Mobilizing Transnational Gender Politics in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780815377481
• eBook ISBN: 9781317094920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Mageza-Barthel provides a context sensitive analysis of how Rwanda's women's movement used the United Nations (UN) gender norms in its efforts to insert gender-specific demands in the post-genocide period. The overall goal of these women - and their supporters - has been to further gender equality and equity in Rwanda. This study details which political processes could be engendered. It further illustrates why certain gender norms were adopted and adapted, whereas others were not. The study addresses issues of global governance in gender politics through such international frameworks as CEDAW, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, as well as Resolution 1325. These instruments have been brought forth by a transnational women's movement to benefit women and women's rights across the globe. It shows how these gender norms were introduced, adapted and contested locally at a crucial time of the transformation process underway. Concerned with the interplay of domestic and international politics, it also alludes to the unique circumstances in Rwanda that have led to unprecedented levels of women's political representation. Which tools have been the most significant in women's mobilisation and how these relate to precedents set within international relations is of interest to a wide community of scholars and policy-makers alike.

Chapter 1

Women, Gender and International Politics

The following two chapters discuss women’s marginalization in politics. Whereas this chapter concentrates on their involvement in international politics, the next chapter focuses on their inclusion in domestic politics. The aim is to undo women’s invisibility in theories of how politics is done and highlights the continuity between the international and domestic spheres of politics. The package of UN gender norms is presented with a view to establishing how these can be made useful for women pursuing political agenda-setting after the genocide in Rwanda. The UN’s gender norms represent a potential tool for women, because they pick up on relevant thematic issues in pursuing gender equality and prohibiting discrimination, both in peacetime, during conflicts as well as in contexts that have experienced conflict.

Although created and passed at the international political level the norms’ implementation has facilitated their impact at the domestic level. Among these are official and innovative means of making the international political framework take hold at the national level – with the aim of improving the lives of women by instituting and maintaining equality guarantees for them. For the past three decades feminist scholars have sought to depict international politics as being relevant to women and vice versa. I further introduce the UN’s gender norms by recounting their content, their implementation mechanisms and discuss how they complement each other. The chapter concludes by pointing to the implications of the UN’s gender norms distinctly for post-conflict societies in aiming to show what potential they could have for contexts such as Rwanda.

Investigating Gender(ed) Ideas and Norms

The advent of feminist IR studies coincided with the end of the Cold War, which brought with it a turn in IR theory. Global Governance debates pick up on the change in international political practice to emphasize the question how common problems within a multipolar world can be solved jointly as a response to the temporary window of opportunity that presented itself (Prügl and Meyer 1999, 11). Indeed, an analysis of states, their policies and their actions remains central, although a shift has taken place towards recognizing other actors such as international organizations, social movements and NGOs within international politics (Rai and Waylen 2008b, 2).

Feminist studies in the Global Governance debate have sought both to understand how global governance is gendered and also to pursue the normative goal of transforming its practice – a particularly pressing task, since global governance outcomes reflect and affect gender relations globally (Ruppert 1998b, 23; Rai 2008, 38; Rai and Waylen 2008b, 1–2). Another pertinent reason led to this increased interest in international politics: the series of high-level world conferences marked an increased level of cooperation among women. The World Women’s Conferences signalled a new era in which women could potentially influence topics related to them and where the women’s conferences could bring these topics together (West 1999, 177). These changes needed to be recorded and transnational gender politics needed to conceptualize differently. A transnational women’s movement (TWM) emerged that influenced our perception that women’s rights are human rights.¹ During the UN Women’s Decade with individual conferences in Mexico City in 1975, in Copenhagen in 1980 and in Nairobi in 1985 a dynamic on caucusing on gender issues unfolded. Thereafter, the conceptualization of transnational gender politics included the political space accorded to women and gender issues (Razavi and Miller 1995; Tinker 1999; Kardam 2004), the TWM’s strategies² (Ruf 1996; Joachim 2002) as well as the construction and reproduction of gendered norms and rules (Runyan 1999; Stienstra 1999).

