Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T10:04:37.468Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The paradox of prevention in the Women, Peace and Security agenda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2020

Laura J. Shepherd*
Affiliation:
Department of Government and International Relations, The University of Sydney, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Prevention is a central pillar of the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ agenda, a policy architecture governing gender and conflict that is anchored in a suite of United Nations Security Council resolutions adopted under the title of ‘Women and Peace and Security’. In this article, I argue that prevention is currently constituted within the WPS agenda in multiple ways, all of which are organised in accordance with different logics: a logic of peace; a logic of militarism; and a logic of security. This presents prevention as a paradox, because in operation it collapses back into a logic of security, even as it is constructed and positioned as security's temporal and conceptual other. I provide a close reading of the WPS resolutions and show how the articulations of prevention across the agenda, and in certain resolutions, operate according to logics of security and militarism. The significance of such an argument is twofold: it lies both in the possibility of reconstruction of prevention in the WPS agenda according to different logics, and in the potential of undoing security – as the manifestation of prevention in practice – in queer, feminist, decolonial, and posthuman ways of knowing and encountering the world.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Anderlini, Sanam Naraghi, Women Building Peace: What They Do, Why It Matters (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007)Google Scholar; Cohn, Carol, ‘Mainstreaming gender in UN security policy: A path to political transformation’, in Rai, Shirin M. and Waylen, Georgina (eds), Global Governance: Feminist Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 185206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See Anderlini, Sanam Naraghi, ‘Civil society's leadership in adopting 1325 Resolution’, in Davies, Sara E. and True, Jacqui (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 3853Google Scholar, for a full discussion of the adoption of Resolution 1325 and the role of civil society; on the contested development of the WPS agenda and its resolutions, see Otto, Dianne, ‘Women, Peace, and Security: A critical analysis of the Security Council's vision’, in Aoláin, Fionnuala Ní, Cahn, Naomi, Haynes, Dina Francesca, and Valji, Nahla (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 105–19Google Scholar; Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Nahla Valji, ‘Scholarly debates and contested meanings of WPS’, in Davies and True (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security, pp. 53–67.

3 Basu, Soumita and Confortini, Catia C., ‘Weakest “P” in the 1325 pod? Realizing conflict prevention through Security Council Resolution 1325’, International Studies Perspectives, 18:1 (2017), pp. 4363Google Scholar.

4 See, among many others, Enloe, Cynthia, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarisation of Women's Lives (London: Pluto, 1983)Google Scholar; Zalewski, Marysia, ‘Well, what is the feminist perspective on Bosnia’, International Affairs, 71:2 (1995), pp. 339–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Young, Iris Marion, ‘The logic of masculinist protection: Reflections on the current security state’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29:1 (2003), pp. 125CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carol Cohn, ‘Mainstreaming gender in UN security policy: A path to political transformation’, in Rai and Waylen (eds), Global Governance, pp. 185–206; Stern, Maria and Zalewski, Marysia, ‘Feminist fatigue(s): Reflections on feminism and familiar fables of militarisation’, Review of International Studies, 35:3 (2009), pp. 611–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Åhäll, Linda, Sexing War/Policing Gender: Motherhood, Myth and Women's Political Violence (London and New York: Routledge, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Dillon, Michael, ‘The security of governance’, in Larner, Wendy and Walters, William (eds), Global Governmentality (London: Routledge, 2004)Google Scholar; Dillon, Michael and Lobo-Guerrero, Lius, ‘Biopolitics of security in the 21st century: An introduction’, Review of International Studies, 34:3 (2008), pp. 265–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duffield, Mark, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed, 2001)Google Scholar; Duffield, Mark, Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples (Cambridge: Polity, 2007)Google Scholar; Duffield, Mark, ‘The liberal way of development and the development–security impasse: Exploring the global life-chance divide’, Security Dialogue, 41:1 (2010), pp. 5376CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stern, Maria and Zanotti, Joakim Öjendal, ‘Mapping the security–development nexus: Conflict, complexity, cacophony, convergence’, Security Dialogue, 41:1 (2010), pp. 530CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Campbell, David, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Campbell, David, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Hansen, Lene, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (London: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar.

