in the methodology of conflict management and
transformation and critiques peacekeeping operations by examining whether and
how the lessons learned from past operations (involving the understanding of
gender relations) have been applied by current peacekeeping operations.
This
study looks at the importance of foregrounding gender perspectives in the
context of the current peace process in Sri Lanka. In asks a series of critical
questions: Why are women central to peacebuilding? How can women’s concerns be
included in peace processes? What is the impact of violence and its consequences
for women? What are the links between security and women’s political
representation? How might policymakers ‘engender’ security?
This study weaves together the principal findings of the above-mentioned projects and examines the theoretical contours of non-traditional formulations of security in the context of South Asia.
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Roundtable:Voices from Pakistan Symposium: Human Security in the New Millenium Research Project: Transcending Conflict: Gender and Non – Traditional Security Regional Conference: Non – Traditional Security Discourse: Gender and South Asia |
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