In 2010, as the Afghan government announced its intention to begin a formal peace process, there were numerous calls for women to have a seat at the table. Both mainstream and critical discourse on women and the peace process in Afghanistan, however, relied on the production of essentialized subjectivities which failed to recognize the political and social complexity of women’s lives, diminished their intellectual contributions and silenced their voices. This article challenges the simultaneous hyper-visualization and silencing of Afghan women by both Afghan and international actors. Drawing on feminist and decolonial theory, we examine the ways in which the colonial mechanisms of intervention, patriarchy and the global hierarchies of knowledge production worked in tandem to marginalize Afghan women while upholding them as agents of peace. The article brings together findings from three participatory research projects on women and peace, which took place from 2010 to 2014 across eight provinces in Afghanistan. A prismed view of the participants’ intersectional realities is constructed, which highlights diverse positionalities and articulations of peace, the social and political cleavages, and differentiated obstacles to their involvement in the peace and reintegration process. The concluding remarks emphasize the relevance of these findings for Afghanistan at the time of publication.
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What/who is still missing in International Relations scholarship? Situating Africa as an agent in IR theorising
Isaac Odoom. "What/who is still missing in International Relations scholarship? Situating Africa as an agent in IR theorising." Third World Quarterly (2017) 38:1, pages 42-60.
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Another decolonial approach is possible: international studies in an antiblack world
Farai Chipato and David Chandler. "Another decolonial approach is possible: international studies in an antiblack world." Third World Quarterly (2022) 43:7, pages 1783-1797.