Gender and Peacebuilding

Description

The Master’s Degree is composed by a set of intertwining courses and a thesis project that offers a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge, incorporating historic and current events from around the world. The Programme is distributed over a three-term timeline (two semesters and one research term). Courses will be taught in intensive three week time periods requiring 45 hours of class work under the guidance of a highly qualified professor and recognized international guest lecturers. During the final term, students are expected to finalize their work at UPEACE main campus through the completion of a Thesis. In order to receive the Master of Arts Degree in Gender and Peacebuilding, students must complete a total of 40 credits, which includes a written thesis.

Objectives
Through the Master’s Degree, the Department of Gender and Peace Education expects to:

• Respond to the demands and challenges faced by students who are continuing their education and mid-career professionals who are working in government, multi-lateral or bi-lateral institutions, non-governmental organizations and private enterprises.
• Empower men and women to become more effective players in the processes of peace with the clear understanding that conflict, violence, and war have a variety of impacts upon men and women that, while comparable, are not the same.
• Provide a solid education in the prevention, management, and resolution of conflicts, including post-conflict interventions, from a gender perspective.
• Offer a theoretical and practical approach to the field of gender studies using material drawn from the fields of Anthropology, Development Studies, Economics, History, Human Rights, Law, Natural Resources, Political Science, Religion, and Sociology.
  

Course Descriptions
The Department for Gender and Peace Education has worked with professors from around the world for over a year to develop a set of truly unique courses that address the interface between the fields of Gender and Peacebuilding. The final product of these consultations has produces a demanding curriculum that requires students to think critically about the two overarching themes while covering a broad range of issues. The new programme for the academic year 2007-2008 presents significant improvements, including better course offerings so that students can tailor their Master’s Degree experience to their own interests.

GPB-6011
Gender Studies and Peacebuilding
September 19 — October 9, 2007
Professor Sara Sharratt 3 credits
The course analyzes the complex relationships between gender, violence and peace. The perspective proposed is that of political theory which will allow for a detailed analysis of the specific relations of gender and power including but not limited to economic power. It will also focus on the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity and religion.

GPB-6020
Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods
October 15 — November 2, 2007
Professors Amr Abdalla, Eliana Carvalho and Rolain Borel 3 credits
This course will develop student’s theoretical knowledge and applied skills in conducting qualitative, quantitative and participatory research in the fields of peace building and conflict analysis and resolution, with a strong emphasis on gender issues and their cultural implications.

GPB-6030
Cultures and Learning: From Violence towards Peace
November 7 — November 20, 2007
Professor Tony Jenkins 3 credits
This course has two primary learning goals. The first is to develop a deep and critical understanding of the underlying causes of violence by examining the origins of violence in the human community to its current institutionalized presence. This inquiry is an essential step in acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills and capacities to be able transform the institutions and unquestioned beliefs that promote and sustain systems of direct and indirect violence. We will give special attention to the lenses of militarism; socio-economics and patriarchy (gender) as meta-culprits/cultural reproducers of a system of violence.

The second goal is to develop a deep sense and awareness of how we (collectively and individually) learn and the relationship of learning to change. In so doing we will examine a variety existing literature on the philosophy of education and educational change. Special emphasis will be given to inquiring into the formation of our own attitudes and beliefs.

GPB-6060
Gender and Human Rights
November 26 — December 14, 2007
Professor Juan Amaya 3 credits
The course will therefore develop from the idea that human rights are the basis for peace, justice and democracy and that there can be no peace without justice and no justice without human rights from a gender perspective. Human Rights will be defined as a code of conduct, an agenda for development, a guide for good governance, based on the principles of equality, accountability, participation and legally binding instruments.

