• Rule of law and justice reform is integral to sustainable development, yet is complex and bound... more • Rule of law and justice reform is integral to sustainable development, yet is complex and bound in social norms and political power. • International support to this agenda is moving away from top-down, state-centric approaches, to be more bottom-up and end-user focused. • There is also a growing interest in politically smart and adaptive approaches. However, what makes for 'effective experimentalism' is under-documented, under-explored and under-systematised.
Shaping policy for development odi.org 1 This rapid review accompanies a larger report that provi... more Shaping policy for development odi.org 1 This rapid review accompanies a larger report that provides a more comprehensive assessment of the evidence on women's voice and leadership. This latter looks at the evidence relating to increasing women's voice and leadership through interventions in the following areas/sub-areas: women's social activism (social mobilisation, social accountability activities); women's political participation (quotas, political parties, electoral reform, constitutional reform, peace agreements); and women's economic empowerment (access to assets; labour market participation) (see Domingo et al., 2015). The project will also involve case studies and a synthesis report. 2 Our search initially identified 99 sources, 54 of which were assessed as relevant and included in the review. See Appendix for a description of the literature collection and analysis methods.
Women’s empowerment has been a feature of development assistance since the 1990s. Given the conti... more Women’s empowerment has been a feature of development assistance since the 1990s. Given the continued resistance to ‘gender issues’ in some parts of the development community, this alone is an achievement. At the same time, feminists worldwide have made a sustained critique of the dominant approach to women’s empowerment. Gender specialists express concern that global support for women’s empowerment quickly waned after the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing as new (and old) policy agendas returned to the fore (Eyben, 2008; Molyneux, 2007). There is widespread agreement that gender mainstreaming, the most prominent legacy November 2014
developmentprogress.org • Around the world, women today have more political power and influence t... more developmentprogress.org • Around the world, women today have more political power and influence than ever. There has been progress even in the most conservative societies. • Key to women’s political power are access to education and material assets, more equal and inclusive politics, strong women’s movements and being effective political operators. • Some women have more influence than others, both within and between countries. Men continue to dominate some sectors and the most powerful positions in society. • Women in positions of power may not champion gender equality. • The international community can better support women’s political leadership by investing in women’s education and economic assets, their organisations and their political apprenticeship; focusing on political systems and not just elections; and supporting locally led and problem-driven responses. Key messages Briefing
Gender issues are enjoying a renaissance within the international development community, with not... more Gender issues are enjoying a renaissance within the international development community, with notable momentum around the threats to women posed by conflict and violence. How to promote the role of women in peace and security, and how to address violence against women and girls, are now two of the top priorities for the international community. The challenge gender advocates face is to transform international commitments into real gains for women at national level. This briefing draws on recent ODI research and evaluation (Domingo et al., 2012; 2013; 2014) to review opportunities to promote women’s political participation and leadership in transitional and post-conflict settings, assess current international efforts to do so, and provide recommendations for policy and programming in this area. May 2014
"Legal empowerment occurs when poor or marginalised people use the law, legal systems and ju... more "Legal empowerment occurs when poor or marginalised people use the law, legal systems and justice mechanisms to improve or transform their social, political or economic situations. The concept of legal empowerment emerged within the development community in the early 2000s from a critique of the ‘rule of law orthodoxy’ and its perceived top-down technical assistance approach to justice sector reform. By contrast, legal empowerment approaches are explicitly interested in the agency and priorities of marginalised people, and understanding how they can use the law to advance their interests. As a concept, it was important in reorienting the attention of the international community towards the experience of the ‘end-users’ of law and justice programmes. At the same time, the use of the law and legal systems by disadvantaged people to contest the unfair distribution of power and resources is a real-world phenomenon that predates and exists independently of international law and justice assistance. These activities are rooted in context-specific histories of how law, politics and development intersect to shape the distribution of resources and power. To date, understanding of legal empowerment has remained confined to a relatively small group of legal experts and within a narrow silo of justice support as part of international assistance efforts. But, as this wider legal activism continues in countries around the world, its relevance to development outcomes is becoming much clearer; this includes use of the law and justice mechanisms to expand access to public goods and services or to reduce marginalisation and inequality. This overview summarises recent evidence on legal empowerment and highlights political economy perspectives on what it will take to realise greater empowerment for those who need it most."
Briefing note Key messages • In the face of deficient security provision in Michoacán as crime-re... more Briefing note Key messages • In the face of deficient security provision in Michoacán as crime-related violence has escalated, an important societal response has been the establishment of local security councils, which address community-specific problems of insecurity and basic safety. • While not a direct challenge to organised crime groups or conflict, these councils have the potential to reopen public space that has been closed down by violence. • Mirroring the political economy of local community structures, local security councils have been more or less participatory. • In varying ways, they have tactically engaged with state-provided law enforcement and security provision; engaged with local self-defence groups perceived by the community as credible security-provision actors; and established strategic coalitions with national-level civil society organisations to better monitor and report on violence and security challenges facing the locality or community. • The councils in Michoacán were established by communities. If donors seek to create similar structures, it is important to acknowledge that they cannot be controlled, as their participatory nature means the priorities are decided by the group. • However, supporting participatory bodies will have an indirect impact on the type of violence donors seek to address. • Citizen councils should not be viewed as a silver bullet, as they can be messy, local institutionsbut they can have a significant impact alongside other responses to violence.