7 Campbell, Susanna, Chandler, David, and Sabaratnam, Meera, ‘Introduction: The politics of liberal peace’, in Campbell, Susanna, Chandler, David, and Sabaratnam, Meera (eds), A Liberal Peace? The Problems and Practices of Peacebuilding (London: Zed, 2011), pp. 113Google Scholar.

8 Oliver Richmond, ‘A genealogy of peace and conflict theory’, in Oliver Richmond (ed.), Palgrave Advances in Peacebuilding (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 14–40, 26. See also Roland Paris, ‘Saving liberal peacebuilding’, Review of International Studies, 36:2 (2010), pp. 337–65; Jan Selby, ‘The myth of liberal peace-building’, Conflict, Security and Development, 13:1 (2013), pp. 57–86; Oliver P. Richmond and Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Where now for the critique of the liberal peace?’, Cooperation and Conflict, 50:2 (2015), pp. 171–89; Laura McLeod and Maria O'Reilly, ‘Critical peace and conflict studies: Feminist interventions’, Peacebuilding, 7:2 (2019), pp. 127–45; Maria O'Reilly, ‘From gendered war to gendered peace? Feminist perspectives on international intervention in sites of conflict’, in Nicholas Lemay-Hébert (ed.), Handbook on Intervention and Statebuilding (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2019), pp. 303–13.

9 Séverine Autesserre, ‘Going micro: Emerging and future peacekeeping research’, International Peacekeeping, 21:4 (2004), pp. 492–500.

10 Recent feminist peace research is of particular interest and relevance here; networked and collaborative research attends specifically to everyday forms of violence and insecurity, and the interplay between gendered subjectivity and structures of power. See Annick T. R. Wibben, Catia Cecilia Confortini, Sanam Roohi, Sarai B. Aharoni, Leena Vastapuu, and Tiina Vaittinen, ‘Collective discussion: Piecing-Up feminist peace research’, International Political Sociology, 13:1 (2019), pp. 86–107.

11 Alice Ackermann, ‘The idea and practice of conflict prevention’, Journal of Peace Research, 40:3 (2003), pp. 339–47.

12 I do not mean to imply that this research is unimportant or lacking in value, as the opposite is the case. This body of work simply asks different questions than the questions I pursue here. See, for example, Janie Leathermann, Raimo Väyrynen, William Demars, and Patrick Gaffney, Breaking Cycles of Violence: Conflict Prevention in Intrastate Crises (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1999); Fon Osler Hampsosn and David M. Lamone, From Reaction to Conflict Prevention: Opportunities for the UN System (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Chandra Lekha Sriram and Karin Wermester, From Promise to Practice: Strengthening UN Capacities for the Prevention of Violent Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003).

13 Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, ‘Global governance, liberal peace and complex emergency’, Alternatives, 25:2 (2000), pp. 117–43.

14 John S. Moolakkattu, ‘The concept and practice of conflict prevention: A critical reappraisal’, International Studies, 42:1 (2005), pp. 1–19.

15 Charlotte Heath-Kelly, ‘Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap? False positives in UK terrorism governance and the quest for pre-emption’, Critical Studies in Terrorism, 5:1 (2012), pp. 69–87; Charlotte Heath-Kelly, ‘Counter-terrorism and the counterfactual: Producing the “radicalisation” discourse and the UK PREVENT strategy’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 15:4 (2013), pp. 394–415; Charlotte Heath-Kelly, ‘Securing through the failure to secure? The ambiguity of resilience at the bombsite’, Security Dialogue, 46:1 (2015), pp. 69–85.

16 Heath-Kelly, ‘Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap?’, p. 71.

17 Heath-Kelly, ‘Counter-terrorism and the counterfactual’, pp. 394–415.

18 Ibid., pp. 396–7, emphasis added.

19 Heath-Kelly, ‘Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap?’, p. 84.

20 Ibid.

21 Shepherd, Gender, Violence and Security: Discourse as Practice p. 57.

22 Heath-Kelly, ‘Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap?’.

23 Soumita Basu and Joáo Nunes, ‘Security as emancipation’, in Shepherd (ed.), Critical Approaches to Security, pp. 63–4.

24 Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 193.

