The (Dis-)Appearance of Race in the United Kingdom’s Institutionalization and Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

Abstract

Abstract In contrast to earlier, more celebratory accounts, more recent scholarship on the United Nations Security Council's Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda reveals the racial–colonial logics deeply woven into the very fabric of the agenda that contribute to reproducing hierarchies, inequalities, and exclusions. Building on this body of literature, this article investigates in more detail how race shapes the United Kingdom's engagement with and institutionalization of the WPS agenda, reinforcing particular domestic identities. Drawing from a rich body of new empirical material, including documentary sources and interview data, the analysis excavates four interlinked racial–colonial practices: (1) the erasure of Britain's imperial and colonial history; (2) the production of new geographies of empire; (3) the construction of cultural inferiority of the “other”; and (4) nation branding efforts that construct the UK as the repository of leadership and expertise. I argue that the UK serves as an illustrative case that yields significant empirical and theoretical insights regarding how race is central to the institutionalization and implementation of the WPS agenda by national governments in the Global North and how, in turn, the WPS agenda enables those governments to identify as morally and culturally superior, thereby justifying racialized hierarchies in international relations.