This report provides an overview of the knowledge base on gender-sensitive approaches to peacebui... more This report provides an overview of the knowledge base on gender-sensitive approaches to peacebuilding and statebuilding in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCAS). It uses systematic principles of enquiry to assess the evidence, but is not a systematic review. The assessment included a review of the most relevant sources, identifying the key trends and findings in relevant academic and grey literature. The main research questions included: What do gender-responsive approaches in peacebuilding and statebuilding look like? What is the impact of gender-responsive approaches on the peacebuilding and statebuilding goals of the international agenda, including inclusivity, participation, responsiveness and accountability? Do these approaches substantively enhance the advancement of gender equality goals in FCAS? For the most part, the literature on peacebuilding and statebuilding does not address these research questions directly or explicitly. As such, the review sought to elicit relevant analytical and empirical findings by taking a closer look at key thematic and sectoral components of peacebuilding and statebuilding, and examined how gender-responsive approaches featured in these. State of the evidence and knowledge base: The evidence on the linkages between peacebuilding and statebuilding processes and outcomes and the adoption of gender-responsive approaches aimed at achieving gender equality outcomes in such processes is relatively weak and small in size, despite the breadth of the subject matter. There are important exceptions to this, with significant contributions to the literature from, for example, Castillejo (2011; 2013), El-Bushra (2012), Justino et al. (2012), Tripp (2012), the studies collated in the UN Women Sourcebook on Women, Peace and Security (UN Women, 2012) and the recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Policy Paper, Gender and Statebuilding in Fragile and Conflict-affected States (OECD-DAC, 2013). 1 The focus on specific thematic components of peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts, such as support for peace agreements, justice and security reform, service delivery or economic recovery, reveals some useful insights into what gender-responsive approaches look like in these areas. However, there is limited direct reference in this literature to the politics of peacebuilding and statebuilding. Assessment of the evidence of links between gender equality, peacebuilding and statebuilding iv Summary of findings Key issues and recurring themes identified in the review of the knowledge on gender-responsive peacebuilding and statebuilding are summarised below. See also the Box at the end of this Executive Summary. Peacebuilding and statebuilding: political settlements and women's political voice Peacebuilding and statebuilding are both multidimensional and complex processes that can offer opportunities to renegotiate and transform the terms and quality of state-society relations, including basing these on more inclusive, participatory, responsive and accountable engagement (DFID, 2010; OECD-DAC, 2011). They are processes in which the political settlement (the underlying rules of social, political and economic engagement) is in flux and potentially subject to redefinition and renegotiation. This context offers specific opportunities to establish and/or strengthen arrangements and state institutions to incorporate stakeholders who have not traditionally had any voice, including women. The emerging body of literature that explores these issues finds that, while women and gender concerns have increasingly been included in peacebuilding and statebuilding, their inclusion and presence remains marginal and uneven at every stage of these processes. In addition, more attention needs to be paid to the substance of women's inclusion/incorporation, as women's mere physical presence in different aspects of peacebuilding is not enough to ensure that the process is gender-responsive. Peacebuilding may include efforts to support peace agreements, and/or new or reformed constitutions. Commitments to inclusivity and effective mobilisation by gender advocates create opportunities for women to be engaged in these processes, either formally or indirectly. A review of the literature further finds that women's participation in politics has increased in post-conflict settings, at least through formal mechanisms such as quotas and participation in political parties. This is closely associated with women's social mobilisation and activism in informal political spaces at the subnational and national levels, and through transnational civil society action. Numerous challenges and barriers that hinder women's substantive participation in post-conflict governance processes were identified. These include customary rules, negative cultural attitudes, male-and elite-dominated political parties and structures, lack of financial resources for women, violence and insecurity, the effect of backlash reactions, illiteracy and political inexperience and lack of support for capacity building, among others. Legacies of conflict and violence, combined with persistent gender-based structures of exclusion and discrimination, can also inhibit women's voice in politics and public life. Research on transitional justice (TJ) has begun to address questions about its potentially transformative impact in addressing gendered experiences of conflict-related violence and structural inequalities. However, the empirical evidence remains underdeveloped. This is especially so in terms of how gender-responsive approaches might affect peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts. This is also true of most of the literature on TJ, which until recently was mostly theoretical, prescriptive and normative. Gender-responsive approaches in TJ are very recent, and thus provides little basis on which to assess their wider impact. Statebuilding: gender-responsive support to building core state functions and services The literature on gender, security and justice provision in FCAS takes note of peacebuilding objectives, but reference to statebuilding in this field remains negligible. The evidence base for FCAS has grown in the past decade, especially with regard to gender-responsive reform of the security sector. Far less is known about the justice sector. When gender perspectives are considered, much of the focus in the literature is on how security and justice sector reforms address issues related to gender-based violence (GBV), but other questions, related to dispute resolution, access to justice or rights protection issues, such as with respect to women's property rights or inheritance, are incipient. Gender-sensitive reform approaches in justice and security have included addressing participation and inclusion (such as the proportion of women recruited to these sectors, or whether women's organisations are consulted on policy), as well the establishment of protection measures and special units to address the safety and security of women and girls. There is also a growing research agenda on understanding the impact of informal security and justice systems on gender relations, and on how customary norms can be contested and redefined. Overall, the knowledge base on justice and security reform (both generally, and specifically on gender-responsive approaches) is dissociated from research on the wider political economy of statebuilding. Recurrent themes in the knowledge base Overall there are, in general, poor linkages across the thematic areas, resulting in important gaps in understanding