Paramilitaries

Citation:

Author: Melanie Hoewer

Abstract:

Violence against women occurs in peacetime, intensifies during wartime, and continues in the aftermath of armed conflict. Women sometimes make gains during conflict and their efforts to break the pattern of violence have led to a greater awareness of gender-based violence. However, a lack of acknowledgement of transformations in gender identity at the macro-level during peace processes may create conflict in intimate partnerships. This study brings to light the complexity of changes occurring during peace processes in a multi-level analysis of women’s perceptions and positioning towards the state, their community, and their intimate partnership. This comparative analysis of fifty-seven female activists’ narratives from Chiapas and Northern Ireland demonstrates how a one-dimensional peace process (Northern Ireland) can limit the space for addressing women’s concerns, while peace processes that transcend the ethno- national dimension of conflict (Chiapas) can open a dialogue on issues of contention in male-female relationships.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, National Liberation Wars, Combatants, Domestic Violence, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Men, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Paramilitaries, Non-State Armed Groups, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Violence Regions: Americas, North America, Europe, Northern Europe Countries: Mexico, United Kingdom

Year: 2013

Citation:

Carey Jr., David, and M. Gabriela Torres. 2010. “Precursors to Femicide: Guatemalan Women in a Vortex of Violence.” Latin American Research Review 45 (3): 142–64.

Authors: David Carey Jr., M. Gabriela Torres

Abstract:

Today women in Guatemala are killed at nearly the same rate as they were in the early 1980s when the civil war became genocidal. Yet the current femicide epidemic is less an aberration than a reflection of the way violence against women has become normalized in Guatemala. Used to re-inscribe patriarchy and sustain both dictatorships and democracies, gender-based violence morphed into femicide when peacetime governments became too weak to control extralegal and paramilitary powers. The naturalization of gender-based violence over the course of the twentieth century maintained and promoted the systemic impunity that undergirds femicide today. By accounting for the gendered and historical dimensions of the cultural practices of violence and impunity, we offer a re-conceptualization of the social relations that perpetuate femicide as an expression of post-war violence. 

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Justice, Impunity, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Paramilitaries, Post-Conflict Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Guatemala

Year: 2010

Citation:

Henshaw, Alexis Leanna. 2016. “Where Women Rebel: Patterns of Women’s Participation in Armed Rebel Groups 1990-2008.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 18 (1): 39–60. doi:10.1080/14616742.2015.1007729.

Author: Alexis Leanna Henshaw

Abstract:

While a significant literature on women's participation in armed rebel groups exists, much of this work is focused on individual cases or regional comparisons among movements. This has led to a lack of cross-national work on women in insurgencies, and a limited understanding of the extent to which women are engaged in civil conflict internationally. This article introduces new data on women's involvement in seventy-two insurgencies active since 1990, and assesses the validity of several assumptions about women and rebellion drawn from existing literature on women in conflict and on civil wars generally. I show that women are active in rebel groups much more often than current scholarship acknowledges. This involvement includes frequent service in combat and leadership roles, where male participants are often presumed to be the default. Finally, while forced recruitment tactics are frequently used to bring women into service, much of their participation appears to be voluntary in nature.

Keywords: gender, civil conflict, terrorism, insurgency

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Militarized Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Militias, Paramilitaries, Non-State Armed Groups, Terrorism

Year: 2016

Citation:

Payne, William J. 2016. “Death-Squads Contemplating Queers as Citizens: What Colombian Paramilitaries Are Saying.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 23 (3): 328–44. 

Author: William J. Payne

Abstract:

Colombian right-wing paramilitary forces aligned with the state and leftist guerrilla groups are associated with homophobic and transphobic attacks. However, the most extreme accounts of violence are attributed to the former group. Sexual and gender minorities are victimized in the ongoing internal conflict in which armed actors use attacks as a form of communicative violence meant to discipline the civilian population. At the same time, Colombian lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities are making significant advances in gaining recognition of their human rights. This article explores the space where the advance of LGBT rights confounds reactionary homophobic beliefs of illegal right-wing armed groups. I consider how concepts such as ‘nation’ and ‘citizen’ shape the discourse of paramilitary forces in their account of their group's homophobic violence. Special attention is paid to the logic provided by two informants, former paramilitary members themselves, regarding the conditions under which right-wing paramilitary groups would be obliged to recognize the rights of sexual and gender minorities as citizens. The article concludes with a discussion of how the development of a sexual citizenship discourse, in place, may serve to disrupt extreme violence against sexual and gender minorities in the context of militarization and armed conflict.