25 Megan MacKenzie, Beyond the Band of Brothers: The US Military and the Myth that Women Can't Fight (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 66–8; Joane Nagel, ‘Gender, violence and the military’, in Laura J. Shepherd (ed.), Handbook on Gender and Violence (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019).

26 I mean this as a compliment.

27 Janet E. Halley, Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 21.

28 See, among others, Paul Amar, ‘Operation Princess in Rio de Janeiro: Policing “sex trafficking”, strengthening worker citizenship, and the urban geopolitics of security in Brazil’, Security Dialogue, 40:4–5 (2009), pp. 513–41; Paul Amar, ‘Turning the gendered politics of the security state inside out? Charging the police with sexual harassment in Egypt’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 13:3 (2011), pp. 299–328; Paul Amar, The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); Jamie J. Hagen, ‘Queering women, peace and security’, International Affairs, 92:2 (2016), pp. 313–32; Sandra McEvoy, ‘Queering security studies in Northern Ireland’, in Manuela Lavinas Picq and Markus Thiel (eds), Sexualities in World Politics: How LGBTQ Claims Shape International Relations (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2016); Melanie Richter-Montpetit, ‘Empire, desire and violence: A queer transnational feminist reading of the prisoner “abuse” in Abu Ghraib and the question of “gender equality”', International Feminist Journal of Politics, 9:1 (2007), pp. 38–59; Melanie Richter-Montpetit, ‘Beyond the erotics of Orientalism: Lawfare, torture and the racial–sexual grammars of legitimate suffering’, Security Dialogue, 45:1 (2014), pp. 43–62; Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Cynthia Weber, Queer International Relations: Sovereignty, Sexuality and the Will to Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Cynthia Weber, ‘IR: The resurrection or new frontiers of incorporation’, European Journal of International Relations, 5:4 (1999), pp. 435–50.

29 See, among others, Soumita Basu, ‘Security as emancipation: A feminist perspective’, in J. Ann Tickner and Laura Sjoberg (eds), Twenty Years of Feminist International Relations: A Conversation about the Past, Present and Future (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2011); Laura Sjoberg, Gender, Justice, and the Wars in Iraq (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006); Laura Sjoberg, Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2013); Stern and Zalewski, ‘Feminist fatigue(s)’; Christine Sylvester, War as Experience: Contributions from International Relations and Feminist Analysis (London and New York NY: Routledge, 2013); Annick T. R. Wibben, Feminist Security Studies: A Narrative Approach (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2011); Lauren B. Wilcox, Bodies of Violence: Theorizing Embodied Subjects in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

30 See, among others, Pal Ahluwalia, ‘Afterlives of post-colonialism: Reflections on theory post-9/11’, Postcolonial Studies, 10:3 (2007), pp. 257–70; Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, ‘The postcolonial moment in security studies’, Review of International Studies, 32:2 (2006), pp. 329–52; Jana Hönke and Markus-Michael Müller, ‘Governing (in)security in a postcolonial world: Transnational entanglements and the worldliness of “local” practice’, Security Dialogue, 43:5 (2012), pp. 383–401; Meera Sabaratnam, Decolonising Intervention: International Statebuilding in Mozambique (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield International Ltd, 2017); Robbie Shilliam, The Black Pacific: Anti-Colonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).

31 See, among others, Erika Cudworth and Stephen Hobden, ‘The posthuman way of terror’, Security Dialogue, 46:6 (2015), pp. 513–29; Erika Cudworth and Stephen Hobden, The Emancipatory Project of Posthumanism (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2017); Cameron Harrington, ‘Posthuman security and care in the Anthropocene’, in Clara Eroukhmanoff and Matt Harker (eds), Reflections on the Posthuman in International Relations: The Anthropocene, Security and Ecology (Bristol: E-International Relations, 2017); Audra Mitchell, ‘Only human? A wordly approach to security’, Security Dialogue, 45:1 (2014), pp. 5–21.

32 The authors cited in notes 29–32 above represent a small and wildly partial selection of the brilliant research undertaken within each of these traditions; many more who are equally deserving of recognition fall outside of these traditions entirely.