how these areas intersect, and the implications for peacebuilding and statebuilding. There are, however, some recurrent challenges and enabling opportunities relating to the prospects for gender-responsive approaches across the thematic areas: Challenges Gender hierarchies are resilient. Even when the experience of conflict may result in changing gender roles, patriarchal and discriminatory social norms tend to reassert themselves in postconflict periods. Legal change to eliminate gender-based discriminatory norms and practices tends to be slow to affect the real dynamics of gender relations. The gap between new laws (de jure) and practice (de facto) is a recurrent challenge across the thematic areas. Institutional hybridity and a weak state presence across the national territory is often a prevalent feature in FCAS. This means that gender-responsive approaches should not just focus on formal state institutions, but donors and international funders are not always equipped to engage with nonstate actors and informal institutions. Donors show a lack of understanding about gender issues across the different sectors. The issues are left to the 'gender experts', with the result that gender-responsive approaches often remain peripheral to mainstream donor engagement in peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts. There is a tendency to 'essentialise' women, reducing them to stereotypes such as victims or nurturing mothers. Moreover, women are often referred to as if they were a homogenous group, Assessment of the evidence of links between gender equality, peacebuilding and statebuilding vi with limited consideration of how gender intersects with class, ethnicity, religion or political preferences. Gender-responsive approaches are often dissociated from considerations of how they intersect with wider social, political and economic dynamics in transitional settings. For instance, increasing the number of women in parliament represents only a modest gain where authoritarian structures prevail. Effective support to gender-responsive peace and statebuilding requires a deep understanding of wider context-specific political economy conditions. Enabling factors and windows of opportunity Changing international norms, including UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, and subsequent related resolutions, constitutes a cumulative process of...
This report reviews the global evidence on the processes of change that enable women to have subs... more This report reviews the global evidence on the processes of change that enable women to have substantive voice and leadership in decision-making. It answers two core research questions: What are the enabling factors for women and girls' voice, leadership and access to decision-making? What do we know about whether and how women and girls' voice, leadership and/or presence in decisionmaking roles result in greater gender equality? Voice, decision-making and leadership are understood as elements of women's empowerment. They encapsulate women having the power to express their preferences, demands, views and interests, to gain access to positions of decision-making that affect public or private power and resource allocation, and to exercise influence in leadership positions. Women's voice, leadership and decision-making power may be present at the household, community and national level, and be individual or collective. The report is guided by a conceptual and analytical framework that draws together long-standing theories of both women's empowerment and the political economy of institutional change in developing countries. We test two common assumptions about women's voice. First, that women's voice, access to, or participation in decisionmaking will lead to them to have actual influence over decisions and outcomes. Second, that women with influence will champion issues of concern to women, including gender equality. To do this, we look at the processes and activities through which women exercise voice, leadership and decision-making in the political, social and economic spheres. We also look at the broader contextual conditions that inform women's political participation, social activism and economic empowerment. These include social structures and norms, political regime type, characteristics of the state, civil society, and market, and international relations. Key findings: What does the evidence tell us? Does women's participation in political, social or economic activities strengthen women's voice, leadership, and access to decision-making processes and roles? Women's individual and collective action, whether in formal politics, civic society or the economy, provide opportunities for women to voice their needs and demands. Women often organise around their practical interests, particularly in the case of social and economic mobilisation. But women, usually from the elite, also come together to lobby for gender equality and to advance their strategic interests. 'Women's voice' as an abstraction risks masking the socio-political and economic cleavages that separate women and underplaying their diverse interests, identities, and ideological or normative preferences. These cleavages include class, religion, ethnicity, caste, age and sexuality. Women's choices and preferences are bounded by concrete individual and collective experiences and consciousness about gender roles and injustice. Women's voice is itself a site of contestation shaped by the dynamics of power, and some groups of womenas individuals or collectivelyare better equipped to wield influence than others. At the same time, women (and also men) from different walks of life have formed alliances around shared interests, and these broader coalitions have been critical to substantive processes of political change, such as challenging autocratic regimes or gender inequality. Women overwhelmingly still have limited access to positions of leadership. While there has been progress in many countries in increasing the numbers of women in elected posts, both at local and national level, women are less likely to occupy executive branch posts or key cabinet positions. Similarly, while women occupy leadership roles in social movements they mostly remain under-represented in organisations that do not focus on women and gender issues. And, in the private sector, women across the world remain woefully under-represented in business management, corporate decision-making and business associations. Women's leadership is mostly seen in terms of access to formal leadership positions, but too little is known about how women become leaders. Effective voice and leadership is associated with an ability to navigate the web of formal and informal institutions and networks that constitute the world of political decision-making or in the market. Civic action, paid or voluntary work and/or participation in formal political life can create opportunities for political apprenticeship, through which women develop political and leadership skills at the individual and collective level. However, trajectories of women's political or economic influence and leadership are mostly still poorly documented or explained. Promising new research looks at the processes through which women leaders come to exercise influence or occupy decision-making roles. In relation to political life, this explores how women and gender advocates navigate the gendered features of formal and informal political institutions and social structures to acquire influence and decision-making roles. Key factors include how formal political or regime features interact, including how different electoral systems intersect with internal dynamics of political