This chapter reviews how the logic of biosecuritisation animates the AKP’s new securitisation technologies. It indexes the government’s attempts to reach deep into the population’s domestic life, families, and bodies to target women, LGBTQ+, and disabled people for biosecuritisation. The first section unpacks the theoretical dimension of biosecuritisation. In the next section, the focus is on biosecuritisation as a logic of authoritarian securitisation. The third section unpacks the gendered insecuritisation of women and the exertion of biopolitical control over their bodies and reproductive lives. The next section then turns to biosecuritisation of the already marginalised LGBTQ+ community, and their criminalisation as ‘deviant’. The last section describes the potentially catastrophic consequences of the biosecuritisation of disabled people. I argue that the biosecuritisation of the purges works to further insecuritise and exclude the already marginalised sub-groups of women, members of LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities by trapping them in the vicious circle of biosecuritisation.

Arnold Schrier’s study, Ireland and the American Emigration, 1850–1900 (1958) set out to analyse the impact of mass emigration to America on the country of origin. Schrier collaborated with the Irish Folklore Commission to devise a questionnaire to gather data on the cultural and folkloristic reaction to emigration. While conducted in 1955, most of those interviewed were in their seventies and eighties and could provide memories and reflections on emigration and returned migration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The questionnaire is a significant source for those desiring to learn more about Ireland and America and possible Americanising influences. This chapter provides a detailed analysis of the questionnaire and the data which emerged from it. Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh notes the nuanced attitudes towards the returned migrant evident in the survey responses, beyond the stereotype of the ‘show off’ returned Yank. Mac Cárthaigh concludes that the disruptive figure of the returned Yank highlighted the gap between the opportunity and novel experiences represented by emigration and the conservatism of the society left behind.

Chapter 4 examines issues of citizenship and religion, with a particular focus on the status of non-Muslims and women. After discussing the problematic notion of citizenship in the Arab world, the chapter analyzes the specific meaning and scope of citizenship in the post-2011 constitutional systems. The chapter shows, on the one hand, that despite significant improvements with respect to the past, non-Muslims and women are still excluded from full citizenship, which remains a prerogative of male Muslims. On the other hand, however, over the past few years, prominent religious leaders and institutions have called for a more equality-based approach toward citizenship’s rights for all people, irrespective of one’s sex and religious belief. Given the profound influence that religion exerts on law and society in Arab countries, these calls might well lead to the adoption of legal reforms aimed at reducing discrimination against women and non-Muslims, and might represent a first step toward replacing the differentiated citizenships that currently exist in Arab countries, with one single, full, and inclusive citizenship.

This chapter examines the promotion of entrepreneurship and business startups in Oman and its rhetorical targeting of youth and women. Although innovation is part of the promotion agenda, entrepreneurship is often focused on encouraging citizens to create their own private sector job. The chapter focuses on the experiences of young people in internalising entrepreneurship promotion discourses and in starting personal businesses. It illustrates two key tensions – first, the tension between rentierism embedded within authoritarian governing structures, on the one hand, and the logic of neoliberal capitalism, on the other; and second, the tensions between rhetoric and realities of youth and female empowerment narratives. Entrepreneurship is expressed and promoted as an empowering activity, and at times is experienced as such, but can also be used to legitimise or reconstitute patriarchal and authoritarian structures to accommodate the market. The space of entrepreneurship promotion is both a key tactic of labour market bandaging, and a distinct illustration of rentier neoliberalism

Chapter 1 introduces the argument, summarises the findings, and describes the conceptual framework applied throughout the book to analyse UN mediation as a gendered-colonial institution. It begins by noting the slow progress of the WPS Agenda in UN mediation, which the scholarly literature has not adequately addressed. It also stakes out the significance of WPS in UN mediation for the realisation of women's right to political participation, the advancement of gender equality in post-conflict contexts, and the diffusion of international approaches to gender-sensitive mediation from the UN to other organisations. The next section discusses how UN mediation can be analysed as an institution and identifies the key concepts and techniques used in parsing its gendered institutional logics. It also argues for using decolonial concepts of gender in studying the UN. Next, the chapter describes the interpretive research design and considers the ethical and practical implications of this approach. Last, the chapter concludes with an overview of each chapter.

