This article examines organized opposition to feminist and LGBTI political projects in Colombia. Although there is a large body of literature on feminist movements and a growing literature on LGBTI movements, there is little research on resistance to them. Through an intersectional feminist lens, this study analyzes the “anti-gender” campaign organized against the gender perspective in Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement to demonstrate the limitations of backlash theory and certain normative understandings of human rights. In contrast to assumptions that backlash is predetermined, the study demonstrates that the anti-gender mobilization against the peace agreement was circumstantial rather than inevitable. To highlight the productive nature of backlash, it traces how opponents employed human rights rhetoric to establish an alternative present and promote an imagined future rooted in exclusion and repression. In addition, it shows that mobilized backlash against feminist and LGBTI movements does not necessarily decelerate or reverse the respective movements’ agendas.

Twenty years after the passing of Resolution 1325, the participation of women as military personnel in peacekeeping operations remains limited. Women currently comprise just under five per cent of military personnel in UN peacekeeping missions, and the UN consistently calls for more. We contend the low numbers of female military personnel in peacekeeping reflects a lack of gender mainstreaming in national militaries globally. This article introduces the problem of sidestreaming, the practice, deliberate or unintentional, of sidelining women and relegating them to specialised spaces in international peace and security while attempting gender mainstreaming or increased gender integration. Drawing on empirical evidence from national militaries we show how and where sidestreaming occurs with the result being that women remain clustered in gendered and low-status spaces in national militaries and in specialised spaces in peacekeeping operations. This has a negative effect on retention and recruitment contributing to the low numbers of female peacekeepers in UN peace operations. We conclude that gender mainstreaming in its fullest sense will require military reform that decouples violence and combat skills from masculinity and inclusive research strategies that engage men as well as women.

This article aims to show the added value of studying transnational advocacy networks through a discursive approach in order to better understand the outcomes of norm diffusion in postconflict contexts. I argue that constructivist approaches to norm diffusion fall short as an explanation of norm adoption because they assume an automatic process of norm propagation through socialisation mechanisms. The first goal of the article is then to discuss how the internal dynamics of discourse negotiation in transnational advocacy networks impact the diffusion and implementation of international norms. The second goal is to propose the concept of the rebound effect and to explore the conditions under which it takes place. Through data collected during extended fieldwork, the article examines a prominent case, namely the transnational campaign for the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security in Burundi and Liberia. I ask why and how the campaign was understood as a success in Liberia and as a failure in Burundi. I argue that there is another way of looking at these cases in less dichotomised ways. Crucially, my findings demonstrate how in both cases a very particular discourse on gender security is (re)produced through power relations between local and transnational activists limiting the type of policies that are advocated for and depoliticising the grassroots.