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Inclusive gender: Why tackling gender hierarchies cannot be at the expense of human rights and the humanitarian imperative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2017

Chris Dolan
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Abstract

The “Debate” section of the Review aims to contribute to the reflection on current ethical, legal or operational controversies around humanitarian issues. In its issue on “Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict” (Vol. 96, No. 894, 2014), the Review published an Opinion Note by Chris Dolan entitled “Letting Go of the Gender Binary: Charting New Pathways for Humanitarian Interventions on Gender-Based Violence”, arguing for a shift in the conceptualization of gender-based violence (GBV) in humanitarian settings from an emphasis on gender equality to an ethos of gender inclusivity. Jeanne Ward's reply, “It's Not About the Gender Binary, It's About the Gender Hierarchy”, was published in a later issue of the Review (Vol. 98, No. 901, 2016). Ward suggested retaining a focus on women and girls in GBV work, while moving forward in partnership with those who wish to accelerate programming directed towards men and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) communities broadly. In this issue, Dolan responds to Ward's position, pointing to empirical and practical developments that have advanced the understanding of how to effectively respond to GBV, including GBV perpetrated against men, boys and members of the LGBTI community. Dolan calls for the IASC Guidelines to be revised in 2020 to be the guiding text on preventing and responding to GBV in humanitarian settings, and explores what it means to do inclusive gender while also tackling hierarchies.

Keywords

sexual violencegender equalitygender inclusivityinclusive genderhumanitarian responsehuman rightsGBVLGBTIhumanitarian imperativeInter-Agency Standing Committeemale survivorswomen and girls
Type
Selected articles on IHL and humanitarian action
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 98 , Issue 902: War and security at sea , August 2016 , pp. 625 - 634
Copyright
Copyright © icrc 2017 

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Footnotes

*

This article was written with generous research support from the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Swedish Research Council, and is an output of the author's work on forms, logics and contexts of sexual violence in conflict, a project with Professors Maria Stern and Maria Eriksson-Baaz.

References

1 See: www.refugeelawproject.org/who-we-are/our-profile.

2 IASC, Guidelines for Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Settings: Focusing on Prevention of and Response to Sexual Violence in Emergencies, September 2005, available at: https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/system/files/legacy_files/tfgender_GBVGuidelines2005.pdf.

3 “The Guidelines provide practical advice on how to ensure that humanitarian protection and assistance programmes for displaced populations are safe and do not directly or indirectly increase women's and girls' risk to sexual violence”: ibid., p iii.

4 See Ward, Jeanne, “It's Not About the Gender Binary, It's About the Gender Hierarchy: A Reply to ‘Letting Go of the Gender Binary’”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 98, No. 901, 2016, p. 290CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in which Ward describes “concerns that such definitional compromises could be exploited in order to draw attention away from the problem of violence against women and girls in GBV theory and practice”.

5 For one of the most insightful expositions of the constructed nature of gender identity, see Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity, Routledge, New York, 1990Google Scholar.

6 For an extensive discussion of intersectionality as a knowledge project, as an analytical strategy and as a critical praxis the definition and boundaries of which are necessarily emergent, see Collins, Patricia Hill, “Intersectionality's Definitional Dilemmas”, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 41, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Elaborated by Kimberlé Crenshaw even before the 1993 United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (DEVAW) around which Ward's piece hinges. Crenshaw, Kimberlé, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color”, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6, 1991, p. 1296CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 P. H. Collins, above note 6, p. 12.

