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Abstract This article intends to challenge the dominant assumptions that undermine the potential application of peacebuilding frameworks beyond formal post-war contexts. It analyses the gangs' truce that recently took place in El Salvador as a privileged laboratory to rethink hegemonic understandings and practices of peacebuilding by specifically addressing the importance of overcoming dichotomised categories such 'war and peace', 'criminal and political', and 'success and failure'. It is claimed that while the truce fostered a discourse pointing towards an ongoing peace process and enlarged the public debate on the failings of post-war policies and on the structural roots of violence, it was also decisively undermined by the inability to surmount the dichotomy that juxtaposes the criminal and the political domains. It is argued that a peacebuilding framework, inspired by a set of critical perspectives on war and peace and on the nature of 'the political', may thus be of crucial importance for the future of policies aimed at curbing violence in El Salvador and elsewhere.

Abstract This article intends to challenge the dominant assumptions that undermine the potential application of peacebuilding frameworks beyond formal post-war contexts. It analyses the gangs' truce that recently took place in El Salvador as a privileged laboratory to rethink hegemonic understandings and practices of peacebuilding by specifically addressing the importance of overcoming dichotomised categories such 'war and peace', 'criminal and political', and 'success and failure'. It is claimed that while the truce fostered a discourse pointing towards an ongoing peace process and enlarged the public debate on the failings of post-war policies and on the structural roots of violence, it was also decisively undermined by the inability to surmount the dichotomy that juxtaposes the criminal and the political domains. It is argued that a peacebuilding framework, inspired by a set of critical perspectives on war and peace and on the nature of 'the political', may thus be of crucial importance for the future of policies aimed at curbing violence in El Salvador and elsewhere.

This article intends to challenge the dominant assumptions that undermine the potential application of peacebuilding frameworks beyond formal post-war contexts. It analyses the gangs' truce that recently took place in El Salvador as a privileged laboratory to rethink hegemonic understandings and practices of peacebuilding by specifically addressing the importance of overcoming dichotomised categories such 'war and peace', 'criminal and political', and 'success and failure'. It is claimed that while the truce fostered a discourse pointing towards an ongoing peace process and enlarged the public debate on the failings of post-war policies and on the structural roots of violence, it was also decisively undermined by the inability to surmount the dichotomy that juxtaposes the criminal and the political domains. It is argued that a peacebuilding framework, inspired by a set of critical perspectives on war and peace and on the nature of 'the political', may thus be of crucial importance for the future of policies aimed at curbing violence in El Salvador and elsewhere. ; Este artigo pretende desafiar os pressupostos dominantes subjacentes à aplicação de enfoques tradicionais aos processos de construção da paz, para além dos contextos formais das políticas pós-guerra. Analisa a trégua das gangues que ocorreu recentemente em El Salvador, tomando-a como um laboratório privilegiado para repensar entendimentos hegemônicos e práticas de construção da paz, abordando especificamente a importância de superar categorias dicotomizadas como "guerra e paz", "criminal e político" e "sucesso e fracasso". Afirma-se que, embora a trégua tenha promovido um discurso voltado a um processo de paz continuado e tenha ampliado o debate público sobre as falhas das políticas pós-guerra e sobre as raízes estruturais da violência, a mesma foi ao mesmo tempo decisivamente enfraquecida pela incapacidade de se superar a dicotomia que justapõe os domínios do político e do criminal. Argumenta-se que um quadro de construção da paz inspirado por um conjunto de perspectivas críticas sobre a guerra e a paz e sobre a natureza do "político" pode, portanto, ser de importância crucial para o futuro das políticas de combate à violência em El Salvador e em outros lugares.