GPB-6090
A Gender Analysis of the Environment and Sustainable Developmen
February 4 — February 22, 2008
Professor Lorena Aguilar 3 credits
The three-week course “A Gender Analysis of the Environment and Sustainable Development” is designed to provide technical, methodological and practical inputs in order to understand the importance of gender issues for the environmental sector. Throughout the three weeks the students will be exposed to the major trends that have been used for the incorporation of gender in the environmental sector. Also, practical skills will be gain in order to mainstream gender in the project cycle (elaboration of proposals, planning, monitoring and evaluation, indicators), specific ecosystem analysis from a gender perspective (coastal zones, forest, watersheds, semiarid and arid zones, protected areas and biodiversity) and elaboration of gender policies for the environmental sector.

GPB-6010
Gender and Media
February 27 — March 11, 2008
Professor Laura Arroyo 2 credits
This course aims at identifying some of the areas on which the media perpetuates patriarchal practices in different cultures and societies.
From a multicultural and transnational perspective, we will examine how feminist media studies have contributed to the analysis of the specific role of the media in reinforcing social relations, in particular gender relations of power. We will work within the theoretical frameworks elaborated by critical and cultural media feminist scholars.
The students will learn about best or poor practices by identifying examples of those in your own culture, while at the same time resolving the question of how the gender bias approach can be changed through the media.

GPB-6022
Gender mainstreaming in peacekeeping operations and in humanitarian assistance>
March 24 — April 11 2008
Professor Nadine Puechguirbal 3 credits
This course is designed to provide theoretical as well as field-based knowledge on the gender dimension of peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance. Throughout the two weeks, the students will be exposed to the major trends that have been used for the incorporation of a gender perspective in peacekeeping and humanitarian fields. Policies, programmes and practical case studies will be shared with the students with the aim of getting a thorough understanding of the positive and negative aspects of peacekeeping operations and humanitarian activities in different environments worldwide. At the end of the two-week course, the students shall be able to understand the cost of ignoring gender in peacekeeping mission and the delivery of humanitarian assistance and to analyze current situations with a gender perspective.

GPB-6041
Health and Gender Studies: Issues of Peace and Conflict
April 16 – April 29 2008
Professor Anna Arroba 3 credits
Health and access to health care is a human right, so is the capacity to determine our sexuality and to live without violence. Most women in the world, whether at war or in peace, do not have these or any rights, a vast majority live in poverty and at the same time they are responsible for all their families, and for the simple fact of being female they have to bear the endemic gender violence of their particular cultures in its varied forms: incest, rape, genital mutilation, kidnapping, sexual and psychological violence, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, etc..

In order to make changes it is important to understand how we have arrived at this situation, to do this we will analyze the situation of women from a historical and anthropological ´history and politics of the body´ perspective, which also includes, gender, rights, class ethnicity, colonialism, post-colonialism and neo-colonialism, as well as categories and hierarchies such as sexualities and racisms.

GPB-6050
Practices of Conflict Management and Peacebuilding
May 5 — May 16 2008
Professor Matthew Norton 3 credits
In the first part of the course we will first look at the Conflict Resolution approach to theorizing conflict, understanding its origins, the vocabularies for speaking of conflict in ways that “get to the heart of the issue” and focusing on the root causes. Then we will move on to a critique of what talking in these ways fails to say – and with what repercussions – about gender, power, privilege, and difference. The second part of the course addresses various responses to conflict. The third part looks at peace processes and the challenges presented by the concept of peace building.

Expected entering profile
In accordance with the mandate of the University for Peace, the Department for Gender and Peace Education recruits students from less developed nations, although students from more developed nations are also welcome. Special attention will be paid to those applicants who provide UPEACE with the opportunity to “train the trainers”, including those involved with the media, education, public prosecutors’ offices, the military, or the civil police. In accordance with the commitment of the University for Peace to the United Nations, a number of UN officials and officers of bi-lateral or multi-lateral organizations will also be considered. The Department for Gender and Peace Education is conscious of the fact that many gender programmes are weighted heavily with female participants, and will therefore actively engage in a recruitment strategy that attempts to bring equal numbers of men and women to the university.

