Protection Norms in the WPS Agenda: Backlash from Within?

In this chapter, Johansson explores how the understanding and application of Women, Peace and Security (WPS) protection has been slimmed down over time. Seeking to understand underlying drivers of this development, she identifies counter discourses in adjacent policy areas such as the Responsibility to Protect and Protection of Civilians in peacekeeping, but also within the original WPS agenda itself. WPS protection exists, and has existed for a long time, in a process of backlash whereby originally more progressive elements are outcompeted by increasingly narrow (i.e. specific) interpretations and applications of WPS protection. Given that narrow norms tend to be more vulnerable to backlash than wide-spanning norms, important and difficult work will be required by WPS advocates to defend the relevance of protection in the future.