Temporality and the discursive dynamics of the Rwandan National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security from 2009 and 2018

ABSTRACT

The African Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is supported by a well-developed architecture. However, the problem-solving language of the Continental Results Framework to monitor state implementation may impede critical gender discourses and practices. This article therefore examines the discursive repetitions and ruptures across Rwanda’s National Action Plans (NAPs) of 2009 and 2018, with specific attention to the dynamics of discursive relations between the two NAPs, and examining whether the language offers openings for alternative interpretations of dominant Rwandan WPS discourses. Our temporal reading of the NAP discourses is grounded in the idea that time as well as learning over time is non-linear, multiple/fluid, connected to a particular space, linked to processes rather than products of repetition and rupture, and representative of an interlocking of pasts, presents, and futures. Three categories of change – namely, “dominant,” “residual,” and “emergent” – are used to structure the analysis. The empirical evidence shows that the categories are not mutually exclusive: the new NAP reflects more of the same dominant discourses, but with some minor qualitative and critical shifts, as well as isolated opportunities for creating a new perspective on WPS.

KEYWORDS:

• Rwanda
• Women
• Peace and Security
• Africa
• discourse
• temporality
• National Action Plans

Introduction

Since the first call to develop National Action Plans (NAPs) for Women, Peace and Security (WPS) in a United Nations (UN) Security Presidential Statement (United Nations 2004), the debate has shifted away from a narrow preoccupation with technical concerns (Miller, Pournik, and Swaine 2014; Popovic, Lyytikainen, and Barr 2010) to over time mirror the discourse about the broader development of the WPS agenda. Critics argue that NAPs perpetuate the flaws and silences of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 (for instance, with regard to masculinities, race, and sexuality) and stand little chance of addressing the implementation gap until power inequalities are eradicated (Pratt and Richter-Devroe 2011). By contrast, norm-entrepreneur proponents view NAPs as a concrete means of grounding these international gender norms in local contexts (Tryggestad 2010). The latter position underscores the UN understanding of an NAP as “[a] document that details the actions that a government is currently taking, and those initiatives that it will undertake within a given timeframe, in order to meet the obligations set out in all the WPS resolutions” (Popovic, Lyytikainen, and Barr 2010, xv). Beyond these two broad positions, other studies (Davies and True 2019; Kirby and Shepherd 2016) have subsequently emphasized the need for a more complex understanding of the working of UNSCR 1325 on the ground.¹

To date, 83 NAPs have been developed, with 26 on the African continent (PeaceWomen n.d.). The state of NAPs on the continent should be read against the background of the strong historical roots of the WPS agenda in Africa² and the existence of a fairly well-developed African WPS architecture, in the form of continental and sub-regional policy frameworks (Hendricks 2017). Thus, while we can safely argue that these frameworks signal a normative change, the change is a qualified one. Although the appointment of the Special Envoy on WPS as well as the development of NAPs aim to close the gap between policy and implementation, the problem-solving language of the Continental Results Framework to monitor the implementation by African Union (AU) member states has emerged in both of these interventions at the expense of a critical gender discourse (African Union Commission 2016).

Our contribution speaks to the so-called temporal “turn” in international relations (IR) (Chamon 2018; Hom et al. 2016) and the fact that temporal frames in relation to WPS and NAPs are currently neglected, partly because many of the NAPs are still too recent. However, as they mature and countries begin to revise their initial NAPs, studies of this nature may increase in number. This research therefore seeks to address this gap. Only four countries in the African context have second-generation (or subsequent) NAPs – namely, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mali, Nigeria, and Rwanda. With the broader WPS shifts in mind, we examine the discursive continuities and ruptures across Rwanda’s NAPs of 2009 and 2018 in order to establish the extent to which the NAPs reflect or diverge from the broader trends in WPS thinking and practice. The Rwandan case study is pertinent for the fact that it sits at the crossroads of a polarizing debate about post-genocide recovery. On the one hand, Rwanda is hailed as a success story, in large part due to the strides that the country has taken in advancing women’s leadership, whereas on the other hand a creeping authoritarianism masks growing inequality and impunity (Twagiramungu and Sebarenzi 2019). However, such a binary tends to obscure historical continuities. It is therefore imperative that any analysis of the discursive dynamics of the two Rwandan NAPs must remain cognizant of the entanglement of past, present, and future, as well as the blurred lines between situations of conflict and post-conflict. Drawing on the concept of temporality (Chakrabarty 2000; Eagleton-Pierce 2019; Rao 2014), this article adopts a non-linear temporal approach, grounded in the idea that time as well as learning over time is multiple/fluid, connected to a particular space, linked to processes rather than products of repetition and rupture,³ and representative of an interlocking of pasts, presents, and futures.

The aim is therefore to use a temporal lens in order to identify the particularities and discursive changes over time in the two NAPs from 2009 and 2018. We structure our temporal reading of the NAP discourses according to three categories of change – namely, “dominant,” “residual,” and “emergent” (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 6). This typology not only serves as a structuring tool, but also helps to shed light on questions such as what learning has taken place over the last decade, if any; whether the language offers possibilities for alternative interpretations of dominant Rwandan WPS discourses and practices; and to what extent the historical and discursive contexts have shifted, and whether this could explain the change (or lack of change) across time. We contend that, while change or the lack thereof represents something of a linear progression, a linear understanding of time and learning does not account for the “messiness” and entangled nature of shifts and/or stagnation over time. Loosely categorizing discourses according to their dominant, residual, or emergent character allows us to look beyond “what, or if things changed” and instead to focus on the kinds of change, which could offer a useful framework for application to other NAPs, facilitating contextual insights for understanding the present state of WPS. Furthermore, although time is always connected to a particular space, a feminist adaptation of the framework could also situate these empirical insights within the broader evolution of the WPS agenda.

