On Living with Negative Peace and a Half-Built State: Gender and Human Rights

Whiteness is from another world: Gender, Icelandic international development and multiculturalism

“…Iris Marion Young’s (2003) discussion of masculine protection in relation to the current obsession with security applies here, as does Lila Abu-Lughod’s criticism of how ‘liberating women’ has been used as an excuse for various military interventions during and after the colonial period (2002: 784). Security discourses have been used to legitimize and justify military invasions and occupations (Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, 2007; Mazurana et al, 2005) and as pointed out earlier in relation to Spivak’s (1988) insights, ‘women’s liberation’ by westerners has had strong racialized edge to it. The ongoing ‘racialization of difference’, i.e.…”

Gender Policies of the new Developmental State: The Case of Indonesian new Participatory Village Governance

“…The affirmative policies can be found in the following aspects (Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, 2014; Joint Donor and Government Mission, 2007; Scanlon, 2012; Wong, 2002): The project affirmed that there must be an equal number of male and female programme staff; There was a special meeting for women in the process of village development planning; In village development planning, there should be a specific proposal from women group; In sub-district meetings, a women's representative had to be involved; The presence of women in proposal planning, verification, and selection stages was required; There was a special module of training on gender for all consultants and facilitators; The data collected by the project were gender-disaggregated; and There was a special component of the project for widows and orphans. As the largest project of its kind, PNPM has been widely evaluated. From the research that specifically looked at the gender aspects of the programme (Akatiga, 2010; Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, 2014; Beard and Cartmill, 2007; Jakimow, 2017; Scanlon, 2012; Wong, 2002), it can be seen that the picture was not always as positive as it could have been. The general conclusion of those studies is that, although women's participation increased significantly in decision-making in meetings, entrepreneurship, and (paid) public works, the gender components of the programme were not yet intentionally designed and implemented to transform the structure of unequal gender relations.…”

“…This policy is the institutionalisation of participatory approach used in various participatory development programmes such as The National Program for Community Empowerment (PNPM-Mandiri), into village governance. The PNPM, which was terminated in 2014 to make way for the implementation of the Village Law, has fairly strong commitment to gender equality and women's empowerment by employing a range of gender-based affirmative action strategies in its design, as will be discussed in Gender Governance in Indonesian Old Participatory Initiatives section (Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, 2014; Jakimow, 2017, Joint Donor and Government Mission, 2007; Scanlon, 2012; Wong, 2002). The Village Law, despite accommodating some affirmative action policies, employs a gender mainstreaming approach, through what it calls “gender justice”, in the governance steps and cycles.…”

The ‘Jeep-Gangsters’ from Iceland

“…Another interesting and in fact rather alarming aspect of this change of terminology and definitions is how it has been used, not only to legitimize the fusion of peacekeeping and humanitarian aid but also to justify and validate military invasions and occupation (Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, 2007;Mazurana et al, 2005). As Mazurana et al claim, 'the liberation of women and girls in Afghanistan and Iraq ' (2005: 22) was repeatedly used for such purposes (see also Abu-Lughod, 2002).…”