Armed Conflict

Citation:

Authors: Kaitlyn Webster, Chong Chen, Kyle Beardsley

Abstract:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Conflict, Gender, Women, Men, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Post-Conflict, Political Participation, Peace Processes, Violence

Year: 2019

Citation:

Takamatsu, Kana. 2020. "Socio-Cultural Barriers of Female Ex-Combatants' Social Re-Integration in Sri Lanka." In Recent Social, Environmental, and Cultural Issues in East Asian Societies, edited by Mika Markus Merviö, 213-23. Hershey: IGI Global. 

Author: Kana Takamatsu

Abstract:

This chapter identifies the post-conflict social barriers to the social reintegration of female ex-combatants. This study refers to the case of Sri Lanka concerning the conflict between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that ended in 2009. During the conflict, the LTTE actively recruited female combatants, and women consisted of a significant number of the entire LTTE combatants. However, after the end of the conflict and even today, many of them are rejected by the community. First of all, the LTTE was fighting for Tamil's independence, but Tamil's community has expressed mixed opinions toward the LTTE. Second, female ex-combatants were then and are now a divergence from the gender norms of their society. Third, from their roles in the conflict, female ex-combatants experienced an indelible change in their ideas through the conflict and observed themselves as capable of being independent women. Consequently, they felt a high level of resistance to returning to traditional gender roles.

Annotation:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Gender Roles, Post-Conflict Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Sri Lanka

Year: 2020

Citation:

Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala, Naomi Cahn, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Nahla Valji, eds. 2018. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Authors: Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, ed., Naomi Cahn, ed., Dina Francesca Haynes, ed., Nahla Valji, ed.

Abstract:

The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict brings together leading interdisciplinary scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to address a complex range of challenges, contexts, geographies, and issues that arise for women and men in the context of armed conflict. The Handbook addresses war and peace, humanitarian intervention, countering violence and extremism, the United Nations Women, Peace, and Security Agenda, sexual violence, criminal accountability, autonomous weapons, peacekeeping, refugee and internally displaced person (IDP) status, the political economy of war, the economics of conflict, as well as health and economic security. It begins with theoretical approaches to gender and conflict, drawing on the areas of international, peace and conflict, feminist, and masculinities studies. The Handbook explores how women and men’s pre-war societal, economic, and legal status relates to their conflict experiences, affecting the ways in which they are treated in the post-conflict transitional phase. In addition to examining these conflict and post-conflict experiences, the Handbook addresses the differing roles of multiple national and international actors, as well as the UN led Women, Peace, and Security Agenda. Contributions survey the regulatory framework and gendered dimensions of international humanitarian and international human rights law in situations of conflict and occupation as well as addressing, and critiquing, the gendered nature and content of international criminal law. The Handbook also includes grounded country case studies exploring different gendered experiences of conflict in various regions. As a whole, this Handbook seeks to critically examine the contemporary gender-based challenges that emerge in conflict and post-conflicts contexts.

Keywords: Gender, conflict, post-conflict, sexual violence, feminism, United Nations, women, Peace and Security agenda, International actors, peace, war

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: Mapping the Terrain: Gender and Conflict in Contemporary Perspective
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

2. Theories of War
Laura Sjoberg

3. From Women and War to Gender and Conflict?: Feminist Trajectories
Dubravka Žarkov

4. The Silences in the Rules that Regulate Women during Times of Armed Conflict
Judith Gardam

5. How should we Explain the Recurrence of Violence Conflict, add What Might Gender Have to do with it?
Judy El-Bushra

6. The Gendered Nexus between Conflict and Citizenship in Historical Perspective
Jo Butterfield and Elizabeth Heineman

7. Violence Conflict and Changes in Gender Economic Roles: Implications for Post-Conflict Recovery
Patricia Justino

8. Victims Who are Men
Chris Dolan

9. Women, Peace, and Security: A Critical Analysis of the Security Council's Vision
Dianne Otto

10. Participation and Protection: Security Council Dynamics, Bureaucratic Politics, and the Evolution of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda
Anne Marie Goetz and Rob Jenkins

11. A Genealogy of the Centrality of Sexual Violence to Gender and Conflict
Karen Engle

12. 1235 + 17 = ?: Filling in the Blanks of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda
Kimberly Theidon

