From Frameworks to Frontlines: Localisation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Ukraine’s Regional and Local Governance

This paper explores how the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is localised within Ukraine’s regional and local governance during an ongoing war. Ukraine has become a widely cited case of WPS localisation through its layered structure of National, Regional, and Local Action Plans (NAPs, RAPs, LAPs). Yet the mechanisms through which these plans are implemented, and the bureaucratic processes that sustain them, remain underexplored. Grounded in feminist institutionalism and norm localisation theory, this paper interrogates the institutional and procedural life of WPS at regional and local levels. It examines how regional and local authorities, alongside women’s rights organisations and donor actors, interpret and enact WPS agenda under wartime conditions. Rather than assuming localisation as an inherently empowering process, the study unpacks it as a site of institutional negotiation shaped by reporting routines, coordination structures, bureaucratic inertia, and shifting political hierarchies. Based on qualitative research in several Ukrainian regions, including interviews with local WPS actors, the paper situates localisation as a bureaucratic process mediated between national frameworks, donor expectations, and local governance logics. It explores questions such as: How are global WPS norms transmitted, translated, or resisted at the local level? What forms of institutional friction or adaptation emerge as WPS moves through national and regional/local governance? How do local officials (including feminist bureaucrats) and women’s rights actors mediate these dynamics and how are their roles shaped by wartime urgency and decentralisation reform? The paper contributes to broader debates on feminist governance, administrative power, and the technocratic versus transformative potential of WPS implementation. It offers Ukraine as a case for understanding how global feminist norms are taken up and reshaped within everyday institutional practice.