International Organizations

Women participants in Conflict

The Nuclear Ban and the Patriarchy: a Feminist Analysis of Opposition to Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons

Citation:

Acheson, Ray. 2019. “The Nuclear Ban and the Patriarchy: a Feminist Analysis of Opposition to Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons.” Critical Studies on Security 7 (1): 78-82.

Author: Ray Acheson

Abstract:

Opposed by some of the world’s most powerful states, the coalition of actors that promoted the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons encountered rigid international power structures. These structures are in part maintained through the deployment of patriarchal tactics and rhetoric to suppress the perspectives and agency of those who might challenge those in a dominant position. In this way, banning nuclear weapons can be read as an act of challenging patriarchy and building space for alternative approaches to politics, including feminist and human-security-based approaches.

Topics: Feminisms, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, International Organizations, Security, Human Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 2019

Women in Arms Control: Time for a Gender Turn?

Citation:

Dwan, Renata. 2019. "Women in Arms Control: Time for a Gender Turn?" Arms Control Today 49 (8): 6-11.

Author: Renata Dwan

Annotation:

Summary:
"On the face of it, women in the arms control field have had a good year, with gender equality featuring frequently in national and multilateral policy debates. Beyond the traditionally women-friendly humanitarian discourse, recent meetings of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) have seen side events and working papers on gender equality and perspectives ahead of the treaty's 2020 review conference. The first-ever side event on gender was held in the margins of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) meeting in Geneva this August. The fifth conference of states-parties to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) the same month went considerably further, convening a thematic discussion on gender and adopting a decision on gender and gender-based violence issues. New studies on the role of women in nuclear and broader arms control garnered significant attention and debate . . . In 2017, newly appointed UN Secretary General António Guterres pledged to achieve gender parity in UN senior leadership appointments by 2021 and across the entire system "well before 2030." The African Union, European Union, and NATO have established dedicated representatives for WPS issues with mandates to advance the integration of gender issues across their respective organization's policies and actions" (Dwan 2019, 6-7). 

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, Political Participation, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 2019

Missing Voices: The Continuing Underrepresentation of Women in Multilateral Forums on Weapons and Disarmament

Citation:

Minor, Elizabeth. 2017. "Missing Voices: The Continuing Underrepresentation of Women in Multilateral Forums on Weapons and Disarmament." Arms Control Today 47 (10): 12-17.

Author: Elizabeth Minor

Annotation:

Summary:
"The recently adopted Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons contains much that is unprecedented for an international nuclear weapons agreement . . . This article looks at some of the patterns in women’s representation at international meetings of multilateral forums dealing with arms matters in recent years. The gender picture is currently far from balanced. Although this article looks at the numbers, achieving equal participation in multilateral forums is a matter that goes beyond securing parity in attendance and speakers at meetings. Further, successfully integrating gendered perspectives and improved attitudes to gender equality could be of greater significance than simple numerical equality to the outcomes these forums can generate for women and men affected worldwide by the weapons issues they discuss. These are all important issues for policymakers and civil society to consider in addressing gender and marginalization in multilateral forums" (Minor 2017, 12). 

Topics: Gender Balance, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, Political Participation, Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 2017

Gender, Conflict and Security: Perspectives from South Asia

Citation:

Singh, Shweta. 2017. "Gender, Conflict and Security: Perspectives from South Asia." Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 4 (2): 149-57.

Author: Shweta Singh

Abstract:

This article provides an overview to this special issue of JASIA, entitled ‘Gender, Conflict and Security: Perspectives from South Asia’. Gender intersects with conflict and security and yet remains at the margins of academic theorizing, policy priority and practitioner perspectives in South Asia. This special issue puts forth fresh insights into how and why the lived experiences of women in South Asia (particularly from areas of protracted conflict such as Nepal, India and Sri Lanka) are different? And how and why these impinge on the global discourse on security? It argues that this analysis is pertinent not just from the standpoint of academic theorizing on security but also from the perspective of international security policy like the United Nations led Women, Peace and Security Agenda. This is the 17th year of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, and only Nepal and Afghanistan in South Asia have a National Action Plan. This special issue also critically examines the key gaps in the international policy on Women, Peace and Security Agenda and how it ‘speaks’ or ‘not speaks’ to the contextual reality of South Asia.

Keywords: gender, conflict, security, South Asia, women peace and security, UNSCR 1325

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, International Organizations, Peacebuilding, Peace and Security, Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325 Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka

Year: 2017

Re-thinking the ‘Normative’ in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325: Perspectives from Sri Lanka

Citation:

Singh, Shweta. 2017. "Re-thinking the ‘Normative’ in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325: Perspectives from Sri Lanka." Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 4 (2): 219-38.

