Articles by Aïko Holvikivi
International Peacekeeping, 2021
Over the past two decades, the international Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has establish... more Over the past two decades, the international Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has established a commitment to increase the participation of women in matters of peace and security, to ensure the protection of women's rights, and to include gender perspectives in conflict prevention. The WPS agenda foresees a number of measures to make peacekeeping more gender-responsive, including training uniformed peacekeepers on gender. These policy commitments date back to the year 2000, and have instigated the development of training materials and the institutionalization of training at regional and national levels. This article examines these training mandates, asking: What is the scope and nature of gender training for peacekeepers? How is gender understood to operate in peacekeeping? A review of international and national policy commitments demonstrates that training uniformed peacekeepers on gender has become a significant transnational practice. An examination of these mandates and training guidance reveals that training discourse establishes a normative understanding of gender that is focused primarily on vulnerability to sexual violence, and that frames gender as a question of skills and capacities rather than political investments or moral values. However, differences in localization demonstrate that gender training could be and sometimes is understood more expansively.
European Journal of International Security, 2020
Since its inception in 2000, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has conceptualised the co... more Since its inception in 2000, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has conceptualised the conflict-affected woman as a subject worthy of international attention, protection, and inclusion. In the wake of Europe's 'refugee crisis', this article examines how the remit of WPS has broadened from women in conflict zones to refugees in Europe's borderlands. A minority of European states now attend, in their WPS policy, to these conflict-affected women on the move. This inclusion productively challenges established notions of where conflict-affectedness is located. It exposes Europe as not always peaceful and safe for women, especially refugees who flee war. Conversely, the dominant tendency to exclude refugees from European WPS policy is built on a fantasy of Europe as peaceful and secure for women, which legitimises the fortressing of Europe and obscures European states' complicity in fuelling insecurity at their borders, cultivating an ethos of coloniality around the WPS agenda. The inclusion of refugees is no panacea to these problems. If focused solely on protection, it repositions European states as protective heroes and conflict-affected women as helpless victims. The WPS framework nonetheless emphasises conflict-affected women's participation in decision-making and conflict prevention, opening space for recognising the refugee women as political actors.
European Journal of Politics and Gender, 2019
Research on gender expertise is often conducted from relations of proximity between academics and... more Research on gender expertise is often conducted from relations of proximity between academics and gender experts, raising familiar feminist methodological questions about the researcher–researched relationship. In this article, I take up the suggestion that such relationships should be guided by the principles of ‘critical friendship’. I argue that critical friendship should be understood as a two-way relationship that creates space to negotiate the goals of gender expertise and how it is practised. I also caution that relations of critical friendship may cause researchers to privilege the perspectives of Global North gender experts in academic analyses, while silencing other voices.
Connections: The Quarterly Journal, Volume 14, Issue 3, p.31-44 (2015)
In this article, I seek... more Connections: The Quarterly Journal, Volume 14, Issue 3, p.31-44 (2015)
In this article, I seek to bridge this gap through an examination of the roles and responsibilities of the security sector in implementing the women, peace and security agenda. More precisely, I examine the processes and principles associated with security sector reform, and argue that its technical components and ultimate objectives are key to the implementation of the women, peace and security agenda. In other words, I ask what SSR can bring to the women, peace and security agenda, rather than how the integration of gender furthers SSR.
Also available at: http://connections-qj.org/article/what-role-security-sector-ssr-approach-implementing-women-peace-and-security-agenda
Book chapters by Aïko Holvikivi
Naiset kriiseja hallitsemassa: Päätöslauselman 1325 kaksi vuosikymmentä (ed. Anne Mäki-Rahkola), 2020
Book reviews by Aïko Holvikivi
LSE Women, Peace and Security Blog Forum, 2020
In the WPS agenda’s twentieth anniversary year, New Directions brings academics, practitioners an... more In the WPS agenda’s twentieth anniversary year, New Directions brings academics, practitioners and activists into conversation in a book that demonstrates the evolutionary breadth and depth of WPS policy and scholarship. In the introduction to the volume, Soumita Basu, Paul Kirby and Laura Shepherd sketch the contours of the WPS agenda as something broader than the text of the policy frameworks that United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 instigated. They characterise the agenda as the focal point of a WPS community and as a site of political investments, demands and disavowals. The editors position the book in the “new politics of WPS…in relation to geographical, temporal and institutional scales” (p. 2) and map, as much as can be done, the trajectory of WPS in scholarly and policy fields: beginning as a feminist activist agenda at the margins of international security, to a policy agenda ingratiated in the ‘masculine’ space of the Security Council, to an agenda that is diffused outside of the politics of the Security Council in local and other institutional spaces (pp. 5-6).