In the first section of the article, we outline our theoretical approach to temporality and its relation to discourse. In the following part, we discuss our critical discourse analysis methodology and justify the case selection. Next, we reflect on the discursive context of the NAPs, which includes relating the continuities and changes to broader historical and contemporary political developments in Rwanda as well as to Rwanda’s WPS engagement. This section is followed by the discourse analysis where we identify and discuss dominant, residual, and emergent WPS discourses. In the final part, we draw conclusions on the meaning of temporality in discourse analysis, and its implications for the future of the WPS agenda in Rwanda and beyond.

Temporal frame

The approach that we adopt in this article reflects a move away from an unproblematized Western linear conception of time (binary of cyclical and linear) toward the conceptualization of multiple, interconnected (postcolonial) temporalities (Eagleton-Pierce 2019) in relation to WPS and NAPs. Like other scholars before us, we take issue with the dominant notion of time as segmentation, scheduling, “synchronization, progress, movement, and a relentless orientation towards the ‘future’” (Mischke 2018, 94).

While the Global North and Global South NAPs co-exist within the same present, we are careful not to homogenize that present, even if they are located within similar historical (postcolonial) contexts. Thus, while the temporal trajectory in the Rwandan NAPs may follow continental and global patterns, we are conscious of the fact that alternative and peculiar legacies are also at play. One can therefore not assume that the language of NAPs offers a simplistic replication of international WPS discourses. We consequently adopt the concept of heterotemporality (plural time) (Chamon 2018, 407) that is imbued with complex meanings (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 2), which in turn give rise to different ways in which the past mirrors or informs contemporary security politics and points the way toward different imagined futures. Such an approach guards against “tempocentrism,” which reifies the present as the superior temporality (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 4).

In this conceptualization, time is not only multiple, but also fluid, more about ideational and discursive processes than products of repetition and rupture. These processes encapsulate different types of activities and forms of interconnection that emanate from the interplay between continuity and change (repetition and rupture) (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 3). The space between continuity and change could be described as dis/continuity in order to avoid the dichotomies of past/present and stasis/change.

For this purpose, we draw on the categorization of three processes of social change – namely, dominant, residual, and emergent (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 6). We apply this model of multiple temporalities in the context of WPS/NAP discourses because we deem the three categories to be elastic enough to cover past, present, and future gender dynamics. We extend Eagleton-Pierce’s theoretical framework through the empirical analysis of the two NAPs and by making links between each temporal category and a particular normative feminist position. The analysis shows, through evidence of discursive fluidity and ambiguity over time, that Rwandan WPS narratives are neither singular nor totalizing. Eagleton-Pierce’s three categories are therefore used to make “latent temporal layers more analytically visible and understandable” (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 7).

Dominant social formations emerge when the interaction of selective pasts and presents produce particular mainstream meanings and practices (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 7), which become entrenched as conventional wisdom with universal appeal. In critical-feminist terms, the mainstream WPS meanings and practices reflect the hegemonic inner workings of power at the global and local levels – a consensus between the liberal peacebuilding project and liberal feminism. Such a consensus is geared toward preventing rival heterodoxies or truths from gaining a foothold (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 7). This explains why dominant WPS discourses do not just appear out of the blue, but instead are carefully established over time through “systematic power relationships that privilege certain ways of knowing, being and acting and that give voice to only certain people’s experiences and agendas” (Nayak and Suchland 2006, 470). Furthermore, despite the fact that these discourses and practices characterize universalist conceptions of women, gender, and self, they are not fixed and have to be responsive to context and historical roots. Eagleton-Pierce (2019, 7) reminds us that dominant discourses are also constantly trying to rejuvenate themselves in order to stave off competition, leading to a selective foregrounding of specific themes. One of the reasons for the success of dominant liberal WPS discourses is because they allow some of the residual elements to co-exist/survive – “tolerating” critical perspectives, secure in the knowledge that players such as NATO or Global North development agencies can continue to coopt the WPS agenda without paying too much attention to the critique of an “add-women-and-stir” approach.

In contrast to hegemonic or dominant discourses, residual formations refer to those subterranean or implicit notions that either formed part of the previous hegemony or previously stood in opposition to the dominant ideas, but now (actively) co-exist on the fringes of the dominant discourses. Residual discourses are difficult to verify empirically as “officially” existing within the hegemonic discourses forming the core prior to their displacement to the periphery, but these experiences, meanings, and norms are nevertheless lived and practiced as remnants of a previous social and cultural institution (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 8). They thus represent quite fluid temporal constructions, sometimes “lurking” (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 4) in the background of hegemonic discourses, and sometimes in the process of becoming more dominant themselves. A feminist example of such a residual discourse is postcolonial feminism (as representative of critical feminisms), where resistance is neither pure nor necessarily counter-hegemonic, but rather non-hegemonic. While it distances itself from a binary of domination versus opposition, postcolonial feminism operates “inside a structure of power that it both challenges and helps to sustain” (Abrahamsen 2003, 190). Thus, in order to disrupt this state of affairs, it would therefore be more appropriate to analyze the language of the NAPs in terms of how it fits into an entangled global coloniality. This means becoming aware of the ethnocentric universalisms embedded in certain discourses, complete with ahistorical accounts of “third world difference” (Mohanty 1988, 68), but also recognizing that the dominant and residual discourses are interrelated. This requires the flexibility to understand context as the site for embodying intersected, multiple identities rather than (as in the case of liberal peacebuilding) as merely the site for implementing individualized gender rights for equality.

