Intimate Partner Violence, Risk and Security

Securing Women's Lives in a Global World

Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Sandra Walklate, Jude McCulloch, JaneMaree Maher, Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Sandra Walklate, Jude McCulloch, JaneMaree Maher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367483432
• eBook ISBN: 9781351791991
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited collection addresses intimate partner violence, risk and security as global issues. Although intimate partner violence, risk and security are intimately connected they are rarely considered in tandem in the context of global security. Yet, intimate partner violence causes widespread physical, sexual and/or psychological harm. It is the most common type of violence against women internationally and is estimated to affect 30 per cent of women worldwide. Intimate partner violence has received significant attention in recent years, animating political debate, policy and law reform as well as scholarly attention.

In bringing together a range of international experts, this edited collection challenges status quo understandings of risk and questions how we can reposition the risk of IPV, and particularly the risk of IPH, as a critical site of global and national security. It brings together contributions from a range of disciplines and international jurisdictions, including from Australia and New Zealand, United Kingdom, Europe, United States, North America, Brazil and South Africa.

The contributions here urge us to think about perpetrators in more nuanced and sophisticated ways with chapters pointing to the structural and social factors that facilitate and sustain violence against women and IPV. Contributors point out that states not only exacerbate the structural conditions producing the risks of violence, but directly coerce and control women as both citizens and non-citizens. States too should be understood as collaborators and facilitators of intimate partner violence. Effective action against intimate partner violence requires sustained responses at the global, state and local levels to end gender inequality. Critical to this end are environmental issues, poverty and the divisions, often along 'race' and ethnic lines, underpinning other dimensions of social and economic inequality.

Part I

Challenges in the contemporary global policy framework

Chapter 1

Securitising sexual violence

Transitions from war to peace

Anette Bringedal Houge and Inger Skjelsbæk

It is awful to say [sighs] … but it feels like we need another armed conflict in order to get the attention and funding we need to be able to work with and address sexual and gender-based violence.

(Non-government organisation [NGO] worker, Sarajevo, November 2015)

Introduction

This book addresses how international and national security measures fail to include or prioritise women’s safety and security from male intimate partner violence (IPV) within their state-centred conceptions of security (see also Ní Aoláin, Cahn and Haynes 2014). Shifting the focus to human – and gendered – security, the various contributions address security politics and measures in relation to ordinary people in their daily lives. In this chapter, we focus particularly on the continuities and discontinuities of sexual violence as it takes place and is responded to in different security settings (see also Buss 2014: 16). In stark contrast to (the lack of) global security responses to IPV – as pointed out in the previous chapter – conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has gained extraordinary levels of attention, visibility and condemnation at the level of global, or international, security politics during the past decade and a half. From this outset, we ask whether and how the recent and ongoing securitisation of CRSV intersects with and connects to post-conflict sexual violence. We do this by drawing on feminist security perspectives, extensive research on issues to do with CRSV, as well as insights gained from interviews with gender activists, politicians and stakeholders in criminal, transitional and post-conflict justice projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. More specifically, we argue that there are three interrelated modes of recognition that form part of the securitisation process: hyper-visibility, the construction of a hierarchy of harms and criminalisation. Looking at securitisation through these modes of recognition, we discuss how the rape–security nexus at the level of global security politics may impact on women’s security in post-conflict societies. In doing so, we engage with the ongoing scholarly discussion about the relevance and importance of a continuum perspective on violence against women (Meger 2016; Cohen and Wood 2016; Kirby 2012).

Feminist security studies and gendered securitisation

Applying a feminist perspective to issues to do with security includes always asking ‘where are the women’ (Enloe 1990) as well as a consistent questioning of ‘what is assumed to be normal’ (Wibben 2011: 12). As Smith (2005, quoted in Wibben 2011: 7) has realised, ‘looking at security from the perspective of women alters the definition of what security is to such an extent that it is difficult to see how any form of traditional security studies can offer an analysis’. Critical feminist security studies challenge traditional security studies’ exclusive concern with state-centred and public security, and questions how security is – or should be – perceived. As does a human security perspective, feminist theories on security focus on the lived experiences and consequences of structural, international, national and individual in/security – emphasising how gender and in/security intersect and work on one another (Hirschauer 2014: 56). From this outset, feminist scholars have asked whether we can in any way talk about a secure state, if its residents do not experience security (Kaldor and Chinkin 2017). This question and the untangling of what is taken for granted in the overall security discourse have steered feminist engagement with issues to do with conflict, peace and security for decades (see also Wibben 2011: 7). Sexual violence is a case in point, as its continuation after the end of conflict exemplifies how security is a highly relative notion, which can mean different things for men and women, collectives and individuals. Boesten and Fisher (2012) remark how, no matter the level of conflict-related sexual violence, ‘[s]exual violence [both] precedes and survives conflict’. Importantly, violence against women does not necessarily abate at the ‘end of conflict’ (see, for example, Manjoo and McRaith 2011: 13). From this perspective, gendered and sexual violence challenge the very notions of ‘conflict’ and ‘peace’, as sexual violence neither begins with the outbreak of war, nor ends with the formal signing of peace agreements:

The terms ‘pre,’ ‘during,’ and ‘post’ conflict bring with them assumptions about breaks or changes in social and political contexts and the everyday lives of women and men. While feminists have sought to challenge the deemed rupture between these divisions … the assumptions about ‘end’ of conflict are difficult to unseat. In the post-conflict period, presumptions about ‘security’ … can obscure the ways in which women continue to face violence and insecurity.

(Buss 2014: 16)

In this chapter we address the consequences of these assumptions, focusing on the recent securitisation of CRSV and how it impacts on how we understand the broader continuum of gendered violence that transgresses ‘war’ and ‘peace’. The term ‘securitisation’ as applied here refers to a process involving a marked shift in the framing of an issue, moving it from the status of a political non-concern, or a concern of ordinary politics, to the realm of security politics (see Hirschauer 2014: 5–6). Such a shift is premised on (the construction of) a specific, exceptional and existential threat, and marks the end of ‘business as usual’, as it evokes the applicability and use of extraordinary measures. That is, it is a shift in framing that expands the toolbox available to policymakers and governments to tackle the threat the issue poses (Hirschauer 2014: 192). For CRSV, this process of securitisation emerged with the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda in the early and mid-1990s. These conflicts constituted watershed moments in global security politics as they forced ahead global recognition of women’s war experiences as a relevant and international security concern (Hirschauer 2014: 7).

UNSCR 1325 and Bosnia as a case for understanding a broader picture

On 31 October 2000, Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) was unanimously adopted by the United Nations (UN) Security Council. This groundbreaking resolution was critically important because it framed women’s wartime experiences as a concern for international peace and security. Importantly, it prominently stated the importance of women’s participation in (military and civilian) peacemaking efforts, and reiterated the international responsibility for women’s particular protection needs during armed conflicts (Tryggestad 2009). The agency approach so clearly articulated in UNSCR 1325 was a new kind of language, rhetoric and ambition at the level of the UN Security Council. However, its implementation has proved to be difficult. UNSCR 1325 asks for changes in social and political structures, in institutional behaviours and societal attitudes. For many politicians, military personnel and others mandated to implement it, the resolution is seen both as too broad and too vague, making it difficult to operationalise its good intentions. In addition, it was felt by many UN member states that the ideas and ideals about gender equality and women’s participation embedded in the text of the resolution embodied Western, and perhaps even Northern, concepts that were now being forced upon people and states with divergent cultural understandings of gender and gender relations.

In contrast to the women’s agency orientation, the resolution’s other main concern about women’s protection needs in the context of war had been part of UN language for at least a decade before the adoption of UNSCR 1325. The Beijing Platform for Action stemming from the UN World Conference on Women in 1995 is a case in point, in which two chapters are devoted to women in armed conflict and the focus is exclusively on the special protection needs of women. Portraying women as in need of rescue was – and remains – uncontroversial. The protection of women as a particularly vulnerable group during times of conflict was, thus, a need around which there was already cross-cultural agreement, and also a task that was easier to conceptualise and operationalise. Protection issues are more pragmatic – often about implementing practical, hands-on security measures that ensure that defined groups of people are less vulnerable in given situations, such as lights in dark places in refugee settlements, military presence in areas of tension between rival groups and safe houses for women. It is this protection orientation that dominates the follow-up resolutions to UNSCR 1325¹ – which primarily focus on women’s security through protection from and prosecution of CRSV (Kirby and Shepherd 2016).

