Transitional Justice

Skirts as Flags: Transitional Justice, Gender and Everyday Nationalism in Kosovo

Citation:

Krasniqi, Vjollca, Ivor Sokolic, and Denisa Kostovicova. 2020. "Skirts as Flags: Transitional Justice, Gender and Everyday Nationalism in Kosovo." Nations and Nationalism 26 (2): 461-76.

Authors: Vjollca Krasniqi, Ivor Sokolic, Denisa Kostovicova

Keywords: art, gender, nationalism, transitional justice, Kosovo

Annotation:

Summary: 
"In this article, we bring the perspective of everyday nationalism to the feminist theorizing in the field of transitional justice and investigate gendered dimensions of post‐conflict nation building. Our aim is to understand possibilities for achieving gender‐just peace characterized by the transformation of gender relations, as well as their obstacles. Feminist scholarship has captured complex, contested, and ambiguous dynamics of shifting gender relations in conflict and post‐conflict settings in the everyday domain. Despite increasing understanding of women's agency and its limits, the entrenchment of dominant hierarchical norms at the intersection of gender and the nation remains puzzling. Everyday nationalism directs attention to mundane aspects of nationhood. It also offers a bottom–up perspective on top–down processes of “formal” nationalism and their interplay with everyday constructions of nationhood. The alignment between these bottom–up and top–down processes reveals how national ideologies are legitimized and hierarchical gender relations entrenched. We ask, does the public recognition of wartime sexual violence and women's suffering challenge the norms and habits of masculine nationhood and pave the way for a new start free of patriarchal hierarchies? Or does it entrench a gendered war “metanarrative” (Björkdahl & Mannergren Selimovic, 2015, p. 172) and with it, unequal gender relations? We study a public art installation about wartime sexual violence in Kosovo aimed at tackling the stigma and silence about wartime rape. The analysis is focused on how this artistic practice, as a symbol, discourse, and performance, as well as an intervention in the everyday domain, offers recognition of wartime sexual violence, and how this recognition responds to, or interacts with, existing gendered dynamics of nationhood. Drawing on Malešević (2013, p. 14), we argue that nationalism and nationhood transcend the public/private dichotomy by connecting institutions and organizations, such as public art installations, to everyday microinteractions. We show that the public endorsement of the art project and the acceptance of wartime sexual violence result in the recognition of the war crime but not the victim. Dynamics of everyday nationalism reinforce gender asymmetries and women's marginalization in a nation‐building process even while their suffering is being acknowledged publicly. Twenty years after the war in Kosovo ended, justice for ethnic Albanian women victims of sexual violence is still largely elusive. Their suffering has been sidelined both in international criminal prosecutions as well as in hybrid domestic war crime trials. The recent adoption by Kosovo's parliament of a reparations law for wartime sexual and gender‐based violence marks formal progress. But, its impact on actual redress for this wartime harm has been limited. One of the major obstacles for women coming forward to claim the reparations is the stigma surrounding wartime sexual violence. The stigma is steeped in gendered patriarchal mores playing themselves out in the politics of postwar peacebuilding within the victims' national community, and it pervades everyday life. By focusing on how an artistic intervention can promote justice for victims of wartime rape, we explore an avenue for supporting gender‐just peacebuilding that is an alternative to women's activism, legal responses, and formal gender equality policies. Despite the “context‐specific natures of claims of justice” (Murphy, 2017, p. 6), the case study of Kosovo reflects the typical pattern of gender‐based harm and the challenges of building gender‐just peace after a civil war. Therefore, our findings reveal everyday dynamics of gendering nation building and contribute to the wider understanding of how the redress for wartime sexual violence perpetuates gender‐insensitive peace (Chinkin & Kaldor, 2013). Empirical research in this article draws on a range of sources. These include the analysis of the Thinking of You art installation, published interviews with the artist, reports of domestic and international media outlets (in Albanian and English), a documentary film about the installation with the same title (Mendoj Për Ty|Thinking of You–Documentary), and speeches by former president of Kosovo, Atifete Jahjaga. We first outline feminist perspectives on transitional justice and present the analytical gains of applying an everyday nationalism perspective to the study of gendered construction of nationhood. This is followed by a background section on the war, sexual and gender‐based violence, and postwar stigma in Kosovo, as well as an overview of the art installation. The analysis is organized around three conceptual dimensions of everyday nationalism: symbols, discourse, and performance." (Krasniqi et al 2020, 461-2)