The emergent category refers to new and often contested ideas, discourses, and practices that display sufficient longevity and potential for alternative futures to qualify as emergent rather than merely as novel (Eagleton-Pierce 2019, 9). Here, one has to decide whether the new meanings, values, practices, and relationships represent a sufficiently significant break with the dominant (as well as the residual) and are not merely an extension of old narratives cloaked in a different vocabulary. This process of becoming is what separates such discourses from the past and the present. They are positioned in terms of the future and alternative imaginings. An example of emergent discourses would be African feminisms, where the emphasis is on relationality, a deep-seated sense of interdependence that guides cooperation between men and women (Cornell and van Marle 2015; Kolawole 2002). This focus on shared security and the freedom to relate rather than freedom from want or fear underlines a positive intersectional approach in African feminisms, which stands in contrast to the notion of intersectionality as constructed around a negative relationality of interlocked oppressions only. Thus, because African feminisms are embedded in the concrete realities of African women’s lives, they also negotiate their realities materially and discursively in relation to the intersection of heteropatriarchal capitalist and gendered militarist oppressions at national and global levels (Mama and Okazawa-Rey 2012, 97).

In this article, we use the temporal frame outlined above to explain types of change, which involves an emphasis on processes of social change as reflected in the language and images of the NAPs – understanding past processes; defining the current juncture; and assessing the likelihood of change within different issue areas in the future.

Methodology

Amid a multitude of approaches to discourse analysis within IR (Doty 1993; Milliken 1999), we follow a critical discourse analysis approach informed by poststructuralist/postcolonial feminism. We do not subscribe to the extreme notion that there is nothing outside WPS discourse, but acknowledge for the purposes of this article, where texts (the NAPs) are our units of analysis, that language forms the entry point for understanding both the physical and social world of gendered peace and security. Since we also mediate reality through our interpretations and emphases, it follows that textual and social processes (text and context) are intrinsically connected.

Critical discourse analysis and feminism work together as both have normative points of departure (Gentry 2016, 28). Our critical-feminist discourse analysis is concerned with the constructions of inclusions and exclusions revealed and reproduced through the language of the two Rwandan NAPs, acknowledging that “power and the use and abuse of it is [often] justified through the language of those who use it” (Gentry 2016, 25). In this regard, discourses are defined as systems “of exclusionary practices and structures, not just labels, but assumptions, absences and social expectations” (Björkdahl and Selimovic 2015, 4). Speaking to the critical element in our methodology, the texts have been read “against the grain – that is, contrary to their ostensible logic to expose taken for granted usage of these concepts” (Hudson 2017, 12). Through multiple readings, we have identified repetitions and ruptures without a priori placement within either the liberal- or the radical-feminist orientations (or dominant, residual, and emergent categories). We have looked for silences and also attempted to read the liberal-feminist language in an open-ended way.

In terms of the dominant/hegemonic discourses, we explore how the global discourse on WPS has been reproduced or reshaped in the NAPs with an emphasis on discursive dynamics, shifts, or turns from the first to the second Rwandan NAP. With regard to residual discourses, our focus is on practices of exclusion and/or silences in the texts as well as how non-hegemonic discourses have resisted being coopted or silenced. We use the emergent typology to explore if new discursive framings on WPS have emerged. On the whole, the typology is used to determine whether the language in the NAPs is (still) characterized by liberal-feminist discourses or whether the co-existence of dominant, residual, and emergent framings may provide some discursive openings.

Rwanda has been selected as a case study for several reasons. First, it is one of the few African countries to have developed a second-generation (or subsequent) NAP. Second, Rwanda can be characterized as a prime example of a renewed commitment to UNSCR 1325 and the WPS agenda through the development of a new NAP in 2018. Rwanda has played a key role in the adoption and formulation of UNSCR 1325, as the Rwandan Ambassador Joseph Mutaboba gave a supporting statement for it (Mageza-Barthel 2015) and the experiences from the Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda led to the inclusion of a specific paragraph on gender-based violence (Madsen 2018). In addition, a delegation from Rwanda attended the UN Third World Conference in 1985 in Nairobi and in 1995 a relatively large delegation from Rwanda participated in the Beijing conference at which the groundwork for UNSCR 1325 was done.⁴ As such, Rwanda is far from a passive recipient of global UN gender norms but actively works to localize these norms (Basu 2016). Third, the interplay and/or tension in Rwanda between democratization by means of gender equality and broader authoritarian tendencies dovetails with a complex and fluid reading of time. The empirical context of the case study and the theoretical lens are therefore compatible.

