The masculine logic of DDR and SSR in the Rwanda Defence Force

Abstract

Since the 1994 genocide and civil war, the Rwandan government has implemented an externally funded disarmament, demobilization and reintegration/security sector reform (DDR/SSR) programme culminating in the consolidation of armed groups into a new, professionalized Rwanda Defence Force. Feminists argue that DDR/SSR initiatives that exclude combatant women and girls or ignore gendered security needs fail to transform the political conditions that led to conflict. Less attention has been paid to how gendered relations of power play out through gender-sensitive DDR and SSR initiatives that seek to integrate women and transform hyper-masculine militarized masculinities. This article investigates how Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme is governed by an oppressive masculine logic. Drawing on critical studies on men and masculinities and feminist work on peacebuilding, myths and the politics of belonging, it argues that Rwanda’s locally owned DDR/SSR programme places the military and militarization at the centre of the country’s nation-building programme. Through various ‘boundary-construction’ practices, the Rwandan government attempts to stabilize the post-1994 gender order and entrench the hegemony of a new militarized masculinity in Rwandan society. The case study draws on field research conducted in 2014 and 2015 and a discourse analysis of historical accounts, policy documents and training materials of the Rwanda Defence Force.

Keywords

DDR gender militarization peacebuilding Rwanda SSR

Introduction

Feminist scholars have argued for the importance of gender inclusivity and breaking the association between masculinity and militarism as a key step towards ensuring that organized conflict does not re-emerge after large-scale violence (Cahn, 2011; Hamber, 2016; Specht, 2013). Within societies transitioning out of civil conflict, two of the most visible stabilization efforts are formal, externally funded disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR) programmes. Described by the United Nations as ‘an integral part of post-conflict peace consolidation’ (UNDDRRC, 2017), DDR incorporates the capturing, storing and documenting of civilian weaponry in state-sanctioned efforts to demilitarize civilian populations, assimilate former combatants back into civilian society and integrate armed groups into a new national defence force (Munive, 2013). SSR takes these efforts further by reconstituting and modernizing the national military service (Sedra, 2016). Together, DDR and SSR programmes are intended to strengthen political settlements, establish good governance and facilitate sustainable peace (Edmonds et al., 2009: 31).

Formal DDR/SSR programmes have been widely criticized for excluding women and girls, creating gendered insecurity and denying women access to justice (Basini, 2013; Mckay and Mazurana, 2004). However, less attention has been paid to DDR/SSR programmes that explicitly address gender, with little to no scholarship focusing on the impact such programmes have on masculinities (Duriesmith, 2015; Specht, 2013). Feminist and critical military scholars share a concern that externally funded and implemented DDR/SSR programmes perpetuate colonial ideas about civilizational progress (Hills, 2015; MacKenzie, 2012). Yet few gendered analyses have examined ‘home-grown’ DDR/SSR programmes pushed by local elites. This means that current knowledge about DDR/SSR programmes has disproportionately focused on the lack of gender sensitivity in external interventions, rather than on how locally owned DDR/SSR initiatives may be gender inclusive.

In an attempt to address these gaps, we investigate the masculine logic of Rwanda’s gender-inclusive DDR/SSR programme. We employ the term ‘masculine logic’ to refer to the ordering principles that structure a set of imaginative/discursive and material practices that help to rebuild and remilitarize a society after conflict. The notion of logics picks up on McLeod’s (2015) contention that peacebuilding interventions that outwardly appear to encourage gender equality can support patriarchal outcomes. We suggest that a masculine logic provides an ordering principle that reinforces the dominance of militarized masculinities while appearing to adopt gender-equitable policies, making it distinct from other processes that lead to militarization. To explore this logic, we focus on the discursive/imaginative project of Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme and ask: How has the implementation of a gender-inclusive DDR/SSR programme in Rwanda shaped militarized masculinity? Drawing on critical scholarship on men and masculinities, feminist theorizing on peacebuilding, and feminist research on nation-building, myths and the politics of belonging, we suggest that Rwanda’s locally owned, gender-inclusive DDR/SSR programme adheres to an oppressive masculine logic that places the military and militarization at the centre of the authoritarian government’s state-building project while appearing to be rights based and gender equitable. Peacebuilding is not just dependent on restructuring heterosexual relationships between men and women, as studies examining gender-exclusive DDR/SSR programmes suggest (MacKenzie, 2012). Peacebuilding also functions by restructuring the gender hierarchy among (re)militarized men/masculinities and among women/femininities.

Foregrounding the agency of Rwandan actors, we argue that ‘boundary construction’ is a central component of the imaginative/discursive project of the Rwandan Patriotic Front–led government’s DDR/SSR programme. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) draws on Rwandan myths of belonging and combines them with imported gendered myths that underpin externally funded, gender-inclusive DDR/SSR initiatives to (re)construct the post-rupture gender order. To understand the imaginative/discursive project of DDR/SSR programmes, it is essential to remain attentive to how these efforts relate to pre-existing colonial and postcolonial logics of gender. In the case of Rwanda, the RPF discursively constructs two oppositional militarized gender orders: the colonial gender order, which was dominant until Rwanda achieved independence in 1959, and the Hutu-extremist gender order, which the RPF argues prevailed up to the end of the genocide in 1994. Both gender orders are characterized by the RPF as dependent on transgressive hyper-masculine logics. Through various boundary-construction practices – which include socializing male and female military personnel to be morally virtuous, disciplined, modern Rwandan soldier-citizens; purging deviant or transgressive masculinities and femininities; purifying ex-combatants; and reconstructing the conjugal order – the RPF regime attempts to discursively re-envision and stabilize the post-rupture gender order. In discussing these dynamics, we use the term ‘post-rupture’ rather than the more common term ‘post-conflict’ to indicate that the social conflicts that shape Rwanda did not end in 1994. As Lund (2016: 1204) argues, ‘post-conflict is hardly the definitive end of violence’ and the institutions that emerge after ruptures are not free of the institutional debris of the conflicts that shape them.

We chose Rwanda as our empirical case study because of its international reputation for supporting gender equality, including integrating women into public institutions, and because the externally funded DDR/SSR programme forms a central component of a longstanding locally owned national peacebuilding process that claims to disarm, unify and reconcile a polarized population. The article first outlines the theoretical framework of peacebuilding as an attempt to reconstruct the gender order. We then explore the centrality of gendered myths in post-rupture state-building projects, before undertaking a critical gendered analysis of the DDR/SSR practices of the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF). In doing so, we identify trends in how the Rwandan Patriotic Front appropriates Rwandan and externally produced gendered myths to reform the post-rupture gender order. The article concludes with some reflections on how to understand the masculine logic of DDR/SSR programmes in the light of the Women Peace and Security agenda.