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Justice, International Tribunals & Special Courts, Reparations, Transitional Justice, War Crimes, Nationalism, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Rape Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Kosovo

Year: 2020

Gender and Transformative Justice in Sri Lanka

Citation:

Fonseka, Bhavani, and Ellen Schulz. 2018. "Gender and Transformative Justice in Sri Lanka." Women, Peace and Security Working Paper Series 18, London School of Economics and Political Science, London.

Authors: Bhavani Fonseka, Ellen Schulz

Abstract:

The idea of ‘transformative justice’ has emerged from criticisms that conventional transitional justice mechanisms have led to static institutions and the prioritisation of elite interests instead of tangible remedies for the people who are most in need – including women. This working paper focuses on Sri Lanka’s reconciliation and reform processes, and the crucial task of bringing genuine transformation to the women affected by the country’s near three decade war and recurring conflicts. The authors urge decision-makers to ensure full inclusion of women and include gendered experiences in planned reform processes, aiming at genuine transformation of societal circumstances so that conflictaffected women can achieve empowerment, dignity and equality.

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Justice, Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Sri Lanka

Year: 2018

Sexuality and Gender Identity in Transitional Societies: Peacebuilding and Counterhegemonic Politics

Citation:

Ashe, Fidelma. 2019. "Sexuality and Gender Identity in Transitional Societies: Peacebuilding and Counterhegemonic Politics." International Journal of Transitional Justice 13 (3): 435-57. 

Author: Fidelma Ashe

Abstract:

This article contributes to a developing field of scholarship that has been concerned with exploring the impacts of conflict and its transformation on sexual and gender minorities. Drawing on extant analysis, the article explores the marginalization of issues pertaining to sexuality and gender in international law and peace agreements. It then moves on to an assessment of the effects of the integration of sexual orientation and gender identity equality provisions into a limited number of peace agreements. The article contends that attempts to implement and extend sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) equality provisions in peace agreements in meaningful ways typically become cast as justifiable, residual or reprehensible by agonistic groups at local levels during transition. It claims that this fracturing of standpoints on SOGI equality can strengthen counterhegemonic articulations of sexual and gender minorities’ identities that provoke radical versions of peacebuilding.

Topics: Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, International Law, Justice, Transitional Justice, Peacebuilding, Sexuality

Year: 2019

Principled Pragmatism and the ‘Inclusion Project’: Implementing a Gender Perspective in Peace Agreements

Citation:

Bell, Christine, and Kevin McNicholl. 2019. “Principled Pragmatism and the ‘Inclusion Project’: Implementing a Gender Perspective in Peace Agreements.” feminists@law 9 (1). 

Authors: Christine Bell, Kevin McNicholl

Abstract:

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 of 2000 provided that peace agreements should adopt a ‘gender perspective’. This commitment has been reiterated in women, peace and security resolutions since that time. This article uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis to consider when and how peace agreements have adopted a gender perspective, using a new PA-X peace agreement database to analyse over 1500 peace and transition agreements from between 1990 and 2016.  It goes further to consider how inclusion of women is related to the other forms of political and group inclusion contemplated to form part of the new political settlement. The article begins by examining what might be meant by a ‘gender perspective in peace agreements’.  It maps out when and how peace agreements provide for women, girls and gender, but also for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans communities, and for ‘men and boys’ and ‘family’ at different stages of a peace process.  The article provides new data on the implementation of agreement commitments and specifically those issues singled out for attention by UNSC 1325. Finally, we consider the inclusion project on offer to women and its relationship to the conceptualisation of the conflict and its solution, by considering the relationship between gender, power-sharing and transitional justice. In summary, analysis of the dataset provides three main findings.  First provision for women is still largely limited to once-off provisions, or issues relating to the victimhood of women, with holistic attempts to adopt a ‘gender perspective’ relatively rare.  Second, the inclusion of women in peace agreement texts tends to be located in the more comprehensive stages of the agreement, with little consideration given to women and gender at either pre-negotiation stages of a peace process, or implementation stages. Third, surprisingly perhaps, political power-sharing is shown to be strongly correlated with several measures of gender inclusion rather than marking an exclusive focus on the inclusion of the groups at the heart of the conflict.  In conclusion we argue that peace agreements indicate the presence of ‘principled pragmatism’ whereby elite commitments to political equality are used by a range of groups to push for a more pluralist conception of the peace settlement as also concerned with the political equality of groups beyond the conflict actors.