Discursive context: the repetitions and ruptures of Rwanda’s WPS engagement

In this section, we bring three major continuities and three major changes during Rwanda’s pre- and post-genocide history into conversation with the repetitions and ruptures that we identify in the WPS agenda as viewed through the two NAPs. The section underlines how repetitions and ruptures happen asynchronously and non-linearly. Furthermore, it reflects how Rwanda has been characterized by more repetitions than ruptures.

Rwanda has a violent past, marked by Belgian colonial rule from 1920 to 1962. In the post-independence period, the country was governed by Hutu Presidents Grégoire Kayibanda and Juvénal Habyarimana until 1994, when the genocide began. During all three of these periods, the manipulation of ethnic identities was prevalent, and this continues into the post-genocide period as a significant and enduring repetition. Throughout the country’s history, the notion of “difference” in Rwandan society has been used to legitimize unequal access to political and economic power. The Belgian colonial powers introduced identity cards fixing ethnic identities in binaries and establishing a hierarchical order between Tutsis, Hutus, and the marginalized Twa. Kayibanda cemented his power through the appointment of Hutus from southern and central Rwanda to prominent positions from 1962, while Habyarimana continued the dominance of the Hutu regime from 1973 onwards. The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) led by the current President Paul Kagame managed to stop the genocide in 1994, although their role in the killing of Hutus is still questioned. Reyntjens (2013) argues that Rwandan society has been characterized by an RPFization and Tutsization under Kagame’s rule as openly addressing questions of ethnicity is forbidden even though they are still at the forefront of people’s minds.

The second repetition concerns the fact that ethnic and gendered identities have intersected in ways that have led to increased discrimination against women. While women were essentialized according to their ethnicity during the genocide, in the post-genocide period they are typecast as mothers and peacemakers. Under Habyarimana’s rule, men had the economic power and independent, mainly Tutsi women were subject to “moral cleanups” by the government (Berry 2018). Leading up to the 1994 genocide, the “Hutu Ten Commandments” were published, widely presenting Tutsi women as “temptresses” and Hutu men who had relations with them as “traitors.” Furthermore, it was implied that Hutu girls and women were more “dignified” and “conscientious” and that Hutu women should bring their male relatives to reason in the name of nationalism. Yet, women were both victims and perpetrators of the genocide. One of the moderate Hutus, Prime Minister Agatha Uwilingiyimana, was killed within the first hours of the genocide, while Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, then Minister for Women and Family Promotion, ordered violence and killing by the Interahamwe (the Hutu paramilitary organization) and her own son (Madsen 2018). During the genocide, between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people were killed in the space of 100 days, leaving a high number of female-headed households, and between 250,000 and 300,000 were raped as a weapon of war targeting the enemy (Powley 2003). In the aftermath of the genocide, women have been viewed as mothers of the nation and the “new brooms” to sweep away all of the dirt of the past, as well as apolitical and ethnically neutral subjects, despite evidence to the contrary.

A third repetition is the concentration of power at the top level and the authoritarian features of the ruling regime also characterizing the precolonial kingdoms and the Belgian colonizers and influencing the two Hutu-dominated regimes and the current regime ruled by Kagame. With the adoption of a constitutional amendment in 2015 (allowing him to stay in power until 2034) and the jailing of some presidential opposition candidates, Kagame cemented his power in the period between the first and the second NAP. However, the increasingly authoritarian nature of the regime is combined with the promotion of pro-women/gender equality policies, most markedly in the area of women’s political representation and also reflected in the two NAPs. Women’s representation in Parliament in the period between the first and the second NAP increased by 12 percent (UN Women). This can be attributed to the role of women in the RPF fighting to end the genocide but could potentially also be a way for the regime to legitimize its authority and divert attention away from human rights abuses.

The first rupture is the position of Rwanda on the African and global stage, with Kagame the President of the AU in 2018 (also reflected in the changes from the first to the second NAP). This constitutes the envisioned new role for Rwanda reflected in the NAPs, leading the way for other African countries and being a responsible international actor despite its authoritarian track record – most likely a public relations act masking its undemocratic features and violent past/present.

The second rupture is captured in the developmentalist modernization project and futuristic vision of the ruling regime, leaving limited space for the suffering of the genocide victims and post-genocide recovery associated with the past. A shift has been detected from a focus on testimonies of the suffering related to the genocide toward success stories and progress, offending many of the genocide victims (Mugabe 2018, 4). Instead of intergenerational dialogue about the genocide, progress and growth has become the dominant discourse.

The third and final rupture concerns structure. There has been an increased institutionalization of WPS. Generally, the period between the first and the second NAP has been characterized by domestication of UNSCR 1325. A steering committee was set up during the period of the first NAP and will continue during the period of the second NAP with representatives from ministries, the national gender machinery, the Forum of Rwandan Women Parliamentarians, women’s organizations (and other civil-society organizations), and the University of Rwanda. Furthermore, a broader forum, Friends of Resolution 1325, is mentioned in both NAPs. However, in the second NAP there has been an institutional centralization of the work on UNSCR 1325, as the women’s organization Pro-Femmes/Twese Hamwe as Secretariat for the Board⁵ has been replaced by ministerial National Working Groups with two Technical Working Groups (for gender and women’s empowerment as well as child and family protection) to monitor the implementation of the result-oriented framework and ensuring resource mobilization. This is a response to the criticism in the evaluation of the first NAP (Gender Monitoring Office 2015) of irregular follow-up and problems with a lack of documentation and integration of the NAP in the actors’ own plans, making it difficult to trace the effects of the NAP.