Methodology

To analyse the masculine logic behind Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme, we triangulate discourse analysis with qualitative interviews. Discourse analysis of Rwandan government policy documents, RDF training manuals obtained from the Ministry of Defence and the work of former RPF brigadier general and military historian Frank Rusagara was conducted to: (a) reconstruct the imaginative/discursive project of Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme and (b) identify trends in how external myths and pre-existing Rwandan myths of origin have been appropriated by the RPF to develop contemporary myths about the post-rupture Rwandan nation. We use Barthes’ (1957: 142) definition of contemporary myths as cultural activities communicated discursively either visually or through speech acts to convey secular or religious ideology that over time becomes naturalized as historical reality. Since, as Barthes (1957: 107) suggests, myths are a ‘type of speech’ and people can be vehicles of myths, we reflect on the speech acts performed during interviews to ascertain how individual actors engage in constructions of belonging. We observe how RPF/RDF contemporary myths become conveyed or disrupted in the discourse created by the social subjects that work within the post-rupture military institution. Sixty-five depth interviews were undertaken with male and female soldiers, senior RDF staff and trainers, and government officials as part of another research project. These interviews took place during four field research trips to Rwanda Military Academy (Gako campus) in Musanse and the Ministry of Defence in Kigali between February 2014 and December 2015. Interviews were conducted in Kinyarwanda, French or English, and undertaken by Georgina Holmes and two European research assistants, with Kinyarwanda translators where required. Kinyarwanda interviews were transcribed into English by three Rwandan nationals.

Rwanda scholars observe that Rwandan research participants practise forms of self-censorship either to avoid appearing to criticize or to demonstrate support for the official (public) narratives of the RPF (Burnet, 2012; Holmes, 2013; Straus and Waldorf, 2011). We identify such performances on the part of our research participants (RPF soldiers) as evidence of their engagement in the politics of belonging and their willingness to (publicly) support the regime’s political project. Yet we also reflect on research participants’ personal ‘desires for attachment’ that may influence whether they choose to support or disrupt the DDR/SSR’s imaginative/discursive project during the research encounter (Yuval-Davis, 2006: 198). For this reason, we divide our research participants into two types: (1) those who joined the Rwandan Patriotic Army from the early 1990s to 1997 and are older members of the RPF based in Uganda and (2) new recruits from 1997–2002 (Phase I of the DDR/SSR programme) and 2003–15 (Phases II and III). The RPF-led government discourages the use of ethnicities such as Tutsi, Hutu and Twa, and research participants were not asked their ethnicity. Some chose to self-identify with an ethnic group by articulating their families’ experiences during the early 1990s, though this approach was not consistently adopted. All research participants provided consent and were informed in advance that their responses would be anonymized.

Peacebuilding interventions and rebuilding the gender order

We first situate DDR/SSR within feminist debates about external peacebuilding interventions. Policy discourse on DDR/SSR has tended to direct its attention towards the participation and protection of women and girls, while quantitative approaches focus on the number of women in DDR/SSR or instances of violence against women (Bastick, 2017; Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2006; Mobekk, 2010). These approaches often fail to capture the relationality of gender or the complex dynamics that shape women’s experiences, and rarely consider masculinities. When formal DDR/SSR programmes fail to break the association between manhood and militarism, they are rightly criticized for failing to transform the political conditions that led to violent conflict (Duriesmith, 2017; Umejesi, 2014).

Feminist scholars share a concern with critical military studies scholars that the cosmopolitan values underpinning externally funded DDR/SSR programmes support a Western-centric, neoliberal and expansionist project that requires outsider experts to ‘civilize’ backward, uneducated recipients of the global South (Elliott and Cheeseman, 2004; Jowell, 2018; MacKenzie, 2012). However, to date feminists have focused their efforts on examining how international actors implement DDR/SSR programmes. Local elites are perceived to benefit from external projects, though few gendered analyses have considered how DDR/SSR programmes are implemented when elites in power claim ownership of them. This emphasis on international actors over local elites within feminist international relations leads to both recognition of agency (for example, of women who join oppressive military organizations) and the denial of agency of elites in power who operate within oppressive global structures.

In African contexts, the civilizing mission of DDR/SSR programmes may further entrench colonial stereotypes about Africans as inherently violent and in need of being disciplined and resocialized. Privileging Western liberal values, externally implemented DDR/SSR programmes aim to transition unprofessional, corrupt African militaries into ‘postmodern’ militaries and to transition hyper-masculine, violent and harmful male soldiers into forces for good. This project is expected to support the post-conflict state’s (re-)entry into the neoliberal economic system (MacKenzie, 2012). Reinforcing colonial myths about African men and women, these programmes often buttress another myth, namely, that the origins and ‘act of civilizing’ is a European-owned invention exported to the global South (MacKenzie, 2016; Shilliam, 2012).

Emphasizing agency, Rwanda scholars have considered how local actors implement the RPF government’s DDR/SSR programme (Edmonds et al., 2009; Jowell, 2014; Lötscher, 2016; Rusagara, 2009; Wilén, 2012). Wilén (2012) examines how the RPF-led government has developed a ‘hybrid’ form of state-building that, although funded by external actors, foregrounds the ruling party’s ‘preference for security and stability’ over democratic peace. Like feminist scholars, Edmonds et al. (2009) suggest that the international community’s criterion for measuring the success of DDR/SSR practices – namely, how professional, efficient and capable the national defence force is in establishing domestic security and stability – ignores localized political tensions. More recently, scholars have examined the imaginative/discursive dimension of Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme. Jowell (2014) and Purdeková et al. (2018) consider how narratives about Rwanda’s history have been leveraged by the RPF to transition from rebel to ruler; to restructure and transition the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) into a modern, Rwandan military; and to remilitarize Rwandan society. However, these studies present macro-level analyses that do not account for how gendered power relations operate at the micro level of both the imaginative/discursive and the material/practical projects of DDR/SSR initiatives.

