Weapons /Arms

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

Citation:

Szedlacsek, Eszter. 2019. “Security Sector Reform, Small Arms and Light Weapons and Gender in the Post-Conflict Western Balkans.” Corvinus Journal of International Affairs 4 (1): 26-38.

Author: Eszter Szedlacsek

Abstract:

We all experience war in a different way – building peace in post-conflict environments requires solutions that bring together various aspects of these experiences at the local, national and international levels. However, the actors involved and the social groups they address are only rarely those at the margin, and the diversity of the catch-all category of “locals” frequently goes unacknowledged when considering Security Sector Reform (SSR) and especially small arms control. Numerous studies have focused on SSR and gender in the Balkans, on perceptions of security in post-conflict environments and its gender-related aspects, as well as on the gendered aspects of small arms, but so far the analysis bringing together all of these aspects is scarce. This paper aims to address this gap, providing an overview of these areas to show that attempts at state-building and security-provision in the Western Balkans have failed to appropriately incorporate gender mainstreaming into their agendas. It is the central claim of this paper that policymakers must realize that gender mainstreaming without a broader understanding of gendered aspects of security does not and will not have transformative power – neither in the Western Balkans, nor in other post-conflict environments.

Keywords: security sector reform (SSR), post-conflict, small arms and light weapons (SALW), Gender, Western Balkans

Topics: Gender, Gender Mainstreaming, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Security Sector Reform, Weapons /Arms Regions: Europe, Baltic states, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2019

Citation:

Eschle, Catherine. 2018. "Nuclear (In)Security in the Everyday: Peace Campers as Everyday Security Practitioners." Security Dialogue 49 (4): 289-305.

Author: Catherine Eschle

Abstract:

This article extends the emergent focus on ‘the everyday’ in critical security studies to the topic of nuclear (in)security, through an empirical study of anti-nuclear peace activists understood as ‘everyday security practitioners’. In the first part of the article, I elaborate on the notion of everyday security practitioners, drawing particularly on feminist scholarship, while in the second I apply this framework to a case study of Faslane Peace Camp in Scotland. I show that campers emphasize the everyday insecurities of people living close to the state’s nuclear weapons, the blurred boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and the inevitability of insecurity in daily life. Moreover, campers’ security practices confront the everyday reproduction of nuclear weapons and prefigure alternative modes of everyday life. In so doing, I argue, they offer a distinctive challenge to dominant deterrence discourse, one that is not only politically significant, but also expands understanding of the everyday in critical security studies.

Keywords: Anti-nuclear, critical security studies, the everyday, (in)security, feminism, peace movement

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Peace and Security, Peacebuilding, Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2018

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

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

Citation:

Aduloju, Ayodeji Anthony. 2017. "ECOWAS and Free Movement of Persons: African Women as Cross-Border Victims." Journal of International Women's Studies 18 (4): 89-105.

Author: Ayodeji Anthony Aduloju

Abstract:

Existing literature has investigated the challenges of interstate border dispute, border conflict and their security and developmental implications for the West African sub-region. ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol of Persons was instituted to enhance economic development of West Africa’s citizens. However, studies have shown that the protocol has relatively aided transborder trafficking in persons, drugs, Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW). However, vulnerability of trans-border women traders in the sub-region have received little attention. This study utilized both primary and secondary sources of data gathering in order to interrogate the provisions of ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Persons vis-à-vis its operationalization and incapacity to increase women’s economic opportunity and empowerment in West Africa. Through field survey, twenty (20) interviews were conducted at the Nigeria-Benin border. The interviews targeted 14 purposively selected women traders at the border, two officials each of the Nigerian Immigration Service, Nigerian Customs Service and the Nigeria Police Force. Moreover, observation method was employed to substantiate the interviews conducted. Data obtained were analyzed using descriptive analysis. Consequently, this study discovered that women constituted more of trans-border traders on Nigeria-Benin border, and precisely in West Africa. In addition, they are vulnerable to extortion, intimidation and sexual harassment by border officials, which has impinged on their rights contained in the ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Persons. The study showed that the protocol does not fully protect women (mostly the ones with low economic characteristics who constitute larger population of women at the border) and thereby having implications for their livelihood and survival. The study then concluded that while the problem faced by women on the Nigeria-Benin border persists, it has a huge impact on the credibility of ECOWAS to properly integrate the sub-region for development and for the benefit of its significant population of women.