Exit profile of graduates
Students of the Master’s Degree Programme can expect to gain the skills and tools that enable them to serve as gender trainers or officers, to participate in peace negotiations, to solve conflicts through the gender perspective and to work in international organizations, humanitarian aid agencies, and governmental institutions. Participants in the programme will also acquire advanced skills in research, data collection, and critical analysis. Upon graduation, students may also expect to be able to successfully write grant proposals, as well as to design, implement and evaluate a variety of programmes and projects, based upon a profound knowledge of the conflicts and struggles brought about by discrimination based on gender-oriented power relations. Graduates will be able to recognize the enormous possibilities that the gender perspective offers to men and women in the prevention of conflicts, sitting at the negotiating table, or participating in post-conflict intervention. They will implement the concepts of equality and equity in their daily public and private lives.

Career development
Graduates from Master’s Degree Programme are expected to work in international organizations, humanitarian aid agencies, and governmental institutions.

Faculty
Sara SHARRATT (USA – Costa Rica) Ph.D in Clinical Psychology and Professor Emerita of Psychology from Sonoma State University, California where she taught for 18 years. She specializes in Gender Studies and Feminist Psychology.

Tony JENKINS (USA) Co-Director of the Peace Education Center at Teachers College, Columbia University; the Global Coordinator of the International Institutes on Peace Education (IIPE); and Coordinator of the Global Campaign for Peace Education. He has extensive international consultative experience, including work with ministries of education, universities, NGOs and UN agencies. His current work focuses on pedagogical research and educational design and development with special interest in alternative security systems, disarmament and gender.

Eliana CARVALHO (Brazil) has nearly ten years of work experience in all aspects of education, including teaching, administration, research, planning, curriculum development and teacher training. She was the Director of the American International School of Costa Rica for two years, and she taught elementary school for five years. She has worked on research projects for the World Bank on school improvement and for Harvard University on early language and literacy development. Mrs. Carvalho earned her B.S. in Mass Communication from Emerson College and her Ed.M. in Administration, Planning and Social Policy from Harvard University. She currently works as an assistant professor at the University for Peace in the Department of Gender and Peace Education.

Lorena AGUILAR (Costa Rica) has a Master’s degree in anthropology; cultural ecology major from the University of Kansas. Nine years of work in the field of development and design of public policy projects in Central America, and eight years actively engaged in the incorporation of social and gender aspects into the use and conservation of natural resources in Mesoamerica. Her current position is Global Gender Advisor to the World Conservation Union and Regional Coordinator of the Social Area in Mesoamerica.

Anna ARROBA (British – Ecuador) has a Master’s degree in gender, history and cultural studies. Is founder and current director of the ONG Women in Health Association (AMES) that woks to provide health and medical services through research and direct action to costarrican women. She has more than thirty years of experience on research and teaching as consultant and professor in universities and UN agencies worldwide.

Amr ABDALLA (Egypt) Professor and Dean for Academic Programmes at the University for Peace. Prior to his arrival at UPEACE he was a senior fellow with the Program on Peacekeeping Policy, School of Public Policy, at George Mason University. He was also a Professor of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences.

Nadine PUECHGUIRBAL, (France) Senior Gender Advisor for the UN Mission of Stabilization in Haiti (MINUSTAH) since June 2004. She is a PhD candidate on the subject “Gender perspectives in post conflict: comparative study between Somalia, Rwanda and Eritrea” at the Department of Political Sciences, University La Sorbonne, Paris, France.

Juan AMAYA, (Colombia/Netherlands) Deputy Head of Department, Department o International Law and Human Rights Doctorandus in International Legal Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands. Disciplines: Public International Law and Human Rights

Matthew NORTON (USA) received his Master’s Degree in Conflict Resolution from the University of Bradford. He is a PhD student in the department of Sociology at Yale University, and a Junior Fellow of Yale’s Center for Cultural Sociology. He was the director of the International Peace Studies Master’s degree programme at UPEACE 2003-2005.