Since women’s international activism has centred on the UN and its institutions, an overview of their mandates to show which political space women occupy is necessary (Antrobus 2004, 16). Women have lobbied the UN vigorously and as a consequence the UN has shown itself responsive to these demands (Brautigam 2002, 9). This is not to say that the UN has been equally responsive to women’s demands in general owing to the complexities and internal dynamics of the institutions themselves (Waylen 2008, 256). Still, overall, gender issues have increasingly started to shift from the periphery of issue areas and have been repositioned as part of the mainstream of political fields.

UNIFEM and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) were originally created with the goal of supporting and funding projects for women in developing countries as well as providing data and analysis on women’s status respectively (Brautigam 2002, 16–17; see Hudson 2010, 95–118). Yet despite these institutions, women still remain relatively invisible within the UN, particularly as their levels of official representation are fairly low. This stands in sharp contrast to the high levels of women’s participation within UN events and bodies. Most women are found in those issue areas and bodies that are traditionally regarded as feminine. Not surprisingly, the highest concentration of women within a United Nations body can be found within the Economic and Social Council’s (ECOSOC) and the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) with men only rarely being sent to this commission. These institutions have been deemed part of a ‘women’s ghetto’, owing to the under-resourcing and marginalization of women’s rights institutions within the UN, since their influence on gender and other issue areas is limited (D’Amico 1999, 37). The institutional set-up of agencies has been altered after the merger of several institutions, including INSTRAW and UNIFEM, into UN Women in July 2010. The hope has been that the ghettoization of women’s issues would be ameliorated with a stronger mandate and an increase in funds (Bunch 2009). The question how the UN itself can be held accountable to the very norms it sets is therefore a subject that requires a look at alternative modes of agency.

The idea of a TWM acknowledges the cooperation between women working from within and from outside governance institutions to effect change on behalf of women (Basu 1995; Ruppert 1998a, 2000b; Wölte 2008). It is made-up of various forms of organizing by women, such as national and transnational issue networks, local women’s organizations and professionalized NGOs. Based on their expertise the latter organizations influence international gender politics and strategies strongly (Ruppert 2002; and following her lead Wölte 2008, 32). The TWM’s impact is largely attributed to its two distinguishing characteristics: First, it links women’s national and local living conditions to international politics. Thereby it places their experiences as a subject matter for international politics. Secondly, its diverse membership base brings together various agents across multi-level politics who act on various political levels. In this way, whilst mobilizing at the international level for a change in global relations and principles on a certain issue, the TWMs’ respective national constituencies are also the addressees of women’s lobbying (Wölte 2008, 33–4).

The summit series had a significant impact on the TWM itself: women forged forth from national and local contexts to learn from each other and brought the lessons learnt from the exchanges at the conferences back to their respective constituencies (Basu 1995). The parallel NGO conferences during the summit series are credited with opening-up the space of international politics to a wider circle of women than those nominated by their governments. Here, alternative conceptions on gender issues were tabled and an exchange of information took place between women. During the women’s decade a strong politicization of gender issues ensued with central questions being raised on whether feminist causes can be separated from those of nationalisms.³ The debates centred on the difference among women and the local contexts of their struggles; it encompassed the condemnation of violence against women and it involved Third World women’s perspectives on gender issues, which placed an emphasis on women’s socio-economic status and issues of economic development. In challenging the notion of a ‘global sisterhood’, the struggle entailed the question of domination within the TWM along the North-South divide.⁴ A question largely settled by the decade’s end (Basu 1995; Kardam 2004, 91).

In fact, the Nairobi conference was tantamount to an endorsement of Third World women’s contribution to, and greatly promoted their further engagement with, the TWM (Antrobus 2004, 53). Yet, although women’s NGOs were able to place gender and poverty on the international agenda, their influence on the outcome of the official conference document was limited (West 1999, 180–82). The 1995 Beijing Conference is credited with turning around the apparent stagnation of gender issues since the UN’s inception; 189 governments and more than 30,000 women were represented at Beijing and its parallel NGO Forum in Huairou. But more importantly, feminist and women’s organizing had culminated to a high point at the local, national and international political levels (West 1999, 184; Brautigam 2002, 18).⁵ This growth has been identified by Peggy Antrobus (2004, 17–18), who refers to Uta Ruppert (2002), as signifying a shift towards a global women’s movement that sought to mobilize around a commonly-defined interest. Based on constant contestation, resistance and suspension new considerations for women’s movements engaging in transnational politics are being developed (Mageza-Barthel 2007; Ruppert, Jung and Schwarzer forthcoming).

