# Women, peace and insecurity: The risks of peacebuilding in everyday life for women in Sri Lanka and Nepal

## TL;DR

This paper explores how peacebuilding efforts after war affect women's everyday lives in Sri Lanka and Nepal, finding that women are more skeptical of initiatives that increase their personal risks.

## Contribution

The study reveals gender-specific responses to peacebuilding measures, highlighting overlooked risks for women.

## Key findings

- Women are more skeptical than men about peacebuilding measures that increase everyday risks, like truth-telling and coexistence with former adversaries.
- There are no gender differences in attitudes toward national-level peacebuilding initiatives like accountability processes.
- The findings suggest current peacebuilding practices overlook women's insecurities, calling for gender-informed approaches.

## Abstract

Truth telling processes, initiatives to prosecute war-time perpetrators, and ex-combatant reintegration are examples of common peacebuilding practices after war. Yet, little is known of how women are affected by peacebuilding initiatives such as these, or how they perceive these initiatives for peace. For many women, peace after war does not bring peace to everyday life; research shows that domestic violence increases during and after war. In addition, some peacebuilding measures have been found to increase risk and insecurity, not least for women. To better understand the interconnections between gender and post-conflict attitudes to peacebuilding, we asked 2,041 women and men in Sri Lanka and Nepal of their views on post-war peace initiatives. In line with our expectations, we find that women are more skeptical than men towards peacebuilding measures that involve increased risk in everyday life, such as truth-telling and coexisting with former adversaries and warring groups reintegrating in local communities. There are no gender differences pertaining to peacebuilding initiatives that take place far away at the national level, for example, concerning accountability or, in the case of Nepal, the peace agreement. Our findings suggest that international peacebuilding practice is blind to the everyday insecurities of women after war. That a basic gendered lens is missing from most peacebuilding designs is both alarming and deeply troubling, but identifying this critical aspect provides the opportunity for imperative change. By shedding light on the challenges women face after war, we hope this article contributes to finding ways to mitigate unknown and unintended side-effects of peacebuilding efforts, and thereby to the development of better, evidence-based peacebuilding practice–of benefit to both men and women.