To understand these gendered dimensions, we start from an understanding of war as a site of structural change and contest within or between gender orders and view civil war as an extension of existing struggles over the most privileged position within society (Duriesmith, 2014). Societies are organized in such a way that multiple constructions of masculinity and femininity are arranged to create a hierarchical ordering through which individuals’ lives are structured. This hierarchy is conceptualized by Connell as the gender order. The gender order is produced and reproduced in the gendered rules, practices and norms of the interconnected institutions that constitute the current ‘state of play’ in patriarchy (Connell, 1987: 139). Gender relations are structured hierarchically in the gender order, though they are not fixed and can be remade.

Large-scale violence and conflicts with a significant transgressive element may disrupt the existing gender order, creating space for a new ordering of gender to emerge. Debates on how the gender order may change during conflict particularly emphasize the emergence of violent forms of masculinity and femininity (Duriesmith, 2018; White, 2007). This framing obscures the diverse range of configurations of masculinity and femininity that constitute the gender order and positions violent, transgressive masculinities as hyper-visible in feminist work.

The focus on overt violence neglects how the postwar moment is a site where masculinities and femininities may be discursively and materially reconfigured and the gender order reconstructed (Duncanson and Woodward, 2016). For Hamber (2016), the reconfiguration of masculinities is a central dynamic in the creation of stable societies after war. The transitional period often entails a shift from masculinity defined by exceptional, overt violence committed by a small group of men to widespread everyday violence. The overt violence of political activists in South Africa was rejected in official narratives at the same time as gun ownership, intimate partner violence and violent responses to crime all became more important to mainstream masculinity (Hamber, 2016: 20–21). The creation of a new ‘everyday’ form of South African masculinity is not defined by acts of war, but by militarized acts that remain on the same continuum without producing large-scale disruptions (Cockburn, 2004).

These transformations can be understood through MacKenzie’s (2012) concept of the conjugal order, which suggests that externally implemented peacebuilding initiatives attempt to re-establish rules around family, sexuality and legitimate social relations. MacKenzie’s understanding of the conjugal order extends the notion of the gender order by detailing how perceptions of security are reliant on intimate relationships. The concept of the conjugal order is not synonymous with Connell’s gender order, in that it focuses on normative constructions of heterosexual relationships and does not examine the structural ordering of masculinities and femininities. MacKenzie’s emphasis on intimate relationships and how wartime intimate practices may produce a sense of disorder strengthens understandings of how the gender order changes during armed conflict.

Nevertheless, MacKenzie’s critique of external DDR/SSR programmes concentrates on interventions that fail to consider gender equality and result in policy responses that are directly harmful to women. Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone is primarily concerned with the ‘illegitimate’ sexual relationships of female soldiers during fighting and attempts made by external actors to ‘return to normal’ by repositioning combatant women in the demilitarized domestic sphere. In Sierra Leone’s DDR/SSR programme, women are not valued as security actors and are treated as incapable of soldiering. Similarly, George (2017), who extends MacKenzie’s work, examines how hybridized systems of regulatory authority prioritize the protection of the conjugal order over defending women from violence. Both these cases indicate that when DRR/SSR programmes fail to consider gendered security needs they are likely to reinforce oppressive orderings of gender. Because of their focus on women’s intimate relationships in cases where gendered insecurity has not been prioritized, MacKenzie and George do not capture how explicit attempts to secure women may facilitate the remilitarization of society. By exploring the masculine logic behind Rwanda’s gender-sensitive DDR/SSR programme, we show that even when peacebuilding efforts prioritize gender equality they may reinforce oppressive notions of militarized masculinity.

Myths, nation-building and DDR/SSR programmes

Reconstruction efforts not only reformulate the basic infrastructure and governmental capacity, but must rearticulate what collective belonging means in the post-rupture society (Burnet, 2012; MacKenzie and Foster, 2017). As Yuval-Davis (2006: 197) infers, this may lead to the creation of a specific political project directed at ‘constructing belonging in particular ways to particular collectivities’ that are ‘themselves being constructed’ by the project.

After large-scale organized violence, a period of narrative reconstruction often occurs, as new narratives of belonging may be produced to define the historical context that led to intrastate war. These narratives serve to reconfigure or restore the gender order by (re)positioning ‘different categories of social location’ and reintegrating community members into the post-rupture society’s ‘grids of power relations’ (Yuval-Davis, 2006: 199). Such imaginings often rely on gendered notions of an idealized gender order. Often, this leads to the re-entrenchment of oppressive gender hierarchies that entail either marginalizing women’s role within the new society or ‘circumscribing their presence to passive victims’ (Björkdahl and Selimovic, 2015: 165).

It is for this reason that peacebuilding efforts, including DDR/SSR programmes, involve a degree of mythologizing. Myths may be used to construct the normative imaginings of what the post-rupture nation-state should look like. International peacebuilding efforts tend to be underpinned by cosmopolitan values that emphasize cis-gendered notions of civilized society and idealized gender relations that deify patriarchal masculinities that are perceived to be less violent than the militarized masculinities that fuelled war. The DDR programme in Liberia shows that these processes may mobilize myths about ‘Western’ sexualities and heterosexual marriage to ‘civilize’ unruly configurations of gender among former fighters (Hills, 2015). For Mackenzie, the externally imposed conjugal order draws on colonial gender myths to reaffirm men’s dominant position in society as (militarized) security actors. These externally driven re-imaginings of the gender order can be seen in the emergence of dominant neoliberal masculinities, supportive policing masculinities and marginalized soldiering femininities of women who have fought. Therefore, gendered interventions incorporated within DDR/SSR programmes should be understood as a form of ‘social engineering’ reliant on gendered imaginations of peace (Parpart, 2016).

Gendered and raced myths are central to nation-building and the politics of belonging. Contemporary myths, often drawn from ‘primordial’ myths of origin, may stabilize the dynamic process of belonging and naturalize the ‘construction of a particular hegemonic form of power relations’, which we identify as the gender order (Yuval-Davis, 2006: 199). For Yuval-Davis, ‘boundary construction’ is a key function of nation-building, where the national community is defined according to ‘othered’ raced, classed and gendered subjects, who may exist within and outside of the nation-state. MacKenzie, Hills and George all demonstrate how when implementing externally funded DDR/SSR programmes, external actors use myths as a discursive boundary-construction practice. In MacKenzie’s analysis, international actors construct race boundaries to distinguish between themselves (the ‘civilizers’) and the Sierra Leoneans in need of ‘civilizing’. Having reconfirmed the primacy of military men as security actors and (demilitarized) women as domestic workers, the DDR/SSR programme transitions society from anarchy to domesticated order and repositions Liberians as belonging to the global neoliberal economic workforce (MacKenzie, 2012). However, we observe that boundary-construction practices may also be used by local elites in power, or by an emerging elite, to assert their sovereignty after conflict; to reposition themselves as agentive subjects within the global neoliberal economic order; and to secure ownership of the nation-building process.

