A Socio-Historical Approach to Regional Organizational Relations? NGOs in Gender Security in the SADC Region

Cecilia Lwiindi Nedziwe

doi:10.22151/politikon.57.1

Authors

Cecilia Lwiindi Nedziwe Rhodes University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4598-0124

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.57.1

Keywords:

NGOs, Southern Africa, Organizational Relations, Gender Security, African Agency, Southern African Development Community

Abstract

The extant academic literature in the field of regional International Relations has paid little attention to non-state actors’ organizational relations in building region-ness. Yet, the region offers sets of organizational relations outside, alongside, and as part of the formal regional state structures to do with gender, which offer insights into non-state regional relations and thus help to fill the lacunae in the field and facilitate understanding of the regional dynamic of international relations. This article examines how organizational relations of non-state actors in gender security play out in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. It highlights the shortcomings of the inter-governmental approach to international relations pursued by various scholars. Drawing on interviews with representatives of NGOs, governments, the SADC, and annual reports, as well as the academic literature, it argues for a socio-historical approach to understanding regional organization and transnationalism, which considers African agency in building region-ness.

Author Biography

Cecilia Lwiindi Nedziwe, Rhodes University

Cecilia Lwiindi NEDZIWE is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University, Makhanda (Grahamstown), South Africa. She holds a PhD degree in International Relations from Rhodes University. Her research interests centre around Southern Africa’s International Relations (IR), international and regional organisations, transnationalism, foreign policy, civil society, gender and peacebuilding.

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