NOT CIVILIAN ENOUGH : How Gender-Essentialist Mandates Militarize Non-Combatant Men in South Sudan

Sammanfattning

As gender mainstreaming practices and attention to the Women, Peace and Security agenda have grown in recent decades, international organizations have increasingly resorted to genderessentialist frames in civilian protection frameworks. These gender-essentialist narratives systematically exclude non-combatant men, using women and children as proxies for civilians and vulnerability. The consequences of this exclusion have yet to be theorized or empirically tested. This thesis asks: “How does gender-essentialist framing in PoC mandates shape the recruitment of non-combatant men?” In answering this question, this thesis conducts a longitudinal comparative case study, delving into two mandates implemented by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. This thesis argues that sidelining non-combatant men from gender-essentialist protection architecture exposes them to heightened violence and economic precarity. These give rise to a gendered protection vacuum, through which non-state armed group recruitment of the unprotected civilian men becomes operative. The analysis finds that this vacuum was more deeply institutionalized under the high gender-essentialism mandate, with NSAG recruitment patterns matching across demographic, spatial, and temporal dimensions. This thesis makes two contributions: it introduces an original indicator-based framework for measuring gender-essentialism, and it connects gender-essentialist institutional design to non-state armed group recruitment, identifying the structural conditions for civilian male mobilization.