This article aims to discuss the intersections of the anti-feminist and anti-immigration agendas in the Portuguese far-right through critical discourse analysis of the PNR and Chega's positions. These political actors convey nationalist, racist and anti-multiculturalist messages at the same time that they show their hostility towards gender equality policies, using racial, cisgender and heteronormative categories as criteria to define whose citizens are worthy of defense/protection. Recently, they have also co-opted gender equality agendas to justify anti-immigration positions, specifically opposing the hosting of refugees, depicted as a potential threat to the imagined Portuguese and European white and Christian community. The latter representation, apparently disruptive of their own conservative ideology based on protecting the traditional family/nation, is thus re-oriented in order to simultaneously attack "gender ideology". The article shows how the mobilization of gendered and racialized tropes in the construction of Europe and Portugal as at risk from 'external' forces re-inscribes racist and xenhophobic securitarian discourses in the political sphere.

This article aims to discuss the intersections of the anti-feminist and anti-immigration agendas in the Portuguese far-right through critical discourse analysis of the PNR and Chega's positions. These political actors convey nationalist, racist and anti-multiculturalist messages at the same time that they show their hostility towards gender equality policies, using racial, cisgender and heteronormative categories as criteria to define whose citizens are worthy of defense/protection. Recently, they have also co-opted gender equality agendas to justify anti-immigration positions, specifically opposing the hosting of refugees, depicted as a potential threat to the imagined Portuguese and European white and Christian community. The latter representation, apparently disruptive of their own conservative ideology based on protecting the traditional family/nation, is thus re-oriented in order to simultaneously attack "gender ideology". The article shows how the mobilization of gendered and racialized tropes in the construction of Europe and Portugal as at risk from 'external' forces re-inscribes racist and xenhophobic securitarian discourses in the political sphere.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the possible conditions for the emergence or containment of collective youth violence in two African capitals (Bissau and Praia) focusing on young people's (re)actions to economic and social marginality. The visibility of violent groups in Praia – capital of a 'model African country' – contrasts with the apparent scarcity of these phenomena in Bissau – capital of an economically stagnant and politically unstable country. In this paper, we argue that more than looking at traditional theories that relate violence to poverty or social anomie, it is necessary to analyze, on the one hand, the role of social inequality in sustaining violence and, on the other hand, the degree of acceptance of the marginalization and social destiny by the young.

This article analyzes the limitations of the United Nations Security Council Resolution on Women, Peace and Security (1325/2000) as a product of the concepts of gender, violence and security underpinning it. Although it represents an important historical advance, recognizing the potential role of women in peacemaking processes and post-conflict agreements, and ensuring that violence against them is taken seriously both nationally and internationally, the Resolution nevertheless has a number of limitations and challenges. It is argued here that the Resolution is (only) a first step towards the recognition of the connections and possibilities of dialogue between gender, violence and security, and that it does not necessarily transform the way each concept and the connections between them are understood within the United Nations, its member states and even non-governmental organizations dedicated to gender issues, particularly women's groups. The limits of the Resolution are questioned by analyzing contexts of armed violence other than wars or post-conflict situations that are not covered by 1325, focusing particularly on their gender dynamics.

Abstract This article focuses on media representations of 'the South in the North' crosscutting the European mediascape in 2015 and the beginning of 2016. Assuming that both identities and perceptions of in/security are socially constructed, particularly by means of discourse, that security is gendered and gender constructions are in turn built on dynamics of in/security, and that gendered power relations and representations are always entangled with other structures of inequality and domination such as racism, this article argues that gendered categories of othering in the media's representations have been critical to produce and justify 1) hegemonic narratives of securitisation that aim to protect an imagined European identity and 2) counter-narratives denouncing the racial and cultural discrimination tied to the 'North's' hegemonic representations of refugees. Theoretically, the article proposes a dialogue among critical, feminist, and postcolonial peace and security studies. Methodologically, it analyses through discourse analysis three highly mediatised cases by examining the social representations of the refugees, namely their gendered components put forward by representative European media outlets based in the UK. It explores their implications in terms of the consolidation of stereotypes and hierarchies of suffering according to criteria of credibility/suspicion and vulnerability/threat, and identifies some examples of media counter-narratives on refugee flows through specific gendered and racialised representations.