Bosnia is a particularly relevant case to examine in order to further our understanding of the ways in which CRSV is securitised and the complexities involved in the process. Bosnia is a country that is still in many ways transitioning from war to peace. While the country is formally independent and self-governed, the international presence remains strong. In particular, the role and mandate of the Office of the High Representative (OHR), which was put in place to oversee the civilian elements of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), remain strong. Moreover, the country is deeply divided. The DPA left Bosnia with one of the most complicated government structures in the world: a state divided into two entities (Republika Srpska and The Bosnian Federation), which has resulted in triple (state and entity level) sets of presidencies, ministers and legislature. The system is highly fragmented, and corruption is widespread. Negotiating this landscape is difficult, and women’s legal, social and political status is entangled in ethnic divisions. Not least, it was the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and particularly in Bosnia, from 1992 to 1995, that played the biggest part in bringing CRSV, women’s war experiences and security needs onto the international agenda. As stated, the massive attention and response to the systematic use of sexual violence in Bosnia was key to the successful mobilisation that drove the adoption of UNSCR 1325 (Hudson and Leidl 2015: 24).

Domestically, the politicisation of women’s bodies and the targeted victimisation of women placed gender issues explicitly at the centre of ethnicised politics in Bosnia (Hansen 2001; Helms 2013; Mežnarić 1994; Nikolić-Ristanović 2000; Skjelsbæk 2006). According to actors in Bosnian civil society, the adoption of UNSCR 1325 in 2000 provided them with political leverage for their work with women’s rights and gender equality (Björkdahl and Selimović 2015). Sarajevo Open Centre argues, for instance, that the country has made progress in terms of greater political participation by women, an increasing number of women in the police and military forces, and efforts to combat gender-based violence and support victims of CRSV (Mirović, Hadžić and Miftari 2015; Veličković 2014). Others point out, however, that the adoption of UNSCR1325 does not function as an instrument for any substantial changes in gender dynamics in domestic structures (Björkdahl and Selimović 2015).

From ‘silence’ to ‘hyper-visibility’

Prior to the conflict in Bosnia and the genocide in Rwanda, CRSV was rarely acknowledged as anything but a by-product of war and received only scant attention from policy, advocacy, legal and academic actors alike. That does not, however, suggest that sexual violence did not exist. Far from it. In her study of women in the Viking Age, Jesch (1991: 1–2) asserts that the Vikings would vent their fury on women and monks by maiming, murdering, robbing, pillaging, destroying, enslaving and raping. Jesch also notes that this behaviour was common among the Vikings’ adversaries. The situation during the Roman empire was no different, as Nicolas Poussin’s painting ‘Abduction of the Sabine Women’ indicates, and Richlin’s (2010: 353) overview of sexuality in the Roman Empire reveals, where she describes how the rape of conquered men and women happened on a wide scale and that it was considered an integral part of warfare. The same point can be found in the work of Vigarello (2001), who traces the history of rape in France from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Moreover, rape as a metaphor and metaphors of rape have been part of historic accounts and other forms of war documentation and depiction for centuries. For example, the attack on the Chinese city of Nanking by Japanese soldiers in 1937, resulting in the death of up to 300,000 Chinese civilians, is commonly referred to as the Rape of Nanking. As a direct manifestation of the misuse of power and violence unleashed by war, rape is used as a metaphor for the barbarism of war. However – and ironically so, considering the recognition that lies in the above use of rape as metaphor – as an act in itself, rape has historically been referred to by the use of euphemisms, such as the biblical formulation that ‘you may enjoy the spoil of your enemies’. Considering rape and sexual violence as part of the spoils of war, as a natural consequence of warfare, has historically marginalised the phenomenon of CRSV as a private women’s problem. This, combined with the shame associated with rape and sexual violence (see, for example, Ericsson 2011), has meant that victims’ stories and experiences have been kept at arm’s length from policy and research analysis. As a consequence, we have, historically, known very little about the ways in which rape is used in different wars, why this is the preferred form of violence in certain settings, how the victims and their societies live with these experiences after the war has ended, and what the political impact of these acts of violence might be, both during and after conflict.

This historical silence has, however, been disrupted by the voiced experiences of survivors from many conflict zones, beginning with Bosnia and Rwanda, but later also Kosovo, East Timor, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the DRC and Syria. Often enabled through public testimonies at international criminal courts from the early 1990s onwards, victims’ stories constitute what Henry (2011) describes as counter memories of war. A massive documentation effort, first by journalists and then on the part of international NGOs and the UN community, was instrumental in bringing about the attention needed to move the internati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Fm
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of acronyms and abbreviations
• Introduction: intimate partner violence, risk and security – securing women’s lives in a global world
• Part I: Challenges in the contemporary global policy framework
• Part II: National security, difference and precarity
• Part III: Everyday security and criminal justice questions
• Conclusion: securing women’s lives – making them count and accounting for men’s violence
• Index