parties, and how informal rules, such as personalism and clientelism, and access to informal decision-making forums affect women's political careers. Does women's voice, leadership and presence in decision-making roles result in greater gender equality? The variation in modes and levels of voice and influence means that it is not possible to track clear trajectories of change between women's voice and leadership and wider gender equality gains. In any case, the research on this relationship is limited across all three thematic areas. Nevertheless, some findings did emerge on whether women's voice and leadership has led to more gender-responsive law and policy, more gender-responsive provision of public goods and services, more inclusive political settlements, more equitable social norms and better socioeconomic outcomes for women and girls. Women's collective voice, when strategically oriented and perceived to be broad-based, is instrumental to their ability to negotiate transformative change. There is no automatic link between women's presence and voice in public life and transformative change. Women may not be heard when they voice their demands and articulate feminist interests. The viability and sustainability of collective feminist voice depends on women's mobilisational capabilities and resources for strategic action and coalition building. It also depends on there being institutional structures and political opportunities, including the political space for associational life, to enable voice to become influence. There is substantial evidence of how women's political voice has resulted in gender-responsive legal and policy reform. These gains include, but go beyond, women's presence in formal political positions and are often connected to women's social mobilisation and their collective organisation around gender justice. But the presence of gender advocates and sectoral experts that are well placed in, and able to strategically navigate, political and institutional opportunity structures is often also critical to women's influence. Prominent formal legal gains through women's political actions include the recognition of gender equality in new constitutions, provisions for temporary measures (e.g. quotas) to redress historical discrimination, legal recognition of women's inheritance and property rights, and their right to be free from sexual and gender-based violence. Through collective bargaining women's unions have also secured improvements in women's labour rights (e.g. wages, work environment, access to social security). Women's social and economic activism can improve their access to public goods and services. The social mobilisation literature provides substantial evidence on women successfully advocating for improved local environments, e.g. sanitation, social housing, transportation, anti-pollution. Under enabling conditions, women's participation in social accountability processes has also led to increased transparency in government decisionmaking, increased budget allocations for services that benefit women, more accessible or responsive services for women, particularly local health services but also personal safety and social protection, and, in some instances, to legal or administrative redress for women, including for gender-based violations. There are some documented instances of women worker's organisations successfully lobbying for new rights and services, such as increased minimum wage, access to credit and savings, subsidised food, healthcare and childcare. Whether and how women holding formal political power improve access to services for women more broadly is an underdeveloped area of research. The links between women's participation and voice and more inclusive political settlements are underresearched. Post-conflict and political transition processes can provide opportunities for women to renegotiate political settlements, but retrenchment on gender equality commitments and gains during peace is common. Latin America, for instance, saw an effective 'beheading' of women's movements following the democratic transitions as women sought to take advantage of supposedly inclusive political settlements. Overall, there has been widespread disappointment in the de facto reshaping political settlements from a gender equality perspective, as well as more widely. At the same time, there is emerging evidence on the symbolic and socialisation effect of increased levels of women's presence in public life and in leadership roles, in terms of changing social norms and attitudes on gender roles. Under enabling conditions, women's political participation, social activism and/or economic empowerment can progressively shift social norms. The economic...
Este contenido está publicado bajo la licencia Creative Commons 2.5 de atribución-no comercial-li... more Este contenido está publicado bajo la licencia Creative Commons 2.5 de atribución-no comercial-licenciar igual, a menos que se exprese lo contrario. Puede suceder que dentro de los contenidos haya elementos con una licencia diferente, por lo que se recomienda ...
ODI is the UK's leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issu... more ODI is the UK's leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues. ODI Project Briefings provide a focused and specialised summary of a project, a country study or regional analysis. This and other ODI Project Briefings are available from www.odi.org.uk Project Briefing D espite considerable progress, poverty reduction and sustainable development remain major challenges for many countries. Aid is an important component in progress but, in recent years, attention has been paid to some of the challenges to its effectiveness. There has also been a growing recognition of how aid can impact on, and be affected by, accountability, governance and politics in donor and recipient countries. But there is still a real gap in understanding about accountability for aid. This paper draws out the key themes and recommendations of a recent study for World Vision UK that examined aid and accountability through case studies in Uganda and Zambia, using the health sector as a lens. References and project information Mixed Sources
The political economy of pre-trial detention i Contents Executive summary ii 1 Introduction 2 Obj... more The political economy of pre-trial detention i Contents Executive summary ii 1 Introduction 2 Objectives of the study 3 Brief scoping 3.1 Summary of the problem of pre-trial detention 3.2 Drivers of pre-trial detention 3.3 Consequences 3.4 Some reform approaches 4 Political economy analysis framework 4.1 Brief explanation of political economy analysis 4.2 Drivers of pre-trial detention at different points along the criminal justice chain 5 Summary 6 Implications for programming 7 Case study methods References Boxes Box 1: Wider socio-political context-key PEA questions to consider Box 2: Arrest and police custody-key PEA questions to consider Box 3: The detention process/environment-key PEA questions to consider Box 4: Pre-trial release/detention, prosecution and trial-key PEA questions to be considered18 Abbreviations
• Rule of law and justice reform is integral to sustainable development, yet is complex and bound... more • Rule of law and justice reform is integral to sustainable development, yet is complex and bound in social norms and political power. • International support to this agenda is moving away from top-down, state-centric approaches, to be more bottom-up and end-user focused. • There is also a growing interest in politically smart and adaptive approaches. However, what makes for 'effective experimentalism' is under-documented, under-explored and under-systematised.
