International Law

Citation:

Bunch, Charlotte. 1995. “Global Campaign for Women’s Human Rights: Where Next after Vienna." St. John's Law Review 69: 171-78.

Author: Charlotte Bunch

Topics: Gender, Women, International Law, International Human Rights, International Organizations, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights

Year: 1995

Citation:

Orford, Anne. 2002. “Feminism, Imperialism and the Mission of International Law.” Nordic Journal of International Law 71 (2): 275-96.

Author: Anne Orford

Abstract:

This special issue of the Nordic Journal of International Law is testimony to the range of international interventions that have been enabled by the energies and insights of feminism. Each of the contributions to this issue is an attempt to think through what it means to read and write feminist legal theory in an age dominated by internationalist narratives, whether of globalization and harmonization, or of high-tech wars on terror and for humanity. This introductory article sketches some of the ethical and political questions that face those of us who attempt to develop a feminist practice of engaging with the projects of international law, whether in the fields of human rights, military intervention, post-conflict reconstruction or economic globalization. In particular, I explore the extent to which feminist internationalism is haunted by the shades of those nineteenth-century European feminists whose role in facilitating empire is undergoing much exploration. In order to think through the ethical issues involved in developing a feminist reading of international law, this article outlines some of the ways in which feminist legal theory is invited to participate in the project of constituting women and the international community. I consider some of the dangers involved in accepting this invitation, and propose alternative methodologies for undertaking the risky project of reading international law.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Globalization, International Law

Year: 2002

Citation:

Schafer, Loveness H. 2002. “True Survivors: East African Refugee Women.” Africa Today 49 (2): 29-48.

Author: Loveness H. Schafer

Abstract:

In this paper, I explain the process asylum seekers from Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Somalia went through when they applied for asylum in Malawi between 1997 and 1999. I describe how international conventions concerning refugees were carried out in practice, paying particular attention to places in the process where women refugees confronted certain hardships. More specifically, I explore the ways in which gender-based violence, rape, and other harms particularly committed against women were dealt with in the processing of asylum applications in Malawi. I argue that both international conventions and individual host countries should revamp laws and mechanisms for admitting refugees to more adequately address the problem of gender-based violence. Despite the hardships they faced, women refugees were the real survivors, because they used all their skills and wits to survive their ordeals and save themselves and their children from abuse, torture, and death.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women, Torture Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Rwanda, Somalia

Year: 2002

Citation:

Gingerich, Tara, and Jennifer Leaning. 2004. The Use of Rape as a Weapon of War in the Conflict in Darfur, Sudan. Boston: Harvard School of Public Health.

Authors: Tara Gingerich, Jennifer Leaning

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Girls, Gender-Based Violence, Health, Reproductive Health, Trauma, Humanitarian Assistance, Context-Appropriate Response to Trauma, International Law, Sexual Violence, Rape, Weapons /Arms Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Sudan

Year: 2004

Citation:

Diller, Janelle M. 2001. “On the Possibilities and Limitations of NGO Participation in International Law and Its Processes: Corporate Applications.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law) 95: 304-309.

Author: Janelle M. Diller

Topics: International Law, NGOs

Year: 2001

Citation:

Kinsella, Helen M. 2006. “Gendering Grotius Sex and Sex Difference in the Laws of War.” Political Theory 34 (2): 161-91.

Author: Helen M. Kinsella

Abstract:

I construct a genealogy of the principle of distinction; the injunction to distinguish between combatants and civilians at all times during war. I outline the influence of a series of discourses–gender, innocence, and civilization–on these two categories. I focus on the emergence of the distinction in the seventeenth-century text "On the Law of War and Peace," authored by Hugo Grotius, and trace it through the twentieth-century treaties of the laws of war–the 1949 Geneva Protocols and the 1977 Protocols Additional. I draw out how the practices of and referents for our current wars partially descend from and are governed by the binary logics of Christianity, barbarism, innocence, guilt, and sex difference articulated in Grotius's text. These binaries are implicated in our contemporary distinction of "combatant" and "civilian," troubling any facile notion of what "humanitarian" law is or what "humanitarian" law does, and posing distinct challenges to theorizations of the laws said to regulate war.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Gender, International Law, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Religion, Violence

Year: 2006

Citation:

Lazarus-Black, Mindie, and Sally Engle Merry. 2003. “The Politics of Gender Violence: Law Reform in Local and Global Places.” Law & Social Inquiry 28 (4): 931-9.

