Gender, Governance and International Security

Nicola Pratt, Sophie Richter-Devroe

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415829151
• eBook ISBN: 9781134924301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

The United Nations Security Council, in 2000, unanimously passed a resolution calling for women's increased participation in conflict prevention and peacebuilding, as well as their protection during conflict. This marked the first time that the UN Security Council explicitly addressed gender issues in 'conflict' and 'post-conflict' situations. But what difference has this international agenda on 'Women, Peace and Security' made to women's lives on the ground and to the governance of international peace and security?

This volume provides a critical evaluation of the mainstreaming of gender issues in matters of international peace and security resulting from the passage of Resolution 1325 in 2000. It considers how this agenda actually plays out in different contexts, and with what implications for women's activism and for peace and security.

The picture that emerges is not uniform, obliging us to reconsider the links between gender, conflict, different visions of peace and, consequently, different projects of peacebuilding. Consequently, the book poses new questions for transnational feminist scholars and activists.

This book was based on a special issue of the International Feminist Journal of Politics.

Introduction

Critically Examining UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security

NICOLA PRATT AND SOPHIE RICHTER-DEVROE

University of Warwick, Coventry, UK and University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Abstract

Here, we introduce the articles that comprise this special issue of IFJP, entitled, ‘Critically Examining UNSCR 1325’. The aim of this special issue is to examine the implementation of UNSCR 1325 and its implications for women’s activism and for peace and security. Given that the articles in this volume approach UNSCR 1325 from various perspectives and in different contexts, our aim in this introduction is to point out a number of conceptual, policy and practical issues that are crucial in the debates around UNSCR 1325 specifically, and women, peace and security more broadly. We do this in four parts: first, problematizing the resolution in relation to changes in global governance; second, examining the Resolution’s assumptions about (gendered) agency and structure; third, examining the Resolution’s assumptions about the links between conflict and gender; and, fourth, comparing different contexts in which 1325 is implemented. To some degree, differences between contributors may be accounted for by different understandings of feminism(s) as a political project. Different feminisms may underpin different visions of peace and, consequently, different projects of peacebuilding. Ultimately, this volume, while answering the questions that we originally posed, throws up new questions about transnational feminist praxis.

INTRODUCTION

On 31 October 2000, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (or, ‘1325’ for short), calling for women’s increased participation in conflict prevention and resolution initiatives, as well as their protection during conflict. The UN has heralded 1325 as a landmark document that promises to protect women’s rights and guarantee their equal participation in peace processes (for example, United Nation Secretary General. (UNSG) 2008). The Resolution’s adoption is considered by many to be an historic milestone since it marked the first time that the UN Security Council dealt specifically with gender issues and women’s experiences in ‘conflict’ and ‘post-conflict’ situations and their contribution to conflict resolution and prevention (Cohn 2008). Previous UN resolutions had treated women as victims of war, in need of protection. However, 1325 also recognized women as agents in building peace and guaranteeing security.

Many feminist scholars and activists have lauded 1325 as highly significant for women’s anti-war and peace activism.¹ The Resolution appears to build on a significant body of feminist scholarship highlighting men’s and women’s differential experiences of war, conflict and post-conflict,² redefining sexual violence as a weapon of war, rather than an ‘unfortunate byproduct’ (Chinkin 1994; Seifert 1994; and others), and recognizing the significant role played by women at the grassroots level in rebuilding the lives of their communities after conflict (Sorensen 1998). UNSC Resolution 1325 also seems to draw on feminist literature documenting the historic role of women’s/feminist groups around the world in mobilizing against war, violence and militarism (Cockburn 1998, 2007; Waller and Rycenga 2001; among others).

The Resolution constructs a link between social (gender) change and political (conflict) transformation in mainstream international policy and has paved the way for new programs and measures at the international, governmental and non-governmental level. At the time of writing, the Resolution has been translated into more than 100 languages and 25 National Action Plans have been drafted to assist implementation at the country level.³

Yet, the ways in which this link between social and political dynamics is conceptualized, and whether and how this is applicable to widely diverging conflict scenarios needs to be interrogated. Several authors have urged a more critical engagement with UNSCR 1325, both in terms of its conceptual foundations as well as policy-related practical impacts.⁴

The contributions to this volume (by academics, practitioners and activists) critically examine UNSCR 1325 in terms of its implementation and relevance to women’s activism in different parts of the world as well as its conceptualizations of approaches to gender, peacebuilding and conflict resolution.⁵ They provide both theoretical/analytical critiques of the resolution, as well as examining the policy and implementation levels. More specifically, this volume addresses the following questions:

• To what degree is Resolution 1325 actually being translated into programs and measures on the ground and with what outcome for women’s lives and for peace and security?