Shaping policy for development odi.org 1 This rapid review accompanies a larger report that provi... more Shaping policy for development odi.org 1 This rapid review accompanies a larger report that provides a more comprehensive assessment of the evidence on women's voice and leadership. This latter looks at the evidence relating to increasing women's voice and leadership through interventions in the following areas/sub-areas: women's social activism (social mobilisation, social accountability activities); women's political participation (quotas, political parties, electoral reform, constitutional reform, peace agreements); and women's economic empowerment (access to assets; labour market participation) (see Domingo et al., 2015). The project will also involve case studies and a synthesis report. 2 Our search initially identified 99 sources, 54 of which were assessed as relevant and included in the review. See Appendix for a description of the literature collection and analysis methods.
Women’s empowerment has been a feature of development assistance since the 1990s. Given the conti... more Women’s empowerment has been a feature of development assistance since the 1990s. Given the continued resistance to ‘gender issues’ in some parts of the development community, this alone is an achievement. At the same time, feminists worldwide have made a sustained critique of the dominant approach to women’s empowerment. Gender specialists express concern that global support for women’s empowerment quickly waned after the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing as new (and old) policy agendas returned to the fore (Eyben, 2008; Molyneux, 2007). There is widespread agreement that gender mainstreaming, the most prominent legacy November 2014
developmentprogress.org • Around the world, women today have more political power and influence t... more developmentprogress.org • Around the world, women today have more political power and influence than ever. There has been progress even in the most conservative societies. • Key to women’s political power are access to education and material assets, more equal and inclusive politics, strong women’s movements and being effective political operators. • Some women have more influence than others, both within and between countries. Men continue to dominate some sectors and the most powerful positions in society. • Women in positions of power may not champion gender equality. • The international community can better support women’s political leadership by investing in women’s education and economic assets, their organisations and their political apprenticeship; focusing on political systems and not just elections; and supporting locally led and problem-driven responses. Key messages Briefing
Gender issues are enjoying a renaissance within the international development community, with not... more Gender issues are enjoying a renaissance within the international development community, with notable momentum around the threats to women posed by conflict and violence. How to promote the role of women in peace and security, and how to address violence against women and girls, are now two of the top priorities for the international community. The challenge gender advocates face is to transform international commitments into real gains for women at national level. This briefing draws on recent ODI research and evaluation (Domingo et al., 2012; 2013; 2014) to review opportunities to promote women’s political participation and leadership in transitional and post-conflict settings, assess current international efforts to do so, and provide recommendations for policy and programming in this area. May 2014
"Legal empowerment occurs when poor or marginalised people use the law, legal systems and ju... more "Legal empowerment occurs when poor or marginalised people use the law, legal systems and justice mechanisms to improve or transform their social, political or economic situations. The concept of legal empowerment emerged within the development community in the early 2000s from a critique of the ‘rule of law orthodoxy’ and its perceived top-down technical assistance approach to justice sector reform. By contrast, legal empowerment approaches are explicitly interested in the agency and priorities of marginalised people, and understanding how they can use the law to advance their interests. As a concept, it was important in reorienting the attention of the international community towards the experience of the ‘end-users’ of law and justice programmes. At the same time, the use of the law and legal systems by disadvantaged people to contest the unfair distribution of power and resources is a real-world phenomenon that predates and exists independently of international law and justice assistance. These activities are rooted in context-specific histories of how law, politics and development intersect to shape the distribution of resources and power. To date, understanding of legal empowerment has remained confined to a relatively small group of legal experts and within a narrow silo of justice support as part of international assistance efforts. But, as this wider legal activism continues in countries around the world, its relevance to development outcomes is becoming much clearer; this includes use of the law and justice mechanisms to expand access to public goods and services or to reduce marginalisation and inequality. This overview summarises recent evidence on legal empowerment and highlights political economy perspectives on what it will take to realise greater empowerment for those who need it most."
Briefing note Key messages • In the face of deficient security provision in Michoacán as crime-re... more Briefing note Key messages • In the face of deficient security provision in Michoacán as crime-related violence has escalated, an important societal response has been the establishment of local security councils, which address community-specific problems of insecurity and basic safety. • While not a direct challenge to organised crime groups or conflict, these councils have the potential to reopen public space that has been closed down by violence. • Mirroring the political economy of local community structures, local security councils have been more or less participatory. • In varying ways, they have tactically engaged with state-provided law enforcement and security provision; engaged with local self-defence groups perceived by the community as credible security-provision actors; and established strategic coalitions with national-level civil society organisations to better monitor and report on violence and security challenges facing the locality or community. • The councils in Michoacán were established by communities. If donors seek to create similar structures, it is important to acknowledge that they cannot be controlled, as their participatory nature means the priorities are decided by the group. • However, supporting participatory bodies will have an indirect impact on the type of violence donors seek to address. • Citizen councils should not be viewed as a silver bullet, as they can be messy, local institutionsbut they can have a significant impact alongside other responses to violence.