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17502977.2014.919054#.U7BTdY2Sx-W.
Journal of Inter... more http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17502977.2014.919054#.U7BTdY2Sx-W.
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding review article of Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? by Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern, Sex and World Peace by Valerie Hudson et al., and Gendering Global Conflict by Laura Sjoberg.
Policy publications by Aïko Holvikivi
The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has successfully constructed the figure of the conflic... more The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has successfully constructed the figure of the conflict-affected woman as a subject worthy of attention, inclusion and protection on the part of the international community. This concern is especially palpable when she is physically present in a conflict zone. As the conflict-affected woman flees and seeks safety and security in Europe, however, she moves to the periphery of the area of concern of WPS policies and discourses. In this working paper, we demonstrate that forcibly displaced persons skirt the margins of the WPS agenda: refugees are present in WPS policies, but as the subjects of marginal and inconsistent concern. We interrogate the effects of this marginalisation, and suggest that including refugee questions in WPS policymaking and scholarship carries the potential to improve security provision for those who have fled to Europe, as well as to revive the transformative potential of the WPS agenda.
Teaching Gender in the Military: A Handbook, 2016
DCAF Publications, 2016
The Teaching Gender in the Military Handbook documents the knowledge outcomes of a series of four... more The Teaching Gender in the Military Handbook documents the knowledge outcomes of a series of four workshops organised by the Security Sector Reform and Education Development Working Groups of the Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes (PfPC). The handbook aims to (a) strengthen the ability of faculty to integrate gender in professional military education and (b) improve the capacity of gender experts to deliver educational content. In other words, it aims to cover both "what to teach" and "how to teach" when it comes to gender and the military.The Handbook was created in response to a call to integrate gender in military education and training articulated in the UN Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security; the NATO frameworks to implement these resolutions; and national policies and initiatives in the NATO-PfP area.
Authors: Aiko Holvikivi and Kristin Valasek
This chapter provides a summary of general trends, g... more Authors: Aiko Holvikivi and Kristin Valasek
This chapter provides a summary of general trends, good practices and the key challenges facing security sector institutions (SSIs) in West African countries. The introduction includes an overview of SSIs in 14 countries at the levels of gender mainstreaming, service delivery, personnel and oversight. This is followed by a comparative regional analysis structured by institution and indicator, covering national governance, police services, armed forces and gendarmerie, justice
systems and penal services. Finally, this chapter presents recommendations to SSIs and security sector oversight bodies on steps still needed to comprehensively address gender issues.
Full report available at: http://www.dcaf.ch/Publications/The-Security-Sector-and-Gender-in-West-Africa-A-survey-of-police-defence-justice-and-penal-services-in-ECOWAS-states
Editors: Aiko Holvikivi and Daniel de Torres
This manual is tailored to the needs of Georgia, bu... more Editors: Aiko Holvikivi and Daniel de Torres
This manual is tailored to the needs of Georgia, but represents a knowledge product to be shared with the other countries for future work within the security sector.
The manual draws on the DCAF Gender and Security Sector Reform Training Resource
Package (DCAF, 2009), a companion to the Gender and Security Sector Reform Toolkit (DCAF, OSCE/ODIHR and UN-INSTRAW, 2008). The training exercises in this manual, with the exception of the exercise on “SGBV Victims’ access to security and justice services” (Module 6, developed by Daniel de Torres and Aiko Holvikivi), are all either directly taken or adapted from the DCAF Gender and Security Sector Reform Training Resource Package. These exercises were developed
by Agneta M. Johanssen, and edited by Megan Bastick and Kristin Valasek.
Op-eds and blog posts by Aïko Holvikivi
British International Studies Association Blog, 2020
RUSI Newsbrief, 2016
UN peacekeepers are deployed to make local populations more safe and secure. They must not be all... more UN peacekeepers are deployed to make local populations more safe and secure. They must not be allowed to become another source of insecurity for the people they are sent to serve. The new Secretary-General should commit to gender equality in order to ensure that peacekeeping lives up to its promise.