In the same way that these ruptures cannot be delinked from the repetitions, an examination of how the past is represented in the NAPs also provides insight into Rwanda’s vision for the future. In the NAPs, the past is evoked not only with imaginings of a peaceful, united, and gender-equal Rwanda, but also with a developmental and instrumentalist purpose. This is in line with the RPF’s vision of transforming the country from a poor, agrarian rural society into an information technology (IT)-driven, market-centered, middle-income African economy.⁶ In the 2009 NAP, it is stated that “Government worked hard to rehabilitate the country that was devastated by the genocide perpetrated against Tutsi in 1994. Women contributed significantly in the implementation of various strategies devised in order to restore unity and reconciliation among Rwandans” (Republic of Rwanda 2009, 4). In the new NAP, it is also emphasized that “[t]he government of Rwanda sees the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment as a prerequisite to sustainable peace and development” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 8). Despite these obvious continuities, scholars characterize Rwanda as a top-down regime seemingly committed to promoting gender equality not for its own sake but to achieve other ends and drawing on women’s integration into the formal economy as an untapped resource, neglecting their care obligations and role in the informal economy (Debusscher and Ansoms 2013; Madsen 2019). It may therefore be necessary to heed Rao’s (2014, 213) warning not to succumb to a triumphalist vision of the future. For this reason, it may be more productive to conceptualize the future of WPS in Rwanda in less optimistic terms, and rather as deferred, unfinished, “not yet,” while still remembering the hopelessness associated with its violent past.

Analysis of WPS discourses

The two NAPs are broadly aligned with the structure, priorities, and language captured in the WPS suite of UNSCRs. The 2009 NAP is structured in accordance with four pillars: prevention of gender-based violence; protection and rehabilitation of victims; participation of and representation for women; and promotion of women and gender issues. The 2018 NAP focuses on five pillars: participation and leadership of women in decision making; prevention of violence against women and involvement in conflict prevention and peace processes; protection from violence; equal access to means of economic relief, economic recovery, and rehabilitation; and women’s promotion and gender mainstreaming in Rwanda’s foreign service and in regional and international cooperation.

In this section, we read the NAPs through the lens of dominant, residual, and emergent discourses to illustrate the temporality of the discursive dynamics of their WPS language. In doing so, we draw on the key pillars of UNSCR 1325, and analyze how the two NAPs converge and diverge in their prioritization of these pillars.

Hegemonic configurations of representation: the politics of numbers

The focus on women’s “participation” as one of the “old themes” represents a cornerstone in the Rwandan NAPs with the adoption of a quota of 30 percent at all levels in the country since 2003 and being at the top of the list of countries with the highest representation globally of women at national level (68 percent). The discourse constellations are paradoxical to say the least. Many scholars (see, for example, Burnet 2008; Longman 2006) question the motives of the regime, arguing that the focus on women’s political representation cements the power of the RPF and an authoritarian state as well as pleasing external donors. However, it has also led to the adoption of pro-gender legislation and an increased awareness of women’s political opportunities (Madsen 2018). The integration of women in public structures in government is drawing on familiar scripts from the pre-colonial period where the Queen Mother within the royal family as a part of a Tutsi institution had significant influence.⁷ It is an attempt to make up for past mistakes and to “clean up” politics by bringing new faces into Parliament in line with the government’s futuristic modernization project.

In the 2009 NAP, a commitment to women’s participation in peace and security and the willingness to ensure implementation are declared. A hegemonic framework in the first 2009 NAP is the portrayal of women as the peaceful gender and as mothers of the nation, caring for and protecting all of its citizens. This is exemplified in the focus on greater involvement of women (in an undefined plural) as a solution to fight the genocide ideology (Björkdahl and Selimovic 2015; Republic of Rwanda 2009). In the 2018 NAP, these commitments are repeated and there is some mention of training for women working within the peace and security sector. However, the NAPs fail to address the underlying patriarchal structural factors and power dynamics that exclude women from participation in peace and security fora – especially at higher levels – or to indicate how the presence of women will bring about change without referencing simplified stereotypical notions and homogenizing all women. In the NAPs, it is clear that representation is a women-only idea (Jansson and Eduards 2016) and there is little questioning of differentiation among women based on (for example) ethnicity, class, and sexuality.

That said, the liberal-feminist discourse on women’s representation provides some alternatives to the “add-women-and-stir” approach. In the 2018 NAP, some degrees of residual formations co-exist at the fringes of the dominant discourse without essentially destabilizing it. First, the new NAP problematizes “representation” by pointing out differences between gendered representation in “hard” and “soft” sectors, at decentralized and centralized levels, and in the security and political spheres (with women being overrepresented in all of the latter categories), illustrated in boxes with facts and a detailed description of the figures according to all categories. These discursive shifts may have been influenced by inputs from women’s organizations, as the civil-society monitoring report Women Count (Global Network of Women Peacebuilders 2012) points out these differences. Second, the new NAP represents a shift from exclusively focusing on figures to paying qualitative attention to not only representation, but also the preconditions for active participation, as illustrated through the outcome objective stating “[m]eaningful and increased participation of women” and the output objective stating “[i]ncreased participation and influence of women” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 25–26, our emphasis). Furthermore, even one of the more quantitative measurements is the “[p]ercentage of men and women who perceive women as equally legitimate and effective leaders as men” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 31).