Author: Shweta Singh

Abstract:

This article asserts the need to re-think the ‘normative’ in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) from the standpoint of the ‘local’, in this case Sri Lanka. It argues that UNSCR 1325 needs to be situated within the larger discourse on international norms, and challenges to the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in varied ‘local’ contexts can be evaluated through the theoretical frameworks provided by existing literature on norms diffusion. I put forward three main arguments: First, the need to go beyond the neat classification of contexts as ‘conflict’ and ‘post-conflict’; second, the need to problematize gender as homogenous and women as coherent stable category of analysis; and third, to look beyond women as victims or agents. I argue that women in post-war Sri Lanka can more aptly be classified as controlled actors as women’s agency is structurally and culturally controlled, which inhibits their capacity to act or perform. In conclusion, I posit that Sri Lanka not only presents a strong case for the localization of the ‘normative’ in UNSCR 1325 but also provides justification for a three-level bottom-up analysis (local, regional and international) to comprehensively understand why UNSCR 1325 fails or succeeds to influence state behaviour.

Keywords: United Nations Security Council 1325, gender norms, norm diffusion, post-war Sri Lanka, controlled actors

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, International Organizations, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325 Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Sri Lanka

Year: 2017

The UN Security Council and the Political Economy of the WPS Resolutions

Citation:

Basu, Soumita. 2017. "The UN Security Council and the Political Economy of the WPS Resolutions." Politics & Gender 13 (4): 721-7.

Author: Soumita Basu

Annotation:

Summary:
"This contribution to the forum links these themes, which dominate discussions of the political economy of the WPS resolutions — funding, economic rights of women, and neoliberal peacebuilding — to a fourth dimension that has remained largely unexplored in feminist international relations scholarship so far: the materiality of the Security Council. Particularly in light of the attention paid to UNSCR 1325 in a number of contributions to the previous Politics & Gender forum on feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist political economy (FPE), this contribution presents the council as an arena in which the meeting of the two strands of feminist international relations can yield valuable insights about the trajectory of the WPS resolutions. It considers not just the politics of financing the provisions of the WPS resolutions but also the broad frames of understanding — of market, state, and society — within which the resolutions are conceived at the council" (Basu 2017, 722).

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, Peace and Security, Peace Processes, Political Economies, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Women's Rights, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS

Year: 2017

Take Back the Future: Global Feminisms and the Coming Crisis of the Beijing Settlement

Citation:

Ergas, Yasmine. 2019. "Take Back the Future: Global Feminisms and the Coming Crisis of the Beijing Settlement." Journal of International Affairs 72 (2): 19-36

Author: Yasmine Ergas

Annotation:

Summary:
"In April 2019, the United States threatened to use its veto in the UN Security Council (UNSC). That was not an unusual move: the Permanent Five members of the UNSC often exercise their right to block a United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR). But what was striking in this case was the content of the resolution against which the US felt both compelled and legitimated to invoke what is, in effect, the Council’s “nuclear option.” Did the draft Resolution introduced by Germany—a US ally—threaten U.S. national security? Did it undermine a friendly nation? In fact, Germany proposed to do neither. Rather, it sought to establish a working group within the UNSC on sexual violence in conflict, and generally strengthen the Council’s monitoring of related processes. Why, then, did the US object? As importantly, why did feminist groups also voice concern about the German initiative? While further research is needed to answer these questions, this essay views the U.S. position on Germany’s draft resolution as an expression of the stance taken by the U.S. administration and other states toward what one could term the “Beijing Settlement,” the general, albeit always contested, consensus rhetorically encapsulated in the slogan that “women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights,” which emerged from the fourth world conference on women in 1995. The U.S. administration’s stance is reflective of a broad backlash against gender-related rights, including both women’s rights generally and all persons’ rights related to sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and sexual characteristics" (Ergas 2019, 19).

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, International Organizations, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence, Sexuality, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS Regions: Americas, North America, Europe, Central Europe Countries: Germany, United States of America

Year: 2019

Leading the Operationalisation of WPS

Citation:

Hutchinson, Susan. 2018. "Leading the Operationalisation of WPS." Security Challenges 14 (2): 124-43.

Author: Susan Hutchinson

Annotation:

Summary:
"This paper considers how an intervening security force can implement the relevant components of the suite of United Nations Security Council resolutions on Women, Peace and Security (WPS). The analytical framework of the paper is a generic operational cycle comprised of preplanning, planning, conduct, and transition. Specific tasks identified in the resolutions are organised in this generic operational cycle. The tasks are those commonly led by security forces, or directed by government, and include: conflict analysis or intelligence; deliberate planning; force structure; population protection; female engagement; support to the rule of law; security sector reform; and disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration. This paper focuses on the experiences of the Australian Defence Force, with additional examples from militaries of Canada, Ireland, Sweden and the United States as well as organisational experiences from NATO and the United Nations. The paper draws on operations including, but not limited to, in Afghanistan, Rwanda, Yugoslavia and East Timor. Overall, the paper makes a unique contribution to the military operationalisation of the WPS agenda" (Hutchinson 2018, 124).