Yuval-Davis’s theory of the politics of belonging furthers understanding of how gender-inclusive DDR/SSR initiatives may be governed by a logic that privileges masculinity (or a group of masculinities) and secures the hegemony of a particular group of men within the post-rupture gender order. When programmes support the establishment of a masculine logic in less overt ways, the forms of gender order they produce are likely to differ from those in instances where programmes are explicitly misogynistic or fail to consider gender at all. As we demonstrate, the RPF’s masculine logic explicitly evokes contemporary myths about gender equality as a necessary component of order and peace, while enforcing oppressive intimacies of dominance and subordination through regulating and disciplining martial bodies. The RPF-led government achieves this by mobilizing gendered myths about pre-colonial, colonial, pre-1994 and post-1994 Rwandan society to depict the military as either an enabler or a disrupter of successive state-building projects. Yet the RPF also appropriates imported gender myths that reflect the cosmopolitan values of externally funded DDR/SSR programmes.

Case study: DDR/SSR in Rwanda

Timescales of rupture and reconstruction

State-sponsored genocide took place between April and June 1994, four years into a civil war between the armed political movement the RPF (comprising predominantly Tutsi refugees from Uganda, Tanzania, Zaire and Burundi) and the Mouvement Républican National pour la Démocratie et le Développement (MRND) government, and within a year of the signing of the UN-negotiated Arusha Peace Accords by both parties to the conflict. As has been well documented, the politics of belonging was central to establishing a vision for a pure Hutu nation-state. Hutu-extremist elements of the MRND government and the political party the Coalition pour la Défense de la République used political indoctrination to militarize men, women and children to commit or support genocide against the target groups – Tutsi and moderate/pro-democratic Hutu – who were dehumanized, alienated and categorized as enemies of the state (Holmes, 2008).

The civil war ended when the RPF took Kigali on 4 July 1994 and a state of emergency was declared. Since the RPF was the victor of the civil war, its military wing, the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), took the role of national defence force. The task of repatriating two million Hutu refugees from Zaire and Tanzania included reintegrating former members of the Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR) who had remobilized and were posing a security threat. Thus, the DDR/SSR programme became an integral part of the locally owned peace process.

With funding from the UN Development Programme, the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany, the interim government (which was initially made up of members of the RPF and pro-democratic parties that had been in opposition to Habyarimana’s MRND government) established the Rwanda Demobilization and Reintegration Commission (RDRC) in July 1997. As per the 1993 Arusha peace agreement, the Commission demobilized and reintegrated ex-combatants from the RPA, ex-FAR into Rwandan communities, and established a multi-ethnic national defence force (Wilén, 2012: 1329). From 2002, Rwanda joined the World Bank–funded Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Programme (MRDP), which provided a shared regional framework for financing the peaceful integration of ex-combatants from nine central African states between 2002 and 2009 (Verwimp and Verpoorten, 2004: 44). Over three phases, the RDRC’s DDR programme demobilized around 60,000 ex-combatants, of which some 400 were women (Farr, 2004), and the RPA downsized from 80,000 soldiers at its peak in 2002 to 35,000 in 2009 (Wilén, 2012: 1329). The RDRC incorporated a gender perspective into the national DDR process by ensuring women’s needs were accommodated in demobilization centres; developing community-level counselling activities for women; providing gender-awareness training for staff; and monitoring the impact of the DDR programme on women (Farr, 2004: 3).

In 2002, the Rwanda Patriotic Army was renamed the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF). In 2007, the RDF and UNIFEM (now UN Women) established a Gender Desk to integrate a gender perspective into the SSR component of the programme (Holmes, 2014, 2018, 2019). The goals of the harmonized DDR/SSR programme were to demilitarize citizens and former combatants; to transform military culture to serve the civilian nation-state; and to provide the structural conditions for enduring peace.

The RPF’s imaginative/discursive project

Promoting contemporary myths about Rwanda’s independence, leadership and ownership of post-rupture state-building has been integral to constructing the imaginative/discursive project of Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme. This boundary-construction practice emphasizes the primacy of Rwandan agency in ‘recivilizing’ Rwandan society after genocide and war, but rejects the neocolonizing intentions of externally implemented peacebuilding initiatives observed by MacKenzie, Hills and George. Partnerships with international donors are necessary, but must not jeopardize the RPF government’s vision to transition Rwanda into a modern, middle-income state. A senior leader in the Rwanda National Police (RNP) and member of the RPF elite who had fought with the RPA during the civil war explained:

We like partnerships, but we prefer partnerships that are reliable, partnerships that are predictable…. Partners who are going to dictate to us what to do? We don’t want those. But those partners who look at our strategic priorities and they focus on those – those partners are our friends. Rwanda has already created a roadmap for its future. If you go to the Ministry of Economic Planning, you will find a chart. What are Rwanda’s strategic priorities for the next five years? They are all there. And you will find what Rwanda can afford to provide with those resources. On the same chart, you will find where Rwanda has gaps, and only those partnerships who can fill those gaps are welcome. Those are the partners we want. (Interview 1)

Rejecting the colonial imaginary of the African uncivilized subject, the RPF constructs a post-rupture subjecthood to portray Rwandans (but more specifically the new elite group in power) as civilized, enlightened beings existing on a higher plane of consciousness. RPF elites, who also self-identify as survivors, frequently talk about developing a maturity, a sensitivity or awareness after having experienced war and genocide. When asked where Rwandans acquired their ‘culture of creating results’, the RNP senior leader explained, while emphasizing his desire to belong to the Rwanda’s new elite group:

You have heard of fatal accidents where people die. Survivors of those fatal accidents, they become very alert – more alert than anyone else who have not had that experience…. 1994 was such an experience for us, and anyone who has survived that kind of situation is more alert than any other person on earth…. We came from zero. Zero! And we don’t want to go back. And the other thing is we have very, very clear-headed leadership up there and vision. So everyone is very alert. (Interview 1)

