Women, Peace and Security Advocacy in the UK: Resisting and (Re)Producing Hierarchies of Gender, Race, and Coloniality

This thesis asks: How do Non-Governmental Organisations advocate for the Women, Peace and Security agenda in the UK, and with what effects? Although there is a vast scholarship on civil society generally divided between liberal and critical perspectives, advocacy has been theoretically overlooked. Understood as a by-product of advocacy efforts, this literature renders advocates devoid of complexity and corporeality. Instead, by drawing from postcolonial and poststructural feminism I theorise advocacy as a discursive and embodied practice that is intersectional and relational. I contend that, by theorising advocacy in this way, we are much better placed to think about advocacy not only as a product, but also as an embodied practice. Moreover, distinguishing between 'NGOs'/'civil society actors' and 'civil society' as a sphere of interaction and field of power relations, the thesis disrupts the purported separation of state/non-state and co-opted/independent. This enables an interrogation of the relationship between the UK Government and NGOs and, more broadly, as it relates to the discursive-embodied nature of advocacy, as well as the effects thereof. This thesis draws from a rich body of original material including 65 interviews with members of the UK Government and NGOs and documentary material. It demonstrates how gender, race, and coloniality structure the subject positions of NGOs advocating for WPS. Rather than always holding the UK Government to account on WPS, most of the NGOs perform the role of 'critical friend' thereby respecting and contributing to the (re)production of global hierarchies, and constructions, of geopolitical power. Encouraged to conduct advocacy in particular ways, advocacy is disciplined and self-disciplined. Examining advocacy around consultations with civil society organisations in conflict zones, immigration policy, Northern Ireland, and the regulation of arms, I argue WPS advocacy is an inherently ambivalent practice challenging and reproducing dominant understandings of gender, race, and coloniality.