Engenderings, the LSE Department of Gender Studies Blog, 2017
Engenderings, the LSE Department of Gender Studies Blog, 2017
Uploads
Articles by Aïko Holvikivi
In this article, I seek to bridge this gap through an examination of the roles and responsibilities of the security sector in implementing the women, peace and security agenda. More precisely, I examine the processes and principles associated with security sector reform, and argue that its technical components and ultimate objectives are key to the implementation of the women, peace and security agenda. In other words, I ask what SSR can bring to the women, peace and security agenda, rather than how the integration of gender furthers SSR.
Also available at: http://connections-qj.org/article/what-role-security-sector-ssr-approach-implementing-women-peace-and-security-agenda
Book chapters by Aïko Holvikivi
Book reviews by Aïko Holvikivi
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding review article of Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? by Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern, Sex and World Peace by Valerie Hudson et al., and Gendering Global Conflict by Laura Sjoberg.
Policy publications by Aïko Holvikivi
This chapter provides a summary of general trends, good practices and the key challenges facing security sector institutions (SSIs) in West African countries. The introduction includes an overview of SSIs in 14 countries at the levels of gender mainstreaming, service delivery, personnel and oversight. This is followed by a comparative regional analysis structured by institution and indicator, covering national governance, police services, armed forces and gendarmerie, justice
systems and penal services. Finally, this chapter presents recommendations to SSIs and security sector oversight bodies on steps still needed to comprehensively address gender issues.
Full report available at: http://www.dcaf.ch/Publications/The-Security-Sector-and-Gender-in-West-Africa-A-survey-of-police-defence-justice-and-penal-services-in-ECOWAS-states
This manual is tailored to the needs of Georgia, but represents a knowledge product to be shared with the other countries for future work within the security sector.
The manual draws on the DCAF Gender and Security Sector Reform Training Resource
Package (DCAF, 2009), a companion to the Gender and Security Sector Reform Toolkit (DCAF, OSCE/ODIHR and UN-INSTRAW, 2008). The training exercises in this manual, with the exception of the exercise on “SGBV Victims’ access to security and justice services” (Module 6, developed by Daniel de Torres and Aiko Holvikivi), are all either directly taken or adapted from the DCAF Gender and Security Sector Reform Training Resource Package. These exercises were developed
by Agneta M. Johanssen, and edited by Megan Bastick and Kristin Valasek.
Op-eds and blog posts by Aïko Holvikivi
In this article, I seek to bridge this gap through an examination of the roles and responsibilities of the security sector in implementing the women, peace and security agenda. More precisely, I examine the processes and principles associated with security sector reform, and argue that its technical components and ultimate objectives are key to the implementation of the women, peace and security agenda. In other words, I ask what SSR can bring to the women, peace and security agenda, rather than how the integration of gender furthers SSR.
Also available at: http://connections-qj.org/article/what-role-security-sector-ssr-approach-implementing-women-peace-and-security-agenda
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding review article of Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? by Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern, Sex and World Peace by Valerie Hudson et al., and Gendering Global Conflict by Laura Sjoberg.
This chapter provides a summary of general trends, good practices and the key challenges facing security sector institutions (SSIs) in West African countries. The introduction includes an overview of SSIs in 14 countries at the levels of gender mainstreaming, service delivery, personnel and oversight. This is followed by a comparative regional analysis structured by institution and indicator, covering national governance, police services, armed forces and gendarmerie, justice
systems and penal services. Finally, this chapter presents recommendations to SSIs and security sector oversight bodies on steps still needed to comprehensively address gender issues.
Full report available at: http://www.dcaf.ch/Publications/The-Security-Sector-and-Gender-in-West-Africa-A-survey-of-police-defence-justice-and-penal-services-in-ECOWAS-states
This manual is tailored to the needs of Georgia, but represents a knowledge product to be shared with the other countries for future work within the security sector.
The manual draws on the DCAF Gender and Security Sector Reform Training Resource
Package (DCAF, 2009), a companion to the Gender and Security Sector Reform Toolkit (DCAF, OSCE/ODIHR and UN-INSTRAW, 2008). The training exercises in this manual, with the exception of the exercise on “SGBV Victims’ access to security and justice services” (Module 6, developed by Daniel de Torres and Aiko Holvikivi), are all either directly taken or adapted from the DCAF Gender and Security Sector Reform Training Resource Package. These exercises were developed
by Agneta M. Johanssen, and edited by Megan Bastick and Kristin Valasek.