These residual formations do not fundamentally challenge either the liberal-feminist hegemonic configurations or the colonial framings questioned by Mohanty (1988) and can peacefully co-exist at the fringes of present discourses. Some scholars (for instance, Basini and Ryan 2016) criticize NAPs generally as technocratic formats with an extreme focus on quantitative measures (only) and therefore as unsuitable tools for guiding complex processes of social change in masculinist institutions. Others fundamentally question whether the integration of women in existing structures is simply a “reification of a handful of individual women at the expense of broader, structural change” (Thomson 2019, 601). In the case of Rwanda, the NAPs seem to be dominated by hegemonic liberal-feminist framings but have the potential to evolve into more useful and nuanced instruments, with elements of situational gender analysis and greater focus on the qualitative measurement of active participation rather than merely on the quantitative measurement of numerical representation.

Emergent formations: the “new,” good, international citizen?

Rwanda is framing itself in a new role as the leading regional and global advocate for the WPS agenda, as exemplified by a discourse that disrupts traditional binaries between the Global North and the Global South. The emergent discourse challenges the perception of the Global North as gender-equal, active, and outward-looking senders and the Global South as gender-unequal, passive, and inward-looking recipients in terms of the WPS agenda (Basu 2016). The discourse marks a shift from the 2009 to the 2018 NAP in that the focus has moved from national to regional and international rebuilding with an emphasis on foreign-policy actors and mainstreaming in contrast to home policy and the marginalization of WPS in isolated projects and programs. This represents an emergent discourse focusing on African solutions for peacebuilding and challenging past Global North dominance, related to the changes that have taken place between the 1994 genocide and Kagame taking up roles as a formal international champion for gender equality with the UN’s HeForShe initiative and as 2018 chairperson of the AU. In the 2018 NAP, this discursive reorientation is illustrated through multiple references to AU instruments (for example, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights 2003, the African Women’s Decade 2010–2020, and the AU Gender, Peace and Security Programme 2015–2020) and a (new) section on gender mainstreaming in Rwanda’s foreign service and in regional and international cooperation. The country’s new role as a regional and global humanitarian role model involves a shift from focusing not only on new caseload returnees (mainly Hutu refugees) and their reintegration into Rwandan society through community programs (Republic of Rwanda 2009) but also on other refugees from the continent (mainly from Burundi and the DRC). The rupture consists of a shift from “sending” to “receiving” refugees and to accepting regional and global international responsibilities in the 2018 NAP.

The role is new compared to the 2009 NAP but the gender discourse draws on familiar scripts on the theme on representation/participation from hegemonic liberal-feminist discourses with a degree of residual framing. It could be seen as a response to the findings from the 2015 global study on WPS and the negligible progress made on women’s participation in peace mediation and peacebuilding (Tryggestad 2016). The 2018 NAP states that the main outcome objective of the theme is to establish “[p]olicy frameworks to support effective participation of women in regional and international peace processes” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 27). It also emphasizes the fact that Rwanda has contributed more female police officers for peace support operations than any other country in Africa. These female police officers are perceived as having competence in dealing with other women in cases of sexual violence and as encouraging other women to report violence due to their presence. As such, they are (ironically) perceived as representing “women” and acting as “protectors” of other women while they themselves are protected by male police officers labeled as a “chain of protection” (Jansson and Eduards 2016, 596). With this double role as both “protector” and “protected,” female officers may be disempowered due to being recognized in terms of their gender alone, at the expense of broader professional capacities. In the 2018 NAP, Rwanda is portrayed as the benefactor within this field with the aim of “[s]eeking to share with neighbouring states and African regions and sub-regions some of the successful approaches as well as best practices to championing the WPS agenda” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 27), bringing Rwanda and the African continent into a new global role in the future.

The “WPS agenda” is mentioned only in relation to the pillar on gender promotion and gender mainstreaming (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 25, 27), placing this pillar squarely within the global arena, and perhaps also firmly within the dominant international discourse and view of gender equality. The version of gender mainstreaming adopted seems to be integrationist, with a focus on the “[i]nclusion and active engagement of women in regional and international mechanisms and fora for conflict prevention, management and peace building” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 26, our emphasis). As in the analysis of the theme of representation/participation, the term “active” indicates some emphasis on the qualitative aspects. The focus is also on institutional capacity building to ensure actual implementation and the need for more research on the WPS agenda. The agenda-setting approach to gender mainstreaming implies a transformation of the foreign-policy agenda with a gender perspective, resulting (for example) in changing priorities on military strategic decisions and spending. However, it is stated in the NAP that the “Rwandan foreign and cooperation policy appears gender neutral” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 22, our emphasis) indicating that very few – if any – changes will take place at that level and that the term “mainstreaming” masks different notions and may leave the patriarchal nature of most military strategic decisions and spending intact. Paradoxically, Rwanda’s transition from a local to a regional and global WPS actor is representing a shift toward new emergent discourses but drawing on traditional hegemonic liberal-feminist framings (and some elements of residual discursive openings), indicating how different discourses co-exist but with few changes in the gender scripts.

