ABSTRACT Female combatants often experience empowerment during armed conflict that is seldom preserved after a peace deal. Empowerment of women fighters is associated with gender equality practices within armed groups… Click to show full abstract
ABSTRACT Female combatants often experience empowerment during armed conflict that is seldom preserved after a peace deal. Empowerment of women fighters is associated with gender equality practices within armed groups that get dismantled as part of post-conflict reintegration. Given the link between gender equality practices and female empowerment, this article considers how alternative reintegration policies that preserve rebel unity after war affect gender relations among ex-fighters. Specifically, the paper examines Colombia’s collective reintegration for the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-ep) that supported the establishment of ex-combatant settlements. The analysis draws on 59 semi-structured interviews with FARC ex-combatants conducted between 2019 and 2022. The main finding are that collective reintegration did not preclude erosion of gender equality norms among former FARC, but it did support grassroots ex-combatant organizing around a feminist agenda with an innovative care approach. To explain these mixed results, the article examines Colombia’s hybrid ‘liberal-local’ peace deal. It shows how the liberal focus on electoral politics falls short, while local peacebuilding efforts better support gender-equal reintegration and the empowerment of female ex-combatants.
               
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