13. Complementary and Convergence?: Women, Peace, and Security and Counterterrorism
Naureen Chowdhury Fink and Alison Davidian

14. Unlocking the Potential of CEDAW as an Important Accountability Tool for the Women, Peace and Security Agenda
Pramilla Patten

15. The Promise and Limits of Indicators on Women, Peace and Security
Pablo Castillo Díaz and Hanny Cueva Beteta

16. Humanitarian Intervention and Gender Dynamics
Gina Heathcote

17. (Re)Considering Gender Jurisprudence
Patricia Viseur Sellers

18. Complementarity as a Catalyst for Gender Justice in National Prosecutions
Amrita Kapur

19. Forced Marriageduring Conflict and Mass Atrocity
Valerie Oosterveld

20. Advancing Justice and Making Amenda Through Reparations: Legal and Operational Considerations
Kristin Kalla

21. Colonialism
Amina Mama

22. Conflict, Displacement, and Refugees
Lucy Hovil

23. Gender and Forms of Conflict: The Moral Hazards of Dating the Security Council
Vasuki Nesiah

24. The Martial Rape of Girls and Women in Antiquity and Modernity
Kathy L. Gaca

25. "Mind the Gap": Measuring and Understanding Gendered Conflict Experiences
Amelia Hoover Green

26. Intersectionality: Working in Conflict
Eilish Rooney

27. Agency and Gender Norms in War Economies
Patti Patesch

28. Risk and Resilience: The Physical and Mental Health of Female Civilians during War
Lauren C. Ng and Theresa S. Betancourt

29. The Gender Implications of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Conflict Situations
Barbara A. Frey

30. Unmanned Weapons: Looking for the Gender Dimensions
Christof Heyns and Tess Borden

31. Gender and Peacekeeping
Sabrina Karim and Marsha Henry

32. Peacekeeping, Human Trafficking, and Sexual Abuse and Exploitation
Martina E. Vandenberg

33. Women, Peace Negotiations, and Peace Agreements: Opportunities and Challenges
Christine Bell

34. Women's Organizations and Peace Initiatives
Aili Mari Tripp

35. Gender and Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration: Reviewing and Advancing the Field
Dyan Mazurana, Roxanne Krystalli, and Anton Baaré

36. Decolonial Feminism, Gender, and Transitional Justice in Latin America
Pascha Bueno-Hansen

37. Gender and Governance in Post-Conflict and Democratizing Settings
Lisa Kindervater and Sheila Meintjes

38. Who Defines the Red Lines?: The Prospects for Safeguarding Women's Rights and Securing Their Future in Post-Transition Afghanistan
Sari Kouvo and Corey Levine

39. "That's Not My Daughter": The Paradoxes of Documenting Jihadist Mass Rape in 1990s Algeria and Beyond
Karima Bennoune

40. Consequences of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence on Post-Conflict Society: Case Study of Reparations in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Lejla Hadzimesic

41. Colombia: Gender and Land Restitution
Donny Meertens

42. Knowing Masculinities in Armed Conflict?: Reflections from Research in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern

43. Northern Ireland: The Significance of a Bottom-Up Women's Movement in a Politically Contested Society
Monica McWilliams and Avila Kilmurray

44. Gendered Suffering and the Eviction of the Native: The Politics of Birth in Occupied East Jerusalem
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

45. Rwanda: Women's Political Participation in Post-Conflict State-Building
Doris Buss and Jerusa Ali

46. Sri Lanka: The Impact of Militarization on Women
Ambika Satkunanathan

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, Refugees, Economies, War Economies, Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Governance, Health, Mental Health, Humanitarian Assistance, Justice, Livelihoods, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Terrorism, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Trafficking, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, Violence

Year: 2018

Citation:

Ellerby, Kara. 2016. “A Seat at the Table Is Not Enough: Understanding Women’s Substantive Representation in Peace Processes.” Peacebuilding 4 (2): 136–50.

