Violence

Citation:

Acheson, Ray, Richard Moyes, and Thomas Nash. 2014. Sex and Drone Strikes: Gender and identity in targeting and casualty analysis. London: Article 36; New York: Reaching Critical Will.

Authors: Ray Acheson, Richard Moyes, Thomas Nash

Abstract:

This paper addresses concerns that the sex of individuals is being used as a signifier to designate people as militants in drone strike targeting decisions and post-strike analysis of casualties. Lack of transparency around armed drone operations makes it difficult to know what standards are used to determine how individuals come to constitute a legal target in the eyes of armed drone users. However, there are some indications that the United States uses maleness as a signifier of militancy. The blanket categorisation of adult men as militants raises moral, legal, social, and policy concerns in a number of areas:

• It erodes the protection that civilians should be afforded in armed conflict and violates many human rights, including the rights to life and due process;

• It undermines accurate casualty recording, which is a crucial basis for military, legal, and political analysis of attacks and for evaluating the use of force more generally;

• It suggests that sex can be taken as a key signifier of identity, which constitutes a form of gender-based violence and has broader implications in the reinforcement of gender essentialisms and problematic associations of masculinity with violence; and

• It sets a precedent for blanket categorisations of people, which may have problematic implications as certain states move to develop and deploy weapons systems operating with greater autonomy in the identification of targets.

The identification of people as objects for attack will always be fraught with challenges and difficulties, but using sex or gender to systematically remove a person’s claim to protection as a civilian is unacceptable.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Rights, Human Rights, Violence, Weapons /Arms

Year: 2014

Citation:

United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office. 2014. International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict: Basic Standards of Best Practice on the Documentation of Sexual Violence as a Crime under International Law. London: UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Health, Mental Health, International Law, International Criminal Law, Justice, War Crimes, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Violence

Year: 2014

Citation:

Author: Annette Weber

Abstract:

An analysis of gendered fighter constructions in the liberation movements in Eritrea and southern Sudan (EPLF and SPLA/M), examining the question of female access to the sphere of masculine fighter constructs and the relevance of this for influence in peacetime affairs. Empirical research in both countries, in particular interviews with participants, reveals that what keeps women out of the sphere of legitimized violence is not some “inherent peacefulness,” but the exclusivist construct of the masculine fighter, which is supported by society. This makes it hard for women to participate in war, and especially to gain full fighter status. An intrinsic link is found between fighter status and access to power in post-conflict state-building from which women, being unable to gain full fighter status, are largely excluded.

Topics: Armed Conflict, National Liberation Wars, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Post-Conflict, Violence, Weapons /Arms Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Eritrea, South Sudan

Year: 2011

Citation:

Myrttinen, Henri. 2005. “Masculinities, Violence and Power in Timor Leste.” Lusotopie 12 (1-2): 233–44.

Author: Henri Myrttinen

Abstract:

This article sketches some of the manifestations of violent masculinities which were visible in the Timor Leste conflict from 1975 to 1999. While concentrating on Timorese actors, it points out that this does not in any way mean that Timorese men are inherently more violent than others. In fact, the vast majority of the acts of violence during the conflict were committed by members of the occupying Indonesian security forces. After a brief thematic and historical introduction, the article examines manifestations of violent masculinities within the pro-independence Falintil guerrilla, the pro-Indonesian militias and the civilian population. As the end of the conflict has not meant an end to, but a "domestication" of violence with extremely high rates of domestic and gender-based sexual violence, the article further examines the impact of the post-conflict situation on violent manifestations of masculinity.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Domestic Violence, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Violence Regions: Oceania Countries: Timor-Leste

Year: 2005

Citation:

Higate, Paul. 2009. “Putting ‘Mercenary Masculinities’ on the Research Agenda.” SPAIS Working Paper 03-09, School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.

Author: Paul Higate

Abstract:

Private Military Security Companies (PMSC) have come increasingly to supplant the activities of regular, national militaries - most notably in such contexts as Iraq and Afghanistan. Though a wide scholarship has addressed questions of legitimacy, regulation and control of PMSCs, critical commentators on gender have almost entirely overlooked the masculinised cultures of these private firms, the majority of which employ former military personnel. This is surprising since masculine norms, values and cultures shape private contractors security practices and can be used to explain human rights abuses, as well as the everyday ways in which these men imagine security. In these terms, the key critical issue concerns what is missed when masculinity is ignored in analyses of PMSCs, a question that is taken up in this working paper within the context of a potential research agenda for this topic of research.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Private Military & Security, Rights, Human Rights, Security, Violence, Weapons /Arms

Year: 2009

Citation:

Harrington, Carol. 2003. “Peacekeeping and Prostitution in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.” Paper presented at the 5th European Feminist Research Conference, Lund, August 20-23.

