Peacekeeping

Sylabus Topic

Reducing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: Does Deterrence Work to Prevent SEA in UN Peacekeeping Missions?

Citation:

Neudorfer, Kelly. 2014. "Reducing Sexual Exploitation And Abuse: Does Deterrence Work To Prevent SEA In UN Peacekeeping Missions?" International Peacekeeping 21 (5): 623-641. 

Author: Kelly Neudorfer

Abstract:

The data on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in UN peacekeeping missions show a sharp decline between 2006 and 2007 which has yet to be explained in the relevant literature. This article partially closes that gap by examining one measure which was introduced to improve investigation processes and deter possible perpetrators, the conduct and discipline units (CDUs). Using a mixed methods design, the quantitative analysis shows that overall, the introduction of a conduct and discipline unit in missions is negatively and significantly correlated with the number of SEA allegations. The case study of MONUC/MONUSCO corroborates these results, indicating that deterrence measures likely contributed to the reduction of the number of allegations.

Topics: Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Women

Year: 2014

Why Does China Participate in Intrusive Peacekeeping? Understanding Paternalistic Chinese Discourses on Development and Intervention

Citation:

Suzuki, Shogo. 2011. "Why Does China Participate in Intrusive Peacekeeping? Understanding Paternalistic Chinese Discourses on Development and Intervention." International Peacekeeping 18 (3): 271-85.

Author: Shogo Suzuki

Abstract:

Why does China continue to participate in highly intrusive peacekeeping operations which, it can be argued, suspend the sovereignty of the host state and attempt to transform it into a liberal democratic, market capitalist state? This article highlights the significant role of Chinese paternalism in providing the ideological justification for intervening in states’ domestic affairs. Focusing on the quasi-official annual publication, the China Modernization Report, and its discourses on development, this article contends that some Chinese discourses interpret modernization as a linear and universal process, and interpret different stages of development in distinctly hierarchical terms. This places China as superior vis-a`-vis many underdeveloped states. Such notions of ‘superiority’, in turn, lead to paternalistic thinking that justifies China (and other relatively ‘developed’ states) intervening in underdeveloped states and societies in order to ‘guide’ them to the path of ‘development’.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Development, Peacekeeping Regions: Asia, Central Asia, East Asia Countries: China

Year: 2011

All-Female Police Contingents: Feminism and the Discourse of Armed Protection

Citation:

Pruitt, Lesley J. 2013. “All-Female Police Contingents: Feminism and the Discourse of Armed Protection.” International Peacekeeping 20 (1): 67–79.

Author: Lesley J. Pruitt

Abstract:

This article focuses on women's involvement in peacekeeping operations and the introduction in 2007 of an all-female formed police unit (FFPU). Possible benefits and challenges of deploying all-female contingents in peace operations are considered and feminist theories of international relations are drawn upon to evaluate arguments for including women in peace and security missions. Media discourses on the Indian FFPU deployed to Liberia in 2007 are analysed, revealing a potential to reshape attitudes about the role of women in peace and security, and emphasizing that femininity need not be incompatible with strength and capacity for protection.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Media, Peacekeeping, Security Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia

Year: 2013

Unintended Impacts and the Gendered Consequences of Peacekeeping Economies in Liberia

Citation:

Aning, Kwesi, and Fiifi Edu-Afful. 2013. “Unintended Impacts and the Gendered Consequences of Peacekeeping Economies in Liberia.” International Peacekeeping 20 (1): 17–32.

Authors: Kwesi Aning, Fiifi Edu-Afful

Abstract:

Despite increased international attention to managing the potential impacts of peacekeeping on host countries, unintended consequences continue to emerge. This article focuses particularly on the alternative economies that peacekeeping operations generate and the differential economic impacts on individuals who come into contact with peacekeepers. Based on empirical evidence derived from fieldwork in Liberia, the article highlights the everyday lives of women whose livelihoods have been affected by the presence of peacekeeping missions. It also discusses how such economies adjust during the peacekeeping drawdown phase, and explores the dynamics that such economies have on specific segments of the Liberian population. The argument is that, while peacekeeping economies are critical in stimulating the local economy and providing livelihoods during and in the immediate aftermath of war, they have negative unintended impacts that need mitigation.