This report provides an overview of the knowledge base on gender-sensitive approaches to peacebui... more This report provides an overview of the knowledge base on gender-sensitive approaches to peacebuilding and statebuilding in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCAS). It uses systematic principles of enquiry to assess the evidence, but is not a systematic review. The assessment included a review of the most relevant sources, identifying the key trends and findings in relevant academic and grey literature. The main research questions included: What do gender-responsive approaches in peacebuilding and statebuilding look like? What is the impact of gender-responsive approaches on the peacebuilding and statebuilding goals of the international agenda, including inclusivity, participation, responsiveness and accountability? Do these approaches substantively enhance the advancement of gender equality goals in FCAS? For the most part, the literature on peacebuilding and statebuilding does not address these research questions directly or explicitly. As such, the review sought to elicit relevant analytical and empirical findings by taking a closer look at key thematic and sectoral components of peacebuilding and statebuilding, and examined how gender-responsive approaches featured in these. State of the evidence and knowledge base: The evidence on the linkages between peacebuilding and statebuilding processes and outcomes and the adoption of gender-responsive approaches aimed at achieving gender equality outcomes in such processes is relatively weak and small in size, despite the breadth of the subject matter. There are important exceptions to this, with significant contributions to the literature from, for example, Castillejo (2011; 2013), El-Bushra (2012), Justino et al. (2012), Tripp (2012), the studies collated in the UN Women Sourcebook on Women, Peace and Security (UN Women, 2012) and the recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Policy Paper, Gender and Statebuilding in Fragile and Conflict-affected States (OECD-DAC, 2013). 1 The focus on specific thematic components of peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts, such as support for peace agreements, justice and security reform, service delivery or economic recovery, reveals some useful insights into what gender-responsive approaches look like in these areas. However, there is limited direct reference in this literature to the politics of peacebuilding and statebuilding. Assessment of the evidence of links between gender equality, peacebuilding and statebuilding iv Summary of findings Key issues and recurring themes identified in the review of the knowledge on gender-responsive peacebuilding and statebuilding are summarised below. See also the Box at the end of this Executive Summary. Peacebuilding and statebuilding: political settlements and women's political voice Peacebuilding and statebuilding are both multidimensional and complex processes that can offer opportunities to renegotiate and transform the terms and quality of state-society relations, including basing these on more inclusive, participatory, responsive and accountable engagement (DFID, 2010; OECD-DAC, 2011). They are processes in which the political settlement (the underlying rules of social, political and economic engagement) is in flux and potentially subject to redefinition and renegotiation. This context offers specific opportunities to establish and/or strengthen arrangements and state institutions to incorporate stakeholders who have not traditionally had any voice, including women. The emerging body of literature that explores these issues finds that, while women and gender concerns have increasingly been included in peacebuilding and statebuilding, their inclusion and presence remains marginal and uneven at every stage of these processes. In addition, more attention needs to be paid to the substance of women's inclusion/incorporation, as women's mere physical presence in different aspects of peacebuilding is not enough to ensure that the process is gender-responsive. Peacebuilding may include efforts to support peace agreements, and/or new or reformed constitutions. Commitments to inclusivity and effective mobilisation by gender advocates create opportunities for women to be engaged in these processes, either formally or indirectly. A review of the literature further finds that women's participation in politics has increased in post-conflict settings, at least through formal mechanisms such as quotas and participation in political parties. This is closely associated with women's social mobilisation and activism in informal political spaces at the subnational and national levels, and through transnational civil society action. Numerous challenges and barriers that hinder women's substantive participation in post-conflict governance processes were identified. These include customary rules, negative cultural attitudes, male-and elite-dominated political parties and structures, lack of financial resources for women, violence and insecurity, the effect of backlash reactions, illiteracy and political inexperience and lack of support for capacity building, among others. Legacies of conflict and violence, combined with persistent gender-based structures of exclusion and discrimination, can also inhibit women's voice in politics and public life. Research on transitional justice (TJ) has begun to address questions about its potentially transformative impact in addressing gendered experiences of conflict-related violence and structural inequalities. However, the empirical evidence remains underdeveloped. This is especially so in terms of how gender-responsive approaches might affect peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts. This is also true of most of the literature on TJ, which until recently was mostly theoretical, prescriptive and normative. Gender-responsive approaches in TJ are very recent, and thus provides little basis on which to assess their wider impact. Statebuilding: gender-responsive support to building core state functions and services The literature on gender, security and justice provision in FCAS takes note of peacebuilding objectives, but reference to statebuilding in this field remains negligible. The evidence base for FCAS has grown in the past decade, especially with regard to gender-responsive reform of the security sector. Far less is known about the justice sector. When gender perspectives are considered, much of the focus in the literature is on how security and justice sector reforms address issues related to gender-based violence (GBV), but other questions, related to dispute resolution, access to justice or rights protection issues, such as with respect to women's property rights or inheritance, are incipient. Gender-sensitive reform approaches in justice and security have included addressing participation and inclusion (such as the proportion of women recruited to these sectors, or whether women's organisations are consulted on policy), as well the establishment of protection measures and special units to address the safety and security of women and girls. There is also a growing research agenda on understanding the impact of informal security and justice systems on gender relations, and on how customary norms can be contested and redefined. Overall, the knowledge base on justice and security reform (both generally, and specifically on gender-responsive approaches) is dissociated from research on the wider political economy of