International Humanitarian Law (IHL)

Peace and the Laws of War: The Role of International Humanitarian Law in the Post-Conflict Environment

Citation:

Campbell, Colm. 2000. “Peace and the Laws of War: The Role of International Humanitarian Law in the Post-Conflict Environment.” International Review of the Red Cross 82: 627–52.

Author: Colm Campbell

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, International Law, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Peace Processes

Year: 2000

UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820: Constructing Gender in Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law

Citation:

Barrow, Amy. 2010. "UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820: Constructing Gender in Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law." International Review of the Red Cross 92 (877): 221-34.

Author: Amy Barrow

Abstract:

While the Geneva Conventions contain gender-specific provisions, the reality of women's and men's experiences of armed conflict have highlighted gender limitations and conceptual constraints within international humanitarian law. Judgements at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) ad hoc tribunals have gone some way towards expanding the scope of definitions of sexual violence and rape in conflict. More recent developments in public international law, including the adoption of Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820 focused on women, peace and security, have sought to increase the visibility of gender in situations of armed conflict. This paper highlights important developing norms on women, peace and security. Although these norms are significant, they may not be radical enough to expand constructions of gender within international humanitarian law. This leaves existing provisions open to continued scrutiny.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, International Law, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325, UNSCR 1820, Sexual Violence, Rape Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Europe, Balkans Countries: Rwanda, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2010

International Law: Modern Feminist Approaches

Citation:

Buss, Doris, and Ambreena Manji. 2005. International Law: Modern Feminist Approaches. Oxford: Hart Publishing.

Authors: Doris Buss, Ambreena Manji

Abstract:

Over the last 10 years, feminist scholars and activists have turned their attention to international law with apparently dramatic results. The impact of feminist engagement is felt in diverse areas from human rights to environmental law. But what do these successes signal for the future? How open is international law to feminist enquiry? What does it mean to do feminist theory in international law? What lessons have we learned from engaging with international law, and what directions do we still need to explore? This book brings together feminist scholars from Australia, Canada, Sweden, Serbia and Montenegro, the United States and United Kingdom. Drawing on diverse theoretical approaches, the chapters explore the directions and tensions in feminist engagement with various areas of international law from human rights, trade and development, and gender mainstreaming, to humanitarian intervention, and environmental and humanitarian law. (Amazon)

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
Doris Buss and Ambreena Manji

2. Feminist Approaches to International Law: Reflections From Another Century
Christine Chinkin, Shelley Wright and Hilary Charlesworth

3. International Human Rights and Feminisms: When Discourses Keep Meeting
Karen Engle

4. Feminism Here and Feminism There: Law, Theory and Choice
Thérèse Murphy

5. Austerlitz and International Law: A Feminist Reading at the Boundaries
Doris Buss

6. Disconcerting 'Masculinities': Reinventing the Gendered Subject(s) of International Human Rights Law
Dianne Otto

7. The 'Unforgiven' Sources of International Law: Nation-Building, Violence and Gender in the West(ern)
Ruth Buchanan and Rebecca Johnson

8. 'The Beautyful Ones' of Law and Development
Ambreena Manji

9. Feminist Perspectives on International Economic Law
Fiona Beveridge

10. Transcending the Conquest of Nature and Women: A Feminist Perspective on International Environmental Law
Annie Rochette

11. The United Nations and Gender Mainstreaming: Limits and Possibilities
Sari Kouvo

12. Women's Rights and the Organization of African Unity and African Union: The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa
Rachel Murray

13. Sexual Violence, International Law and Restorative Justice
Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic

 

Reviews of International Law: Modern Feminist Approaches:

By Nicole LaViolette: http://www.academia.edu/3403811/Review_of_Doris_Buss_and_Ambreena_Manji_eds._International_Law_Modern_Feminists_Approaches

Topics: Development, Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Mainstreaming, Humanitarian Assistance, International Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights

Year: 2005

Terror/Torture

Citation:

Bennoune, Karima. 2008. “Terror/Torture.” Berkeley Journal of International Law 26 (1): 1-61.

Author: Karima Bennoune

Abstract:

In the face of terrorism, human rights law’s requirement that states “respect and ensure” rights necessitates that states take active steps to safeguard their populations from violent attack, but in so doing do not violate rights. Security experts usually emphasize the aspect of ensuring rights while human rights advocates largely focus on respecting rights. The trick, which neither side in the debate has adequately referenced, is that states have to do both at the same time. In contrast to these largely one-sides approaches, adopting a radical universalist stance, this Article argues that both contemporary human rights and security discourses on terrorism must be broadened and renewed. This renewal must be informed by the understanding that international human rights law protects the individual both from terrorism and the excesses of counter-terrorism, like torture. To develop this thesis, the Article explores the philosophical overlap between both terrorism and torture and their normative prohibitions. By postulating new discourses around the paradigm of terror/torture, it begins the project of creating a new human rights approach to terrorism.

Topics: International Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Rights, Human Rights, Security, Human Security, Terrorism, Torture

Year: 2008

Girl Soldiers and Participation in Hostilities

Citation:

Quénivet, Noëlle. 2008. “Girl Soldiers and Participation in Hostilities.” African Journal of International and Comparative Law 16 (2): 219–35.

