Lacking a clear legal definition, the conceptualization and application of durable solutions have been highly influenced by states’ interests that were often at odds with humanitarian concerns on refugee protection.During the Cold War resettlement was perceived as the preferred durable solution, although it was selectively applied to different refugee crises in the South.With the asylum crisis in the 1980s and the end of the Cold War, a new agenda of containment emerged as Northern countries’ interest in receiving refugees declined.During the 1990s voluntary repatriation emerged as a new preferred solution and there was an effort to redefine and adapt resettlement to a new context.This process focused on detaching resettlement from its previous political and immigration character and redefining it as an exclusive protection tool and instrument of international co-operation.Hence, resettlement in the post-Cold War era is characterized by depoliticization, a smaller number of beneficiaries, and geographic expansion. However, it is important to critically question whether such depoliticization has happened in fact, the reasons behind it, and its relation to North-South politics and containment strategies.
Community-based natural resource management bodies, including Community Resource Boards (CRBs) and Community Scouts, are responsible for governance and wildlife law enforcement in Zambia’s Game Management Areas (GMA), community lands that buffer the National Parks. Despite commitments to inclusive governance and benefit sharing, men dominate the wildlife and natural resource sectors in Zambia; they make up the vast majority of wildlife scouts who patrol the GMAs and hold most positions on the CRBs who allocate benefits and decide on management priorities. Gender blind structures within community governance institutions during the recruitment and training process and social and gender norms that see leadership roles as men’s domain act as barriers to women’s participation in the sector. In response, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) invested in a comprehensive package of activities to increase women’s effective participation in wildlife governance and law enforcement, including gender-responsive CRB elections, empowerment training for newly elected women candidates, revised community scout training curriculum, and capacity building support for organizations that support scouts and CRBs. The intervention helped increase women’s representation in CRBs from four percent to 25 percent in pilot communities. It also supported the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) to recruit the first gender balanced cohort of community scout recruits and field an all-women patrol unit in Lower Zambezi National Park.
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