Topics: Economies, Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Peacekeeping Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia

Year: 2013

Rethinking ‘Sexual Exploitation’ in UN Peacekeeping Operations

Citation:

Simic, Olivera. 2009. “Rethinking ‘Sexual Exploitation’ in UN Peacekeeping Operations.” Women’s Studies International Forum 32 (4): 288–95. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2009.05.007.

Author: Olivera Simic

Abstract:

This article will question definitions used by researchers in their studies of “sexual exploitation” in UN peacekeeping operations. The article will suggest that there is confusion about the definition of “sexual exploitation” not only among scholars undertaking empirical studies and exploring “sexual exploitation” issues in several peacekeeping missions, but also among UN peacekeeping personnel and local people. I look closely at nine empirical studies and explore the language used, the definitions of “sexual exploitation”, the identified causes of “sexual exploitation” and the difficulties of gathering evidence in cases of “sexual exploitation”. My article will suggest that the term “sexual exploitation” is broadly defined and contentious, and might cover activity that is not necessarily “sexually exploitative”. The article concludes that researchers have not questioned the over inclusive and broad term of “sexual exploitation” defined in the Secretary General's ‘zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and sexual abuse’ [SGB (Secretary General's Bulletin) (2003) Special measures on protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. UN Doc ST/SGB/2003/13] and, consequently, conflate all forms of sexual relationships with forced prostitution, rape, human trafficking and other forms of sexual offences.

Topics: Gender, Women, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Women, Torture, Sexual Torture

Year: 2009

Transforming Nationhood from within the Minefield: Arab Female Guerrilla Fighters and the Politics of Peace Poetics

Citation:

Al-Samman, Hanadi. 2009. “Transforming Nationhood from within the Minefield: Arab Female Guerrilla Fighters and the Politics of Peace Poetics.” Women’s Studies International Forum 32 (5): 331–39. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2009.07.011.

Author: Hanadi Al-Samman

Abstract:

This research addresses the corpus of war narratives penned by Arab female authors in general, and Hamida Na'na', a Syrian writer in particular. In her novel The Homeland (1979), Na'na' examines the ways in which Arab female guerrilla fighters transform the concept of nationhood from a totalitarian “imagined community,” in Benedict Anderson's (1983) sense, to an all-encompassing, post-war, humanist rhetoric. The experience of the heroine as a former freedom fighter and highjacker convinces her to abandon organized patriarchal paradigms of violence that rely on the propagation of a sacred war myth, and to embrace a peace poetics model in the reconstruction of the national narrative. In the final analysis, the novel endorses post-modern, national definitions of citizenship that are built on the dialogue of words rather than guns—on the constant shifting and reshuffling of all centers of power so as to ensure equal participation of all fragmented and previously—excluded national selves including that of the feminine. The positionality, however, of this counter-feminine, national consciousness has to focus on centering itself in the homeland if it is to succeed in eliminating the hegemony of the essentialist, national narrative. Hence the insistence in this novel on homecoming, even if the first attempts are met with initial disappointments, and even if physical sacrifices leading to death have to be made. The only answer to transforming these essentialist dichotomies lies in deconstructing systematic, institutionalized patterns of violence from within, in advocating human love instead of sectarianism. This goal can only be accomplished if women act as active participants in the construction of a new, national, humanist, aural narrative, and not as voyeurs from the side-lines. Recent theories of location and nationhood such as those by Caren Kaplan (1996) are employed to frame the discussion of this novel and other related texts.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Nationalism, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes Regions: Asia, Middle East

Year: 2009

Revisiting the United Nations Decade for Women: Brief Reflections on Feminism, Capitalism and Cold War Politics in the Early Years of the International Women’s Movement

Citation:

Ghodsee, Kristen. 2010. “Revisiting the United Nations Decade for Women: Brief Reflections on Feminism, Capitalism and Cold War Politics in the Early Years of the International Women’s Movement.” Women’s Studies International Forum 33 (1): 3–12. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2009.11.008.

