Mobilizing the women, peace and security agenda for refugee women's participation: Committees and cooperatives in Turkey

Abstract

This article explores the potential for mobilizing the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda to promote refugee women's participation in decision-making processes in Turkey. Although WPS predominantly focuses on women in conflict zones, we argue that it can offer a meaningful avenue of engagement for refugee women in host countries. In the absence of a coherent national action plan in Turkey, we investigate to what extent the scattered and peripheral initiatives of refugee women has the potential to draft and implement WPS and how, in turn, mobilization under WPS helps consolidate and mainstream these initiatives. This article examines refugee women's committees and cooperatives and shows how they can meaningfully localize international policy and leverage it for refugee women's participation. We demonstrate that committees and cooperatives offer a space to discuss, challenge, and give nuance to refugee policies in Turkey, and WPS can act as an essential lever to reinforce and amplify such initiatives.