“Our Cry as Women Leaders”: Crisis Response Intervention, Customary Governance, and the Masculinization of Peace in Solomon Islands

This discussion examines how and why the peacebuilding environment in Solomon Islands presents profound constraints for women despite the promises of global, regional, and national policy stipulating the importance of this activity. The analysis draws on theories of scale to explain how gendered geometries of power are configured in the Solomon Islands peacebuilding environment. These power geometries are shaped by interplaying local and global factors and have limited the space that is open to women peacebuilders. A “crisis response” orientation to Australian-led conflict stabilization missions has been coupled with a national bureaucratic tendency to equate “customary governance” with peacebuilding. Both trends have augmented masculine power and constrained the space for women to engage in conflict mediation. As I show, these developments contradict United Nations Women Peace and Security principles, set out in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and localized in National Action Plans developed in Australia and in Solomon Islands. These expressly stipulate the importance of supporting women’s contributions to peacebuilding when conflict flares. The article’s analysis makes clear how women continue to push against these constraints but against overwhelming pressures. It concludes with the claim that conflict mediation processes can only be made more durable in Solomon Islands if the discriminatory gendered geometries of power identified are confronted and greater emphasis is placed on women’s customary authority and capacities as peacebuilders.