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Pragmatic scepticism in implementing the Women, Peace and Security agenda

ABSTRACT Conditions for women in the Global South have increasingly become acknowledged as critical components of global security. However, the development and implementation of policies to address these conditions, particularly the UN Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, have rested on essentializing assumptions of women’s victimhood and certain traditional roles in society. On the basis of these assumptions, national governments, transnational NGOs and international organizations provide financial and technical assistance to women's local civil society organizations to implement the WPS agenda. In response, local women’s organizations in Côte d'Ivoire perform “pragmatic scepticism” in the face of these essentializing international discourses. Local women, challenge the discourses at the same time they reclaim them for their own needs. This article uncovers two frames that women articulate – vulnerability and motherhood – as markers of identity in advocating for peace and security and as instruments to attract attention from the international community.