Laura ARROYO (Costa Rica) holds the position of Alumni and Student Affairs Officer at the UPEACE Department of Academic Administration. She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and Diplomacy with a specialization in Project Management from Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica. Her research interests include the Incorporation of the Gender Perspective in the Development Cooperation Policy of the European Union and its impact on the Cooperation Programs for Central America. Prior to her work at UPEACE, she worked as Program Coordinator for the Center for Academic Programs Abroad CAPA and the Costa Rican Culture and Language Institute ICLC. She also developed research for a psychological consultanship on sexual abuse on women during their childhood and adulthood. Laura also taught English as a second language for beginners and intermediate students at the Cultural Center of Languages, Costa Rica, where she later became the administrator of one of its branches.

Dina RODRIGUEZ (Peru) Head of Department of Gender and Peace Education. MA in Education, University of Texas, at Austin, USA; BA in Mathematics, Alverno College, Milwaukee, USA; BA in Teaching, National University of Education, Peru. Trained in Human Right and Gender Studies at the International Institute of Human Rights, Rene Cassin, Strasbourg, France. Certificate: Building Capacities for Peacekeeping and Women’s Dimensions in Peace Processes, European Union-Latin American Office, Santiago, Chile. Director of the Educational Area: Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, San Jose, Costa Rica. Director: Center for Educational Resources (IIDH), San Jose, Costa Rica. Consultant; Secretaria de Estado do Planejamento, Brasilia, Brazil. Programme Officer, Ministry of Education, Lima, Peru. Disciplines: Human Rights Education, Gender and women’s Studies, Education for Peace.

Former Students’ Theses

Class of 2003/2004

Cathy A. Onekalit –Uganda
A Generation of Thorns Easily Made yet Hard to Break: The Child Soldiers of Norhtern Uganda

Daniel Ketema – Kenya
Eritrea’s Peace Army in Exile: Diaspora Eritreans’ attempt to effect change in Eritrea through non-violent struggle

Anna Kirey – Ukraine
Non-formal education in gender and peace for young people in Kyrgystan: needs analysis, theories and methods

Nisreen Hannoun – Jordan
Reconstruction in Afghanistan: Women, Agency and Constitutional Reform

Roxanne Myers – Guyana
In Search of Peace – Women in Political Parties in Guyana

Stella Laloyo – Uganda
Security Concernes among Women Living in Internally Displaced Camps in Northern Uganda

Angela Rosinni – Philippines
Women in the Sea of War: Promoting the Participation of the Bangsa Moro Women in the Mundanao Peace Process

Gall Harmat – Israel
Fresh Meat, Fresh Sweets – Militarism and Sexism in Israel

Adilia Caravaca – Costa Rica
The Impact of Increased Representation of Women in Parliament: The Costa Rica Case

Hovig Etyemezian – Lebanon
Analysis of Armenian Women’s Empowerment Status and Contribution to the Creation of a Post-Genocide Diasporan Society in Lebanon

Karina Dianderas – Peru
The Paradoxical Role of Women Within Sendero Luminoso: The Myriad of Reasons Behind Their Refusal to Continue Fighting

Pam Steager – United States
A Content and Process Evaluation of the post-September 11, 2001 “Peace casts” on www.fire.or.cr

Retika Rajbhandari - Nepal
Shifting women’s lives: the impact of armed conflict on the lives of Nepali women

Class of 2004/2005

Tsion Tadesse Abebe – Ethiopia
Women and Poverty in Etiopía: Assesment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper

Maria Marta Delgado – Uruguay
Women's resistance against the military dictatorship in Uruguay during the '70s and the '80s.

Jide Fajoyomi – Nigeria
Overcoming Poverty for Gender-Sensitive Peace Building in Nigeria

Catherine Garcia Porras – Peru
Challenges of Women in Policing: Traffic Policewomen improving the law enforcement agency in Peru

Adrina Rose Garibian – United States
Deconstructing Porgess: A Feminist Critique of US Women in the Iraqi War

Tahmina Khakimona – Tajikistan
Women and Islam

Shannon Marie Mathieu – United States
Linking Gender and Disarmament: Women’s Nonviolent Responses to Gendered Militarization and Nuclear Proliferation

