In recent years movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have given global visibility to crucial questions of sexism and racism, and conversations across many sectors of society, about how to address these and other interconnected oppressions. These conversations have extended to the aid sector, which has begun to tangle with the contradictions of aiming to serve the poorest and most marginalized people, while being entangled in historical and present-day structures of colonialism and violence, and the implications of the repeated scandals around abuse and corruption that continue to plague it. Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have taken public actions signalling their commitment to addressing structural oppressions in their work. The efficacy of these actions is better explored elsewhere; however, it is clear that there is still a great deal of work to be done in this area.

This chapter considers the extent to which the practice of unarmed civilian peacekeeping (UCP) represents a new, more radical, and progressive humanitarian methodology, with particular emphasis on how the everyday practice of UCP workers relates to gendered structures of power. It draws upon PhD research the author undertook on UCP with a focus on the INGO Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) (Oakley, 2020). This incorporated direct observation of a UCP team in Mindanao, Philippines over a two-week period in 2017, 12 interviews with current and former staff and volunteers, and auto-ethnographic reflections on my own experience with NP in South Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq and with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) in Palestine. In that study UCP is understood and explored as a as a unique ‘community of practice’ (COP) subordinate to and nested within the overarching humanitarian infrastructure; with which it has a complex and fluid relation.

I worked under the assumptions that UCP can be understood and articulated as a COP that could be researched ‘through’ (Lewis and Schuller, 2017, p 15) an organization, in this case NP.

I believe that it is useful to consider how specific vocational practices reflect different types and levels of institutionalized oppression and counter-hegemonic resistance and that UCP workers may provide clues about how gender can be ‘done’ differently.