Residual pushback: making space for prevention to co-exist with protection

In this section, we take a closer look at the evolution of two dominant (“old”) discourses – namely, the protectionist and preventive ones – across the two NAPs. Five resolutions concentrate on “protection” (UNSCRs 1325, 1820, 1888, 1960, and 2106), with some also mentioning “prevention.” The latest resolution (UNSCR 2467), with a focus on the prevention of sexual violence and a stronger focus on addressing root structural causes, aims to make up for this. Nevertheless, the language of UNSCR 2467 in relation to the sexual and reproductive health and rights of wartime victims has been watered down due to resistance from conservative forces in the US.

According to Basu (2016), the prevention pillar is underdeveloped and stands in service of the participation and protection pillars. Such blindness produces analyses that favor protection from the exceptional nature of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) during war at the expense of prevention of structural violence during peacetime. On the one hand, treating SGBV as an issue separate from others could have the effect of marginalizing survivors of SGBV (Saferworld 2014). On the other hand, exceptionalizing SGBV could lead to its conflation with violence against women and girls, thereby entrenching the notion of women as victims of male violence. In practical terms, this means that the emphasis on protection creates a prevention blind spot where the social and political economy roots of gender inequality that exacerbate women’s vulnerability are masked. The result is that preventative measures may therefore not address the specific underlying causes of this inequality (Saferworld 2014, 3).

Although prevention of violence and conflicts is listed as the first priority in the 2009 NAP, it is framed as a liberal rights-focused discourse and practice. This emphasizes the creation of an appropriate national, regional, and international legal environment; the revision of discriminatory laws in Rwanda (Republic of Rwanda 2009, 9, 13); and the adoption of strategies of community dialogue to shift discriminatory attitudes and behavior. This approach is motivated by the need to address persistently high rates of violence against women through the promotion of women’s spaces in communities in the form of shelters and a clinic at the “Village of Hope” established by the Rwanda Women’s Network for victims of SGBV. The national umbrella organization Pro-Femmes/Twese Hamwe, through its discourse of peace in minds and homes, has also joined the struggle against SGBV (Madsen 2018).

Whereas the 2009 NAP offers detailed steps on what needs to be done on the legal and policy front to establish an institutional framework of care and support, the 2018 NAP draws on the successes of the last ten years and revolves around the types of structures established, such as community structures, anti-SGBV committees, and child protection committees from village to district level. The so-called “Parents’ Evening” (Umugoroba w’Ababyeyi, UwA), and “Friends of Family” (Inshuti z’Umuryango, IzU) serve as a means to report abuses and protect children (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 16). In terms of our categorization of discourses, these examples represent an extension of the hegemonic discourse in that they offer qualitative shifts toward greater institutionalization. They therefore indicate a deepening or consolidation of the dominant understanding of prevention over time. This involves the strengthening of a liberal-institutionalist framework while paying little attention to the role of structures in causing violence. Yet, the attention given to community structures may bode well for the growing voice of a residual “non-hegemonic” discourse on the prevention–protection nexus.

In addition to strengthening community/institutional capacity to prevent violence, this pillar also has the aim of engaging more substantially with men to ensure that they understand the need to play a stronger role in addressing violence against women, when it is stated that “[p]eacebuilding requires an awareness of how men and women together can better contribute to sustainable peace and security” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 26). Output 2.2 further aims to increase men’s participation in UwA (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 34), which represents a residual theme not explicitly mentioned in the first NAP. The foregrounding of community and collaboration between men and women in the second NAP speaks to African feminisms that emphasize relations rather than binaries between genders, and represents a fairly significant shift away from an entirely liberal-dominant discourse.

With reference to protection, there is a strong intersectional focus on the special needs of former women combatants, refugees, displaced women, and those living with disability (Republic of Rwanda 2009, 6, 9). These needs are closely linked to the different types of support offered, such as social, psychological, legal, and medical, as well as the training of security forces on humanitarian international law and SGBV (Republic of Rwanda 2009, 9, 15). Rehabilitation of survivors’ dignity therefore forms a core part of the strategy toward protection.⁸ The 2018 NAP extends the notion of protection from violence by greatly expanding the detail of support measures and offering repetitions in the form of equally strong emphases on special needs, as in the 2009 NAP. The approach is described as comprehensive: “multi-sectorial services at all levels that protect women and girls’ safety, physical and mental health, education and economic security” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 26) in the form of so-called “One Stop Centres.”

In the 2018 NAP in particular, there is an explicit acknowledgment of the association of protection with prevention through attention to the structural causes of gender inequality and discrimination, policy gaps, and barriers that prevent women from performing to their full potential (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 18). Two apparent emergent discourses that do not feature in the first NAP further support our reading of temporality across the two NAPs. The mentions of gender-responsive early-warning mechanisms as a means of prevention (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 26) and of “preventing and countering violent extremism, which can be conducive to terrorism” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 10) draw on an understanding of past and current causal factors as well as time-sensitive responses to prevent future manifestations of violence.

In the NAPs, the relationship between prevention and protection is treated as complex and entangled. In other words, there is no simple linear connection (timeline) between means and ends. In the 2009 NAP, the strategy of analyzing and understanding national and regional conventions and laws is presented as the means for developing an environment in which women’s rights are protected (Republic of Rwanda 2009, 13–14). Here, protection may be read as trumping prevention. But at another level prevention is protection – of women’s rights through practices of gender equality and gender equity. In the 2018 NAP, protection and prevention go hand in hand; for example, the National Policy against Gender-Based Violence (2011) is aimed at eliminating SGBV “through the development of a preventive, protective, supportive and transformative environment” (Republic of Rwanda 2018, 12, our emphasis). The discourse analysis therefore may point to a gradual shift toward a more critical understanding of prevention. We therefore submit that prevention and protection should rather be read as co-constituted, and not sequential.