These contemporary myths are informed by the experience of being abandoned by the international community during the 1994 genocide, as well as the RPF’s precarious position during its transition from rebel to ruler in the immediate aftermath of conflict. Yet the contemporary myth of Rwandan enlightenment also reflects the RPF’s rejection of the ‘idealized imaginary’ of ‘external actors as necessary saviours’ in the post-rupture moment (MacKenzie, 2012: 3) and the myth that all peacebuilding interventions are ‘rescue missions for regions that are too devastated and chaotic to initiate their own recovery’ (MacKenzie, 2012: 61). Whereas externally funded DDR/SSR programmes emphasize the ‘narrative beginnings’ of (global) civilization originating from Europe (Shilliam, 2012: 112), the RPF mobilizes ancient Rwandan myths of origin to describe Rwanda’s long history of civilization, while at the same time promoting contemporary myths about Rwandan collective belonging to position the military and militarized soldier-citizens at the centre of developmental progress. As Purdeková et al. (2018) observe, and as Rwandan military historian and former RPF brigadier general Frank Rusagara wrote in 2009, the ‘process of Ku-aanda’ saw the expansion of the Rwandan state through military conquests, but also the alleged consolidation of Rwandans and ‘Rwandaness’ or ‘Rwandicity’, as ‘loose and unstable’ clan groups merged into military formations. The military institution is mythologized in Rusagara’s discourse as ‘an indispensable characteristic of the social order’ in the face of ‘predatory’ strong neighbouring kingdoms (Rusagara, 2009: 9). It is through the process of Ku-aanda that ‘Rwanda found its “soul”’, and ‘each man and his male descendants had to belong to a particular military regiment which gave them their social identity’ (Rusagara, 2009: xv).

According to Rusagara’s interpretation of history, which he gleans both from Rwandan customs, folklore and poetry, and from the works of Western historians such as Catharine Newbury and David Newbury, Jan Vansina, René Lemarchand, and Jean-Pierre Chrétien, Ku’aanda ended during the era of colonial expansion (1894–1924), when the Belgians systematically eroded the Rwandan army. National self-determination, then, predated the anticolonial movements of the 1950s and 1960s, described by Rusagara as a period of neocolonialism, whereupon Hutu were manipulated by German and Belgian colonizers, and later France (Rusagara, 2009: 122). Post-1994 state-building is imaged as a return to the 500-year old, pre-colonial process of Ku’aanda, and thus a return to an ‘older normal’ and militarized social order, in contrast to disruption and disorder defining the colonial and postcolonial eras. It is against this backdrop that oppositional militarized gender orders are constructed by RPF elites.

Constructing oppositional militarized gender orders

Two oppositional militarized gender orders – the colonial gender order, dominant up until independence in 1959, and the Hutu-extremist gender order, which the RPF argues prevailed immediately prior to and during the genocide – are discursively constructed and rejected by the RPF. In Rusagara’s historical account, the military masculinities of the colonial army (the Force Publique) and the Hutu extremist-controlled FAR are governed by a transgressive, hyper-masculine logic. Having invaded Rwanda in 1896, the Force Publique, which later became ‘an army of occupation’ and police force tasked with maintaining public safety in Rwanda, imported brutality, including raping women, stealing livestock and destroying crops. Significantly, Rwandans and Burundians were ‘never recruited to form any part of the Force Publique’, described as comprising only foreign men from Congo and West and East Africa led by white Europeans (Rusagara, 2009: 79). Later, Belgian colonialists used as a boundary-construction practice a system called Pignet, which assessed body sizes to determine whether men were fit enough to join the Garde Territoriale du Rwanda. This system ‘favoured the short and stocky “Hutu” [masculine] constructs to the exclusion of the taller and slender “Tutsi”’ (Rusagara, 2009: 123). ‘Hutu-nizing’ the force paved the way for the establishment of a new postcolonial Rwandan army in the 1960s, funded and trained by the Belgians and France. This early Rwandan military force was recruited from Northern Rwanda, a region historically ‘associated with violence and “brutality”’ (Rusagara, 2009: 158). Thus, Rusagara recounts a singular narrative trajectory in which barbaric violence prevails for 100 years, until the end of the 1994 genocide.

In contrast, the older, pre-colonial army is mythologized as disciplined and governed by ‘civilized’ gendered codes of war. Since ‘killing women and children in war was considered taboo and extreme recklessness’, any episodes of sexual or gender-based violence committed by Rwandan soldiers evidence the erosion of national military strength and increasing colonial encroachment (Rusagara, 2009: 16). Here, Rusagara engages in what MacKenzie and Foster term ‘masculinity nostalgia’, a ‘longing for bygone times, or for a set of relationships and experiences associated with the past’, and a process that often ‘mythologizes peace as a time of patriarchal power, authority and gender certainty’ (MacKenzie and Foster, 2017: 208). Transgressive, barbaric violence that breaks traditional Rwandan militarized social codes of conduct is considered a colonial invention, and later a neocolonial intervention via French military influence during Habyarimana’s 27-year dictatorship. The Western myth that Rwandans transgressed to primordial violence during the civil war and genocide is dispelled, although the RPF does not reject another Western (cosmopolitan) myth embedded in external DDR/SSR initiatives, namely, that Rwandans transgressed and are in need of being ‘recivilized’.

Downplaying RPA violence during the civil war and emphasizing Hutu-extremist state-sponsored ‘genocide as transgression’ (Burnet, 2012; Stone, 2004), state-owned narratives about the political climate leading up to 1994 perpetuate the myth of colonial and imperial disorder. Genocide is narrativized as dependent on the homogeneous Hutu community committing brutal, transgressive forms of violence, including sexual and gender-based violence on their male and female victims (Taylor, 1999), during an ‘apocalyptic, orgiastic’ moment of killing (Stone, 2004: 47–48). All Rwandans – whether Tutsi and Hutu survivors who experienced or were forced to commit transgressive violence including ‘deviant’ sexual acts on their loved ones, or perpetrators who raped, killed or were complicit in other ways – broke traditional Rwandan societal codes of conduct (Taylor, 1999) and introduced gender uncertainty. These acts created new problematic masculinities and femininities, especially for those Tutsi, Hutu Twa and mixed-ethnicity men who were raped or were forced to engage in taboo sexual acts with relatives. These masculinities are seldom publicly acknowledged by the ruling elite. Asked whether many male survivors had experienced conflict-related sexual violence, a senior Gender Desk representative and major, who had joined the RPA in Uganda in the early 1990s, remarked that they ‘had no statistics on men and boys raped during the genocide – it is not in our culture to talk about men and boys being raped, but we know that it happened’ (Interview 2).

