Where and how does food security feature in the Women, Peace and Security agenda?

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Peace, conflict, and food security are each deeply gendered, with important gendered differences in both the experiences of these phenomena and their subsequent impacts. However, there has been relatively limited attention paid to their intersection – namely, how gender shapes food security in peace and conflict. Moreover, despite significant policy focus on all three dimensions at multiple levels, policy processes related to gender, peace and conflict, and food security tend to proceed on parallel tracks with limited overlap. This study sets out to map these points of intersection, analyzing where food security features in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) policy agenda. Drawing on a combination of content analysis across a large corpus of WPS policy material and in-depth qualitative discussion of select cases, we find that, first, there is an absolute neglect of food security and its gendered dimensions in the WPS agenda overall; second, food security is relatively neglected even in comparison to other domains of human security, broadly defined; and third, food security is neglected even in contexts of extreme food crisis. We conclude with a discussion of these gaps and their implications for gender equality, inclusive peace, and sustainable food security.