This work focuses on women's participation in peacekeeping operations and what needs to be considered regarding the role and circumstances of women, including those in relation to the host society.

Despite reforms that have realized major improvements, gender power imbalances within and through peacekeeping missions continue to pose major challenges. Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley explore how increasing the representation of women, particularly through an "equal opportunity" framework, will help peacekeeping operations become more of a vehicle for gender equality globally.

This book provides a critical assessment of the impact of UN Resolution 1325 by examining the effect of peacebuilding missions on increasing gender equality within conflict-affected countries. UN Resolution 1325 was adopted in October 2000, and was the first time that the security concerns of women in situations of armed conflict and their role in peacebuilding was placed on the agenda of the UN Security Council. It was an important step forward in terms of bringing women’s rights and gender equality to bear in the UN’s peace and security agenda. More than a decade after the adoption of this Resolution, its practical reality is yet to be substantially felt on the ground in the very societies and regions where women remain disproportionately affected by armed conflict and grossly under-represented in peace processes. This realization, in part, led to the adoption in 2008 and 2009 of three other Security Council Resolutions, on sexual violence in conflict, violence against women, and for the development of indicators to measure progress in addressing women, peace and security issues. The book draws together the findings from eight countries and four regional contexts to provide guidance on how the impact of Resolution 1325 can be measured, and how peacekeeping operations could improve their capacity to effectively engender security. This book will be of much interest to students of peacebuilding, gender studies, the United Nations, international security and IR in general.

The Women in Blue Helmets tells the story of the first all-female police unit deployed by India to the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia in January 2007. Lesley J. Pruitt investigates how the unit was originated, developed, and implemented, offering an important historical record of this unique initiative. Examining precedents in policing in the troop-contributing country and recent developments in policing in the host country, the book offers contextually rich examination of all-female units, explores the potential benefits of and challenges to women’s participation in peacekeeping, and illuminates broader questions about the relationship between gender, peace, and security.

This volume deals with women's participation in international peacekeeping operations and what those operations might consider to be the role and circumstances of women, including those of the host society. Essays include: a theoretical perspective on women and war, highlighting the difference between post-modernist and universalist approaches to women's roles in peacemaking and conflict resolution, the role of women in military operations, the implications of the high levels of sexual violence in peacekeeping operations and the UN's gender policy for peacekeeping operations.

Passed in 2000, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and subsequent seven Resolutions make up the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. This agenda is an international policy framework addressing the gender-specific impacts of conflict on women and girls, including protection against sexual and gender-based violence, promotion of women's participation in peace and security processes and support for women's roles as peace builders in the prevention of conflict and rebuilding of societies after conflict. The handbook addresses the concepts and early history behind WPS; international institutions involved with the WPS agenda; the implementation of WPS in conflict prevention and connections between WPS and other UN resolutions and agendas.

This book clarifies some key ideas and practices underlying peacebuilding; understood broadly as formal and informal peace processes that occur during pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict transformation. Applicable to all peacebuilders, Elisabeth Porter highlights positive examples of women’s peacebuilding in comparative international contexts. She critically interrogates accepted and entrenched dualisms that prevent meaningful reconciliation, while also examining the harm of othering and the importance of recognition, inclusion and tolerance. Drawing on feminist ethics, the book develops a politics of compassion that defends justice, equality and rights and the need to restore victims’ dignity. Complex issues of memory, truth, silence and redress are explored while new ideas on reconciliation and embracing difference emerge. Many ideas challenge orthodox understandings of peace. The arguments developed here demonstrate how peacebuilding can be understood more broadly than current United Nations and orthodox usages so that women’s activities in conflict and transitional societies can be valued as participating in building sustainable peace with justice. Theoretically integrating peace and conflict studies, international relations, political theory and feminist ethics, this book focuses on the lessons to be learned from best practices of peacebuilding situated around the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. Peacebuilding will be of particular interest to peace practitioners and to students and researchers of peace and conflict studies, international relations and gender politics.