Engaging with the Gender, Peace and Security Agenda in Research and Activism in Lebanon
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Research at LSE ENGAGING WITH THE GENDER, PEACE AND SECURITY AGENDA IN RESEARCH AND ACTIVISM IN LEBANON Elizabeth Laruni, Charbel Maydaa and Henri Myrttinen 17/2018 + Issues relating to gender, peace and security are a contested field in the Arabic-speaking world. This includes the history and present state of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, which local grassroots level actors and critical voices often struggle to influence. Rather, it is often powerful national governments, non-state actors and outside actors – including donor governments, international organisations and international non- governmental organisations (INGOs), Global North academia but also powerful religious institutions – that define much of the framework, direction and content of gender, peace and security work. Much of the region is marked by armed conflict, occupation, displacement and rule by authoritarian governments. Increasingly, in a number of the countries the already limited space for civil society and academia is shrinking further, due to an increased securitisation of politics. This is exacerbated by policies of Global North actors that focus on countering violent extremism (CVE) and/or utilise frameworks put in place to address gender inequality (such as the WPS agenda) to address short-term security concerns, which can marginalise women’s rights organisations’ work on redressing gender inequality and its societal impacts.¹ The purpose of this paper is to reflect on Peace network co-ordinated by the LSE to find themselves in situations of very the current state of gender, peace and Centre for Women, Peace and Security.2 limited power and agency at best, and at security work in Lebanon in particular, worst in extremely precarious conditions. providing a view from a critical academic While the majority of literature on gender Similarly, persons of diverse SOGI, and civil society perspective, with a strong inequality within Lebanon and the especially those who cannot draw on focus on sexual orientation and gender Middle East and North Africa (MENA) socio-economically or politically powerful identity (SOGI) issues. It draws on ongoing region more widely has tended to focus networks, are often placed in positions of discussions and collaboration among a women’s marginalisation, we argue particular vulnerability, facing exclusion, network of academics, practitioners and that it is also important to broaden the discrimination and violence, often activists working on gender and sexuality, debate to include diverse SOGI issues. exacerbated if they are prescribed other both in Lebanon and more broadly as part The majority of women, men, and those societally marginalised identity markers.3 of the Gender Violence Across War and with other gender identities continue Elizabeth Laruni is Programme Officer for Gender and Peacebuilding at International Alert, Charbel Maydaa is Director of MENA Organization for Services, Advocacy, Integration & Capacity-building (MOSAIC) and Henri Myrttinen is Head of Gender and Peacebuilding at International Alert. movement[s], which engaged women from + grassroots organizations […] in working for De-politicisation of the women’s rights and gender justice a combined feminist-nationalist agenda” movements has occurred through an ‘NGO-isation’ of the into interlocutors for the international 8 work, whereby civil society organisations become mere community. This has hindered, and in some cases precluded previously service providers, often for outside actors such as INGOs resistance- and grassroots-oriented and UN agencies. organisations from carrying out more political work. Organisations are instead having to focus on short-term fundraising, service delivery, meeting donor reporting requirements and working on serial 1 See also, International Alert, Oxfam and UK BACKGROUND Foreign and Commonwealth Office,Now is the projects on democratisation, healthcare, Time: Research on Gender Justice, Conflict and 9 Fragility in the Middle East and North Africa While the region is often viewed from peacebuilding and women’s rights. (London: International Alert, 2017), https:// the outside as a backwater in terms of Political work for gender equality is often www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/ file_attachments/rr-gender-justice-conflict- gender justice activism, women’s political done by outside agencies, be it INGOs, fragility-mena-050617-en.pdf; Kvinna till Kvinna, activism in the ‘modern’ sense dates donors or UN agencies, where “weakened Suffocating the Movement: Shrinking Space for th Women’s Rights (Stockholm: Kvinna till Kvinna, back to at least the late 19 century states, under the pressure of international 2018), http://thekvinnatillkvinnafoundation.org/ in the Arab World.4 Women’s rights agencies and some local constituencies, files/2018/03/kvinna-till-kvinna-suffocating- the-movement-report-eng-2018.pdf organisations and politically outspoken are pushing for more ‘gender-equitable 10 2 Between August 7–8, 2017, MOSAIC, and the women were a central part of anti-colonial legislation’.” This is also linked to LSE Centre for Women Peace and Security independence movements in many of the processes that Lila Abu-Lughod has co-organised a workshop in Beirut which brought together 25 activists, academics and countries. Post-independence, however, referred to as the “internationalization practitioners to discuss how academic women’s rights and gender equality of Muslim women’s rights”, in which research and NGO work can be used as a tool for emancipation. were mostly relegated to a position of a small group of elites speak on 3 Henri Myrttinen and Megan Daigle, When Merely minor importance by the neo-patriarchal behalf of all women in a language of Existing is a Risk: Sexual and Gender Minorities 5 In Conflict, Displacement and Peacebuilding and mostly autocratic governments. international rights and obtain funds for (London: International Alert, 2017), Several governments, such as those of projects to target and “empower” women https://www.international-alert.org/sites/default/ 11 files/Gender_SexualAndGenderMinorities_ Egypt, Syria and Iraq, also a sought to beneficiaries. While this trend has been EN_2017.pdf ‘governmentalise’ women’s rights through affecting women’s rights movements 4 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: official committees closely linked to the for over a decade in the region, it is also Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). government, in what has been called increasingly happening with organisations 6 5 See for example, Hisham Sharabi, Neopatriarchy: ‘state feminism’. These official state that focus on persons of diverse SOGI. A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society bodies, often including women linked (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). to the political elite, “wrested women’s The twin trends of governmentalisation 6 Nadje Al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women’s issues from civil society and women’s and NGO-isaton of gender justice work Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University organisations; cover[ed] up problems have led in part to Islamist women’s groups Press, 2000). and […] essentially served to capture the proliferating where NGOs have co-opted the 7 International Alert et al, Now is the Time: 35. women’s movement and made women leaders of the secular mass movement.12 8 Islah Jad, The Demobilization of Women’s Movements: The Case of Palestine (Toronto: activists who chose to participate or However, post-Arab Spring, the space for Association for Women’s Rights in Development, cooperate with the system appear to be these groups and movements to work 2008): 2, https://www.awid.org/sites/default/ 7 files/atoms/files/changing_their_world_-_ complicit with the state.” has been radically reduced: for example, demobilization_of_womens_movements_-_ in Egypt this has occurred due to real or palestine.pdf; see also Laleh Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine - The Politics of A further de-politicisation of the women’s perceived links of these groups to political National Commemoration (Cambridge: rights and gender justice movements has opposition movements. Cambridge University Press, 2009). occurred through an ‘NGO-isation’ of the 9 International Alert et al, Now is the Time. work, whereby civil society organisations Over the past decade, however, there have 10 Jad, The Demobilization of Women’s Movements. become mere service providers, often also been numerous advances in terms of 11 Lila Abu-Lughod, “The Active Social Life of ‘Muslim Women’s Rights’: A Plea for for outside actors such as INGOs and increasing awareness about and spaces Ethnography, Not Polemic, with Cases from UN agencies. This process continues for persons of diverse SOGI across the Egypt and Palestine”, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 6 (1) (2010): 5-6. to transform “mass-based, living social region; locally developed transformative 2 approaches to transforming masculinities; and the emergence of more radical, + secular feminist movements. These The perception of Lebanon’s ‘progressive’ status in the new movements go beyond the limited, MENA region tends to be informed by an urban, upper and previously dominant state feminism, seeking a more intersectional and class, Beirut-centric view, drawing on romanticised tropes of comprehensive approach to gender ‘the Paris of the Orient’. This masks the socially conservative, equality. These processes have not been highly patriarchal and often socio-economically harsh uncontested,