9 For Ward, by contrast, it is not. See J. Ward, above note 4, p. 291.

10 See, for example, Carpenter, R. Charli, “Recognizing Gender-Based Violence against Civilian Men and Boys in Conflict Situations”, Security Dialogue, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Claire, Male Rape Is a Feminist Issue: Feminism, Governmentality and Male Rape, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Connell, R. W., Masculinities, Polity Press, London, 1995Google Scholar; Jones, Adam, “Gendercide and Genocide”, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2000CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abdullah-Khan, Noreen, Male Rape: The Emergence of a Social and Legal Issue, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lazreg, Marnia, Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar; El-Bushra, Judy and Gardner, Judith, “The Impact of War on Somali Men: Feminist Analysis of Masculinities and Gender Relations in a Fragile Context”, Gender & Development, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2016CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alison, Miranda, “Wartime Sexual Violence: Women's Human Rights and Questions of Masculinity”, Review of International Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewis, Chloé, “Systemic Silencing: Addressing Sexual Violence against Men and Boys in Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath”, in Heathcote, Gina and Otto, Dianne, Rethinking Peacekeeping, Gender Equality and Collective Security, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2014Google Scholar; Silberschmidt, Margarethe, “Disempowerment of Men in Rural and Urban East Africa: Implications for Male Identity and Sexual Behavior”, World Development, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2001CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, Hannah, Masculinities, Conflict and Peacebuilding: Perspectives on Men through a Gender Lens, Saferworld, 2014Google Scholar; Sjoberg, Laura, Women as Wartime Rapists: Beyond Sensation and Stereotyping, New York University Press, New York, 2016CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mibenge, Chiseche, “Investigating Outcomes of a Limited Gender Analysis of Enslavement in Post-Conflict Justice Processes”, Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Vol. 5, No. 3, 2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Misra, Amalendu, The Landscape of Silence: Sexual Violence against Men in War, Hurst & Co., London, 2015Google Scholar; Davies, Sarah E. and True, Jacqui, “Reframing Conflict-Related Sexual and Gender-Based Violence: Bringing Gender Analysis Back In”, Security Dialogue, Vol. 46, No. 6, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See, for example, Pratt, Nicola, “Reconceptualizing Gender, Reinscribing Racial–Sexual Boundaries in International Security: The Case of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on ‘Women, Peace and Security’”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2013, p. 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dolan, Chris, “Has Patriarchy been Stealing the Feminists' Clothes? Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Security Council Resolutions”, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2016Google Scholar.

12 Patricia Hill Collins describes such alliances as “coalitional politics”. P. H. Collins, above note 6, p. 8.

13 J. Ward, above note 4, pp. 282, 283.

14 UNHCR, “Sexual and Gender Based Violence”, available at: www.unhcr.org/sexual-and-gender-based-violence.html.

15 The Rome Statute definition of rape, for example, is gender-neutral both in terms of victims and perpetrators. It recognizes that rape can be done with objects, not just the penis. With the exception of forced pregnancy, the other forms of sexual violence identified (sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced sterilization and “any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity”) can all be experienced by persons of any gender. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, UN Doc. A/CONF.183/9, 17 July 1998 (entered into force 1 July 2002), Arts 7(1)(g)(i), 8(2)(b)(xxi); International Criminal Court, Elements of Crimes, reproduced from Official Records of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, First Session, New York, 3–10 September 2002, pp. 8–10, 28–30, available at: www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/336923D8-A6AD-40EC-AD7B-45BF9DE73D56/0/ElementsOfCrimesEng.pdf.

16 UNSC Res. 2106, UN Doc. S/RES/2106, 2013, available at: http://undocs.org/en/S/RES/2106(2013).

17 For a recent critique of the revised GBV Guidelines, see Heleen Touquet and Ellen Gorris, “Out of the Shadows: The Inclusion of Men and Boys in Conceptualisations of Wartime Sexual Violence”, Reproductive Health Matters, Vol. 24, No. 47, 2016.

18 J. Ward, above note 4, p. 276.

19 On 18 November 2014, this author conducted a Skype call with six members of the GBV AOR, all of whom were women.

20 Examples of attempts to carry out extensive “beneficiary-based consultation” do exist and could have been drawn upon. See, for example, Lattu, Kirsti, To Complain or not to Complain: Still the Question, Humanitarian Accountability Partnership International, Geneva, 2008Google Scholar.