Post-rupture militarized masculinities

Owing to the breadth of experiences of conflict both in Rwanda and in the east of Congo, Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme constructs a new Rwandan military masculinity that is relevant to Tutsi survivors, ex-RPA and ex-FAR soldiers, and ex-militia men alike. To achieve this, the RPF appropriates Western cosmopolitan myths centring on the ‘good male soldier’ and the ‘female peacebuilder’, and draws on mythic constructions of Rwandan heteronormative militarized masculinity and femininity. However, since contemporary myth creation is historically and contextually grounded, the RPF reconstitutes myths of origin and belonging to fit its interpretation of Rwanda’s past as a reflection of Rwanda’s present and future trajectory. The new militarized masculinity, identified as the morally virtuous soldier-citizen, embodies attributes that are dialectically opposed to those of the dangerous, volatile, hyper-masculine colonial soldier and Hutu extremist, which in RDF discourse are the only visible problematic masculinities. This construction is compatible with the ideal of the cosmopolitan soldier, thereby enabling the RPF government to demonstrate that it is delivering on several objectives expected of its military assistance funders, including developing a disciplined, ‘rapidly deployable’ military force ‘trained for both combat roles and peacemaking roles’ to defend human security (Kronsell, 2012: 77).

Training, depicted as central to Ku’uanda, marks the ‘return to the older order’ of pre-colonial militarized society. For Rusagara (2009: 91–92):

socialization in pre-colonial Rwanda took place in the traditional military schools, amatorero, where everyone’s discipline and good conduct, bravery and patriotism, honesty and integrity, moral behaviour and even their mannerisms were moulded to make not only a good soldier, but an impfura y’u Rwanda. [gentleman of Rwanda]

During contemporary reintegration training exercises, RDF senior officers employ the same discourse as Rusagara to posit that military personnel should be of high moral standing. Reflecting Kagame’s repeated call for Rwandans to ‘restore their dignity’, ‘good’ male soldiers are disciplined, controlled, professional and loyal to the modern Rwandan state. They live by the three RDF values of ‘honour, patriotism and valour’, whereby honour constitutes ‘personal integrity’ and ‘strong moral character or strength and adherence to ethical principals’ (RDF, 2014). In a module on military ethics, trainers emphasize that RDF soldiers are morally virtuous, regardless of their involvement in civil war and genocide, and promote the rationale for ongoing socialization:

Our people are really good, the Rwandans. Very few of the RDF personnel misbehave, but a lot of members of the RDF need a little help through teaching ethics and values. It does not make any difference about the background. If we have faith in them and encourage them … then the RDF will be excellent. (RDF, 2014)

A key distinction between the morally virtuous RDF soldier-citizen and the deviant, transgressive colonial soldier or Hutu-extremist soldier/militiaman is the RPF’s rejection of the misogynist male warrior identity. This can be observed in the RDF’s institutional discourse on Women, Peace and Security. At face value, the RDF embraces all priorities of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and its related resolutions, including gendering SSR and enabling a gender-equitable distribution of power within the institution. Rwanda’s first 1325 National Action Plan (2010–2012), developed during the third stage of the DDR/SSR programme, details how state security apparatus should protect women and girls and facilitate women’s participation in peacebuilding and conflict prevention. A key priority for the Gender Desk is combatting sexual and gender-based violence, domestic violence, and child violence. Evoking the RPF-sanctioned ‘victim versus perpetrator’ narrative, a second RDF all-rank training manual suggests that socializing male soldiers to reject the abusive treatment of women is a crucial step towards reconciling and unifying the Rwandan population and curtailing genocide ideology. According to the training manual, sexual and gender-based violence ‘creates the violated (Victims) and violators (Perpetrators)’ and is ‘a cause of insecurity, mistrust and fear amongst the population, which is a key recipe for conflict and attendant insecurity in society’ (RDF, 2014).

Williamson (2016: 43) observes that Tutsi men who had experienced a crisis of masculinity during the genocide ‘expressed an aversion to violence in any form’. This crisis of masculinity was dismissed by longstanding RDF military personnel who had served in the RPA during the civil war. However, a 34-year-old male captain with a degree in sociology observed that ‘gender violations can happen to men and women, but a huge percentage of women are violated’. The captain expressed the view that a ‘gender violation [was] not a civilized situation’, linking contemporary sexual violence committed by RDF members to the kind of violence seen in the 1994 genocide (Interview 3). In exercising discipline and strength of mind (as opposed to just bodily strength), male RDF soldiers are expected to control their sexual urges. While male military personnel talked about being disciplined and respecting women, two relatively senior, married male soldiers responsible for arranging interviews each sent one research assistant flirty text messages, asking if she would like to meet for a drink, thereby disrupting the narrative of discipline promoted in official RDF discourse and in elite interviews.

Constructing the female security actor

Contrary to instances where women are excluded from formal DDR/SSR programmes and relegated to the domestic sphere, the RPF values women as security actors. RPF elites carefully construct a discourse explaining women’s integration, again drawing on myths of origin to create new myths about women’s role in post-rupture recovery. For Rusagara (2009: xv), women worked alongside the military in ‘logistics and support, such as evacuating the dead and casualties and performing various war rituals’ in pre-colonial times. In February 2014, Minister of Gender Oda Gasinzigwa mobilized the myth of Ndabaga, a young woman who disguised herself as a man, joined the military and exceled as a soldier (before being discovered). Combining this with two contemporary myths, the minister explained why women were valued as soldiers in Rwandan society: first, for their role in the RPF liberation movement and, second, when operating as security actors in the aftermath of genocide. Only one serving soldier interviewed recalled the myth of Ndabaga. Like the minister of gender, she was a longstanding member of the RPF elite who had joined the RPA as a 15-year-old child soldier alongside her older brothers and parents. However, younger women who joined the military during Phases II and III of the DDR/SSR programme spoke of an alternative contemporary myth circulating within Rwandan society (but not discussed by senior soldiers) that female soldiers were prostitutes or mistresses of male soldiers.