Several aspects should be considered to investigate norms and ideas. For one global politics should be understood as multi-polar and multi-level politics. Within this wider political system state interests should be questioned and the incentives for politics regarded as primarily non-material and arising out of social interaction. However, the social construction of gender relations⁶ forms the basis upon which the social construction of international politics is developed. As non-material factors, instead of merely being perceived as regulatory these norms should be understood as constitutive. For another, if power is acknowledged as being disparately held within the international system, then the analytic weight accorded to structure and agents may be balanced out. This perspective bares the potential of multiple avenues along which decisions can be influenced. As a result institutions in the form of international organizations are important, because they specify and disseminate norms. In brief, they affect the course norms may take (Ruppert 2000b, 33; Locher and Prügl 2001, 114; Kardam 2004, 96–105). In return, the (legal) norms issued by international organizations impact on states’ behaviour (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 916). In order to continue, it is important to develop a definition of what norms entail. As behavioural standards norms differentiate acceptable forms of behaviour for states (Gurowitz 1999, 417; Stienstra 1999, 267). They discern that which ‘is’ from that which ‘ought to be’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 916). More specifically, they are found as codified rules and agreements, such as treaties and international outcome documents, which are accompanied by enforcement mechanisms (Kardam 2004, 87–8).

Despite being codified, norms are dynamic and not static. Owing to shifting social and political relations, they impact on societies along the given lines of difference they encounter (Stienstra 1999, 266). The question who uses norms becomes relevant to trace norms and ideas. They may be reflected in explicit as well as implicit behaviour, rhetoric and actions around gender (Whitworth 1994, 74–5). Departing from the lived realities of women’s lives the material conditions under which norms operate and the material outcomes expected as a result of norms’ existence are critical for feminist scholars who also embrace normative claims (Locher and Prügl 2001, 122). How extensive norms are also depends on their scope: overall or comprehensive norms generate the setting for specific or focused norms that define particular issues (Stienstra 1999, 25–6). For example, the topics of women in peace and conflict settings or women’s economic equality exist as subsets under the umbrella of prohibiting women’s discrimination. At the same time, not all subsets encounter the same commitment. One need only compare the progress made globally on women’s human rights agenda and the strong resistance against changing their economic and security-related fate. What results have women’s struggles in the transformation of gender relations thus borne? In order to extricate these gains for Rwandan women in relation to the UN’s gender norms, a discussion of these pivotal norms is necessary and a framework reflecting an understanding of how these international norms can be translated domestically needs to be established.

The UN’s Gender Norms: From Women’s Human Rights to Women, Peace and Security

In this section, the evolution of the UN’s gender norms from general Women’s Human Rights norms to conflict-specific gender norms is depicted. What becomes apparent is that a diffusion of the gender equality norm from the Human Rights sector to the security sector has taken place. The norms on Women, Peace and Security have been preceded by various general and at times even very specific women’s human rights norms. Since the founding of the United Nations women’s equality has been a controversial topic, which has found its place on the UN agenda in increments. So, whilst the UN Charter already stipulates men’s and women’s formal equality as one of the UN’s founding principles all major human rights documents since then prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sex. Further norms with significant relevance to women’s equality were signed in years soon thereafter (Cook 1995, 10).

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

One of the most significant developments during the Women’s Decade was the CSW’s finalization of CEDAW in 1979.⁷ After being adopted by the UN’s General Assembly it entered into force after 20 states had ratified it on 3 September 1981 (Wörgetter 1999, 171; Charlesworth and Chinkin 2000, 216; Brautigam 2002, 11; Byrnes 2002, 120; Hübner 2007, 163). Rwanda was one of the UN’s member states, which was on board from the very beginning. The Kigali administration signed the treaty on 1 May 1980 and ratified it on 2 March 1981 (United Nations 2013a). By September 2013, 187 states had acceded to or ratified the treaty, making it one of the most widely ratified UN conventions to date (see Wörgetter 1999, 171).