33 See Sarah Lamble, ‘Queer necropolitics and the expanding carceral state: Interrogating sexual investments in punishment’, Law Critique, 24 (2013), pp. 229–53; Corinne L. Mason, ‘Global violence against women as a national security “emergency”’, Feminist Formations, 25:2 (2013), pp. 55–80; Simon Flacks, ‘Law, necropolitics and the stop and search of young people’, Theoretical Criminology, OnlineFirst, available at: {https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480618774036}.

34 See also Heath-Kelly, ‘Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap?’, p. 72.

35 Jacques Derrida, cited in Penny Griffin, ‘Deconstruction as anti-method’, in Laura J. Shepherd (ed.), Critical Approaches to Security: An Introduction to Theories and Methods (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 209–23 (p. 210); see also Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), pp. 10–18.

36 Richard Devetak, ‘Postmodernism’, in Scott Burchill, Andrew Linklater, Richard Devetak, Jack Donnelly, M. Paterson, Christian Reus-Smit, and Jacqui True (eds), Theories of International Relations (3rd edn, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 169.

37 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Biddles Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk, 2001), p. 96.

38 See Iris Marion Young, ‘The logic of masculinist protection: Reflections on the current security state’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29:1 (2003), p. 13. Since developing the concept of logics in earlier research, I have worked with the very brilliant [redacted], whose work on the discursive construction of gender and protection in humanitarian normative frameworks pushed me to think further about conceptualising logics and how they work. My thinking on logics also owes a debt to Weber's examination of queer logics of statecraft; see Weber, Queer International Relations.

39 Roxanne Lynn Doty, ‘Foreign policy as social construction: A post-positivist analysis of US counterinsurgency policy in the Philippines’, International Studies Quarterly, 37:3 (1993), pp. 297–320; Roxanne Lynn Doty, Imperial Encounters (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). See also Linda Åhäll and Stefan Borg, ‘Predication, presupposition and subject-positioning’, in Shepherd (ed.), Critical Approaches to Security, pp. 196–207.

40 Doty, ‘Foreign policy as social construction’, p. 307.

41 David Campbell, cited in Jennifer Milliken, ‘The study of discourse in international relations: A critique of research methods’, European Journal of International Relations, 5:2 (1999), pp. 225–54 (p. 236).

42 On the productive power of WPS national actions plans, see, among others, Maria Martín De Almagro, ‘Producing participants: Gender, race, class, and Women, Peace and Security’, Global Society, 32:4 (2018), pp. 395–414; Gina Heathcote, ‘Security Council Resolution 2242 on Women, Peace and Security: Progressive gains or dangerous development?’, Global Society, 32:4 (2018), pp. 374–94; Jamie J. Hagen and Toni Haastrup, ‘Global racial hierarchies and the limits of localisation via national action plans’, in Soumita Basu, Paul Kirby, and Laura J. Shepherd (eds), New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020), pp. 133–52; Doris Asante and Laura J. Shepherd, ‘Gender and countering violent extremism in Women, Peace and Security national action plans’, European Journal of Politics and Gender, FastTrack, available at: {https://doi.org/10.1332/251510820X15854973578842}.

43 On the productive power of institutional WPS governance and protocols beyond the UN, see, among others, Roberta Guerrina and Katharine A. M. Wright, ‘Gendering normative power Europe: Lessons of the Women, Peace and Security agenda’, International Affairs, 92:2 (2016), pp. 293–312; Katharine A. M. Wright, ‘NATO'S adoption of UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security: Making the agenda a reality’, International Political Science Review, 37:3 (2016), pp. 350–61; Toni Haastrup, ‘WPS and the African Union’, in Davies and True (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security, pp. 375–87.

44 See, for example, Laura J. Shepherd, Gender, Violence and Security: Discourse as Practice (London: Zed, 2008); Laura J. Shepherd, ‘Sex, security and superhero(in)es: From 1325 to 1820 and beyond’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 13:4 (2011), pp. 504–21; Nadine Puechguirbal, ‘Discourses on gender, patriarchy and Resolution 1325: A textual analysis of UN documents’, International Peacekeeping, 17:2 (2010), pp. 172–87; Nicola Pratt, ‘Reconceptualising gender: Reinscribing racial-sexual boundaries in international security: the case of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on “Women, Peace and Security”’, International Studies Quarterly, 57:4 (2013), pp. 772–83.