Keywords: women and conflict, gender perspective, peace processes, power sharing, transitional justice, constitutions

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Justice, Transitional Justice, LGBTQ, Peace Processes, Sexuality, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325

Year: 2019

Peacebuilding Measures and the Transformation of Masculinities: Looking at Liberia and Uganda

Citation:

Messerschmidt, Maike, and Hendrik Quest. 2020. “Peacebuilding Measures and the Transformation of Masculinities: Looking at Liberia and Uganda.” In Gender Roles in Peace and Security: Prevent, Protect, Participate, edited by Manuela Scheuermann and Anja Zürn, 79–100. Cham: Springer.

Authors: Maike Messerschmidt, Hendrik Quest

Abstract:

Messerschmidt and Quest trace the potential for transformation of violence-centred masculinities in Liberia and Uganda as a result of post-conflict peacebuilding. First, they suggest a practice-theoretical framework that enables them to distinguish between violent and non-violent configurations of masculinity at different analytical levels. They then scrutinise disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR), security sector reforms (SSR) and transitional justice in Liberia and Uganda to assess their potential to transform violence-centred masculinities. In both cases, they see good reason to assume that peacebuilding measures have contributed to the transformation of masculinities, albeit more profoundly so in Liberia than in Uganda. By identifying relevant practices in all three programmes, they contribute to both the academic and practical knowledge concerning post-conflict peacebuilding measures.

Topics: DDR, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Justice, Transitional Justice, Peacebuilding, Post-Conflict, Security Sector Reform, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia, Uganda

Year: 2020

Gender Politics and Geopolitics of International Criminal Law in Uganda

Citation:

Bunting, Annie. 2018. "Gender Politics and Geopolitics of International Criminal Law in Uganda." Global Discourse 8 (3): 422-37.

Author: Annie Bunting

Abstract:

This paper explores the views of victim survivors – both men and women – on the current prosecution of Dominic Ongwen at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, including the crime of forced marriage. This case will be used as the central story around which the potential and limitations of international criminal law for gender justice will be explored. The Ongwen case has blurred the lines between victims and perpetrators of child soldiering and has generated much debate within and outside the continent. It has resuscitated the contestation and controversies surrounding the ICC regime in Uganda and Africa more broadly. The reflections I share in this paper come out of a collaborative research project I direct called ‘Conjugal Slavery in War: Partnerships for the study of enslavement, marriage and masculinities’ (CSiW 2015-2020). While Uganda and the Ongwen case will be central to this paper, our research project includes partners working with survivors of conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and northern Nigeria. We collected well over 250 interviews with women who were abducted for forced marriage. Using interview data from Uganda, as well as court records, this paper explores in-depth the geopolitics and gender politics of prosecuting conjugal slavery as an international crime.

Keywords: ICC, gender violence, Crimes against Humanity, transitional justice

Topics: Combatants, Child Soldiers, Gender, International Law, International Criminal Law, Justice, Crimes against Humanity, Transitional Justice, Sexual Violence, Sexual Slavery Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2018

Rethinking Transitional Gender Justice: Transformative Approaches in Post-Conflict Settings

Citation:

Shackel, Rita, and Lucy Fiske, eds. 2019. Rethinking Transitional Gender Justice: Transformative Approaches in Post-Conflict Settings. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

Authors: Rita Shackel, Lucy Fiske

Annotation:

Summary:
This book draws together established and emerging scholars from sociology, law, history, political science and education to examine the global and local issues in the pursuit of gender justice in post-conflict settings. This examination is especially important given the disappointing progress made to date in spite of concerted efforts over the last two decades. With contributions from both academics and practitioners working at national and international levels, this work integrates theory and practice, examining both global problems and highly contextual case studies including Kenya, Somalia, Peru, Afghanistan and DRC. The contributors aim to provide a comprehensive and compelling argument for the need to fundamentally rethink global approaches to gender justice. Rita Shackel is Associate Professor of Law at The University of Sydney Law School, Australia. Her research program is broadly focused on evaluation and reform of legal and social justice processes, with a specific focus on sexual and gender based violence and the needs of victims and survivors especially women and children. Lucy Fiske is Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on forced migration, human rights and gender justice. (Summary from Palgrave Macmillan) 
 
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Rethinking Institutions
Lucy Fiske and Rita Shackel
 
Part I: Rethinking Institutions
2. The Rise (and Fall?) of Transitional Gender Justice: A Survey of the Field
Lucy Fiske
 
3. Ebola and Post Conflict Gender Justice: Lessons from Liberia
Pamela Scully
 
4. Making Clients Out of Citizens: Deconstructing Women’s Economic Empowerment and Humanitarianism in Post Conflict Interventions
Rita Shackel and Lucy Fiske
 
5. Using War to Shift Peacetime Norms: The Example of Forced Marriage in Sierra Leone
Kiran Grewal
 
6. More Than a Victim: Thinking through Foreign Correspondents’ Representations of Women in Conflict
Chrisanthi Giotis 
 
Part II: Rethinking Interventions
7. WPS, Gender and Foreign Military Interveners: Experience from Iraq and Afghanistan
Angeline Lewis
 
8. Addressing Masculinities in Peace Negotiations: An Opportunity for Gender Justice
Philipp Kastner and Elisabeth Roy-Trudel
 
9. Recalling Violence: Gender and Memory Work in Contemporary Post-conflict Peru
Jelke Boesten
 
10. ICC Prosecutions of Sexual and Gender Based Violence: Challenges and successes
Rita Shackel
 
Part III: Learning from the Field
11. Speaking from the Ground: Transitional Gender Justice in Nepal
Punam Yadav
 
12: Quechua Women: Agency in the Testimonies of the CVR - Peru Public Hearings
Sofia Macher
 
13. The Effects of Indigenous Patriarchal Systems on Women's Participation in Public Decision Making in Conflict Settings: The Case of Somalia
Fowsia Abdulkadir and Rahma Abdulkadir
 
14. ‘Women Are Not Ready to [Vote for] Their Own’: Remaking Democracy, Making Citizens after the 2007 Post-election Violence in Kenya
Christina Kenny
 
15. ‘An education without Any fear?’: Higher education and Gender Justice in Afghanistan
Anne Maree Payne, Nina Burridge and Nasima Rahmani
 
16. Transitioning with Disability: Justice for Women with Disabilities in Post-war Sri Lanka
Dinesha Samararatne and Karen Soldatic
 
17. Conclusion
Rita Shackel and Lucky Fiske

 

Topics: Conflict, Democracy / Democratization, Education, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Indigenous, International Law, International Criminal Law, Justice, Transitional Justice, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Peace Processes, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence Regions: Africa, MENA, Central Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Americas, South America, Asia, Middle East, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Kenya, Liberia, Nepal, Peru, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka

Year: 2019

Elusive Justice: Women, Land Rights, and Colombia's Transition to Peace

Citation:

Meertens, Danny. 2019. Elusive Justice: Women, Land Rights, and Colombia's Transition to Peace. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Author: Danny Meertens

Annotation:

Summary:
Fifty years of violence perpetrated by guerrillas, paramilitaries, and official armed forces in Colombia displaced more than six million people. In 2011, as part of a larger transitional justice process, the Colombian government approved a law that would restore land rights for those who lost their homes during the conflicts. However, this restitution process lacked appropriate provisions for rural women beyond granting them a formal property title. Drawing on decades of research, Elusive Justice demonstrates how these women continue to face numerous adverse circumstances, including geographical isolation, encroaching capitalist enterprises, and a dearth of social and institutional support. Donny Meertens contends that women's advocacy organizations must have a prominent role in overseeing these transitional policies in order to create a more just society. By bringing together the underresearched topic of property repayment and the pursuit of gender justice in peacebuilding, these findings have broad significance elsewhere in the world. (Summary from University of Wisconsin Press)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Land, Gender, and Justice on the Eve of Peace
 