Irene Adriana Munz – United States
Empowerment of Peace Builders by Overcoming Fear

Olumide Sunday Olaniyan – Nigeria
The Relevance of Gender Equality in Promoting Nigeria’s Development

Jenifa John Omolo – Tanzania
Domestic violence and HIV / AIDS – The Case of Tanzania

Titilope Rasheedat Salam – Nigeria
Exploring Women’s Human Rights under the Sharia Penal Code in Northern Nigeria: The Burden of Safiya and Amina

Olivera Simic – Bosnia-Herzegovina
Gender Side of Peace Building Efforts – Women’s Role in the Aftermath with Particular Emphases on Bosnia and Herzegovina

Yas Taherzadeh-Malmiri – Great Britain
The Gendered Dimensions of HIV/AIDS in South Africa

Denisse Termin Rosenfeld – Mexico
Women’s Crimes in Juarez City, Mexico

Iyenemi Wokoma – Nigeria
Assessing the Accomplishments of Women’s Non-violent Direct Action in the Niger Delta

Class of 2005/2006

Elisa Audo - USA
Prospects for Meditation as an Intervention for Domestic Violence Batterers

Sujata Thapa Bhattarai - Nepal
Beyond victim hood: Women’s involvement in peace action in Nepal

Alison Casey - USA
Homegrown Peace: community –driven development in post-war peacebuilding

Annika M. Gifford - USA
Say it, say sorry: gender, justice and “comfort women”

Monica Henry - USA
“Good military wives” stay “in the closet”. Obstacles to openly opposing operation iraqi freedom (OIF)

Andrew Hicks - Guyana
Men and their families: the inter-dynamics of fatherhood and masculinity among inner-city males

Alex Sivalie Mbayo - Sierra Leone
Social and economic impact of rape as a weapon of war

Diana Maria Montealegre Mongrovejo - Colombia
The current alliance of the feminist, pacifist and antimilitarist movement ruta pacífica and the indigenous women´s movement of tierradentro. Towards an indigenous feminism.

Sara Niazi - Pakistan
Islamic feminism: is this the way ahead? An iranian case study

Tomoko Ohtsuki - Japan
Are we asking too much?: exclusive gender mainstreaming efforts by international organizations

Abigail Stucker - USA
A feminist framework: Narratives that redefine fertility.

Yunike Zulu - Zambia
Power relations and the incidence of rape during armed conflict and a gender analysis of post-conflict demobilisation and reintegration programmes: the case of Rwanda

Class of 2006/2007

Katherine Braggs – USA
The Prohibition of Women’s Ordination in the Catholic Church: Transforming the Movement to a Human Rights Framework

Joshua Cerretti – USA
The Gendered Exports of Corporate – Driven Globalization

Makda Maru – Ethiopia
Engendering the Darfur Peace Process: Roles and Responsibilities of the Main Actors

Dinoo Mathews – India
Domestic Violence and Women in Public Life: The Case of Women Elected Members in Rural Local Governments in India

Grace Tasila Mbewe – Zambia
A Seat in the Grass: Gender Analysis of the Gacaca Courts in Rwanda

Odette Mukazi Mutanguha – Rwanda
Women in Conflict Situations: A Case Study of Rwanda

Anat Nir – Israel
Taking it to the Bank: Women's Financial Empowerment in Israel

Siyami Takha – Cameroon
The Place of Women’s Rights in the Cameroonian Family Laws and Traditions

Verónica Ticas – USA
The Lived Experiences of Immigrant Salvadoran Women who send Remittances Home on a Frequent Basis

Yolisa Joy de Jager – Canada
Aboriginal women and the Canadian Federal Prison System

Mariella Cruzado – Peru
About men, Superheroes and Such: The Construction of Masculinities in the Upper-middle Class in Lima.

Elshaday Woldeyesus – Ethiopia
Effects of Sexual Harassment on Female Students in Campus: the Case of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

Annie Kiel - USA
Sex trafficking in Costa Rica

Kathryn Goesel – USA
Sex education and Abstinence Education. Comparative Study US and CR