Chapter 2 provides background on the WPS Agenda and UN mediation. It first discusses the politics of the WPS Agenda in the UN by focusing on three main dynamics: how UN actors articulate what the WPS Agenda is, how the UN's mediation architecture has adopted the Agenda, and how actors within the UN resist the Agenda, both passively and actively. It then provides an overview of the UN's mediation role and how it is institutionalised. The chapter illustrates the different forms UN mediation can take by describing three processes that come up throughout the book: the Great Lakes of Africa (which deals with the national and regional dimensions of the conflict in the DR Congo), Syria, and Yemen. This chapter is especially useful for readers who may not be familiar with the WPS Agenda in the UN system and/or UN mediation.

Chapter 5 explores the logic of UN mediation as an ‘art’, which emphasises the fluid, contingent nature of mediation and prioritises relationships with negotiating parties. This chapter examines two core practices: emotional labour and discretion. The first section describes how UN mediators engage in emotional regulation to facilitate negotiations. The creation of emotional ties relies upon empathy and bonding in informal settings, which creates masculinised spaces that women have trouble accessing. In this case, the practice of empathy can be exclusionary. The second section examines how discretion – the choices mediators make about how to implement their mandates – is a key practice in UN mediation. How a mediator exercises their discretion is tied to their sense of political judgement. As such, using discretion unwisely can affect others' perceptions of a UN mediator's judgement. As WPS, especially the participation of local women, is often framed as showing partiality to one party over others, mediators are reluctant to use their discretion to advance the WPS Agenda. Instead, it is framed as a risk to the mediator's reputation for good political judgement and impartiality.

Chapter 6 analyses narrative representations of local women, who feature throughout UN mediation texts as ‘the women’. This subject position is multifaceted and articulated differently according to different logics of UN mediation. Especially within the logic of UN mediation as a science, ‘the women’ are expected to play a legitimating, information-providing role to support the UN. This is an extractive, rather than an empowering, relationship. UN narratives position ‘the women’s’ labour as central to mediation effectiveness, but they also question their abilities and authenticity as representatives of their communities. Capacity-building training is one method that the UN, and particularly gender advisors, use to discipline women into appropriate forms of participation. The logic of UN mediation as an art has less use for 'the women' in its narratives and instead questions whether they are 'political enough' to be appropriate representatives in negotiations. In turn, local women resist and navigate the subject position of ‘the women’ through strategic essentialism, critique, or opting out.

Sleep and epilepsy have bidirectional relationships, and various endocrine interactions. Besides the commonly observed increase in seizure frequency in association with sleep loss or with sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea, seizures themselves may lead to sleep fragmentation. Furthermore, nocturnal seizures may be associated with more severe and longer lasting respiratory consequences, as well as higher risk of sudden death. It is common for sleep to change during pregnancy in relation to endocrine changes and these changes may in turn affect seizure frequency. Overall, estrogens may have excitatory effects and may increase the consolidation of wakefulness and decrease REM sleep duration. Progesterone tends to have a sedative effect and the decrease in level may lead to more complaints of insomnia pre-menstrual and after menopause. Common sleep disorders are discussed. Obstructive sleep apnea becomes much more common after menopause, and sometimes may be seen in the third trimester of pregnancy as a result of weight gain. Restless legs syndrome is more common in pregnancy. Overall, insomnia is more common in women. Consideration should be given to comorbid primary sleep disorders whenever symptoms of insomnia or hypersomnolence are reported by patients with epilepsy.

