Beyond instrumentalisation: gender and agency in the prevention of extreme violence in Kenya

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the adoption of UNSCR 2242, which calls for the integration of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) agendas, feminist scholars and activists have cautioned that such a move instrumentalises and securitises the WPS agenda and its objectives of gender equality and women’s empowerment. Based on over 80 interviews with civil society actors involved in P/CVE in Kenya – specifically, Mombasa, Isiolo and Nairobi – this article argues that both the calls for empowerment and the critiques of instrumentalization similarly draw on racialised constructions of women’s agency, or lack thereof, in the global south. Further, the instrumentalised/empowered binary is premised on a liberal feminist conceptualisation of agency only as resistance, which does not accurately capture the complex ways in which WPS actors and feminist peace activists negotiate with and work to transform security agendas. While recognising the harms caused by state and donor-led P/CVE approaches, this article centres the perspectives and experiences of men and women who work in daily violence prevention within and beyond the frame of P/CVE to theorise the agentive capacities that emerge from securitised spaces.