• What are the implications of the Resolution’s focus on armed conflict, as opposed to other forms of structural violence, for peace and security?

• How do women activists in conflict areas use UNSCR 1325? How do they reconcile, if at all, the universality of the resolution with the particularity of different conflict situations?

• Is the privileging of a universal gender identity in understanding women’s experiences and responses to conflict, above other social categories – such as, nationality, class, ethnicity or religion, among others – a useful tool or an obstacle to women’s activism?

• What does the formulation, adoption and/or implementation of 1325 tell us about the nature of post-Cold War global governance?

Given that the articles in this volume approach UNSCR 1325 from various perspectives and in different contexts, our aim in this introduction is not to present a coherent theoretical framework. Rather we would like to point out a number of conceptual, policy and practical issues that are crucial in the debates around UNSCR 1325 specifically, and women, peace and security more broadly. We attempt to summarize some of the answers to the above research questions as presented by our contributors in four parts: first, problematizing the resolution in relation to changes in global governance; second, examining the Resolution’s assumptions about (gendered) agency and structure; third, examining the Resolution’s assumptions about the links between conflict and gender; and, fourth, comparing different contexts in which 1325 is implemented.

THE PATH TO UNSCR 1325 AND CHANGES IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

The origins of 1325 lie in the UN world conferences on women and long-term lobbying by women’s and civil society organizations concerned with gender, development and conflict. The issue of women, conflict and peace received intense debate at the Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985 (Cockburn 2007: 139). It was, however, only once Boutros Ghali’s Agenda for Peace in 1992 had introduced a bottom-up approach of peacebuilding to mainstream conflict resolution (to complement the dominant state-centric, top-down approach of peacemaking) that women achieved a major breakthrough with the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. The Platform emphasized the importance of a gender perspective and women’s contributions for sustainable peacebuilding and identified ‘[t]he effects of armed or other kinds of conflict on women, including those living under foreign occupation’ (United Nations [UN] 1995) as one of its 12 major areas of concern and urging governments, international organizations and civil society to take strategic actions.

A review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action at the 23rd special session of the General Assembly on ‘Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century’ (Beijing +5) found that the critical area of concern ‘Women and Armed Conflict’ had not been sufficiently addressed, let alone implemented. As a result, the NGO Working Group on Women and Armed Conflict (NGOWG) was founded to lobby the UN for the passage of a UN security council resolution that would help ensure that the issue of women, peace and security would be properly addressed. In October 2000, Namibia, which had earlier that same year passed the Windhoek Declaration and the Namibia Plan of Action on Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations, took up the presidency of the UN Security Council. It responded to the NGO Working Group’s lobbying by agreeing to sponsor a session on Women, Peace and Security. In preparation for this session, an Arria Formula meeting was held on 23 October 2000 giving civil society organizations and representatives the opportunity to present their experiences and raise their concerns to Security Council members. A week later, on 31 October 2000, UNSCR 1325 was passed unanimously.⁶

The increasing concern among activists for the impacts of conflict on women and women’s participation in peacebuilding and conflict resolution was mirrored in the theoretical shift in international relations (IR) theory away from the (neo-)realist state-centerd to a more holistic, agent-centerd conceptualization of security, proposed particularly in the field of critical security studies (see e.g. Booth 2005) and feminist IR (e.g. Peterson 1992; Tickner 1992). The need to take into consideration the human dimension of security, and for rethinking security from a feminist perspective, was famously called for by Ann Tickner already in the early 1990s:

Not until the hierarchical social relations, including gender relations, that have been hidden by realism’s frequently depersonalised discourse are brought to light can we begin to construct a language of national security that speaks out of the multiple experiences of both women and men. (Tickner 1992: 66)

UNSCR Resolution 1325 opens with 10 pre-ambular paragraphs referring to broad normative standards embraced by the international community through legal principles, human rights and humanitarian law, as well as previous UN resolutions, declarations and documents, such as the Beijing Platform for Action, the United Nations Charter, the Windhoek Declaration and the Namibia Plan of Action. Its 18 operational paragraphs cover 3 main themes. First, the resolution recognizes women’s contribution to peacebuilding and conflict resolution and calls for their increased participation at all decision-making levels in national, regional and international conflict prevention and resolution initiatives. Second, it highlights the gendered aspects of war and armed conflict demanding the protection of women’s rights, including shielding women and girls from gender-based violence and other violations of international law. Finally, the resolution calls upon local actors, member states, but also the UN system itself, to adopt a gender perspective in peace operations, negotiations and agreements.