The aim of this paper is to discuss three main critical challenges which research and policymaking in the feld of collective youth violence in urban contexts face today. This paper argues that we need to shift the focus of research in this area from "problematic" youth to the study of the ways in which violence permeates daily lives and becomes normalised through specifc local social and political conditions. The paper then suggests that, in light of recent theory and empirical research, the relationship between violence and poverty should be re-evaluated. Additionally, and in order to properly address the causes of youth collective violence, this paper argues for a change of focus in the analysis of youth violent mobilisation. The suggested focus rests on the appeal of the symbolic revenues that mark the search for a valued social status and possibilities in contexts of adversity and violence. In fact, symbolic factors associated with the involvement in drugs traffcking and other violent activities and with youths' contact with frearms are key factors, namely the search for status, power and respect, and attracting recognition from their male and female peers. The adrenaline and danger which youth experience through these activities are highly connected with gender constructions. Finally, this paper supports the progressively accepted evidence in favour of an urgent shift in how to address and prevent youth violence, claiming that repressive policies have hitherto failed to contain violence and to contribute to improving the formulation of preventive policies. This paper is based on data collection and analysis as well as reports from several studies conducted since 2006 in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), San Salvador (El Salvador), Praia (Cape Verde) and Bissau (Guinea-Bissau).

For the mainstream literature, the notion of failed state is void of political or systemic meaning: states fail because they are allegedly not capable of adopting the necessary reforms, either in economic or in institutional terms. Quite differently, we argue that state failure must be understood as the result of a complex mix of exogenous and internal factors. The combination of an overload of demands by the donor community and the non-prioritization of internal legitimacy are at the heart of most state failure processes. Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau have often been included in the group of "risk states" or "poor performers". The analysis of their historical trajectory shows the need of a more complex approach than the usual prescriptive strategies, such as political conditionality, associated to failed or collapsed states.

Overall, despite the differences between Rio de Janeiro, San Salvador and Praia in terms of the incidence of youth violence, historical approaches and experience in dealing with the issue, Brazil, El Salvador and Cape Verde have all favoured an enforcement-based approach, focusing primarily on repression and law-enforcement mechanisms (police action, specific youth violence legislation, and prosecution, prison and socio-educational systems), instead of interventions aimed at the root causes of violent behaviour. However, recent changes in federal government approaches to public security in Brazil, coupled with state level changes, suggest the materialisation of a discourse shift in the field of youth violence, which has been in the making since the late 1990s. Another common feature in these countries is the incomplete availability of qualified information systems on violence and violent criminality, especially on organised crime and female involvement in urban violence. Civil society actions to prevent and combat urban violence are very diverse. In Brazil, especially Rio de Janeiro, NGOs, associations and grassroots organisations have a fairly long track record when dealing with the issue of youth violence, promoting initiatives and programmes mostly aimed at youth violence prevention, especially at the primary level. These initiatives and programmes have been based on skills training, sports, culture, empowerment and, to lesser extent, professional training and labour market integration. In San Salvador, despite the severity of youth violence, civil society approaches are less diversified and effective. Like any other violence-afflicted country in Central America, violence prevention and especially intervention programmes, namely those aimed at the perpetrators of violence, face greater disadvantages and less funding and support from the region's crime-weary population. In Praia, the involvement of civil society in this matter has been slow. However, in recent years, the experiences of civil society organisations, sometimes in partnership with public institutions, have been singled out as good examples and as having had some direct impact on youth involved in violence in the Cidade da Praia. Responding to and effectively preventing youth urban violence requires a comprehensive approach which takes into account the intra-social forms of violence committed by and against youth, as well as the structural conditions which determine the marginalisation of youth. This includes prevention programmes which help young people in vulnerable situations, intervention programmes which offer alternatives for those attracted to violence, rehabilitation prospects for those who wish to leave violent groups, and those leaving prison and socioeducational systems. Capable and accountable law-enforcement bodies, protection and support mechanisms for victims of violence, adequate arms control policies, up-to-date data collection and analysis systems on youth and violence, and whole-of-government and multi-disciplinary approaches to violence are also key.