The Gender Dimensions of Social Conflict, Armed Violence and Peacebuilding

WREP and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF Nigeria) partnered with and hosted a research consortium from the Graduate Institute of International & Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland and Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

The research project was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development.

Research Design

The research was conducted in three states in Nigeria (Jos, Enugu and Warri) and Indonesia (Ambon, Aceh and East Java) experiencing diverse but similar types of conflict. The study compared and contrasted the gender dimensions of social conflict, armed violence and peacebuilding across these settings.

The project started from the assumption that intersectionally gendered power relations affect a community's capacity to manage conflicts and prevent violence. Key questions explored included:

• What is the connection between gender relations, the level of violence in a community during conflict, and its capacity for violence management?
• How does gender inform peacebuilding practices at the intersection of other identity categories, and to what effect?

Key Findings

• Both nations showed strong similarities in issues about communities and the use of peaceful tools such as positive media narratives, youth participation in creative arts and sports to maintain peace.
• Gender functions as a resource in peacebuilding — both masculinity and femininity become productive for peace and conflict reconstruction in different ways.
• A sole responsibility lies with citizens, government, civil society, media, religious and community leaders, youth, women and men to ensure peaceful coexistence.

The workshop concluded that peace is a gradual and evolving process. Nigeria, as a young democracy, is developing the capacity to manage conflicts resiliently and constructively.