Author: Noëlle Quénivet

Abstract:

Recently, organisations working with former child soldiers have observed the growing number of girls involved in armed conflicts. While their fate as sexual slaves is well documented, their participation in hostilities is less acknowledged. Girls, like boys, spy, loot, and kill, but they also cook, clean, and run camps. International humanitarian law, human rights law and international criminal law ban the participation of children in armed conflicts. However, the interpretation of the expression ‘participation in hostilities’ leaves open the possibility that the activities carried out by girls do not fall within the purview of this prohibition, and that, hence, their recruiters are not breaching the aforementioned legal norms.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Child Soldiers, Female Combatants, Gender, Girls, International Law, International Criminal Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Sexual Violence, Sexual Slavery

Year: 2008

The Trauma of Justice: Sexual Violence, Crimes Against Humanity and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Citation:

Campbell, Kirsten. 2004. “The Trauma of Justice: Sexual Violence, Crimes Against Humanity and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.” Social & Legal Studies 13 (3): 329–50.

Author: Kirsten Campbell

Abstract:

This article explores the relationship between the concepts of trauma and justice in the jurisprudence of crimes against humanity of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, focusing upon cases of sexual violence. It argues that the Tribunal’s jurisprudence conceives this crime as a traumatic violation of both the subject of rights and of universal humanity. The Tribunal’s models of international justice as procedure, punishment, recognition and therapy understand justice as the legal suturing of this trauma. In these models, the notion of ‘justice’ functions as phantasy in the psychoanalytic sense of an imaginary scene that veils its impossibility. However, figuring international justice as the resolution of the trauma of crimes against humanity reiterates the traumatic wrong in humanitarian law. Humanitarian law therefore requires a new model of international justice - a model that does not reiterate the past but which can institute the future.

Topics: Health, Trauma, International Law, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Justice, Crimes against Humanity, International Tribunals & Special Courts, Sexual Violence Regions: Europe, Balkans Countries: Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2004

Adolescent Girls in Colombia’s Guerrilla: An Exploration into Gender and Trauma Dynamics

Citation:

Hernández, Pilar, and Amanda Romero. 2003. “Adolescent Girls in Colombia’s Guerrilla: An Exploration into Gender and Trauma Dynamics.” Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community 26 (1): 21–38. 

Authors: Pilar Hernández, Amanda Romero

Abstract:

Armed combat in childhood and adolescence is a form of child abuse and a violation of International Humanitarian Law. This study explores the impact of guerrilla life in adolescent peasant girls coerced to join the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC). It analyzes their stories within the social context of the ongoing conflict in the country. Seven adolescent peasant girls were interviewed with a semi-structured format and the descriptive data were analyzed using the constant comparison method. Results reflect the ways in which they joined the guerrilla, and the traumatic aspects of gendered-based violence and combat exposure. An understanding of these traumatic experiences is discussed highlighting the continuum of patriarchal practices that make girls specific targets of sexual exploitation. Implications for rehabilitation programs are discussed.

Keywords: trauma, war, Gender

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Girls, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Health, Trauma, International Law, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2003

Women and the Law of Armed Conflict: Why the Silence?

Citation:

Gardam, Judith. 1997. “Women and the Law of Armed Conflict: Why the Silence?” The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 46 (1): 55–80.

Author: Judith Gardam

Abstract:

The aim of this article is to extend the critique of human rights law by feminist scholars to humanitarian law—or the law of armed conflict, as it is more traditionally known. When reflecting generally on the role that international law plays in providing protection for women from the effects of violence the obvious starting point is the regime of human rights. So much of human suffering in today's world occurs, however, in the context of armed conflict where to a large extent human rights are in abeyance and individuals must rely on the protections offered by the law of armed conflict. The debate that has been taking place for some years in the context of human rights as to the extent to which that system takes account of women's lives needs to extend to the provisions of the law of armed conflict. Although commentators have convincingly demonstrated the limitations of the existing body of human rights law adequately to take account of the reality of women's experience of the world, the law of armed conflict is even more deficient. Moreover, despite the recent focus on rape in armed conflict as a result of the international outrage at the sexual abuse of women in the armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia, these shortcomings remain largely unaddressed. At first glance this seems somewhat surprising until the special difficulties that flow from certain characteristics of the law of armed conflict are appreciated.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, International Law, International Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Sexual Violence Regions: Europe, Balkans Countries: Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 1997

Gender Mainstreaming in International Institutions: Developments at the UN ad hoc Tribunals and the International Criminal Court

Citation:

Chappell, Louise. 2005. “Gender Mainstreaming in International Institutions: Developments at the UN ad hoc Tribunals and the International Criminal Court.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Honolulu, March 5.

Author: Louise Chappell

Abstract:

In recent years women's activists have worked hard to add a gender dimension to the workings of emerging international institutions including the UN ad hoc tribunals on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the International Criminal Court. Through their efforts they have made some significant advances in bringing to light the complex, diverse and unique aspects of women's lives previously ignored in international criminal and humanitarian law. Advances include: the recognition of sexual violence as a grave breach of international law relating to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide; the redefinition of the crime of rape and the acknowledgment of gender as a basis for persecution. Feminist pressure has also helped to encourage an acceptance of the representation of women and gender interests within the ICC. Although there is still much to be done, feminist activists have demonstrated that there is a place for 'women's interests' under international law and that by taking these interests into account can make a real difference to women's lives in times of conflict.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, International Law, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Organizations, Justice, Crimes against Humanity, International Tribunals & Special Courts, War Crimes, Sexual Violence, Rape Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Europe, Balkans Countries: Rwanda, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2005

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