As we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda in 2025, insecurities faced by women and feminized bodies are, instead of decreasing, multiplying and complexifying. If the WPS Agenda has been an essential normative framework, the upcoming celebrations are thwarted by a resurgence of war, violence, and genocides in different regions of the world. In this context, how can we think of gendered forms of contestation against militarization? What are the roles of women, feminist groups and LGBTIQ+ people in tackling violent conflicts?
In this panel, we emphasize on gendered experiences of militarization and insecurities as well as reflections on the possible liberatory practices and politics enacted by feminists, women and LGBTIQ+ people in war-affected contexts. The panel, therefore, speaks to the conference theme by focusing particularly on how authoritarian, war, and colonial violence unfolding in several countries is shrinking the spaces for political participation of women, feminists, and LGBTQI+ people.
We wish to insist on the continuum between the forms of multiple insecurities experienced by different actors amid war and militarization of everyday lives and on the feminist translocal resistance that can be enacted to contest them. In doing so, the panel brings multiple analytical and practical cases – among which Mali, Myanmar, Colombia and Afghanistan – that have a common theme: discussing gendered insecurities and thinking about radical hope through gendered forms of contestations.