Authors: Mindie Lazarus-Black, Sally Engle Merry

Abstract:

The end of the millennium has witnessed an enormous expansion in discourses, intervention practices, and social movements opposing violence against women. Not only does this development affect familial and gender inequalities, but it also reshapes the relationships among communities, states, and the global order. This symposium examines these changing relationships by considering how new discourses, laws, and practices about gender violence between intimates develop through local, national, and global processes. It explores local situations from a global perspective and global processes from a local perspective. Thus, it examines the local-global interface in the creation and implementation of social reforms concerning violence against women. We use the case of violence against women because it offers an excellent vantage point for analyzing the creation of an emerging global system of law based in human rights and assessing its impact on local and national laws and practices. It also offers a site to examine how local actors reformulate the content and meaning of global reform discourses. The articles track actors from local to international settings and back again as they negotiate the application of law to violence against women. This symposium is unusual in its effort to develop theoretical perspectives that consider the relationships between gender violence and the processes of nationalism and globalization. It brings together scholars who have studied efforts to combat violence between intimates in different nations. The authors' empirical ethnographic research merges a local perspective with broader studies of national and global actors and institutions.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Globalization, International Law, International Human Rights, Nationalism, Rights, Human Rights

Year: 2003

Citation:

Pratt, Marion, and Leah Werchick. 2004. Sexual Terrorism: Rape as a Weapon of War in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: An Assessment of Programmatic Responses to Sexual Violence in North Kivu, South Kivu, Maniema, and Orientale Provinces. Washington DC: United States Agency for International Development, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance.

Authors: Marion Pratt, Leah Werchick

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Sexual Violence, Rape

Year: 2004

Citation:

Gallagher, Anne. 1997. “Ending the Marginalization: Strategies for Incorporating Women into the United Nations Human Rights System.” Human Rights Quarterly 19 (2): 283-333.

Abstract:

This article describes and evaluates the progress made towards developing and incorporating a women perspective into the human rights work of the United Nations and to suggest strategies to facilitate this process. This article sets out to describe and to critically evaluate the progress which has been made towards developing and incorporating a gender perspective into the human rights work of the United Nations, and to suggest strategies that may be adopted to facilitate this process. In doing so, it seeks to examine the reasons why women have been at the periphery of international human rights, and what obstacles remain to their full integration. These objectives presuppose certain views and alliances which deserve to be identified at the outset. For example, it is accepted that human rights discourse, and the institutional structures which have been built around it-despite serious weaknesses-can be a valuable means of securing equality and basic dignity for women throughout the world. It is also accepted that marginalization of a group-any group vis-à-vis the international human rights system is harmful to that group's interest in securing the basic rights to which its members are entitled as equal persons under international law.

Topics: Gender, Women, International Law, International Human Rights, Rights, Human Rights

Year: 1997

Citation:

Park, Jennifer. 2007. “Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War in International Humanitarian Law.” International Public Policy Review 3 (1): 13–18.

Author: Jennifer Park

Abstract:

Sexual violence as a weapon of war targets individuals not only on the basis of group membership, but also uniquely on the basis of gender. Despite substantial increases in occurrence during warfare, international and national mechanisms have largely neglected the impact of sexual violence in hindering peace and obscuring perceptions of security among population groups. The failure to clearly recognise sexual violence as a weapon of war has resulted in impunity, in turn affecting the likelihood of future outbreaks of conflict. To prevent further negligence, the establishments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have made notable progress toward reconceptualising sexual violence as a weapon of war. This paper highlights and evaluates the innovations made by the ICTY and the ICTR towards recognising the issue of sexual violence as a threat to international peace and security in international law.

Topics: International Law, International Criminal Law, International Humanitarian Law (IHL), Justice, International Tribunals & Special Courts, Security, Sexual Violence, SV against Women Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Europe, Balkans Countries: Rwanda

Year: 2007