Peacekeeping

Citation:

Tidblad-Lundholm, Kajsa. 2020. “When Are Women Deployed? Operational Uncertainty and Deployment of Female Personnel to UN Peacekeeping.” International Peacekeeping 27 (4): 673–702.

Author: Kajsa Tidblad-Lundholm

Abstract:

Keywords: women's participation, UNSCR 1325, peacekeeping, United Nations, peace operations

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Peacekeeping

Year: 2020

Citation:

Beber, Bernd, Michael J. Gilligan, Jenny Guardado, and Sabrina Karim. 2017. “Peacekeeping, Compliance with International Norms, and Transactional Sex in Monrovia, Liberia.” International Organization 71 (1): 1–30.

Authors: Bernd Beber, Michael J. Gilligan, Jenny Guardado, Sabrina Karim

Abstract:

United Nations policy forbids its peacekeepers and other personnel from engaging in transactional sex (the exchange of money, favors, or gifts for sex), but we find the behavior to be very common in our survey of Liberian women. Using satellite imagery and GPS locators, we randomly selected 1,381 households and randomly sampled 475 women between the ages of eighteen and thirty. Using an iPod in private to preserve the anonymity of their responses, these women answered sensitive questions about their sexual histories. More than half of them had engaged in transactional sex, a large majority of them (more than 75 percent) with UN personnel. We estimate that each additional battalion of UN peacekeepers caused a significant increase in a woman’s probability of engaging in her first transactional sex. Our findings raise the concern that the private actions of UN personnel in the field may set back the UN’s broader gender-equality and economic development goals, and raise broader questions about compliance with international norms.

Topics: Gender, Women, International Organizations, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia

Year: 2017

Citation:

Vahedi, Luissa, Susan A. Bartels, and Sabine Lee. 2019. “‘Even Peacekeepers Expect Something in Return’: A Qualitative Analysis of Sexual Interactions between UN Peacekeepers and Female Haitians.” Global Public Health: 1–14. doi: 10.1080/17441692.2019.1706758.

Authors: Luissa Vahedi, Susan A. Bartels, Sabine Lee

Abstract:

The UN maintains a zero-tolerance policy on sexual interactions between peacekeepers and beneficiaries of assistance. Our research describes the lived experience of engaging sexually with UN peacekeepers during Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haiti (MINUSTAH) from the perspectives of Haitian women/girls. Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with Haitian women raising children fathered by MINUSTAH peacekeepers. Transcripts were analyzed according to empirical phenomenology. Adverse socio-economic conditions were key contextual factors. Three themes related to the nature of the sexual interactions emerged: sexual violence, transactional sex, and long-term transactional relationships imbedded in perceptions of love. Most sexual interactions were transactional and nuanced since the peacekeeper assumed the role of romantic and material provider. Sexual consent was conceptualised as the ability to weigh the benefits and consequences of engaging sexually with peacekeepers. Sexual violence was identified among minors and in instances of sexual abuse. This study provides empirical evidence to support a nuanced understanding of sexual relationships between women/girls and peacekeepers. In addition to holding peacekeepers accountable, a harm reduction approach that aims to raise awareness for peacekeeping codes of conduct and provide comprehensive reproductive and sexual education should be considered.

Keywords: Haiti, peacekeeping, transactional sex, sexual abuse and exploitation, United Nations

Topics: Gender, Women, Girls, Post-Conflict, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Women Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Haiti

Year: 2019

Citation:

Zaiter, Manar. 2018. "Lebanon, UNSCR 1325, and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda." Al-Raida Journal 42 (1): 39-50.

Author: Manar Zaiter

Abstract:

The Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1325 (31 October 2000) constitutes an advancement in the international protection of women and girls in times of conflict. It is the first public, legal instrument issued by the Security Council, calling warring parties to respect women’s rights and support their participation in all stages and contexts of conflict prevention, conflict resolution, peace talks, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, humanitarian response, and post-conflict reconstruction. In view of the situation in the Arab region and of the political, security, economic, cultural, and social context that affects women, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda is of great importance to the entire Arab region.

