Disembodying Combat: Female Combatants’ Political Reintegration in Nepal and Colombia

Summary, in English

Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) programs have systematically failed to reintegrate women into civilian society adequately: both academic knowledge and policy orientations have been misleading about female ex-combatants’ political post-war engagement. This working paper aims to critically analyze the reintegration of the female combatants by comparing the Maoists (Nepal) and Farianas (Colombia) processes in their respective context of the post-peace agreement. The focus is on the political issues underlying the particular place of women in insurgent combat and what it means to “re-embody” civilian society with a temporal glance at the 15-year transition in Nepal and the 5-year peace process in Colombia. The working paper is divided into five sections: (1) a contextualization of the cases; (2) a mapping of the transitional context; (3) a critique of the dichotomous perspectives that have shaped the figure of the female combatant; (4) an analysis of the lessons learned from Nepal and Colombia’s post-peace agreement transition and, finally; (5) a set of policy orientations and academic venues for an intersectional and embodied perspective on DDR.