Keywords: ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol, Gender, Trans-Border Women Traders, West Africa, sub-regional integration

Topics: Development, Economies, Economic Inequality, Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Trafficking, Arms Trafficking, Drug Trafficking, Human Trafficking, Weapons /Arms Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Benin, Nigeria

Year: 2017

Citation:

Frey, Barbara. 2018. "The Gender Implications of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Conflict Situations." In The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict, edited by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Naomi Cahn, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Nahla Valji, 365-75. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Author: Barbara Frey

Abstract:

This chapter provides an overview of the gendered nature of firearm possession, use, and victimhood. It analyzes women’s roles in disarmament processes and the importance of greater female representation in firearms policy processes. The chapter opens with an overview of the current distribution, use, and regulation of small arms and light weapons and the impact that significant numbers of civilian-owned firearms have on broader communities. It then describes the differing experiences of men and women in firearms control and the differing contexts in which men and women become victims of gun violence. The chapter explores situational case studies of female combatants using small arms and light weapons and describes how the use or non-use of female combatants relates to gender roles in conflict settings.

Keywords: small arms, light weapons, firearms, disarmament, gun violence, gun control, female combatants, Gender

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Conflict, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Violence, Weapons /Arms

Year: 2018

Citation:

Broadhead, Lee-Anne, and Sean Howard. 2019. “The Nuclear Ban Treaty and the Cloud Over Trudeau’s ‘Feminist’ Foreign Policy.” International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis 74 (3): 422-44.

Authors: Lee-Anne Broadhead, Sean Howard

Abstract:

The Canadian Liberal government of Justin Trudeau claims to be ushering in a new era of a ‘‘feminist’’ foreign policy. While serious steps have been taken in this direction, this paper focuses on the government’s opposition to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a treaty that has been negotiated with a logic and language explicitly linking issues of disarmament and gender, reframing ‘‘security’’ as fundamentally a question not of state but of human (and environmental) security. Ignoring its own public statements that repeatedly link women with peace and security, the Trudeau government’s opposition to the Treaty exposes the hollowness of its claims.

Keywords: Canada, foreign policy, nuclear weapons, Trudeau, feminism

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Feminist Foreign Policy, Peace and Security, Rights, Security, Human Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada

Year: 2019

Citation:

Vaughan, Tom. 2013. “Asian Fury: Gender, Orientalism and the Indo-Pakistani Nuclear ‘Threat’ in US Foreign Policy Discourse, 1998 – 2009.” Working Paper No. 09-13, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.

Author: Tom Vaughan

Abstract:

Since India and Pakistan each carried out their second tests of nuclear weapons in 1998, US foreign policy discourse and Western media has often taken as fact the 'threat' of nuclear conflict in the region. This dissertation argues that a critical constructivist approach is required when studying Indo-Pakistani nuclear relations, given the inadequacies of structural realism and its unhelpful assumptions about the 'nature' of international politics. Since realist accounts make up the majority of recent literature on the subject, this dissertation aims to provide an alternative account, examining how US foreign policy discourse constructs the condition of threat through representations of the US, India and Pakistan. Using a discourse analysis methodology, I investigate the gendered and orientalist constructions of India and Pakistan which contribute to the mainstream perception of nuclear threat on the South Asian subcontinent. In a two-part analysis, I examine the effect that the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks have had on the US discourse around Indo-Pakistani nuclear behaviour. I find that the US discourse changes significantly over time. From the 1998 tests onwards, a direct and imminent nuclear threat to international security is constructed. After 9/11, this threat is increasingly negated. Across both periods, the US discourse constitently feminises and orientalises India and Pakistan in relation to a dominant US masculinity – practices which are instrumental in the representation of threat – although the uses and effects of these representational practices shift over time. The discursive changes observed demonstrate how 'radical breaks' in history can change knowledge about international politics, and illustrate how US foreign policy discourse reconfigures the US's global identity after 9/11.

Keywords: United States, India, Pakistan, nuclear, non-proliferation, Foucault, discourse, Gender, orientalism

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Nationalism, Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, South Asia Countries: India, Pakistan, United States of America

Year: 2013

Citation:

Authors: Kumkum Sangari, Neeraj Malik, Sheba Chhachhi, Tanika Sarkar

Annotation:

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2001