Engaging with the gender, peace and security agenda in research and activism in Lebanon

Issues relating to gender, peace and security are a contested field in the Arabic-speaking world. This includes the history and present state of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, which local grassroots level actors and critical voices often struggle to influence. Rather, it is often powerful national governments, non-state actors and outside actors – including donor governments, international organisations and international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs), Global North academia but also powerful religious institutions – that define much of the framework, direction and content of gender, peace and security work. Much of the region is marked by armed conflict, occupation, displacement and rule by authoritarian governments. Increasingly, in a number of the countries the already limited space for civil society and academia is shrinking further, due to an increased securitisation of politics. This is exacerbated by policies of Global North actors that focus on countering violent extremism (CVE) and/or utilise frameworks put in place to address gender inequality (such as the WPS agenda) to address short-term security concerns, which can marginalise women’s rights organisations’ work on redressing gender inequality and its societal impacts.¹