Development

Peace studies is a growing academic field that has its scholarly roots in international relations (IR), political science, and history. All three academic disciplines consider the nation state as a primary constitutive element of the international system and central to social stability, security, and peace. This has been heavily critiqued by IR feminists (Still, 1998; Stean 1998, among others) who associate the notion of the nation state with an embedded patriarchal system that entrenches hierarchical social relations across race, class, and gender.

Course Rationale

This course should explore key issues of gender, conflict and peacebuilding in the African context. Overall, the course should also aim to investigate how gender, violence and war have a variety of impacts upon development in Africa, and how development concerns are intrinsically linked to peacebuilding. The course would hence seek to analyse how each aspect of conflict, from domestic violence in peacetime to violence in wartime, is influenced by the real and perceived needs and responsibilities of men and women. Why conflict is gendered at critical moments is a key question, as is how men and women develop different strategies of survival. The course ideally invites an exploration of the role gender plays in political development and achieving sustainable peace. Women’s roles as actors as well as victims of conflict should hence be evaluated as will gender specific peace initiatives.

It is challenging, in a way, to talk about legal feminism in Africa when the concept of “African feminism” itself is an issue of persistent contestation on the continent.   What I address myself to here are the various ways that feminists around the continent have analysed the law and the ways they have used it to pursue their struggles for gender equality and women’s human rights.   What gains have been made and what are the limitations?