Experts and Enemies - A Field Study on the Role of Women’s Organizations in the Implementation Process of UNSCR 1325 in Serbia

Abstract: This bachelor thesis and Minor Field Study examines how women’s experiences of security are used in the process of implementing UNSCR 1325 in Serbia. The essay aims to touch the boundary between security policy in its traditional sense and a standpoint feminist view on security. Feminist security policy has gained ground the latest decades, and have contributed to a wider focus on human security instead of national security – and thereby women. One of the biggest documents to represent the broadened concept of security is UNSCR 1325. In Serbia, women’s organizations have ever since the 90s wars in former Yugoslavia fought an uphill battle to gain support for their agenda on women, peace and security. By using the standpoint feminist perspective on security, combined with theories of experience based knowledge as potential expertise, the thesis investigates how experiences of security – possessed by women’s organizations, are used in the policy process. The study is based on 17 interviews made in Serbia, with representatives of women’s NGOs, governmental institutions and other for the policy process essential actors. The study shows that women’s organizations on the one hand are seen as the biggest experts on women’s security. In the same time they are unable to transfer their experience based knowledge to the implementation process of UNSCR 1325, because of the different conceptions of what the resolution really should mean.