Gender and community security

The gendered nature of insecurity, and therefore of efforts to promote security and build peace, is now widely recognised. Despite inconsistent implementation, promoting gender-sensitive approaches to security provision has become part of the peacebuilding canon.

Community security is a people-centered approach to tackling issues causing insecurity that aims to provide opportunities for people to identify their security concerns and to plan and implement collective responses.

This report explores the role of gender in community security programmes and looks at what has worked and what hasn't in a range of contexts: Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, South Sudan and Yemen. Specifically it addresses three core questions:

  • How can community security programming be made more gender-sensitive?
  • Does taking a gender-sensitive approach to community security programming improve its outcomes?
  • How effective are community security approaches in preventing and reducing gender-based violence?

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