statebuilding. Recurrent themes in the knowledge base Overall there are, in general, poor linkages across the thematic areas, resulting in important gaps in understanding how these areas intersect, and the implications for peacebuilding and statebuilding. There are, however, some recurrent challenges and enabling opportunities relating to the prospects for gender-responsive approaches across the thematic areas: Challenges Gender hierarchies are resilient. Even when the experience of conflict may result in changing gender roles, patriarchal and discriminatory social norms tend to reassert themselves in postconflict periods. Legal change to eliminate gender-based discriminatory norms and practices tends to be slow to affect the real dynamics of gender relations. The gap between new laws (de jure) and practice (de facto) is a recurrent challenge across the thematic areas. Institutional hybridity and a weak state presence across the national territory is often a prevalent feature in FCAS. This means that gender-responsive approaches should not just focus on formal state institutions, but donors and international funders are not always equipped to engage with nonstate actors and informal institutions. Donors show a lack of understanding about gender issues across the different sectors. The issues are left to the 'gender experts', with the result that gender-responsive approaches often remain peripheral to mainstream donor engagement in peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts. There is a tendency to 'essentialise' women, reducing them to stereotypes such as victims or nurturing mothers. Moreover, women are often referred to as if they were a homogenous group, Assessment of the evidence of links between gender equality, peacebuilding and statebuilding vi with limited consideration of how gender intersects with class, ethnicity, religion or political preferences. Gender-responsive approaches are often dissociated from considerations of how they intersect with wider social, political and economic dynamics in transitional settings. For instance, increasing the number of women in parliament represents only a modest gain where authoritarian structures prevail. Effective support to gender-responsive peace and statebuilding requires a deep understanding of wider context-specific political economy conditions. Enabling factors and windows of opportunity Changing international norms, including UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, and subsequent related resolutions, constitutes a cumulative process of...
This report reviews the global evidence on the processes of change that enable women to have subs... more This report reviews the global evidence on the processes of change that enable women to have substantive voice and leadership in decision-making. It answers two core research questions: What are the enabling factors for women and girls' voice, leadership and access to decision-making? What do we know about whether and how women and girls' voice, leadership and/or presence in decisionmaking roles result in greater gender equality? Voice, decision-making and leadership are understood as elements of women's empowerment. They encapsulate women having the power to express their preferences, demands, views and interests, to gain access to positions of decision-making that affect public or private power and resource allocation, and to exercise influence in leadership positions. Women's voice, leadership and decision-making power may be present at the household, community and national level, and be individual or collective. The report is guided by a conceptual and analytical framework that draws together long-standing theories of both women's empowerment and the political economy of institutional change in developing countries. We test two common assumptions about women's voice. First, that women's voice, access to, or participation in decisionmaking will lead to them to have actual influence over decisions and outcomes. Second, that women with influence will champion issues of concern to women, including gender equality. To do this, we look at the processes and activities through which women exercise voice, leadership and decision-making in the political, social and economic spheres. We also look at the broader contextual conditions that inform women's political participation, social activism and economic empowerment. These include social structures and norms, political regime type, characteristics of the state, civil society, and market, and international relations. Key findings: What does the evidence tell us? Does women's participation in political, social or economic activities strengthen women's voice, leadership, and access to decision-making processes and roles? Women's individual and collective action, whether in formal politics, civic society or the economy, provide opportunities for women to voice their needs and demands. Women often organise around their practical interests, particularly in the case of social and economic mobilisation. But women, usually from the elite, also come together to lobby for gender equality and to advance their strategic interests. 'Women's voice' as an abstraction risks masking the socio-political and economic cleavages that separate women and underplaying their diverse interests, identities, and ideological or normative preferences. These cleavages include class, religion, ethnicity, caste, age and sexuality. Women's choices and preferences are bounded by concrete individual and collective experiences and consciousness about gender roles and injustice. Women's voice is itself a site of contestation shaped by the dynamics of power, and some groups of womenas individuals or collectivelyare better equipped to wield influence than others. At the same time, women (and also men) from different walks of life have formed alliances around shared interests, and these broader coalitions have been critical to substantive processes of political change, such as challenging autocratic regimes or gender inequality. Women overwhelmingly still have limited access to positions of leadership. While there has been progress in many countries in increasing the numbers of women in elected posts, both at local and national level, women are less likely to occupy executive branch posts or key cabinet positions. Similarly, while women occupy leadership roles in social movements they mostly remain under-represented in organisations that do not focus on women and gender issues. And, in the private sector, women across the world remain woefully under-represented in business management, corporate decision-making and business associations. Women's leadership is mostly seen in terms of access to formal leadership positions, but too little is known about how women become leaders. Effective voice and leadership is associated with an ability to navigate the web of formal and informal institutions and networks that constitute the world of political decision-making or in the market. Civic action, paid or voluntary work and/or participation in formal political life can create opportunities for political apprenticeship, through which women develop political and leadership skills at the individual and collective level. However, trajectories of women's political or economic influence and leadership are mostly still poorly documented or explained. Promising new research looks at the processes through which women leaders come to exercise influence or occupy decision-making roles. In relation to political life, this explores