Women Consideration within Peacebuilding Processes in Post-Conflict Rwanda: A Qualitative Case Study of Non-Governmental Organizations Coping Strategies for Gender-Sensitive Peacebuilding

Abstract

The vulnerable situation of women after a conflict needs to be considered by peacebuilding actors to obtain societies without structural violence and gender inequalities, and to finally reach peace. However, peacebuilding initiatives, mainly the UNs WPS agenda, have been criticized by feminist scholars to “consider gender” by having a top-down approach that lacks structural and context given knowledge, which generates gender-insensitive peacebuilding. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to improve the understanding of how different approaches to gender-sensitive peacebuilding can meet the needs of women in post-conflict societies. This was enabled by investigating a peacebuilding project in post-conflict Rwanda called “Reinforcing community capacity for social cohesion and reconciliation through societal trauma healing in Rwanda ''. By conducting semi-structured interviews with staff from NGOs within the project, their consideration of women were revealed. The data was analyzed using a thematic content analysis which created seven themes that were further analyzed with a theoretical framework of feminist and gender-related research, concepts and approaches. The study depicted that the project’s approach to gender-sensitive peacebuilding both counteracts and adapts to unequal structures in order to meet the needs of women in Rwanda at multiple levels. A conclusion was that peacebuilding actors should base decisions on a context given analysis of gender relations and predict all consequences of their actions to meet women's needs, both within peacebuilding activities and in different spheres of life.