Narrating everyday peace and (in)security: Somaliland women’s lived realities as sites of contestation

Abstract: This article is a collection of Somali women’s narratives during Somaliland’s early peace and reconciliation conferences (1992–7) and their experience of the post-conflict reconstruction period (2000–12). Women’s experience with violence, insecurity and prevailing gender norms highlights that peace is not the absence of gendered violence and that everyday peace is mired in political stability and physical insecurity. Twenty years on, women’s narratives have helped to fill gaps by showing how women’s contributions have been sidelined but also demonstrate their unique experiences of ‘peace’ and ‘security’. This has been instrumental to framing Somaliland’s political history as a region exempt from the civil strife manifest in other parts of the Horn. This article examines the sites of contestations and conflict that have emerged as a consequence of women’s narratives being marginalised and its implications on how ‘peace’ and ‘security’ are practised and framed in the Somaliland context.

Keywords: Peace, security, gendered violence, Somaliland, narratives.

Article posted to Journal of the British Academy, volume 10, supplementary issue 1 (Everyday peacebuilding and practices in Kenya, South Sudan, Somaliland and Ghana).