"We Are Always Each Other's Keeper": Transformative Dimensions of Women's Local Peacebuilding in Africa

Abstract

Many women have continued to engage in local peacebuilding activities in the face of massive failures of formal peacekeeping missions in the Sahel region of Africa, where the world's fastest-growing and most deadly insurgent groups are found. Women are largely excluded from these missions. Instead, they are most active in grassroots peacebuilding initiatives, where their impact is significant, yet often overlooked. Women's localized peacebuilding activities can have transformative impacts on gender relations and roles and on society more broadly. We examine women's efforts specifically in the context of significant failures and setbacks of formal peace efforts. Using in-depth interviews with women engaged in grassroots peacebuilding in Mali and Nigeria, where ongoing regional jihadist insurgencies and political instability persist, we identify three important mechanisms through which women are responding to these massive setbacks: (1) Women build ties across religious, ethnic, pastoralist-nomad, and other divisions central to the conflict, addressing the very divides that formal peace processes have struggled to overcome; (2) Women engage in income-generating activities and community and peacebuilding initiatives that challenge traditional gender roles and increase women's empowerment; and (3) Women's daily peacebuilding activities have multiplier effects, improving not only their own welfare but that of their households and communities. This article contributes to our understanding of how women's peacebuilding activities can have transformative effects in the face of setbacks. It draws on in-depth interviews with women peacebuilders from Mali and Nigeria.