45 Jennifer Milliken, ‘The study of discourse in International Relations: A critique of research methods’, European Journal of International Relations, 5:2 (1999), pp. 225–54 (p. 244).

46 United Nations, UN Charter (1945), Article 1, available at: {http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/un-charter-full-text/} accessed 13 September 2018.

47 James Sutterlin, The United Nations and the Maintenance of International Security: A Challenge to be Met (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), pp. 18–19.

48 United Nations, ‘Secretary-General Says Global Effort Against Armed Conflict Needs Change From “Culture Of Reaction To Culture Of Prevention”’ (1999), available at: {https://www.un.org/press/en/1999/19991129.sc6759.doc.html} accessed 27 March 2020; on the changing security discourse at the Council, see David Malone, ‘The Security Council in the 1990s: Inconsistent, improvisational, indispensable’, in R. Thakur and E. Newman (eds), New Millennium, New Perspectives: The United Nations, Security and Governance (New York, NY: UN University Press, 2000), pp. 21–45; Matt McDonald, ‘Human security and the construction of security’, Global Society, 16:3 (2010), pp. 277–95; Jutta Joachim, ‘Framing issues and seizing opportunities: The UN, NGOs and women's rights’, International Studies Quarterly, 47:2 (2003), pp. 247–74.

49 United Nations Secretary-General, ‘Remarks to the 61st Session of the Commission on the Status of Women Side Event – Women, Peace and Security and Prevention: New Directions and Opportunities, delivered by Ms. Kyung-wha Kang, Secretary-General's Senior Advisor on Policy’ (2017), available at: {https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/remarks-sg-team/2017-03-15/remarks-61st-session-commission-status-women-side-event-women} accessed 13 September 2018. As might be expected, the Secretary-General's initiatives tend toward the data-driven; early warning systems and prevention capacity are ‘things’ that can be measured, which aligns with a more general appreciation of quantification in the UN system. As Sally Engle Merry so astutely notes, ‘[u]nder the evidence-based regime of governance, it is necessary to be counted to be recognised. Quantification makes issues visible and reveals the extent and scope of a problem. But things that are more easily counted and more often counted tend to be those counted in the future, while those that have not been counted or are hard to quantify tend to be neglected and thus disappear from view.’ See Sally Engle Merry, The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016), p. 219.

50 Although the focus of this study is the prevention pillar, there is much overlap and crossover between the pillars of WPS activity. It is certainly the case that there is resonance, for example, between the way that protection (against sexual violence) is constituted at times in accordance with a logic of security; this could usefully be the focus of future research. I am grateful for comments from an anonymous reviewer that prompted me to reflect on this.

51 Katrina Lee-Koo, ‘Engaging UNSCR 1325 through Australia's National Action Plan’, International Political Science Review, 37:3 (2016), pp. 336–49.

52 Basu and Shepherd, ‘Prevention in pieces’, p. 449.

53 The resolutions adopted under the title of ‘Women and Peace and Security’ are: United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2000, S/RES/1325 (2000), available at: {http://undocs.org/S/RES/1325(2000)}; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820, S/RES/1820 (2008), available at: {http://undocs.org/S/RES/1820(2008)}; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1888, S/RES/1888 (2009), available at: {http://undocs.org/S/RES/1888(2009)}; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1889, S/RES/1889 (2009), available at: {http://undocs.org/S/RES/1889(2009)}; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1960, S/RES/1960 (2010), available at: {http://undocs.org/S/RES/1960(2010)}; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2103, S/RES/2103 (2013), available at: {http://undocs.org/S/RES/2103(2013)}; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2122, S/RES/2122 (2013), available at: {http://undocs.org/S/RES/2122(2013)}; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2242, S/RES/2242 (2015), available at: {http://undocs.org/S/RES/2242(2015)}; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2467, S/RES/2467 (2019), available at: {https://undocs.org/S/RES/2467(2019)}; United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2493 (2019), available at: {http://undocs.org/S/RES/2493(2019)}.

