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In October 2015, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2242 calling on member states to work toward the greater integration of the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda with efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism. While the rapprochement between counterterrorism and WPS may appear to be a step forward, particularly for those seeking to increase women's participation in areas traditionally dominated by men, it is also potentially dangerous. This article makes a significant contribution to the larger debate on the WPS agenda by studying the impact and unintended consequences of linking WPS with countering violent extremism on the ground in Kenya. Based on original research in the field, including key informant interviews, I argue that in the Kenyan context, connecting WPS with violent extremism has had several damaging consequences for women and their communities. Far from advancing the WPS agenda, this new policy shift has caused tension between local and international priorities, precipitated the redirection of donor funding away from important gender initiatives and toward countering violent extremism, and resulted in women's additional stigmatization, insecurity, and exclusion.
During armed conflicts, women experience extensive gender harm of a physical, sexual, legal, economic, social, cultural, and political nature. Recently, however, we have witnessed unprecedented attention in international law and policy-making arenas to the specific issue of sexual violence as a strategy of warfare. This has been particularly obvious in the agenda on women, peace, and security. Since 2008, the United Nations agenda has increasingly and repeatedly focused on sexual violence in armed conflicts in several Security Council resolutions, calling on and pressuring member states and international agencies to address this issue using militaristic and legalistic strategies. In this article, looking particularly at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), I argue that the prioritization of sexual harm over other forms of gender harm has had a detrimental impact on women living in aid-dependent societies, and the international obsession with sexual harm has delivered neither justice nor security for victims in the DRC. The article concludes that in order to effectively address sexual violence, we have to rethink sexual harm as gender harm and start listening and responding to women's actual needs and priorities on the ground.
This chapter sets the background for the study. The chapter starts by highlighting the gendered experiences of women in conflicts and the challenges that they face in the aftermath. The chapter briefly discusses the United Nation's previous work on women's rights and the limitations of this framework in the context of armed conflicts. The chapter then describes the background of the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security. In particular, the chapter underscores the importance of the recent developments in international relations and the crucial role played by international feminist advocacy networks in the process leading up to the adoption of the first resolution on WPS. The final two sections of the chapter discuss the significance of the UN agenda on WPS and provide a detailed overview of the issues that it addresses.
THE EXPERIENCES OF WOMEN IN ARMED CONFLICTS
Armed conflicts undoubtedly have devastating effects on both women and men, but women's experiences of conflict are considerably different. This dissimilarity is arguably due to sexual violence, to women's reproductive abilities, to their roles as the primary caretakers in families, and their second class status in most conflict zones. During conflicts women are particularly targeted for sexual violence. Within the literature on women and war one finds incontrovertible testimonies as to the endemic nature of wartime sexual violence in countries as diverse as Syria; Sri Lanka; Democratic Republic of Congo; Uganda; Liberia; Sierra Leone; Sudan; Rwanda; Somalia; Haiti; Guatemala; El Salvador; Kosovo and Chechnya.
During conflicts, women also experience ‘economic violence’. On a global level the majority of women live in low income or middle income countries with only 15% of the world's female population living in high income countries.
In most of these societies female headed households are among the poorest with women making up the majority of the people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Discrimination, illiteracy, lack of access to education and employment opportunities all contribute to women's economic subordination and poverty. The violence and insecurity during conflicts push women further into dire economic situations. Women, particularly those who have lost their male relatives, are more likely to be dispossessed and stripped of their land and properties.
