Dueling Models: Tackling Women’s Empowerment through both Security and Development

While a number of scholars have stressed gender as a critical component of global security, prior studies on the UN Women, Peace, and Security resolutions and the National Action Plans to implement them have not fully assessed sub-national-level implementation to examine the efforts that the local actors are making. This paper analyzes how local women’s organizations in West Africa, in implementing the WPS resolutions, must contend with two models of international intervention. The security/human rights model passes norms and policies developed at the international level through the state, with the expectation that the state will implement or adhere to these norms and policies, then direct local actors—whether governmental or civil society—to follow and further implement the directives. The development model largely bypasses the state because of the assumption that the state has already failed to provide for its citizens, so provisions and implementation efforts begin at international organizations or countries in the Global North, funnel through transnational NGOs, and end up at local NGOs or specific government projects through grants. Prior to these resolutions, women’s issues had usually been addressed as a development concern, yet with the Security Council becoming an actor, these models conflict, resulting in a patchwork of policies that do not holistically address fundamental issues of women’s security. This project uses interview and participant observation data collected in Côte dʼIvoire, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Mali to show how local women’s organizations must manage limited understandings of women’s lives and cope with limited funding, leading to ineffective policy implementation.