Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso

In the context of extant efforts in the decolonisation of African Studies, transnationalisation of feminist theorising, and the rise of intersectionality as an analytical tool in gender studies, I argue for the adoption of an 'African intersectionalities' framework towards achieving the decolonisation of African women's and gender studies. The article engages a critical review of feminist intersectionality theory and its trajectory, executes a decolonial reading to propose an African intersectionality specifically, and explores the emancipatory potentials for harnessing the interconnections of both literatures in the field of African women's and gender studies.

This research note interrogates the varied ways in which researcher and research subjects' intersectional identities complicate multiple levels of access to research participants, specifically with respect to research I conducted with refugee women who returned to Liberia after the end of the civil war in 2003. I argue that motherland (or nationality) and motherhood (or maternity) produce minefields' during fieldwork that a researcher has to navigate in achieving different levels of access to research subjects, particularly in postconflict situations. While the literature mostly discusses these issues from the perspective of non-Africans conducting fieldwork abroad, this essay analyses issues arising from being a young, female Nigerian conducting research with women, mostly mothers, in the same African sub-region. It explains how being a young, married, pregnant, and mothering Nigerian facilitated or obstructed access to research participants. This foregrounds the complexity of the insider/outsider debate for researchers conducting fieldwork in various contexts, and thereby contributes to the wider literatures on feminist methodologies and qualitative fieldwork.

This article proposes a re-evaluation of the classic 'durable solutions' - repatriation, local integration, resettlement - being applied to refugee women in Africa, foregrounding gender considerations in the selection of solutions to apply, women's access to these processes, and sensitivity to the African and peacebuilding context. Extant literature largely ignores the reality of diversity among refugee women. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) policy and states' practices regarding refugee women do not sufficiently address this diversity and how structural dynamics are shaping durable solutions for refugees. I argue therefore that there is an intersectionality of disadvantage, a dual intertwined convergence of personal and systemic factors that make refugee women in Africa doubly deprived in accessing and experiencing sustainable durable solutions. I suggest that rethinking durable solutions for refugee women in Africa involves a reassessment of the three solutions, and the adoption of initiatives that positively link refugee women and peacebuilding outcomes.

Empirical evidence has demonstrated that in contemporary wars, women and children bear the brunt of the violence unleashed in the form of killings, abductions, and various forms of gendered violence. This research investigates the ways in which returnee refugee women in post war Liberia experience gender-based violence in their everyday lives. It also investigates the role of governmental agencies in addressing this violence and the implications of all these for the reintegration of returnee women and peace in the country generally. To this end, fieldwork was carried out in Liberia employing in-depth and semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, document review, and observation. One hundred persons participated in the study including returnee women across the country, community leaders, and NGO and government staff. The research was framed within human rights theory, which locates women's rights within human rights and provides practitioners and disadvantaged women alike a vocabulary to frame political and social wrongs. The responses indicate that returnee refugee women in Liberia continue to confront generalized and gender-specific violence. The implementation of government legislation such as the new rape law continue to encumber the drive to tackle gender-based violence (GBV) while other initiatives such as a national GBV taskforce move the country in the right direction. The implications are that reintegration of returnee refugee women remains slow and, although women constitute a remarkable proportion of government, most returnee women have yet to find meaningful ways of contributing to the success of the nascent political order. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]