Countless feminist studies, supported by field research, have highlighted the extent of gender harm experienced by women during conflicts as a quasi-universal phenomenon. The gendered nature of conflicts is often compounded by peace processes that typically marginalise women and their concerns, leading to the entrenchment of gender discrimination in post-conflict reconstruction. Peace agreements are typically negotiated between political and military elites with the help of mediators and intervention from other international and regional actors. The participation of civil society representatives in formal peace negotiations tends to be minimal at best. Women, whether as political leaders, mediators, diplomats or representatives of civil society, are generally under-represented and mostly absent from these military focused and highly masculinised peace talks. Often, within these narrow yet internationalised ‘peace’ circles ‘complimentary patriarchies’ operating between national, regional and international actors are compounded to disserve women. The resulting peace agreements are invariably written in gender neutral language that marginalises and excludes women and their needs from almost every aspect of the transition. Within the feminist literature, political transitions whether those that follow from violent conflicts, popular uprisings or repressive regimes, are often described as ‘windows of opportunities’ that have the potential to transform the status of women and gender relations within the societies in which they have occurred. In October 2000 the adoption of United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) was hailed as a historic event and a turning point for women in conflicts, peacemaking, peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction. Resolution 1325 formally required political transitions to be inclusive, gender sensitive and transformative for women. In particular, resolution 1325 called for the incorporation of a gender perspective in all peace efforts including in peacemaking, peacebuilding, peacekeeping and humanitarian relief operations and for the participation of women in all peace activities including in the negotiations of peace agreements and in future governance and transitional institutions.
The passing of Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in October 2000 marked the beginning of a global agenda on women in conflicts, peacemaking, peacekeeping and post-conflict reconstruction. Reviewing the implementation of the UN agenda is critically important since such work feeds into policy areas and contributes to the adoption and continuous improvement of gender-sensitive strategies at the national and international levels. This is particularly so with the impending Fifth World Women Conference, almost 20 years after the Beijing Platform for Action. To date, very little research has been done on the implementation of the UN resolutions on women, peace and security in peace treaties. Hence, this book is timely, offering a valuable contribution not only to the literature on the UN resolutions on women, peace and security, but also to the literature on peace agreements, peace mediation, and transitional justice, and to practitioners working in this field. The study has adopted an interdisciplinary approach bringing together various bodies of literature and raising key theoretical and practical questions that tend to be overlooked by scholars working within the strict boundaries of the distinct disciplines. The book has introduced a new dataset that provides important comprehensive evidence on the extent to which the UN resolutions on women, peace and security have had an impact on peace agreements. Through the reflections of elite peacemakers, the book provides insights into the practice of peacemaking and the challenges of implementing WPS resolutions on the ground. The voices of the practitioners have, moreover, added exceptional depth and breadth to the theoretical discussions in this volume. Having established, on one hand, the great potential of the UN Security Council resolutions and, on the other, their limited implementation on the ground, the findings of this study have important policy implications. Governments, international organisations and non-governmental organisations must now refocus their efforts on bridging the gap between the theory and practice of gender sensitive peacemaking. In particular, further consideration must be given to peace mediation processes to ensure that mediators are willing and able to place gender issues on their list of priorities for agendas in peace negotiations. Mainstreaming gender issues in peace agreements is only the beginning of a long struggle to achieve gender equality in post-conflict societies but it is a struggle that women must win to increase the likelihood of an inclusive and fair post-conflict transition.
In the previous chapter I presented a wide range of data pertaining to the nature of the provisions dealing with gender issues in 112 peace agreements signed between 2000 and 2008. The analysis established that women's political participation and gender-based violence are the highest coded categories in this database (21 and 20 peace agreements respectively). The data also showed that these peace agreements do not reflect the broader agenda for participation espoused by resolution 1325 since women's appointments to the judiciary, and recruitment to re-structured police forces, the army and security forces remain hardly addressed at all. Agreements also continue to marginalise women's participation in DDR and in transitional justice and reconciliation processes. Most importantly the findings reveal that the issue of women's economic and social rights remain largely absent from most peace agreements. However, quantitative data, if not combined with other methods, only provide a limited understanding of the reality of implementation that may lead to hasty or misguided conclusions. Therefore, for a fuller picture it is important to move beyond figures to critically evaluate how these issues are being addressed in peace agreements. This chapter will focus on women's political participation not least because it is one of the most common issues in peace agreements but also because it is one of the three main focuses of resolution 1325 and is an area that many women's groups have actively and repeatedly drawn attention to.
