Interrogating the “local” in Women, Peace and Security: reflections on research on and in the UK and Iraq

The “local” plays an important yet ambiguous role in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. In each of our PhD research projects, the term “local” came up frequently during our fieldwork: in readings, in interviews, and in policy and advocacy documents. The local is often used as a descriptor for both a place (the “everyday”) and a group of actors (the “local population”), which for WPS often refers to the constituency of “women and girls” located in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. However, the ambiguity that accompanies the numerous articulations of the term by different actors working on WPS in various settings has meant that we have both had trouble defining and locating the local in conceptual and practical terms across our respective case studies (the UK and Iraq). Although the designation clearly plays an important role in WPS, the local remains nebulous. This raises important questions regarding the discourse, policy, practice, and study of the agenda.