In terms of its recognition of women’s role in peacebuilding and conflict resolution and women’s differentiated experiences of war, 1325 appears to build on feminist scholarship and activism. However, Carol Harrington’s article in this volume questions celebratory accounts that view feminist/women’s activist lobbying inside and outside the UN as the main initiators of this shift in conceptualizations of peace and security for

fail[ing] to analyze how the collapse of the Soviet Union transformed discourse on both ‘women’ and ‘human rights’ as problems for international government. In the post-Cold War order the US poses as leader of the democratic world and defender of women and children against brutal men who instigate ‘new wars’ characterised by mass rape.

Yet, the increase in peacekeeping in response to these ‘new wars’ ‘creates environments in which sexual violence, abuse and exploitation flourish’. Resolution 1325, Harrington argues, ‘speaks to these tensions within contemporary peacekeeping operations, proposing the technical solution of gender mainstreaming’ (Harrington this volume). What her article suggests is that 1325 constitutes a tool for dealing with the new realities of post-Cold War international security rather than transforming them. This raises two questions about the link between 1325 and feminism: (a) does feminist activism and research really challenge the international security architecture? Or (b) does 1325 really build on feminist activism and research?

Sheri Gibbings’s article, based on ethnographic research among gender advocates at the UN, including the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), demonstrates how 1325 and the discourses in support of it have omitted some significant feminist aims. She finds that ‘[p]rior to the passage of UNSCR 1325, WILPF-UN often portrayed women as agents of peace, but also provided an explicit critique of militarism and masculinity’. Discursive speech norms at the UN, however, later curtailed feminist critiques of militarization and militarized masculinities in conflict, instead requiring a unique focus on the positive, ‘utopian’ representation of women as ‘bridge-builders’ and ‘peacemakers’ (Gibbings this volume). One of the least studied aspects of the resolution (including within this volume) is the tracing of what sort of feminism is represented in 1325 and, consequently, with what implications. One could argue that, rather than transforming international security agendas, 1325 marginalizes anti-militarist feminism in advocating for international peace and security. The innovative conceptualizations of human security and the inter-relationship between gender and war dynamics advanced in critical and feminist IR scholarship thus have yet to be fully embraced by the mainstream international agenda on women, peace and security (see also Väyrynen 2004).

CRITICALLY EXAMINING UNSCR 1325: GENDER, STRUCTURE AND AGENCY

Several articles in this volume point to the tensions in the Resolution between highlighting the significance of women’s agency in peace and security and failing to address structural factors that may constrain women’s agency. Laura Shepherd’s contribution argues that a positive shift has taken place in the Council’s language with regard to the ‘women, peace and security’ agenda: while 1325 portrays women mainly as victims, the later Resolutions add a discursive representation of women as actors, agents or even ‘superheroines’. Although these developments may give rise to optimism, Shepherd also points out that structural causes (such as poverty) that inhibit women acting as agents with truly transformative potential are still not included in the mainstream international organizations’ analytical framework. She critiques the way in which discourses around the ‘women, peace and security’ agenda equate women’s agency with women’s capacity to act, warning that ‘this agency is both a rupture in the familiar representation of women-as-victim and an additional burden for (some) women to bear’ (Shepherd this volume). Nevertheless, she concludes that the move away from victimization to a more plural (yet fragmented) representation of female subjectivity in conflict offers possibilities for feminist critical engagement and perhaps even transformation. Indeed, Margaret Owen of Widows for Peace for Democracy argues persuasively that 1325 and its subsequent resolutions have the potential to support a particularly vulnerable subset of women in post/conflict, that of widows. However, feminist and other activists must lobby to ensure that widowhood issues are included within the remit of the ‘women, peace and security’ agenda (Owen this volume).

This optimistic analysis is not necessarily shared by other contributors to this volume. In the case of Palestinian women’s organizing (Farr this volume), the overall structure of the so-called peace process marginalizes women and civil society actors in general. This is despite a long history of Palestinian women’s activism in resistance to Israeli occupation. As Vanessa Farr argues, ‘Put starkly, no matter what instruments they use to help them position their peacebuilding arguments, Palestinian women are trying ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Critically Examining UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security
• 2. Sex, Security and Superhero(in)es: From 1325 to 1820 and Beyond
• 3. No Angry Women at the United Nations: Political Dreams and the Cultural Politics of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325
• 4. UNSCR 1325 and Women’s Peace Activism in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
• 5. Resolution 1325 and Post-Cold War Feminist Politics
• 6. ‘Women, Peace and Security’: Addressing Accountability for Wartime Sexual Violence
• 7. Configurations of Post-Conflict: Impacts of Representations of Conflict and Post-Conflict upon the (Political) Translations of Gender Security within UNSCR 1325
• 8. Feminist Knowledge and Emerging Governmentality in UN Peacekeeping: Patterns of Co-optation and Empowerment
• 9. Leveraging Change: Women’s Organizations and the Implementation of UNSCR 1325 in the Balkans
• Index