Author: Kara Ellerby

Abstract:

While the international community stresses the importance of including women at the peace table so peace processes will better represent their needs and interests, it is unclear what specifically this inclusion entails. Do women need to be negotiators, mediators? Do peace agreements adequately represent women’s interests when women are included? This article engages UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security as a framework through which to assess peace processes and agreements. A woman-focused examination of all civil war peace processes reveals that less than 10% meet women’s inclusion as envisioned in UNSCR 1325. This article focuses on the three conditions accounting for women’s substantive representation in peacebuilding. What emerges are three joint necessities: an explicit women’s agenda; access to the peace process; and advocacy within the process. The final sections problematise how even in all of these positive cases women had to fight to participate.

Keywords: women, Gender, representation, stakeholders, UNSCR 1325

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Gender, Women, Peacebuilding, Political Participation, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325

Year: 2016

Citation:

Baker, Catherine. 2019. “Veteran Masculinities and Audiovisual Popular Music in Post-Conflict Croatia: A Feminist Aesthetic Approach to the Contested Everyday Peace.” Peacebuilding 7 (2): 226–42.

Author: Catherine Baker

Abstract:

In Croatia, campaigners for a more critical public reckoning with the memory of Croatia's 'Homeland War' (1991–5) and the national past confront embeddings of hegemonic myths of the war into everyday life. Among these are the stardom of a musician whose 'patriotic' music claims the same moral authority as the Croatian veterans' movement and whose public persona has embodied militarised masculinity since he became a wartime star. Popular music and youth engagement with it is thus among the sites where everyday understandings of peace are being contested. By exploring the audiovisual aesthetics of the song/video through which this musician re-engaged with veterans' activism in 1998, and showing that popular music spectatorship seeps into the everyday micropolitics of young people building and contesting peace, the paper argues that for critical peace and conflict studies to understand the affective politics of post-conflict masculinities, they must combine a feminist and aesthetic consciousness.

Keywords: audiovisual aesthetics, Croatia, everyday peace, masculinities, popular music, veterans

Topics: Age, Youth, Armed Conflict, Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Croatia

Year: 2019

Citation:

Sjoberg, Laura. 2017. "Jihadi Brides and Female Volunteers: Reading the Islamic State’s War to See Gender and Agency in Conflict Dynamics." Conflict Management and Peace Science 35 (3): 296-311.

Author: Laura Sjoberg

Abstract:

Decades ago, Cynthia Enloe called for a research agenda looking for where women are in war and conflict. Enloe recognized that women play active roles in and are affected by wars and conflicts, but are often ignored in news coverage, policy analysis, and scholarship. The current conflict in Syria and Iraq appears as a counterexample: hundreds of millions of Google results mention women and the Islamic State (IS). Subjects vary widely: the stories cover female victims of IS, female recruits to IS, and women who fight IS. This article explores the hypervisibility of women in this conflict, looking for lessons about sex, gender, and conflict. The first part analyses discourses in a sample of major news reports, evaluating how different women around IS are represented. It finds that agency is removed from both female victims and female IS partisans, while it is exaggerated for women who fight against IS. This corresponds with emphasis on different gendered traits for differently positioned women. After tracing these gendered representations, the article applies theories of gender and conflict to understand how women have become central to the fighting and coverage of the conflict in Syria and Iraq. It concludes that paying attention both to the empirical presence of women and to the co-constitution of gender, war, and conflict augments understanding of this war, and across conflicts.

Keywords: feminist theory, Gender, Islamic state, media coverage, terrorism, violence, war

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Terrorism, Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq, Syria

Year: 2017

Citation:

Saleh, Fadi. 2020. "Queer/Humanitarian Visibility: The Emergence of the Figure of The Suffering Syrian Gay Refugee." Middle East Critique: Special Issue on Queering the Middle East 29 (1): 47-67. 

Author: Fadi Saleh

Abstract:

Prior to the Syrian uprisings in 2011, Syrian queer and trans* populations were rather unknown and irrelevant to global LGBT politics, Western media, and humanitarian efforts. This changed considerably after the uprisings as representations steadily increased and proliferated on social media and in journalistic accounts. This article traces this shift and argues that queer and trans* Syrians became visible primarily through a queer/humanitarian media-visibility paradigm and the construction, consolidation, and circulation of the figure of the suffering Syrian gay refugee. Drawing on analyses of what I consider pivotal events and media representations as well as journalistic writings, this article maps out the ways in which the figure of the suffering Syrian gay refugee and the associations it foregrounds emerged, circulated, and became normalized after the uprisings and years into the Syrian conflict. Furthermore, based on ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted with Syrian LGBT refugees in Istanbul during 2014 – 15, this article challenges the suitability of this figure as a knowledge production framework and suggests new research trajectories to approach, understand, and write Syrian queer and trans* histories beyond the queer/humanitarian visibility paradigm and the figure of the suffering Syrian gay refugee.