CEDAW represents a milestone in defining women’s equality as women’s human rights. It addresses states, which are expected to implement it, and counters the discrimination against women in both the private and public spheres. Furthermore, the systematic nature of women’s discrimination is identified. As a result it distinguishes between formal or de jure equality and women’s actual or de facto equality (Cook 1995, 11; Charlesworth and Chinkin 2000, 217; Brautigam 2002, 12; Hübner 2007, 164). To fight discrimination states parties have committed themselves to include CEDAW’s provisions in their respective constitutions, revise discriminatory laws and to establish policies and institutions to ensure women’s equality timeously. Positive discrimination instruments – such as affirmative action or quotas – are deemed not to be discriminatory as they serve to speed up women’s de facto equality.

States parties are compelled to submit national reports to the CEDAW Committee – an expert committee monitoring CEDAW’s implementation – in regular intervals. A special report may either supplement submitted information or serve as a reaction to current events.⁸ Yet, although the CEDAW Committee carries the bulk of the monitoring responsibilities, its concluding observations remain non-binding recommendations (Cook 1995, 23; Hübner 2007, 176). Shadow Reports written by NGOs and networks primarily serve to increase the pressure exerted on states to show progress in implementing CEDAW, since it does not foresee any sanctions (Cook 1995, 23; Hübner 2007, 173–4).⁹ Moreover, the Optional Protocol to CEDAW, which entails a complaints and inquiry procedure, has strengthened the Committee’s mandate and increased the Convention’s reach. Rwanda acceded to the Optional Protocol on 15 December 2008, joining more than 100 other states parties (United Nations 2013b; see also Hübner 2007, 163; Brautigam 2002, 15).

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

Despite the strong impetus created by the Women’s Decade, the review conducted at its end showed that hardly any progress on women’s rights and equal status had been achieved. Consequently, calls for ensuring the Decade’s success were growing (Brautigam 2002, 17–18). For women from the global South who had encountered development-related setbacks and experienced the 1980s as a ‘lost decade’ Beijing’s outcomes were essential (Antrobus 2004, 67–79). The differences between Northern and Southern representatives’ interests that were voiced during the Decade remained. However, this divide could be bridged with feminists’ assertion that the package of human rights is universal, inseparable and inalienable (Wörgetter 1999, 176; Charlesworth and Chinkin 2000, 206–7; Gierycz 2002, 45–7).

For various reasons, the Beijing PFA represents a major achievement for the TWM.¹⁰ Through it gender equality, as a theme, became a political mainstream issue (Antrobus 2004, 67–79; see Wörgetter 1999, 175). The Beijing PFA reaffirms states’ commitment to gender equality and all prior gender norms, like CEDAW, relevant to gender equality (Porter 2007, 13). It furthermore frames gender equality under the ambit of Women’s Human Rights, which acknowledges the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights (Wörgetter 1999, 176; Gierycz 2002, 30).

As a conference communiqué the Beijing PFA has no binding international legal standing but rather relies on government commitment for implementation and encourages non-state actors to follow its recommendations (Wörgetter 1999, 176). The ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Dedication
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Introduction: From Ideas and Principles to Politics and Policy-Making
• 1 Women, Gender and International Politics
• 2 Women’s Representation and Participation in Transitions
• 3 Gendering Rwanda’s Nascent and Emerging Publics
• 4 Negotiating Beijing, Genocide Crimes and the Right to Inherit: Women’s Agenda-Setting during the Transition
• 5 ‘If It Is Not in the Constitution, Anyone Can Change It!’ Engendering the 2003 Constitution
• 6 Going Against the Grain? First Legislative Results
• Conclusion: Revisiting a Contested Terrain: Gender Politics in Post-Genocide Rwanda
• Bibliography
• Index