Author: Kristen Ghodsee

Abstract:

Between 1975 and 1985, there were three U.N. conferences on women held in Mexico City, Copenhagen and Nairobi. This article is a brief reflection on the tensions that informed these first 10 years of the international women's movement seen from the point of view of the American women who believed that their leadership of that movement was being challenged by the strident anti-imperialist rhetoric of the Soviet Union and its allies. Soviet support for the international women's conferences was instrumental in forcing otherwise reticent American politicians to take the emerging international women's movement seriously. Fearing that socialist women would hijack the deliberations with their anti-capitalist “peace” agenda, U.S. congressmen became actively involved in constructing a definition of “appropriate” women's issues for the U.S. delegates attending the conferences, laying the bedrock of what would later become the relatively hegemonic, internationalized form of Western feminism that would ironically be exported to Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism in 1989.

Topics: Gender, Women, Justice, Nonviolence, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Rights, Human Rights

Year: 2010

Engendering Accountability in Private Security and Public Peacekeeping

Citation:

Sperling, Valerie. 2015. “Engendering Accountability in Private Security and Public Peacekeeping.” In Gender and Private Security in Global Politics, edited by Maya Eichler. Oxford Studies in Gender and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author: Valerie Sperling

Topics: Gender, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Peacekeeping

Year: 2015

Gender, Sex and the Postnational Defense: Militarism and Peacekeeping

Citation:

Kronsell, Annica. 2012. Gender, Sex and the Postnational Defense: Militarism and Peacekeeping. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/gender-sex-and-the-postnational-defense-9780199846061?cc=us&lang=en&.

Author: Annica Kronsell

Abstract:

Gender, Sex, and the Postnational Defense looks at the way that a postnational defense influenced by SC 1325 and focused on human security affects gender relations in militaries. Interestingly, despite the successful implementation of gender mainstreaming in training, the number of women involved in military peacekeeping remains low. Contradicting much of the gender mainstreaming literature, Annica Kronsell shows that increasing gender awareness in the military is a more achievable task than increasing gender partiy. Employing a feminist constructivist institutional approach, Kronsell questions whether military institutions can ever attain gender neutrality without confronting their reliance on masculinity constructs. She further questions whether "feminism" must always be equated with anti-militarism or if military violence committed in the name of enhancing human security can be performed according to a feminist ethics. Kronsell builds her theoretical argument on a case study of Sweden and the E.U.

(Oxford University Press)

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarism, Peacekeeping, Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325 Regions: Europe, Nordic states, Northern Europe Countries: Sweden

Year: 2012

The Risks of Instrumentalizing the Narrative on Sexual Violence in the DRC: Neglected Needs and Unintended Consequences

Citation:

Heaton, Laura. 2014. “The Risks of Instrumentalizing the Narrative on Sexual Violence in the DRC: Neglected Needs and Unintended Consequences.” International Review of the Red Cross 96 (894): 625–39.

Author: Laura Heaton

Abstract:

Public understanding of humanitarian emergencies tends to focus on one story and one type of victim. Examples are manifold: amputees in Sierra Leone, victims of kidnapping in Colombia, or victims of chemical weapons in Syria. At times, the aid community, and the media in turn, seizes upon a particular injustice – landmines, female genital mutilation and child soldiers are examples from recent decades – and directs resources and attention its way. Similarly, thematic trends tend to dominate aid discourse, with funding proposals to donors replete with references to the framework du jour. In a related phenomenon highlighted by author and aid worker Fiona Terry, “[w]ords are commandeered to give a new gloss to familiar themes: ‘capacity building’ became ‘empowerment’, which has now become ‘resilience’”. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the conflict has been largely defined by sexual violence, and raped women are its most prominent victims.

Keywords: Democratic Republic of the Congo, sexual violence, conflict, peacekeeping, advocacy, aid

Topics: Armed Conflict, Media, Humanitarian Assistance, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence Regions: Africa, Central Africa Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Year: 2014

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