21 Dolan, Chris and Shahrokh, Thea, with Edström, Jerker, Kabafunzaki, Darius King, Maganya, Dieudonné, Moninga, Aimé and Ongwech, David Onen, “Engaged Excellence or Excellent Engagement? Collaborating Critically to Amplify the Voices of Male Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence”, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 47, No. 6, 2016CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 N. Pratt, above note 11.

23 J. Ward, above note 4, p. 290.

24 Ibid.

25 IASC, Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action, 2015, p. 283, available at: www.gbvguidelines.org. Unfortunately, recommendations that the nutrition sector also alert humanitarian actors to the specific nutritional needs of those suffering rectal damage were not included.

26 Ibid., p. 11.

27 For example, this author urged that wherever the text asks “Are males, particularly leaders in the community, engaged in these community mobilization activities as agents of change?”, it should be altered to “Are males, including leaders in the community, engaged in these community mobilization activities, both as agents of change and as potential victims?”.

28 See, for example, Stemple, Lara and Meyer, Ilan H., “The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions”, American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 104, No. 6, 2014CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also Stemple, Lara, Flores, Andrew and Meyer, Ilan H., “Sexual Victimization Perpetrated by Women: Federal Data Reveal Surprising Prevalence”, Aggression and Violent Behavior, Vol. 34, 2016Google Scholar, available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2016.09.007. For discussion of what re-coding of testimonies can do for understanding of patterns of conflict-related violence, see Michele Leiby, “Digging in the Archives: The Promise and Perils of Primary Documents”, Politics & Society, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2009.

29 J. Ward, above note 4, p. 295.

30 For a critical examination of the evidence base and what it tells us about the gender-based nature of sexual violence against men and boys, see S. E. Davies and J. True, above note 10.

31 This question has been put to the author in a number of workshops, including the UNHCR workshop on “Working with Male SGBV Survivors”, Amman, Jordan, 15–17 September 2015; the “Working with Male SGBV Survivors in Refugee Settlements” training for Danish Refugee Council staff, Adjumani District, 18–19 November 2016; and “Surfacing Sexual Violence” in the CERAH training on Sexual Violence in Conflict Settings and Emergencies, Geneva, 21 March 2017.

32 As Davies and True have already done, we should “question all the studies to date in which it has been claimed that SGBV did ‘not’ occur … because we have little understanding of the socially and culturally specific barriers to reporting for men and women, girls and boys”. S. E. Davies and J. True, above note 10, p. 8.

33 As noted in the global study on the implementation of UNSC Res. 1325, “[t]he nature of conflict in certain regions is qualitatively different, the content of what we mean by ‘peace’ and ‘security’ is evolving, and the understanding of what we mean by ‘justice’ has also transformed. This ever-changing and ever evolving reality poses major dilemmas for the four pillars of Security Council resolution 1325 and its subsequent resolutions: these pillars of prevention, protection, participation, and peacebuilding and recovery.” UN Women, Preventing Conflict, Transforming Justice, Securing the Peace: A Global Study on the Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, 2015, p. 13.

34 See N. Pratt, above note 11. See also Hagen, Jamie J., “Queering Women, Peace and Security”, International Affairs, Vol. 92, No. 2, 2016CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 See UN Women, above note 33.

36 J. Ward, above note 4, p. 278.

37 In striking contrast to the IASC process discussed here, the second edition of the International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict, dated March 2017, dedicates a whole chapter to the specifics of working with male survivors.

38 See European Commission, “Award Decision: Transnational Projects to Support Victims of Violence”, 2016, Annex 1, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/grants1/files/2015_action_grants/2015_spob_ag_vict/award_decision.pdf?utm_content=buffer1b175&utm.

39 “Without this wider acceptance of responsibility that relates not only to violence but also to the concept of gender itself, the success of violence prevention programs (from the grassroots to the international) is likely to be compromised.” Grey, Rosemary and Shepherd, Laura J.. “‘Stop Rape Now?’ Masculinity, Responsibility, and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence”, Men and Masculinities, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2013, p. 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 See UN Women, above note 33.