Keywords: gay, humanitarian visibility, media, queer, refugee, Syria, violence

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Conflict, Media, LGBTQ, Sexuality, Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Syria

Year: 2020

Citation:

Strzelecka, Ewa K. 2018. "A Political Culture of Feminist Resistance: Exploring Women’s Agency and Gender Dynamics in Yemen’s Uprising (2011-15)." In Yemen and the Search for Stability: Power, Politics and Society after the Arab Spring, edited by Marie-Christine Heinze, 47-70. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. 

Author: Ewa K. Strzelecka

Annotation:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Equality/Inequality, Livelihoods, Rights, Women's Rights, Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Yemen

Year: 2018

Citation:

Pandya, Sophia. 2018.  "'The War Took Us Backwards:' Yemeni Families and Dialectical Patriarchal Reordering." Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 16 (1-3): 266-308.

Author: Sophia Pandya

Abstract:

If political activities (demonstration, revolution, war) can be understood as forms of ritual performance in which temporary social hegemonic inversions typically are followed by competing efforts to restore structure or define a new structure, then under what conditions would they offer potential for changes in family dynamics and gender roles? The past few years in Yemen have witnessed extraordinary political and socioeconomic turbulence, from the 2011 Arab Spring revolution to the 2015 brutal war. Yemeni families have been significantly impacted in myriad ways, including displacement, family separation, poverty, violence, unemployment, sectarian strife, disruption of education, and mental illness. Men and women have demonstrated a high level of public activism during the Arab Spring and the war, further altering family dynamics and the gendered social tapestry, in a highly patriarchal country. Social "disorder," including modification of gender roles, is often challenged by those desiring to restore "order," the "traditional" family structure, and patriarchy. This study analyzes gendered dimensions of the "Yemen Spring" and the subsequent war, with a particular focus on the link between gendered family dynamics and the sociopolitical landscape, also considering the role religion and religious groups play.

Keywords: Yemen, Yemen and war, Islam and gender, gender and war, ritual theory, family, family and war, religion

Topics: Armed Conflict, Conflict, Gender, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Households, Religion Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Yemen

Year: 2018

Citation:

Khodary, Yasmin, Noha Salah, and Nada Mohsen. 2020. "Middle Eastern Women between Oppression and Resistance: Case Studies of Iraqi, Palestinian and Kurdish Women of Turkey." Journal of International Women's Studies 21 (1): 204-26.

Authors: Yasmin Khodary, Noha Salah, Nada Mohsen

Abstract:

Wars and conflicts have had a profound impact on women and gender in the Middle East. In this article, we aim to highlight the various ways in which the ongoing oppression and conflict in the Middle East shape the responses of the Iraqi, Palestinian and Kurdish women of Turkey and the object of their struggles. We go beyond the 'Orientalist' discourse, which depicts Middle Eastern women in armed conflicts as solely vulnerable and helpless victims, to discuss the resisting roles played by the Iraqi, Palestinian and Kurdish women of Turkey. Middle Eastern women have played and continue to play major roles in responding to society, gender and state oppression. While the Iraqi women in this study voice their resistance through conventional actions and wide civil-society activism that transcends the local level, the Palestinian women engage in unconventional unarmed or peaceful resistance through Sumud and cultural resistance as well as armed/non-peaceful acts of resistance. Finally, in the face of Turkish state oppression, the Kurdish women of Turkey also deploy non-peaceful resistance through becoming active fighters and engaging leadership positions in the Kurdistan Workers' Party.

Keywords: Iraqi women, Palestinian women, Kurdish women, resilience, resistance, oppression

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Society, Combatants, Female Combatants, Conflict, Gender, Women Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq, Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories, Turkey

Year: 2020