Grassroots Resilience: Women's Informal Peacebuilding in the Rumuekpe Crisis, Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

This article examines women’s informal peacebuilding in Rumuekpe, Rivers State, Nigeria, during and after the 2006-2008 crisis. The objective of this study is to trace how women’s engagement in Rumuekpe developed over time and what it reveals about their access to formal recognition within Rivers State’s wider peace architecture. The study is anchored in feminist peace and security theory, which holds that women are frequently active and effective participants in community-level peacebuilding even where they remain structurally and institutionally excluded from the formal negotiations that follow. Adopting a single, instrumental case study design, the study draws on documentary material, gathered directly from the Rumuekpe Women Accord as part of a wider mixed-methods study of women’s participation in peace negotiations across Rivers State. Findings show that women in Rumuekpe organized as the prayer warriors, sustaining prayer-based mobilization and outreach to armed youths, drew on kinship and trust, rather than institutional standing, to influence combatants. Despite being sustained and at points, strikingly effective, none of this engagement converted into recognized seat at any formal negotiating table. The study concludes that informal engagement in Rivers State is a durable, effective, and consistently under-credited feature of how peace is actually built and sustained at the community-level, rather than evidence that formal participation alone produces sustainable peace. It recommends that women’s informal mediation work be formally documented and attributed, that grassroots structures such as the Rumuekpe Women Accord be deliberately integrated into the community’s formal peace architecture, and that future research and policy attend as closely to how women describe their own contribution as to how that contribution is described on their behalf. Key words: case study, grassroots peacebuilding, Rumuekpe, informal engagement, Rivers State.

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