In the aftermath of formal colonization, a range of crises continues to a source of insecurity for Africans. These insecurities are fostered by a hierarchical global political system that is still steeped in colonial patterns of interactions that privilege challenging masculinities, as critical peace and feminist scholarship has identified (see Stern/Towns, 2022). 

While attention to regional governance as a means to peace is not new, the implications of (African) feminist ontologies in the conception of peace has thus far been absent from mainstream theorising with implications for interventions (Haastrup, 2022, a,,b). Indeed, eradicating these resistant insecurities was the basis for the global normative framework, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, first adopted over two decades ago and advocated for by feminists. However, the version that has remained of the WPS agenda has failed to challenge the hierarchies that underpin these crises and instead re-entrenches them thus exacerbating these crises (Haastrup/Hagen, 2020; 2022). Even as new feminist peace works have exposed these realities, the place of African knowledge in informing new theorisations and praxis remains marginal.

This project seeks to recover the aspirations of pan-African feminists who have and continue to advocate for emancipatory regional solutions as the basis for lasting peace. Towards a Feminist Peace aims to theorise the possibilities of a feminist peace. 

Theoretically, it draws on approaches that challenge prevailing hegemonies to develop a critical feminist analytical lens informed by transnational feminisms that centre African feminist alternative worlds. The project utilises a methodological approach drawn from the social sciences and humanities. Insights from this research are aimed at: generating new knowledge; articulating how marginal practices or ‘practice from below’ inform radical theorisations; and contributing to global debates and policies on the gendered dimensions of peace and security.