Gendering foreign policy in Colombia’s peace process with the FARC

ABSTRACT

This study examines the “two-level games” – that is, the interaction between domestic politics and foreign policy – in the gendering of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC). It analyzes the domestic pressures that drove the formulation and incorporation of a gender perspective in the negotiations with the FARC, and how this gender dimension was incorporated in the Colombian government’s foreign policy strategy. The goal is to understand the entanglement of domestic and international preferences in the gendering of the peace agreement. By doing so, this article contributes to feminist literature on foreign policy and peacebuilding.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• feminist theory
• foreign policy analysis
• Colombia
• peace process

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 At the time of our data collection, the speeches made by members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were available at http://www.cancilleria.gov.co/newsroom/speeches. The speeches made by President Juan Manuel Santos were available at http://es.presidencia.gov.co/discursos and at http://wsp.presidencia.gov.co/Discursos. However, when President Iván Duque took office in 2018, most of the speeches were taken off these web pages. The authors maintain copies of all extracted documents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Felipe Jaramillo Ruiz

Felipe Jaramillo Ruiz received his PhD in Political Science and International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland. He has recently published work on gender quotas in Colombia, women and peacebuilding, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and sexuality, and gender equality.

María Catalina Monroy

María Catalina Monroy is Assistant Professor of International Relations and Director of the Colombian Foreign Policy Analysis research project at Facultad de Estudios Internacionales, Políticos y Urbanos at Universidad del Rosario, Colombia. She is coordinator and founder of the WomanStats Project for Colombia at Universidad del Rosario. Her work focuses on the promotion of gender and international relations, particularly in Colombian foreign policy analysis.