'Localising the Global' - Resolution 1325 as a tool for promoting women's rights and gender equality in Rwanda

Much work on Resolution 1325 and the agenda of 'women, peace and security' has its focus on how Res 1325 has 'trickled down' from the global to the local level in a specific context. This article will reverse the gaze highlighting women's local perspectives asking what the 'women, peace and security agenda' have done for respectively the national women's organisations and local women's groups in a specific African post-conflict setting - Rwanda. The article sheds light on the local/global dynamics in the processes of translating Res 1325 with a focus on the gender language and practices. Thus, it explores how the global gender language and the global norms laid out in Resolution 1325 has been used by national women's organisations working as 'localising agents' in transformative processes where the gender norms laid out have become part of the gender vocabulary of the women's organisations and been appropriated. The article also explores to which extent Resolution 1325 has worked as promoting women's rights and gender equality at the level of local women's groups and identifies some tension with local understandings of gender and local practices indicating that further localising is needed.