Topics: Armed Conflict, DDR, Gender, Women, Governance, International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Security, Security Sector Reform, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Americas, North America, Asia, South Asia, Europe, Balkans, Nordic states, Northern Europe, Western Europe, Oceania Countries: Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Rwanda, Sweden, Timor-Leste, United States of America, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2018

Women and Natural Resources Unlocking the Peacebuilding Potential

Citation:

United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office, and United Nations Development Programme. 2013. Women and Natural Resources Unlocking the Peacebuilding Potential. United Nations .

Authors: Adrienne Stork, Cassidy Travis, Silja Halle

Annotation:

Summary:

“Women’s diverse experiences in times of conflict have powerful implications for peacebuilding. Their capacity to recover from conflict and contribute to peace is influenced by their role in the conflict, whether directly engaged in armed groups, displaced, or forced to take on additional responsibilities to sustain their livelihoods and care for dependents. In spite of efforts by the international community to recognize and better address these multiple roles through agreements such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, the dominant perception of women as passive victims in conflict settings continues to constrain their ability to formally engage in political, economic and social recovery, and thereby contribute to better peacebuilding.

One of the unexplored entry points for strengthening women’s contributions to peacebuilding relates to the ways in which they use, manage, make decisions on and benefit from natural resources. Coupled with shifting gender norms in conflict-affected settings, women’s roles in natural resource management provide significant opportunities to enhance their participation in decisionmaking at all levels, and to enable them to engage more productively in economic revitalization activities.

As the primary providers of water, food and energy at the household and community levels, women in rural settings are often highly dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods, and are therefore particularly susceptible to changes in the availability and quality of these resources during and after conflict. In particular, lack of access to land – which underpins rights to all other natural resources and is a key asset for securing productive inputs – can force them into increasingly vulnerable situations and expose them to higher levels of physical and livelihood risk, with trickle-down impacts on community welfare. The structural discrimination that women face regarding resource rights and access also limits their political participation and economic productivity.

At the same time, conflict often leads both women and men to adopt coping strategies that challenge traditional gender norms. To meet the needs of their households and compensate for loss of revenue usually provided by male family members, women may assume new natural resource management roles, either by taking up alternative income-generating activities or by moving into traditionally male sectors. In the aftermath of conflict, capitalizing on these shifting roles can contribute to breaking down barriers to women’s empowerment and enhancing women’s productivity in sectors that are often critical to economic revitalization.

Failure to recognize the challenges and opportunities awarded to women in conflict-affected settings by their various roles in natural resource management also risks perpetuating inequalities and deepening grievances linked to natural resource rights, access and control, which have proven to be powerful catalysts for violence. Addressing issues of inequality related to resource access and ownership, participation in decision-making and benefitsharing early on in the peacebuilding process is therefore a critical condition for lasting peace and development.

To strengthen peacebuilding outcomes by enhancing women’s engagement and empowerment in conflictaffected contexts through sustainable natural resource management, this report recommends that national
governments and the international community take the following action:

  1. Promote women’s participation in formal and informal decision-making structures and governance processes related to natural resource management in peacebuilding: Working with natural resource management authorities can help increase women’s participation in decision-making at the sub-national and national levels. However, targeted support is needed for overcoming the structural, social and cultural barriers to women’s formal and informal political participation in conflict-affected settings. This can be achieved by including women and gender specialists early on in peace negotiations in a variety of positions – as negotiators, as expert advisors and as civil society observers – and in mediation support teams, as well as supporting their capacity to engage effectively in these processes. It also requires ensuring that women are represented in relevant decision-making bodies, including through the use of quotas and soliciting inputs from a broad range of women’s groups and networks when elaborating natural resource management policies. In addition gender experts should be part of teams charged with developing policies and other governance tools around natural resource management in peacebuilding contexts, including in supply-chain certification mechanisms, benefit-sharing schemes, and transparency initiatives. Finally, it is essential to provide training and capacity-building and to support the advocacy efforts of women’s organizations and networks.
  2. Adopt proactive measures to protect women from resource-related physical violence and other security risks early in the peacebuilding period: Women in conflict-affected settings routinely experience physical insecurity, including sexual violence, when carrying out daily tasks linked to the collection and use of natural resources. Moreover, while the impacts of environmental contamination and pollution adversely affect all, women are particularly vulnerable, due to heightened exposure in their gendered roles and responsibilities. Protecting women from these risks is not only important to their health, but also key to ensuring that they are able to safely carry out economic and social activities linked to natural resource management. Among other measures, addressing these risks can involve: conducting assessments to identify specific resource and environment-related security and health threats for women in conflict-affected contexts; ensuring that women have safe access to key resources, such as fuel wood and water, in internally displaced persons and refugee camps; supporting the dissemination of innovative technologies, such as improved cook stoves, that protect women from adverse health impacts in carrying out their roles; increasing women’s participation in security sector institutions and conflict resolution  processes; and supporting awareness-raising and training on women’s rights among the staff of government institutions and the national security sector, as well as at the community level, in order to increase gender-sensitive operational effectiveness and security service delivery by the army and police.
  3. Remove barriers and create enabling conditions to build women’s capacity for productive and sustainable use of natural resources: Access to credit, technical support and benefits from natural resource exploitation is essential to improving women’s economic productivity, which in turn is key to their empowerment. Likewise, legal support for the enforcement of land rights and other resource rights underpins women’s ability to productively use natural resources for their recovery. Achieving this can include: identifying women’s specific roles in key natural resource sectors and how those roles may have been affected during conflict, establishing regular consultative mechanisms with a variety of women’s groups and networks on the development of basic service infrastructure in their communities, prioritizing land negotiation and reform processes that improve women’s rights to land. In addition, providing legal aid, conflict management, negotiation and mediation services to women can enable them to enforce their resource-related rights and access dispute resolution mechanisms. Prioritizing access to finance, inputs and skills training for women and men equally, upholding human rights and minimum labor standards for women’s involvement in the extractive sectors and ensuring private companies operating in the extractive sectors engage both men and women during environmental and social impact assessments, as well as throughout the project cycle can further improve women’s productive and sustainable use of natural resources. Finally, women’s representation on commissions established for wealth-sharing and national and sub-national level and the provision of gender expertise for such bodies, should be prioritized and efforts made to ensure that women are included in community based natural resource management initiatives in conflict-affected settings.
  4. Within the United Nations, increase inter-agency cooperation to pursue women’s empowerment and sustainable natural resource management together in support of more effective peacebuilding: Existing inter-agency mechanisms at the global and country levels should be tasked to address the risks and opportunities presented to women by natural resource management in peacebuilding contexts more systematically in their work, including by: conducting pilot programmes to learn lessons on how to integrate the linkages between women, natural resources and peacebuilding in joint assessments and country programming; ensuring that 15 percent of all funding towards UN-supported natural resource management programmes in peacebuilding is allocated to women’s empowerment and gender equality; requiring the collection of sex and agedisaggregated data on peacebuilding and recovery programmes that address and/or have an impact on natural resource management; developing specific targets related to the participation of women and gender experts in natural resource management in post-conflict countries, in line with the priorities and goals set in the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States and the goals for the post-2015 development agenda; supporting further research on the nexus of women, natural resources and peacebuilding, particularly in areas where significant knowledge gaps remain; and integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment issues in meetings of actors working on addressing the linkages between natural resources, conflict and peacebuilding.” (Stork, Travis, and Halle 2013, 7-8)

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households, International Organizations, Livelihoods, Peacebuilding, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Land Rights, Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325, Violence

Year: 2013

Contesting Feminism’s Institutional Doubles: Troubling the Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda

Citation:

Otto, Dianne. 2019. "Contesting Feminism’s Institutional Doubles: Troubling the Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security Agenda." In Governance Feminism: Notes from the Field, edited by Janet Halley, Prabha Kotiswaran, Rachel Rebouché, and Hila Shamir, 200-29. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Author: Dianne Otto

Annotation:

Summary:
"In early 2000, feminist peace activists embarked on an ambitious new strategy of engagement with institutional power, from within rather than from outside the international military and diplomatic establishment, when the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) led a coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) hoping to persuade the UN Security Council to adopt a thematic resolution on women, peace, and security (WPS). Previously, the Council had shown almost no interest in women except, commencing with the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans, as victims of conflict-related sexual violence. That the Council responded positively to the efforts of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security (hereafter referred to simply as the NGO Working Group) and unanimously adopted Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325) on October 31, 2000, came as a surprise to me, although, as I will explain, I have since realized that there was much for the Council to gain by (re)presenting itself as feminist-friendly. I have also been astonished by the remarkable institutional productivity that has followed the adoption of SCR 1325. Not only has it prompted annual Security Council debates on WPS and annual Secretary-General’s Reports since 2004; it has led to a further seven resolutions on this theme (as of October 2016). Cascades of gender policies, training manuals, checklists, indicators, benchmarks, targets, studies, and reports have also followed, as well as many new positions established for “gender experts,” including the special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict and Gender Advisory Teams deployed by UN Peacekeeping to all multidimensional peacekeeping operations" (Otto 2019, 200-1).

Topics: Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, International Organizations, Peacebuilding, Political Participation, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, SV against Women, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325, UNSCR 1820, UNSCR 1888, UNSCR 1889, UNSCR 1960, UNSCR 2106, UNSCR 2122, UNSCR 2242

Year: 2019

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