54 S/RES/1889 (2009).

55 S/RES/2493 (2019).

56 S/RES/1325 (2000), Preamble.

57 Ibid., para. 1.

58 S/RES/1820 (2008), Preamble, para. 12.

59 S/RES/1889 (2009), Preamble.

60 S/RES/2492 (2019), para. 4.

61 Basu and Confortini, ‘Weakest “P” in the 1325 pod?’, p. 54. See also Carol Cohn, Helen Kinsella, and Sheri Gibbings, ‘Women, Peace and Security Resolution 1325’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 6:1 (2004), pp. 130–40.

62 Basu and Confortini, ‘Weakest “P” in the 1325 pod?’, p. 55.

63 Carol Cohn cited in Basu and Confortini, ‘Weakest “P” in the 1325 pod?’, p. 55.

64 Basu and Confortini, ‘Weakest “P” in the 1325 pod?’, p. 56. Soumita Basu and Laura J. Shepherd reach a similar conclusion in their analysis of prevention discourse in the UK, Australia, and India; they argue that ‘the silences around violence and conflict [in these cases] create parallel silences around prevention such that it is only visible in pieces’. See Basu and Shepherd, ‘Prevention in pieces’, p. 450.

65 S/RES/1820 (2008), para. 8.

66 S/RES/1888 (2009), para. 11.

67 Ibid., para. 7.

68 S/RES/2122 (2013), para. 7.

69 Ibid., para. 2.

70 Ibid., para. 15, emphasis in original.

71 S/RES/2467 (2019), Preamble.

72 Ibid., emphasis in original.

73 Ibid., emphasis in original.

74 Ibid., para. 24.

75 Ibid., para. 26.

76 Ibid., para. 13.

77 For analysis, see, among others, Pip Henty, ‘Women, Peace and Countering Violent Extremism’ (2017), available at: {https://humanitarianadvisorygroup.org/women-peace-and-countering-violent-extremism/} accessed 13 September 2018; Anna Möller-Loswick, ‘The Countering Violent Extremism Agenda Risks Undermining Women Who Need Greater Support’ (2017), available at: {https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/news-and-analysis/post/221-the-countering-violent-extremism-agenda-risks-undermining-women-who-need-greater-support} accessed 13 September 2018; Gender Action for Peace and Security, ‘Prioritise Peace: Challenging Approaches to Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism from a Women, Peace and Security Perspective’ (2018), available at: {http://gaps-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GAPS-report_Prioritise-Peace-Challenging-Approaches-to-P-CVE-from-a-WPS-perspective.pdf} accessed 13 September 2018.

78 United Nations Security Council, ‘Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism: Report of the Secretary-General. A/70/674’ (2015), para. 11, available at: {https://undocs.org/A/70/674} accessed 10 September 2018.

79 Ibid., para. 13.

80 My understanding is that the shift reflects sustained negotiation among members of the Security Council regarding the politics of prevention and the ways in which prevention efforts sit alongside the principle of non-intervention.

81 United Nations Security Council, ‘Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism’, para. 11.

82 Ibid., para. 12.

83 See also d'Estaing, Sophie Giscard, ‘Engaging women in countering violent extremism: Avoiding instrumentalisation and furthering agency’, Gender & Development, 25:1 (2017), pp. 103–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 United Nations Security Council, ‘Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism’, para. 13.

85 Aoláin, Fionnuala Ní, ‘The “war on terror” and extremism: Assessing the relevance of the Women, Peace and Security agenda’, International Affairs, 92:2 (2016), pp. 275–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 276).

86 Henty, ‘Women, Peace and Countering Violent Extremism’.

87 With apologies. Huysmans, Jef, ‘What's in an act? On security speech acts and little security nothings’, Security Dialogue, 42:4–5 (2011), pp. 371–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Aradau, Claudia, ‘Only aporias to offer? Étienne Balibar's politics and the ambiguity of war’, New Formations, 58 (2006), pp. 3946CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 43).

89 Ruby, Felicity, ‘Security Council Resolution 1325: A tool for conflict prevention?’, in Heathcote, Gina and Otto, Dianne (eds), Rethinking Peacekeeping, Gender Equality and Collective Security (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 173–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 179).

90 Ruby, ‘Security Council Resolution 132’, p. 178.

91 Basu and Confortini, ‘Weakest “P” in the 1325 pod?’.