2. Transition: Back to Normal Life?
 
3. Dispossession: A Twofold Gendered History
 
4. Friction: Land Restitution at Work
 
5. Transformation: The Elusive Future
 
6. Conclusion: Linking Land, Justice and Gender to the Peace Accord
 
7. Epilogue: Women Protagonists of the Peace Accord on Gender and Land

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Displacement & Migration, Gender, Women, Justice, Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict, Peacebuilding, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2019

Gender in Human Rights and Transitional Justice

Citation:

Lahai, John Idris, and Khanyisela Moyo, ed. 2018. Gender in Human Rights and Transitional Justice. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Authors: John Idriss Lahai, Khanyisela Moyo

Annotation:

Summary:
This volume counters one-sided dominant discursive representations of gender in human rights and transitional justice, and women’s place in the transformations of neoliberal human rights, and contributes a more balanced examination of how transitional justice and human rights institutions, and political institutions impact the lives and experiences of women. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the contributors to this volume theorize and historicize the place of women’s rights (and gender), situating it within contemporary country-specific political, legal, socio-cultural and global contexts. Chapters examine the progress and challenges facing women (and women’s groups) in transitioning countries: from Peru to Argentina, from Kenya to Sierra Leone, and from Bosnia to Sri Lanka, in a variety of contexts, attending especially to the relationships between local and global forces. (Summary from Palgrave Macmillan)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Gender in Human Rights and Transitional Justice
 
2. Feminism during Social and Political Repression in Egypt: Making or Breaking Resistance Through Legal Activism
 
3. Power, Prejudice and Transitional Constitution-Making In Kenya: The Gender of Law and Religious Politics in Reproductive Choice
 
4. Civil Society and the Regulation of Laws Against Gender Violence in Timor-Leste
 
5. Addressing Violence Against Women Through Legislative Reform In States Transitioning From The Arab Spring
 
6. Human Rights Frameworks and Women’s Rights In Post-Transitional Justice Sierra Leone
 
7. Engendering Justice: The Promotion of Women in Post-Conflict and Post-Transitional Criminal Justice Institutions
 
8. Justice and Reparations Policies in Peru and Argentine: Towards The De-legitimization of Sexual Violence
 
9. Women Between War Scylla and Nationalist Charybdis: Legal Interpretations of Sexual Violence in Countries of Former Yugoslavia

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Discourses, Gender-Based Violence, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Justice, Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict, Rights, Reproductive Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights, Sexual Violence Regions: Africa, MENA, East Africa, North Africa, West Africa, Americas, South America, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Balkans, Oceania Countries: Argentina, Egypt, Kenya, Peru, Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2018

Gender Perspective in UN Framework for Peace Processes and Transitional Justice: The Need for a Clearer and More Inclusive Notion of Gender

Citation:

Lemay Langlois, Léa. 2018. "Gender Perspective in UN Framework for Peace Processes and Transitional Justice: The Need for a Clearer and More Inclusive Notion of Gender." International Journal of Transitional Justice 12 (1): 146-67.

Author: Léa Lemay Langlois

Abstract:

Gender influences the experiences of war and periods of large-scale abuses, and as such it needs to inform peace processes and transitional justice mechanisms. In the past 15 years, the UN Security Council has provided a framework for the inclusion of a gender perspective in peace processes, which includes attention to conflict-related genderbased violence (GBV) through the establishment of the Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. This article analyzes how gender is framed and understood in this context and how it impacts the practice of peace processes. It is suggested that in order to effectively tackle the root causes of conflict-related GBV, the WPS architecture should allow for an expansive understanding of gender, avoiding the reproduction of gender stereotypes. This should include the recognition of intersectional experiences of women with violence during conflict, violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and gendered violence committed against men.

Keywords: gender, gender stereotypes, gender-based violence, peace process, Colombia

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Intersectionality, Justice, Transitional Justice, Peace Processes, Sexuality, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS

Year: 2018

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