Conclusion

The temporal lens and the readings of the NAPs in terms of interconnectedness between pasts, presents, and futures have proved to be helpful in both empirical and theoretical respects. The introduction of a temporal theoretical perspective to meaning making has enabled us to see discourses and practices as more than sets of fixed, sequential products and rather as fluid co-constitutive processes. On the empirical front, identifying repetitions and ruptures has given rise to new insights on the discursive dynamics between the NAPs, the Rwandan context, and the global WPS arena. Through critical discourse analysis, we have demonstrated how textual and social/contextual processes are intrinsically connected. The combination of a discursive methodology and a temporal frame holds potential for better understanding how we think and act in a gendered peacebuilding world through engaging with dominant, residual, and emergent discourses.

Dominant discourses in the NAPs linked to representation and participation display a primarily linear understanding of time, allowing different degrees of residual formations on the margins but not really subverting the balance of liberal forces. Similarly, the apparently emergent discourse of global participation appears to be indicative of a rupture, but in fact draws on familiar gender scripts. Entirely new emergent discourses are still embryonic and it is therefore too soon to conclude that they represent the beginnings of alternative WPS imaginaries. Elements of African-feminist practice are evident in the new NAP but are overshadowed by ostensibly new discourses that could possibly merely be liberal discourses attempting to reinvent themselves. By contrast, the prevention–protection nexus has evolved across the NAPs to express a much stronger non-hegemonic, residual stance that is reflective of a more nuanced, multiple, yet connected understanding of time.

The textual analysis has shown that dominant liberal-feminist, residual (postcolonial-feminist), and emergent (African-feminist) discourses are never mutually exclusive; they always co-exist in a fluid way. Time is therefore more than the sum total of past, present, and future; multiple temporalities are all found together in one moment. This textual reading of temporality, however, stands in sharp contrast to the national narrative. For the Rwandan government, time is in the singular and linear, about “moving on” as part of an ongoing modernization project and interlinked to forgetting about the past – thus a kind of tempocentrism through reifying the present/future. As mentioned earlier, this discourse limits the spaces for genocide survivors to speak about their experiences and neglects their time of trauma. With the adoption of a postcolonial temporal lens, the sharp division between war and peace becomes blurred given the persistence of (everyday) wars of violence against women and imposed silences on ethnic differences. Masking discrimination and abuse may sow the seeds for renewed conflict, thus making the future a perilous one.

While conceptualizations of time are related to repetitions and ruptures in a particular space, such as Rwanda, broader application is made possible by also focusing on process rather than seeing the three discursive formations as fixed. With more second-generation NAPs upcoming, the temporal lens may be further developed, as it provides a useful tool for recovering pasts, understanding presents, and defining new visions for WPS futures. It helps us to understand particular empirical WPS issues, such as how particular political or gender struggles in the past continue to influence contemporary issues. Taking time seriously in further studies may reveal patterns across countries and regions that could influence the way in which we visualize the co-existence of diverse WPS perspectives. Reading Rwanda’s WPS engagement as one of dis/continuity also ultimately provides an empirical basis for theorizing past and present in future WPS work in non-binary ways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Diana Højlund Madsen is a senior gender researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. She has worked extensively on gender and conflict with a specific focus on Rwanda, gender, and norm translation. She has also worked extensively on gender and politics with a specific focus on Ghana.

Heidi Hudson is a Professor of International Relations and Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. In 2018, she was the Claude Ake Visiting Chair at the Nordic Africa Institute and the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden. She specializes in feminist security studies, with a specific focus on Africa.

Notes

1 Perspectives raised at a panel on “The Future of WPS” (International Studies Association Annual Convention, Toronto, March 27–30, 2019) ranged from considering NAPs as colonial products of the bureaucratization of the WPS agenda to emphasizing its production across a number of diffused spaces.

2 The Windhoek Declaration was instrumental in the adoption of UNSCR 1325 under Namibia’s Security Council Presidency as a result of extensive lobbying from women’s organizations in the Global South.

3 The focus on repetitions and ruptures is inspired by Reyntjens (2018).

4 UN Women is currently based in Rwanda and plays a role in supporting the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in the country.

5 The board had the Minister of Gender and Family Promotion as Chairperson and representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as First Deputy Chairperson, the Ministry of Defense as Second Deputy Chairperson, and the Forum of Rwandan Women Parliamentarians as Third Deputy Chairperson.

6 This goal was formulated in the Vision 2020 plan, but the deadline was later extended to 2035 due to economic constraints (Twagiramungu and Sebarenzi 2019).

7 According to Powley (2003), Rwandan women were not so influential in the colonial period. However, Berry (2018) describes one Queen Mother – Kanjogera of the Abega clan – who became very powerful and, among other things, planned a coup d’état and put her son on the throne. The name “Kanjogera” has become synonymous with a woman who wields power and is the real authority behind the public face of a male leader.

8 In the first NAP, rehabilitation forms part of the protection pillar as a residual theme, but in the second NAP, relief, recovery, and rehabilitation is a stand-alone pillar.