The first part of this chapter critically engages with how the agenda on women, peace and security has treated the matter of women's political participation. This section will also map out how the peace agreements in the database have addressed the issue of women's political participation. The second part of this chapter attempts to answer the question of why peace agreements often address women's political participation but fail to tackle issues of women's economic and social inequalities that would, crucially, empower women and enable them to move towards gender equality as well as increased participation. The overall aim of the chapter is to reflect on the current impact of the UN agenda for women, peace and security on peace agreements. In pursuing this goal, I employ quantitative and qualitative data and include references to feminist literature, UN official documentation, peace agreements, and interviews conducted with elites within the field of peacemaking.
In Chapter 3 I established that out of the 112 agreements in the database 49 included references to women and gender issues and 63 agreements did not. The analysis in Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrated that the provisions addressing gender concerns in peace agreements also remain largely inadequate. This chapter, relying on expert opinions, aims to uncover some of the reasons behind the limited implementation of the UN resolutions on WPS in peace agreements and to draw key recommendations for maximising the impact of the resolutions on the ground. The chapter is based on 12 interviews conducted with key elite experts involved in the field of peacemaking. The views of the experts are particularly useful to understand the dynamics of peace negotiations and the challenges for the implementation of the UN agenda on WPS on the ground. As I explained in Chapter 2, the environment of formal peace negotiations is generally elitist and exclusionary consisting mainly of military leaders and government representatives engaged in direct or indirect talks with the help of third parties. Outside the parties to the conflict, those involved in the negotiation, mediation and facilitation of peace agreements generally carry prestige, influence and political weight. Consequently, some of the participants in this research would form part of what Zuckerman has termed the ‘ultra-elite’. Because of their insider experience, talking to the elites is a very efficient and concentrated method of gathering good quality data. In this research I define ‘experts’ as those professional elites who are or have been closely involved in the formal negotiations of one or more peace agreements and who are working or have worked in the planning and supporting of mediation of formal peace processes and peacemaking activities. As I have previously mentioned, in order to satisfy the ethical requirement of this research, all the participants in this research have been anonymised. The interviews were conducted in 2009 and hence the analysis in this chapter is generally focused on resolutions 1325 and 1820 rather than on the more recent resolutions on women, peace and security.
The term ‘peace agreement’ is often used to refer to a variety of documents signed at different stages of a peace process. These include: ceasefire agreements; truce or cessation of hostilities agreements; preliminary agreements; pre-negotiation agreements; framework or substantive agreements; interim agreements; sub-agreements; comprehensive agreements, and implementation agreements. Of course not every peace process includes all of these elements. While some peace processes follow a step-by-step strategy for negotiating and adopting peace accords, others seek to negotiate one main comprehensive agreement. Peace agreements are also signed in very different circumstances. While in some conflicts the parties agree on a ceasefire before entering into substantial peace negotiations, in other cases the cessation of hostilities is left to the final agreement. The negotiation of a peace settlement is usually removed from the conflict zone. For instance, looking at the dataset of peace agreements compiled by this study we see that the Afghanistan (2001) agreement was negotiated in Bonn, Germany; the Uganda (2008) agreements were negotiated in Juba in Southern Sudan; and the Liberia Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2003) was signed in Accra in Ghana.
Bell observes that ‘the act of comparing agreements is immediately open to the challenge that the term peace agreement in fact has no core meaning’. This is why it is imperative at the commencement of this section to clearly articulate the working definition of peace agreements used here. There is no consensus within the scholarly literature on what constitutes a peace agreement. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) states that ‘a peace agreement should address the problem of incompatibility, either by settling all or part of it, or by clearly outlining a process for how the warring parties plan to regulate the incompatibility’. The UCDP divides the incompatibility into government and territory and stipulates that the agreement has to be signed by some of the warring parties and not merely imposed by third parties as is the case with Security Council resolutions. The UCDP also distinguishes between ceasefire agreements and peace agreements, and excludes ceasefire agreements that do not address government and territorial incompatibilities from its definition of peace agreements.