To reconcile these tensions, the RPF draws on the cosmopolitan myth of ‘woman as peacebuilder’ and downplays women’s capacity to be assertive, violent, aggressive, defensive or hypersexual, while female soldiers are discouraged from exhibiting or utilizing their sexuality for personal gain (a trait previously associated with Tutsi women in Hutu-extremist propaganda). Instead, women should perform the role of the cleansed, professional Rwandan female soldier, adhering to older, traditional conceptualizations of Rwandan femininity (Holmes, 2014, 2018). These conceptualizations suggest that ‘civilized’ women are naturally meek, modest and unassertive. Prewar idealized conceptualizations of Hutu-extremist masculinity and femininity and Tutsi male/female deviance are reconceptualized as perversions of a monolithic modern Rwandan culture. To belong in the post-rupture society and in the RDF, male and female soldier-citizens must reject the dangerous, hyper-masculine logic of former colonizers and Hutu extremists.

The RPF’s masculine logic further plays out by explicitly evoking the cosmopolitan ideal that gender equality is a necessary component of order and peace. Research participants of all ranks and ages referred to gender equality and women’s empowerment to draw a temporal distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Rwanda. Unlike Rusagara, serving soldiers did not distinguish between pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial eras. ‘Traditional’ pre-1994 culture was considered to have been deeply misogynistic and characterized by unjust social relations that oppressed and marginalized ethnic minorities and women across social, economic and political spheres. Rwanda’s ‘modern culture’ was progressive, rejected overt discrimination based on gender, ethnicity and disability, and embraced women’s empowerment. Publicly, female soldiers were no longer perceived as being weak but rather as equal partners in a professionalized military workforce. One male lieutenant colonel and former RPA soldier observed that it was ‘in [the RDF’s] doctrine to operate with women’ (Interview 4). An 18-year-old female private reflected:

Before the genocide, there were no women in the army, but then they saw that women are able and they started to increase the number [of women]. Women used to think that it is hard and tiring work for men only, but now they see it as a job like any other. (Interview 5)

During interviews, there were instances when male soldiers disrupted the official discourse, challenging the idea that women were equal soldiers. When asked about whether the most senior woman in the RDF, Colonel Rose Kabuye (now retired), was an example of a women excelling at soldiering, a major who had served in the RPA in the early 1990s engaged in his own boundary-construction practice, highlighting men’s physical strength to other and exclude female soldiers:

Yes, she marched with us [during the civil war]. But she was not marching with us every day. But for us, we used to march everyday – 24 hours a day. Women … can work in the government, being politician, she can. She can be a minister…. But in the military, we like them, and we want them to be in the military. But you can’t say that you can have 50% women in the military when you go for an operation.

Despite instances where male and female soldiers disrupt the RPF’s imaginative/discursive project, the kinds of distinction present in RPF discourse, elite interviews and in the discourse of female soldiers who demonstrate a strong desire to belong in the RDF mirror in many ways the narratives of progressivism and gender equality evident in the literature on the reformation of militarized masculinity in the global North (Duncanson, 2015). However, the fact that the cosmopolitan soldier identity constructed in Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme rejects overt misogyny and sexual and gender-based violence and that women are valued as security actors should not be mistaken for the rejection of a masculine logic.

Stabilizing the post-rupture gender order

Having constructed ‘modern’, post-rupture militarized masculinities and femininities, the RPF proceeds to reposition social categories to construct the post-rupture gender order and cement the dominance of the new hegemonic masculinity. Several trends are observed that show how the imaginative/discursive project of Rwanda’s gender-inclusive DDR/SSR programme supports this process, and four types of boundary-construction practice are identified: purging deviant masculinities and femininities; purifying ‘tainted’ men and women; purging ‘special needs’ groups from the military; and re-establishing Rwanda’s conjugal order.

Purging and purifying

In Phase I (1994–97), all ex-combatants were required to attend the military ingando re-education camps (Mgbako, 2005). Male and female ex-combatants who supported the Hutu-extremist hyper-masculine logic were considered particularly transgressive and targeted for purification and/or purging. Participants received lectures on Rwandan history, politics and society from senior members of the RPF and undertook an intense programme of activity, including endurance training designed to resocialize them into new Rwandan society or into the RDF (Purdeková, 2015). Hutu-extremist former members of the FAR and the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) took part in three-month long ingando programmes, while RPF ex-combatants and ex-FAR soldiers who were not implicated in the genocide and were considered less transgressive were enrolled in two-week courses (Mgbako, 2005). Like other outcast groups, including prostitutes and street children, demobilized male and female ex-combatants were socialized to behave as good citizens, and men were retrained and reinserted into traditionally masculine jobs such as mechanics and carpentry (Turner, 2014: 421).

Modern ingando camps were an initiative developed by the RPF in the early 1990s to indoctrinate and militarize Tutsi refugees (Mgbako, 2005; Purdeková, 2015). Contemporary Rwandan ingando camps have enabled the ruling elite to reform the armed forces to fit the new social imaginary of a cleansed, professionalized notion of militarized masculinity. Ex-combatants were portrayed as being infected by their ‘wickedness’ (Turner, 2014: 423), while the ingando camps constitute the physical cantonment of fallen men and women quarantined from civilized society until they have been cleansed. The ingando camps therefore offered redemption to the ‘barbaric’ and ‘wicked’ Hutu ex-combatants, in the form of new performances of civic nationalist masculinity and femininity, and a solution to the harms caused by ‘fallen’ militarized masculinity during the 1990s. Paradoxically, similar boundary-construction practices were used by génocidaires in the early 1990s when they attempted to purge society of those who threatened their hegemony. Yet, men and women whose gender performances challenge the post-rupture gender order are not killed, as they were during the genocide. Instead, these participants of the DDR/SSR programme are contained and silenced, resocialized and offered less powerful places in society.

Purging special needs groups

Focus on ‘special needs groups’ has emerged as a key component of gender-mainstreaming in DDR processes (Piedmont, 2012; UNDDRRC, 2017) and refers to any person affiliated with armed groups who is not an able-bodied adult male, including emotionally traumatized men, women, child soldiers, the elderly or the disabled. In Rwanda, 8,400 disabled servicemen were demobilized and provided with basic financial support, vocational training and medical rehabilitation to encourage their successful reintegration into civilian society (Edmonds et al., 2009). The initiative has been touted internationally as a successful example of local ownership and delivery and has been emulated by other countries in the Great Lakes region (Edmonds et al., 2009). However, this component of the programme, in conjunction with the removal of ‘tainted’ and fallen men, removes the corrupting presence of those who fail to live up to the myth of the strong, moral, male soldier-citizen, protector of a reformed, dignified and civilized Rwanda.

