Coping in a Polarized Peacebuilding Environment: Resistance and Backlash to Feminist Peacebuilding amidst growing amount of FFPs

Advocates for feminist peacebuilding, such as feminist activists or NGOs face a myriad of resistances and backlashes in their daily work. Those emanate not only from conservative, fundamentalist or autocratic actors, but are deeply ingrained within the foundational structures of peacebuilding, including the social, economic and political institutions, with colonial and patriarchal underpinnings. However, while we observe increased resistances and backlash, an increasing number of state governments adopt feminist approaches to their foreign and development policies, centering gender equality also in peace and security politics. In the midst of those contradictive developments in gender equality policies, the imperative questionarises regarding how to affectlively address resistance and backlash. In this presentation, we discuss how feminist peacebuilding actors navigate between countering backlash and resistance, and simultaneously further pushing and advancing feminist foreign policies. Our presentation discusses this central question from the perspective of feminist peacebuilders, such as activists, LGBTQI+ organisations, women’s rights groups and NGOs. The analysis driven by an intersectional-feminist methodology consists of a rich collection of qualitative data from interviews with over 30 feminist peacebuilding actors. It provides in-depth insights into the different forms of backlash and resistance, categorizing them into individual and structural realms. It further explores approaches in how to counter and mitigate different forms of backlash and resistance, along with the analysis of peacebuilders perception of feminist foreign policy. Finally, we shed light on the role, opportunities and limits of feminist foreign policies for countering backlash and resistance against feminist peacebuilding practices.