We are pleased to introduce the 13th volume of International Development Policy, ‘Gender in Peacebuilding: Local Practices in Indonesia and Nigeria’.
This volume aims to develop a better understanding of the multiple and complex ways in which gender is present in peacebuilding practices and both enables and constrains transformative goals. It explores how gender becomes productive either by being deployed strategically or by asserting itself inadvertently, for example through gender stereotypes, gendered divisions of labour, or identity constructions. Finally, it looks at the effects of deploying gender as a technology of government, and what inclusive peace might look like.
The present volume is the culmination of a six-year research project funded by the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d) and the long list of co-editors reflects its cooperative nature. The project, led by the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute, investigated the gendered dimensions of social conflict, armed violence and peacebuilding through close collaboration between scholars from Indonesia, Nigeria and Switzerland, who jointly conceptualised and implemented the research and who co-authored the contributions.
This experience and its results as presented in this volume also highlight the need for more collaborative research across North–South divides. Research of this kind is still relatively rare, as are open access co-authored publications stemming from such research.
The volume includes eight chapters and two interludes. Each chapter provides a gender analysis of one distinctive initiative or practice in a specific context in either Indonesia or Nigeria, while the interludes present reflections on, and experiences with, particular methodological issues that emerged during the collaborative research process. These contributions convey the wealth of existing practices aimed at transforming violent conflict and building peace across diverse communities in these two countries.
Chapter drafts were presented and discussed in an authors’ workshop held online in October 2020. We would like to thank workshop participants for providing relevant input to the authors, and the peer reviewers for their valuable insights. Finally, we are grateful to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (sdc) and the Republic and State of Geneva—Service for International Solidarity (ssi) for their financial support. We also appreciated the commitment of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute to this project and throughout the editorial process for this volume.
The Editors
Geneva, May 2021