Author: Carol Harrington

Abstract:

This paper compares the organisation of sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo during UN operations to the sexual violence associated with US military bases in the Republic of Korea (ROK) during the 1970s, while also drawing some comparisons with the way sexual violence was organised in wartime Yugoslavia. I argue that in all of these cases military men agree that soldiers are entitled to heterosexual encounters, and thus provide women for soldiers to have sex with, treating the women concerned as people whose well- being, dignity and bodily integrity is of no relevance at all. Such sexual violence appears to be institutionalised across contemporary militaries. However, the political logic that categorises women as people to be protected or as people who have no rights to bodily integrity differs across sites. My enquiry is based in a sociology of the body that treats sexual violence as political violence, thus I expect that the sexual categorisation and organisation of women for soldiers will reveal important aspects of the political order the militaries involved are defending. I will elaborate on this theoretical perspective in relation to the three cases in the course of my discussion. Through comparing these three military contexts I seek to understand how military thinkers in the case of Bosnia and Kosovo divided people in relation to physical security and rights to bodily integrity, and thus to uncover the logic of the political order these peacekeeping operations defended. (Intro)

Topics: Gender, Women, Men, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militarization, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Sexual Slavery, SV against Women, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking, Violence Regions: Asia, East Asia, Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Korea, South Korea

Year: 2003

Citation:

Hagemann, Karen. 1997. “Of ‘Manly Valor’ and ‘German Honor’: Nation War and Masculinity in the Age of the Prussian Uprising Against Napoleon.” Central European History 30 (2): 187–220.

Author: Karen Hagemann

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Nationalism, Violence Regions: Europe, Central Europe Countries: France, Germany

Year: 1997

Citation:

Gray, Chris Hables. 2003. “Posthuman Soldiers in Postmodern War.” Body & Society 9 (4): 215–26. doi:10.1177/135703403773684739.

Author: Chris Hables Gray

Abstract:

The centrality of human-machine weapon systems is a key aspect of postmodern war. Since 1939 such systems have proliferated while improved interfaces have led to several types of actual cyborg soldiers. As the crisis of postmodern war deepens it is producing a series of quite different militarized bodies. Cyborgs proliferate in type so it is no surprise that we have pilot-cyborgs and tele-operators, info-cyborgs (from political operatives to clerks and including all the servants of the computers and weapons systems), and various fighting cyborg soldiers and sailors. There has also been a resurgence of a type of irregular warrior that many commentators describe as bestial. It is not a coincidence that while humanity is on the verge of producing real posthumans (quite possibly for military applications) so-called “prehuman” types of war have broken out across the globe. War is based on bodies and its skewed logics have driven many cyborgian developments. Now, both war and our cyborg society are involved in a linked crisis fueled by the relentless march of technoscience that has made modern war impossible and posthumans probable. The future of the human, and of a multitude of potential posthumanities, will largely be determined by how this crisis is resolved.

Topics: Armed Conflict, "New Wars", Gender, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Violence, Weapons /Arms

Year: 2003

Citation:

Given, Emel Linda, 2010. “Man, Woman or Just Human: How Do Gender Roles Influence Sexual Violence Against Males in Armed Conflict?” BSIS Journal of International Studies 7: online.

Author: Emel Linda Given

Topics: Armed Conflict, DDR, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Gender Mainstreaming, Justice, International Tribunals & Special Courts, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Violence

Year: 2010

Citation:

Stephen, Lynn. 1999. “The Construction of Indigenous Suspects: Militarization and the Gendered and Ethnic Dynamics of Human Rights Abuses in Southern Mexico.” American Ethnologist 26 (4): 822–42.

Author: Lynn Stephen

Abstract:

I use the tools of ethnography to analyze the gendered and ethnic patterns of militarization and torture in southern Mexico. Such patterns replay gendered and sexual stereotypes of indigenous men and women as captured in national myth and vision. While such an analysis is useful for Mexico, it draws from and is applicable to other situations of political violence and provides a way of understanding the underlying culture wars—signaled by crises of representation at the margins of states—being waged to redefine nations. I argue that the insights of anthropological analysis (particularly historical and cultural analysis) are key in clarifying the rationales official for treating some people differently than others, and thus constructing them as suspects vulnerable to political violence and human rights abuses.

Topics: Gender, Gender Analysis, Indigenous, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Nationalism, Rights, Human Rights, Torture, Violence Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 1999