Paper short abstract:

Thanks to the concept of “hybridity”, this paper studies the case of UNIFEM/UN Women in Burundi, and shows how its programmes are received by different actors (the UN, the national state and local civil society organizations), and then reshaped in unexpected directions.

Paper long abstract:

Despite a renewed attention payed at the integration of gender norms in UN programmes in post-conflict countries, little has been yet written on the interactions between UN agencies, the national state and local civil society organizations in the production and implementation of these programmes. How do they evolve in relation to their reception by local actors? How have contested norms and practices on gender and women been renegotiated on the field? How do these programmes interfere with the local political game? Based on an ethnographic methodology, this paper studies the case of UNIFEM/UN Women in Burundi, and shows how these programmes are received by different actors, and then reshaped in unexpected directions. The concept of "hybridity" (Mac Ginty, 2011) will help us to describe these multi-level and multi-actor interactions, to study the local political uses of western views on gender and women and the learning process and mutual adaptation of the programmes to their unexpected effects. Moreover, we will analyse the ambivalent nature of hybridity: it is a source of conflict as well as of cooperation. Competitive and cooperative dynamics indeed take place between the various actors that produce and implement UN programmes on gender and women. In this complex configuration, UN agencies are not only used as a resource for local actors to advance their own interests, but also profoundly interfere in the Burundian political game. Their role is even more critical that the political situation has been unstable and tense, particularly on the land issue.