Governing Protection, Constructing Security: UNMISS in South Sudan

Sammanfattning

This thesis, informed by feminist security studies, decolonial theory, and governmentality, critically examines how women’s security is discursively conceptualized, governed, and operationalized within the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). It argues that UNMISS protection regimes do not merely respond to pre-existing insecurity, but actively construct women’s security through gendered, colonial, and governmental logics. While these regimes claim to advance protection, they also reproduce narrow terms of recognizability dependency, and epistemic marginalization. In doing so, this thesis contributes to broader debates on peacekeeping, gender governance, and the colonial dimensions of gendered security by illuminating how women’s security in the context of South Sudan is not only a matter of protection, but also a site of governance through which power, knowledge, and intervention are organized and legitimized.