Chapter 4 examines how the logic of UN mediation as a science produces and disseminates technical knowledge. It focuses on the practices of conflict analysis and the circulation of ‘best practices’ in implementing the WPS Agenda in Syria and Yemen. The beginning sections argue that conflict analysis produces instrumental knowledge about conflict by fixing actors and issues in a schema that is legible to interveners. It emerges from colonial schemes of knowledge production that diagnose the local sphere as lacking in capacity. As such, ‘gender-sensitive conflict analysis’ – a common tool for implementing the WPS Agenda in UN mediation – is subject to many of the same problems. The remainder of the chapter analyses the UN's institutional learning practices, arguing that its ‘best practice’ case studies of WPS in mediation depoliticise knowledge about gender, position the UN as the protagonist of women’s participation by erasing its own resistance to WPS, and diminish local women’s agency. Crucially, these best practice cases also elide ‘participation’ with ‘consultation’, undermining the WPS Agenda’s call for the meaningful participation of local women in UN mediation.

Enzyme-inducing antiepileptic drugs (EI-ASMs) such as phenytoin, carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, and phenobarbital may decrease contraceptive efficacy. When considering contraception for women with epilepsy (WWE), the intrauterine device (IUD) is a first line choice. It is important to keep in mind that hormonal contraception with estrogenic components induces the metabolism of lamotriginePreconception counseling should be started early and revisited frequently for WWE of childbearing age. Pre-partum optimization of ASMs ideally should be done 9−12 months before a planned pregnancy. The majority of WWE are likely to have a safe pregnancy and a healthy newborn.

Chapter 8 draws together the major themes of the analysis and prompts further thinking on decolonial feminist modes of conflict resolution. This chapter concludes that the UN’s attempt to stay relevant through developing mediation expertise is counterproductive, and contends that it should instead adopt a solidaristic approach that foregrounds politics and aims to produce ‘knowledge encounters’ between different worlds. The bulk of the chapter discusses some principles for decolonial feminist approaches to mediation, which include encounters across different ontologies of peace, decolonising expertise, solidarity, and establishing relations of care and accountability.

Chapter 3 explores narrative struggles over defining UN mediation. It examines the discursive production of UN mediation as an institution, from its beginning as a series of ad hoc diplomatic engagements, to its institutionalisation in the 2000s. The chapter shows how we can observe over time the increasingly dominant construction of conflict as a technical rather than political challenge. The chapter traces these struggles by contrasting two key documents on the UN’s role in peace and security that appeared in 1992: UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali’s 'Agenda for Peace' and the UN Office of Legal Affairs' 'Handbook on the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes between States'. The differences between these documents illustrate the development of competing logics of UN mediation: that of mediation as an art, and that which sees it as a science. The chapter compares and contrasts the narrative features of these institutional logics, and discusses how they rely upon gendered-colonial assumptions about the nature of politics, violence, and agency that shape the incorporation of the WPS Agenda.

Chapter 7 explores how the logic of UN mediation as an art produces masculinities, particularly the subjects of ‘the mediator’, ‘conflict parties’, and ‘youths’. The first part examines the narrative representations of ‘the mediator’ as a political man who should show good judgement, have excellent interpersonal skills, and be spatially mobile. ‘The mediator’ has to be empathetic and good at listening – feminised traits that operate as capital for male mediators, but less so for women. In addition, the selection process for mediators draws from the masculinised professions of diplomacy and politics and the informal, male-dominated networks of diplomats at the UN. This chapter presents descriptive findings on the gender and career backgrounds of senior UN mediators. The second part of the chapter examines representations of local men. ‘Local men’ – often equivalent to the ‘conflict parties’ – function as the constitutive outside of ‘the mediator’. ‘Conflict parties’ are represented as emotional, traditional, and irrational, recalling colonial constructions of the ‘other’. Meanwhile, male ‘youths’ appear not as political agents, but as vectors of senseless violence. Thus, a colonial hierarchy of masculinities exists in which local men are subordinate to the mediator.