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Girls, Humanitarian Assistance, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Peace Processes, Rights, Women's Rights, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325 Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Lebanon

Year: 2018

Relevant Links: Open Access Policy for this article available here

Citation:

Holvikivi, Aiko. 2019. "Fixing Gender: The Paradoxical Politics of Peacekeeper Training." PhD diss., The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Author: Aiko Holvikivi

Abstract:

Over the past two decades, gender training for military and police peacekeepers has become institutionalised in the global governance of peace and security. Such training purports to respond to gendered harms previously ignored in, or actively caused by, peacekeeping operations. This evolving transnational practice involves the introduction of gender knowledge – indebted to feminist theorising and activism – into police and military organisations – commonly characterised as institutions of hegemonic masculinity. This thesis takes the tension between feminism and martial institutions as its point of departure to investigate what meaning the term gender acquires in training for uniformed peacekeepers, asking: What epistemic and political work does gender training do in martial institutions? Investigating the pedagogical practices of gender training through a multi-sited ethnography, I approach this question with the help of feminist, postcolonial, (and) queer epistemic perspectives. I conceptualise gender training as involving the production of knowledges around gender; knowledges which enable ways of being and acting in the world. I suggest that training practices often produce an understanding of gender that serves martial politics and reproduces colonial logics in the peacekeeping enterprise, thereby emptying the term of the transformative political hopes that feminist theorists typically invest in the concept. At the same time, I identify moments of tension, in which gender training appears to be destabilising hierarchical martial logics and engaging in subversive pedagogy. In sum, I argue that ambivalence is an integral feature of gender training, and locate political potential in the cultivation of resistant pedagogies, which exploit the margins of hegemonic discourses to engage in subversive strategies of destabilisation and delinking. This thesis provides an empirical contribution to an under-studied area of global governance, as well as forwarding feminist theorising on political strategies for engaging with and against institutions of state power.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Governance, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Peacekeeping

Year: 2019

Citation:

Smith, Dan, and Inger Skjelsbaek, eds. 2001. Gender, Peace and Conflict. London: Sage Publications. 

Authors: Dan Smith, Inger Skjelsbaek

Annotation:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Peace and Security, Political Participation, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence Regions: Americas, South America, Asia, South Asia, Europe, Balkans Countries: Colombia, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2001

Citation:

Karim, Sabrina. 2019. “Restoring Confidence in Post-Conflict Security Sectors: Survey Evidence from Liberia on Female Ratio Balancing Reforms.” British Journal of Political Science 49 (3): 799-821.

Author: Sabrina Karim

Abstract:

Civilian confidence in domestic institutions, particularly in the security sector, is important for stability and state consolidation in post-conflict countries, where third-party peacekeepers have helped maintain peace and security after a conflict. While other scholars have suggested that a strong security sector is necessary for mitigating the credible commitment problem, this article provides two alternative criteria for assessing security sector reforms’ effect on confidence in the security sector: restraint and inclusiveness. Female ratio balancing in the security sector meets these two criteria, suggesting that it has the potential to help enhance confidence in the security sector and thereby create the right conditions for the peacekeeping transition. The argument is tested using original surveys conducted in post-conflict, ex-combatant communities in Liberia. The expectations received empirical support. The findings indicate that restraining and inclusive reforms could improve trust in the state’s security sector. They also demonstrate the importance of considering gender in theories related to post-conflict peace building and international relations more broadly.

Keywords: security sector reform, peacekeeping, gender, ex-combatants, state building, Liberia

Topics: Combatants, Gender, Women, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Security Sector Reform Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia

Year: 2019

Citation:

McDermott, Rose. 2020. “The Role of Gender in Political Violence.” Current Opinion in Behavioral Science 34: 1-5. doi: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2019.09.003.

Author: Rose McDermott

Abstract:

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Men, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Political Participation, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, Violence

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:

Hultman, Lisa, and Karin Johansson. 2017. "Responding to Wartime Sexual Violence: UN Peacekeeping and the Protection Agenda." Global Responsibility to Protect 9 (2): 129-46.

Authors: Lisa Hultman, Karin Johansson

Abstract:

Recent years have seen an increased emphasis on protection of civilians and the problem of sexual violence. The Security Council has adopted a number of resolutions towards improving the status of women in the realm of peace and security. However, we do not know if this translates into action by the Security Council in terms of deploying peacekeepers to respond to sexual violence. In this paper, we examine to what extent the prevalence of sexual violence increases the likelihood that the un chooses to deploy peacekeeping operations. In doing so, we acknowledge that sexual violence is an underreported phenomenon, about which the Security Council may not have perfect information. We explore this question by using data from the svac dataset in all intrastate armed conflicts, 1989–2009, which provides information about sexual violence as reported by three main agencies. We examine to what extent sexual violence, as reported by different agencies, is correlated with a higher likelihood that the un deploys a peacekeeping operation. Our findings suggest that reports of sexual violence on average increase the likelihood of a peacekeeping operation. However, depending on which of the sources we consider, we find contradictory findings for whether the un responds differently to sexual violence perpetrated by states and non-state actors respectively.

Keywords: peacekeeping, sexual violence, protection of civilians, UN Security Council

Topics: International Organizations, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS

Year: 2017