Re-establishing the conjugal order

The suppression of perceived subversive sexual practices linked to genocide and the return to older (mythic) respectable heteronormative models of masculinity and femininity establishes the post-rupture conjugal order, which the RPF attempts to stabilize through the policing of RDF soldiers’ sexuality and intimate relationships. Such policing is evident in the RDF’s prohibition of any form of sexual deviancy including polygamy, sexual and gender-based violence, intimate partner violence and extramarital affairs, and in the institutionalization of heterosexual marriage as the appropriate site of sexual liaisons in accordance with Rwanda’s 2003 Constitution. Yet the policing of sexuality and intimate relationships mirrors the neocolonial logic of externally implemented DDR/SSR initiatives examined by MacKenzie and George. Via the Gender Desk, the RDF disciplines soldiers who engage in any kind of sexual and gender-based violence, in line with the RDF’s gender security policies, and offers a marriage counselling service (Holmes, 2014, 2018).

University-educated young male soldiers and reservists who are members of the RPF elite experience particularly high levels of surveillance, as one interviewee explained. Like older-generation RPF soldiers, these modern-day intore (‘chosen ones’) are considered to have ‘advanced consciousness in society’ and a ‘special responsibility’ to act as role models. As in ancient times, their status is achieved through engaging in militarized rites of passage, including intorero schooling, considered to be ‘advanced ingando’ (Purdeková, 2015: 188). Yet, as potential future leaders, intore are ‘promoted as an elite group’ of males (Turner, 2014: 425–426). These RDF soldiers and reservists are told they will lose their career prospects and social status if they marry the wrong kind of woman, notably women who are not Rwandan or who exhibit traits that may threaten to destabilize the post-rupture gender order.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people are another othered social category, despite being afforded legal status in Rwanda’s 2003 Constitution. Like the RPF government, the RDF maintains a ‘“strategic silence” around LGBT rights’ (Haste and Gatete, 2015: 6–7), decrees sexual orientation a ‘private matter’ and has not challenged the stigma LGBT soldiers experience. By refusing to recognize gender fluidity and by substituting new militarized gender roles for the deviant masculinities and femininities that informed the colonial and Hutu-extremist hyper-masculine logics, the DDR/SSR programme institutionalizes a new model of sexual politics that reifies heterosexual couplings and the monogamous family unit within the RDF. This mirrors MacKenzie’s findings, though in Rwanda it is not a lack of attention to gender inclusivity that has resulted in oppressive trends. Rather, the approach taken to gender integration and the prevention of sexual violence has reinforced the RPF’s oppressive masculine logic.

Conclusion

Including a gender perspective in all aspects of DDR/SSR programmes was formalized as an integral element of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000). It is the possibility of change during the post-rupture moment that Women, Peace and Security policy initiatives have looked to harness to advance gender equality and secure stable peace. Analysis of Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme presents a significant conceptual problem for the Women, Peace and Security agenda, which has been widely adopted in feminist work on peacebuilding. We have made the case that although the military component of Rwanda’s DDR/SSR programme has incorporated a gender perspective by emphasizing gendered security needs, integrating women into the armed forces, and consciously rejecting hyper-masculine militarized masculinities, the programme has a distinct masculine logic that establishes the post-rupture society’s gender order.

Attempts to reforge the conjugal order can be observed in the regulation of sexualities in the RDF; in the policing of sexual intimacies in the private lives of RDF military personnel and reservists, and in the hierarchical arrangement of gender on which the DDR/SSR programme has relied. Yet the modern (civilized) Rwandan male soldier-citizen is not expected to exhibit the kind of overt violent transgression that characterized (uncivilized) militarized masculinities during the genocide and colonial rule. Stable and less overtly violent masculinities are promoted in the gender-inclusive DDR/SSR programme, though the RDF has retained the oppressive qualities of militarized masculinity. This does not suggest a successful delivery of Women, Peace and Security objectives, nor the emergence of new, softer militarized masculinities that feminists such as Duncanson (2015) or Bevan and MacKenzie (2012) have considered in other instances.

In the light of these findings, some key understandings of demilitarization put forward in Women, Peace and Security policy and activism are challenged, notably the assumption that including a gender perspective in DDR/SSR programmes will lead to a more gender-equitable distribution of power within a new national defence force or will facilitate the demilitarization of the post-rupture society. Rather, our research concurs with that of Purdeková et al. (2018), who suggest that the RPF government’s DDR/SSR programme is serving to remilitarize Rwandan society.

By conducting a gendered analysis, we highlight how remilitarization trends occur at the micro level and in intimate and private spaces. Our analysis also emphasizes the need to take a more structural approach to the analysis of the impact of gender-sensitive DDR/SSR programmes. If the gendered structural impacts of these programmes are not accounted for, then demilitarization risks following a masculine logic that reinforces the hegemony of the most powerful men in society, while groups of men and women whose potential threatens their existing powerbase are contained and controlled. Without addressing the less overtly destructive components of militarized masculinity within DDR/SSR programmes, the Women, Peace and Security agenda risks reinforcing the kind of oppressive gender order that has emerged in Rwanda, rather than challenging patriarchal gender formations per se.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the International Studies Association and the Conflict Research Society in 2018. The authors would like to thank the British Academy/Leverhulme and the Leverhulme Trust for funding the research, and the interviewees who agreed to take part in the project.

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by the British Academy/Leverhulme (Small Research Grant: Ref SG131357) and the Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2015-418).

ORCID iD

David Duriesmith

David Duriesmith is a UQ Development Fellow at the University of Queensland, where he researches the intersections of militarism, masculinities and patriarchal violence. He is the author of Masculinity and New War: The Gender Dynamics of Contemporary Armed Conflict (Routledge, 2017). Email: d.duriesmith@uq.edu.au.

Georgina Holmes is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Reading. Her research concerns gender and security sector reform in African and European militaries, peacekeeping training, and the integration of female uniformed personnel in peacekeeping. She is the author of Women and War in Rwanda: Gender, Media and the Representation of Genocide (I. B. Tauris, 2013). Email: g.holmes@reading.ac.uk.

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