Is Rights Talk Just Talk? Implementing Women’s Economic Empowerment Norms at the Global-Local Nexus in Kosovo

This paper examines the translation of UN women’s economic empowerment norms at the domestic level through international organizations (IOs) in post-war states, taking the international system in Kosovo as the primary case study. Through a comparative analysis of different IOs in Kosovo, the paper assesses the extent to which international actors are delivering on international commitments to women’s economic empowerment at the local level, and the mechanisms through which this process operates. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis, it analyses how various IOs have engaged with UN norms relating to women’s economic empowerment on the ground, such as the SDGs and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The paper concentrates on the decision-making and design phases of country-level office programming, in order to analyse international agencies’ contributions to the implementation of women’s empowerment norms and the variations between IOs in this regard. Second, it examines the interplay between different international entities in this particular issue area, shedding light on how the presence of overlapping international actors affects norm implementation at the domestic level. By focusing specifically on the country-office level of international organizations, this paper makes a significant theoretical contribution by reflecting on how IOs exercise agency beyond the HQ level at the global-local nexus. This study argues that it is essential to better understand the contributions of the country-level offices of global governance organizations to enable more effective policy engagement. It also makes an important empirical contribution through its focus on an under-researched policy area: the performance of IOs in the gender sphere at the domestic level in post-conflict settings.