The adoption of Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in October 2000 marked the beginning of a global agenda on women in armed conflicts and post-conflict transition. Women, Peace and Security: Repositioning gender in peace agreements discusses the context and the content of this UN agenda and provides a systematic review of its implementation, over the last fifteen years, in peace agreements around the world. This book is timely, offering a valuable contribution to the literature on gender in armed conflicts, peace agreements, peace mediation, and transitional justice and is essential reading for practitioners and scholars working in this field. The study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to raise key theoretical and practical questions often overlooked by scholars working within the strict boundaries of the distinct disciplines. The book introduces a new dataset on peace agreements that provides important comprehensive evidence on the extent to which resolution 1325 and other subsequent resolutions on women, peace and security have impacted on peace agreements. Through the reflections of elite peacemakers, the book provides additional insights into the practice of peacemaking and the challenges of implementing the UN resolutions on women, peace and security on the ground. The findings of this book have important policy implications for governments, international organisations and NGOs who must refocus their efforts on bridging the gap between the theory and practice of gender sensitive peacemaking.'This exceptional study on the women, peace and security council resolutions is a significant contribution to the peace and security literature across multiple fields. Sahla Aroussi has produced a detailed, grounded and thoughtful assessment of the past fifteen years of United Nations Security Council resolutions grounded in thorough policy analysis and underpinned by a unique dataset. The work is particularly timely in light of the Global Study on the Women Peace and Security being undertaken in 2015. This thoughtful and scholarly analysis is grounded in a thorough and detailed empirical study, giving policy makers and academics substantial fodder for future work and reflection.Sahla Aroussi is to be commended for producing a work of immense depth and substance at such an important juncture in the contemporary history of the women, peace and security agenda. The book is a must read for policy makers, feminists and scholars working on these issues.'Fionnuala Ni Aolain, Professor of Law and Associate Director TJI, Ulster University & Professor of Law University of Minnesota'Dr Aroussi's The Women, Peace and Security Resolutions offers a unique insight into how, against certain odds, international standards trickle down and affect people's everyday lives, even in those very environments where that is least likely. This outstanding analysis is an inspiring account of the potential role of mediation and peace negotiation processes as platforms of norm socialization. Beyond its focus on gender, it is therefore most relevant for a wider audience interested in the nexus between international relations, international law and development.' Stef Vandeginste, Lecturer, Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp 'This is an outstanding book, which will be of immense value to researchers on conflict, conflict transformation, transitional justice and international law. ..a comprehensive and detailed account of international policy and practice, which will be an excellent resource for practitioners, scholars and researchers.' Carmel Roulston, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Ulster University
'I was abducted by the LRA when I was only 12 years old … I was forced to become one of Kony's 27 “wives”. I never got the chance to go to school. After 11 years in the Bush, I managed to escape. I now live with my own and two other adopted children whose mother died. Upon return from captivity we, as former abductees, faced a lot of stigma and discrimination. Following demobilisation, the government is supporting the men but gave nothing to us. We were forced to go with the LRA but the government treated us like we went there willingly. It is like they have forgotten that our time has been wasted and that these men are the same men that slept with us and made us give birth to children from a very young age. Now we are home, it is us the mothers who are taking care of these children and not the fathers and yet the government is not supporting us.'
Evelyn Amony, Kitgum Northern Uganda, November 2011
During conflicts women, like men, are murdered, tortured, displaced, imprisoned, dispossessed, starved and forced into slave labour. Yet, in addition to these crimes, women and girls are particularly targeted for sexual violence. Sexual violence, though often associated with rape encompasses a wide array of other forms of attack including but not limited to: sexual assault; sexual slavery; sexual torture; forced nudity; forced prostitution; forced impregnation; forced sterilisation; forced marriages; and sexual mutilation. While there is growing evidence that men and boys are sometimes also victims of sexual abuse during conflicts, systemic and organised abuse of women remains much more common. Sexual crimes are not particular to certain types of conflicts or culture but are exceedingly commonplace during internal and international armed conflicts around the world and at all times.
Sexual violence has detrimental and overreaching consequences for women, their families, communities and the ethnic group to which they belong. This is especially true given that the concept of shame associated with the rape of women in peacetime continues for the sexual violence committed in conflicts. Rape and sexual crimes have destructive socio-economic and health effects on women's lives.