how women and gender advocates navigate the gendered features of formal and informal political institutions and social structures to acquire influence and decision-making roles. Key factors include how formal political or regime features interact, including how different electoral systems intersect with internal dynamics of political parties, and how informal rules, such as personalism and clientelism, and access to informal decision-making forums affect women's political careers. Does women's voice, leadership and presence in decision-making roles result in greater gender equality? The variation in modes and levels of voice and influence means that it is not possible to track clear trajectories of change between women's voice and leadership and wider gender equality gains. In any case, the research on this relationship is limited across all three thematic areas. Nevertheless, some findings did emerge on whether women's voice and leadership has led to more gender-responsive law and policy, more gender-responsive provision of public goods and services, more inclusive political settlements, more equitable social norms and better socioeconomic outcomes for women and girls. Women's collective voice, when strategically oriented and perceived to be broad-based, is instrumental to their ability to negotiate transformative change. There is no automatic link between women's presence and voice in public life and transformative change. Women may not be heard when they voice their demands and articulate feminist interests. The viability and sustainability of collective feminist voice depends on women's mobilisational capabilities and resources for strategic action and coalition building. It also depends on there being institutional structures and political opportunities, including the political space for associational life, to enable voice to become influence. There is substantial evidence of how women's political voice has resulted in gender-responsive legal and policy reform. These gains include, but go beyond, women's presence in formal political positions and are often connected to women's social mobilisation and their collective organisation around gender justice. But the presence of gender advocates and sectoral experts that are well placed in, and able to strategically navigate, political and institutional opportunity structures is often also critical to women's influence. Prominent formal legal gains through women's political actions include the recognition of gender equality in new constitutions, provisions for temporary measures (e.g. quotas) to redress historical discrimination, legal recognition of women's inheritance and property rights, and their right to be free from sexual and gender-based violence. Through collective bargaining women's unions have also secured improvements in women's labour rights (e.g. wages, work environment, access to social security). Women's social and economic activism can improve their access to public goods and services. The social mobilisation literature provides substantial evidence on women successfully advocating for improved local environments, e.g. sanitation, social housing, transportation, anti-pollution. Under enabling conditions, women's participation in social accountability processes has also led to increased transparency in government decisionmaking, increased budget allocations for services that benefit women, more accessible or responsive services for women, particularly local health services but also personal safety and social protection, and, in some instances, to legal or administrative redress for women, including for gender-based violations. There are some documented instances of women worker's organisations successfully lobbying for new rights and services, such as increased minimum wage, access to credit and savings, subsidised food, healthcare and childcare. Whether and how women holding formal political power improve access to services for women more broadly is an underdeveloped area of research. The links between women's participation and voice and more inclusive political settlements are underresearched. Post-conflict and political transition processes can provide opportunities for women to renegotiate political settlements, but retrenchment on gender equality commitments and gains during peace is common. Latin America, for instance, saw an effective 'beheading' of women's movements following the democratic transitions as women sought to take advantage of supposedly inclusive political settlements. Overall, there has been widespread disappointment in the de facto reshaping political settlements from a gender equality perspective, as well as more widely. At the same time, there is emerging evidence on the symbolic and socialisation effect of increased levels of women's presence in public life and in leadership roles, in terms of changing social norms and attitudes on gender roles. Under enabling conditions, women's political participation, social activism and/or economic empowerment can progressively shift social norms. The economic...
Este contenido está publicado bajo la licencia Creative Commons 2.5 de atribución-no comercial-li... more Este contenido está publicado bajo la licencia Creative Commons 2.5 de atribución-no comercial-licenciar igual, a menos que se exprese lo contrario. Puede suceder que dentro de los contenidos haya elementos con una licencia diferente, por lo que se recomienda ...
ODI is the UK's leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issu... more ODI is the UK's leading independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues. ODI Project Briefings provide a focused and specialised summary of a project, a country study or regional analysis. This and other ODI Project Briefings are available from www.odi.org.uk Project Briefing D espite considerable progress, poverty reduction and sustainable development remain major challenges for many countries. Aid is an important component in progress but, in recent years, attention has been paid to some of the challenges to its effectiveness. There has also been a growing recognition of how aid can impact on, and be affected by, accountability, governance and politics in donor and recipient countries. But there is still a real gap in understanding about accountability for aid. This paper draws out the key themes and recommendations of a recent study for World Vision UK that examined aid and accountability through case studies in Uganda and Zambia, using the health sector as a lens. References and project information Mixed Sources
The political economy of pre-trial detention i Contents Executive summary ii 1 Introduction 2 Obj... more The political economy of pre-trial detention i Contents Executive summary ii 1 Introduction 2 Objectives of the study 3 Brief scoping 3.1 Summary of the problem of pre-trial detention 3.2 Drivers of pre-trial detention 3.3 Consequences 3.4 Some reform approaches 4 Political economy analysis framework 4.1 Brief explanation of political economy analysis 4.2 Drivers of pre-trial detention at different points along the criminal justice chain 5 Summary 6 Implications for programming 7 Case study methods References Boxes Box 1: Wider socio-political context-key PEA questions to consider Box 2: Arrest and police custody-key PEA questions to consider Box 3: The detention process/environment-key PEA questions to consider Box 4: Pre-trial release/detention, prosecution and trial-key PEA questions to be considered18 Abbreviations
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