Keywords: sexual citizenship, paramilitary, homophobic violence, Colombia, LGBT, queer

Topics: Armed Conflict, Citizenship, Gender, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Paramilitaries, Rights, Human Rights, Sexuality, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2016

Citation:

Azarbaijani-Moghaddam, Sippi. 2007. “On Living with Negative Peace and a Half-Built State: Gender and Human Rights.” International Peacekeeping 14 (1): 127–42. doi:10.1080/13533310601114335.

Author: Sippi Azarbaijani-Moghaddam

Abstract:

This article examines the double standards associated with a precarious international peacebuilding strategy in Afghanistan based on impunity and half-truths rather than accountability and transitional justice. Many international organizations have turned a blind eye to past and current human rights atrocities through forms of rationalization based on an empowerment of cultural differences, relativization of progress and ‘policy reductionism’. Consequently, and in the absence of consistently applied rights instruments, societal divisions along gender, ethnic and other lines have intensified Afghanistan’s culture of intolerance to human rights, thereby violating the very principles the international community purports to uphold. Drawing on first-hand experiences, personal interviews and a sober analysis of trends, this article challenges some of the conventional assumptions held about the perception and knowledge of human rights among Afghans. It concludes by identifying possible areas of future study to better understand both the prospects for transitional justice and how ordinary Afghans continue to cope with widespread injustice and inequality.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Occupation, Civil Society, Corruption, Ethnicity, Gender, International Organizations, Justice, Impunity, Transitional Justice, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militias, Paramilitaries, Peacebuilding, Rights, Human Rights, Violence Regions: Asia, Middle East Countries: Afghanistan

Year: 2007

Citation:

Hayes, Bernadette C. and Ian McAllister. 2012. “Gender and Consociational Power-Sharing in Northern Ireland.” International Political Science Review 34 (2): 123-139.

Authors: Bernadette C. Hayes, Ian McAllister

Abstract:

Designing political arrangements is the most viable approach to resolving inter-communal divisions in post-conflict societies. Yet women are frequently ill-served by such peace settlements, since gender equality is often sacrificed in an effort to resolve conflicts over national identity. Northern Ireland is no exception to this trend. Although the 1998 Northern Ireland Agreement made specific provision for gender equality, it was primarily framed in terms of national identity. This article examines to what extent this focus on inter-communal ethnic division undermined support for the Agreement among women. Using data from the 2010 Northern Ireland Election Survey, we examine gender differences in attitudes towards the consociational institutions of government. The results show a significant gender gap in support for the institutional arrangements that were established by the Agreement. We propose and test three explanations to account for this gender gap. 

Keywords: post-conflict, consociationalism, gender, national identity, power-sharing

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Civil Society, Democracy / Democratization, Domestic Violence, Economies, Poverty, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Men, Girls, Boys, Governance, Constitutions, Elections, Post-Conflict Governance, Justice, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Paramilitaries, Nationalism, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes, Political Participation, Post-Conflict, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Weapons /Arms Regions: Europe, Western Europe Countries: Ireland

Year: 2012

Citation:

Bora, Papori. 2010. “Between the Human, the Citizen and the Tribal.” International Feminist Journal Of Politics 12 (3): 341-60.

Author: Bora Papori

Abstract:

On 15 July 2004, a public protest was staged in the state of Manipur, in India's Northeast, to oppose the rape and custodial killing of a young Meitei woman, Thangjam Manorama, by soldiers of a counter-insurgency paramilitary battalion, the Assam Rifles, who suspected she was a militant. At this protest, several women appeared nude, holding a banner that read 'Indian army rape us'. This analysis considers how we might read the nudity and the statement 'Indian army rape us'. I argue that the language of law, human rights and women's rights as human rights, are inadequate to analyze the protest and the events surrounding it because they do not situate the protest within larger political struggles in the Northeast. Further, such universalist approaches take categories like 'Indian citizen', 'woman' and 'tribal' as a given and do not allow for an engagement with how these categories are mutually constituted, or the law's complicity in their constitution. Accordingly, concerns about contested notions of citizenship that are at the heart of the Manipur protest cannot be adequately addressed within this framework. Instead, I suggest a postcolonial feminist analytics as an alternative means to engage with the political questions raised by the protest.

Keywords: women and political participation in India, rape as a weapon of war

Topics: Armed Conflict, Citizenship, Democracy / Democratization, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Paramilitaries, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, SV against Women, Tribe, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2010