Gendered Harm, Legal Remedies and Women's Reintegration: A Case Study of Kenyan Women Returnees from Al Shabaab
type: CreativeWork
description: This research offers an original, granular account of the gendered harms faced by Kenyan women returnees in the prescriptive and programmatic operationalisation of reintegration norms in DDR-P/CVE processes. To do so, this research answers following question: ‘What gendered harms arise in operationalising reintegration norms in international policy frameworks for women returnees from terrorist groups and how can these be remedied?’ This thesis focuses on Kenyan women returnees from Al Shabaab and draws on doctrinal analysis of policy documents, including, Women, Peace and Security Agenda and empirical data collated from key informant interviews, including, Kenyan Anti-Terror Police Unit and civil society organisations. From these, I found that women returnees face specific gendered harms as part of their reintegration processes. These harms originate from the marginalised social location these women are situated which invisiblises their experiences, leading to their exclusion from P/CVE policy and programming. This overall finding encompasses the three main contributions of this thesis as follows. First, I generated an analytical gendered harm framework which drew from existing literature on feminist theory on law, peace and security. While a variety of previous studies have applied the term ‘gendered harm’ as illustrative of different ways in which women experience harm, my framework extends these illustrations into an analytical framing by developing three broad considerations as follows. These are, first, subjects of gendered harm, which focuses on the male body politic and women-as-victims framing; objects, which looks into the character and typology of gendered harm, including, ways in which this harm is social, relational and hierarchical; and, third, the importance of provision of remedy. In its second main contribution, this thesis deploys the developed gendered harm framework to identify the exclusions that women returnees experience in the prescriptive and…
abstract: This research offers an original, granular account of the gendered harms faced by Kenyan women returnees in the prescriptive and programmatic operationalisation of reintegration norms in DDR-P/CVE processes. To do so, this research answers following question: ‘What gendered harms arise in operationalising reintegration norms in international policy frameworks for women returnees from terrorist groups and how can these be remedied?’ This thesis focuses on Kenyan women returnees from Al Shabaab and draws on doctrinal analysis of policy documents, including, Women, Peace and Security Agenda and empirical data collated from key informant interviews, including, Kenyan Anti-Terror Police Unit and civil society organisations. From these, I found that women returnees face specific gendered harms as part of their reintegration processes. These harms originate from the marginalised social location these women are situated which invisiblises their experiences, leading to their exclusion from P/CVE policy and programming. This overall finding encompasses the three main contributions of this thesis as follows. First, I generated an analytical gendered harm framework which drew from existing literature on feminist theory on law, peace and security. While a variety of previous studies have applied the term ‘gendered harm’ as illustrative of different ways in which women experience harm, my framework extends these illustrations into an analytical framing by developing three broad considerations as follows. These are, first, subjects of gendered harm, which focuses on the male body politic and women-as-victims framing; objects, which looks into the character and typology of gendered harm, including, ways in which this harm is social, relational and hierarchical; and, third, the importance of provision of remedy. In its second main contribution, this thesis deploys the developed gendered harm framework to identify the exclusions that women returnees experience in the prescriptive and…
author: Wabuke, Emmah
language: eng
keywords: Al Shabaab, gendered harm, Kenya, Keywords: gendered harm, women returnees, countering violent extremism, reintegration, reintegration, women returnees
license: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/6f3b81ca-ba64-4794-80dc-418bc6b410a1/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2023-11-10
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:33:00Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.109668