Scenes from the United Nations Security Council Open Debate on Women and Peace and Security Photo: UN Women/Ryan Brown
It was the resolution that nearly wasn’t. Earlier this week, the UN Security Council very narrowly passed Security Council Resolution 2467, the latest in a string of resolutions on Women, Peace and Security, after the US threatened to exercise its veto power to prevent the Resolution from getting off the ground.
Sponsored by Germany, Resolution 2467 sought to develop a suite of measures to address sexual violence in war and strengthen prevention efforts. It would encourage commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions set up by the United Nations to address rape and other sexual crimes in their investigations of human rights violations in war zones and urge UN sanctions committees to apply sanctions against perpetrators of this violence.
The biggest source of tension came from a phrase promising “timely” sexual and reproductive health assistance to survivors of sexual violence, which the US declined to support, threatening to veto the Resolution should the phrase remain. The final resolution has removed all reference to “sexual health and reproductive rights,” an area that has become so politicized as to be a roadblock for many of the UN’s initiatives on addressing women’s rights and security.
But as Fionnula Ni Aolain notes:
[R]eproductive health is much more than abortion. It includes the right to fistula operations, the right to ongoing monitoring and choice in reproductive regulation (i.e. whether to have access to contraception in the aftermath of rape to prevent pregnancy), the right to health services that take account of reproductive and sexual health in the aftermath of sexual violence. All these essential health entitlements are at risk when reproductive health needs are not recognized for sexual violence survivors.
While many are criticizing the acquiescence shown by the Security Council in watering down the language of the Resolution, I question what need there is in the first place for this latest in a string of resolutions at this level aimed at addressing conflict-related sexual violence. This latest brings the total of UN Resolutions explicitly focused on sexual violence in war to six, and reaffirms the place of “conflict-related sexual violence” at the pinnacle of the UN’s Women, Peace, and Security agenda.
In a 2016 article, I wrote that the securitization of gendered violence, particularly conflict-related sexual violence – has given this form of gender-based violence more value than other forms, which has had some unintended deleterious effects. Not only has it resulted in the excising of conflict-related sexual violence from what feminists have long called the ‘continuum of violence’ experienced by women under patriarchy, but it has also imbued CRSV with exchange value such that it bears rewards for those willing to exploit its symbolic and material capital.
In fact, it is this very symbolic capital that led to Germany’s commitment to introduce yet another resolution on CRSV in the first place. Long before the resolution’s drafting, Germany promised to make “women, peace, and security” a priority of its presidency in the Security Council. This commitment led a number of international NGOs and civil society organizations, including CARE International and UN Women, to issue a joint statement pleading with Germany not to introduce yet another resolution on CRSV.
Perhaps ever the cynic, I cannot help but be skeptical of all of these wonderful sounding commitments made by powerful Western countries who espouse rhetoric about the need to end this ‘scourge of war.’ For we have zero evidence that the heightened and sustained attention that CRSV has received since Resolution 1820 first recognized sexual violence as a weapon of war and a threat to international peace and security that these measures have had any effect on reducing this form of violence or any others faced by women in times of war.
Rather, it seems to have had the opposite effect of producing the idea that warfare could be a ‘safe place for women.’ Armed conflict is no longer considered a form of gendered violence, existing on the continuum of gendered violence, produced through gendered symbolisms and enforcing a stratified gender structure. By excising specifically sexual forms of violence enacted in war from other forms of war-related violence (not to mention excising it from ‘banal’ and ‘everyday’ forms of gendered violence), this framework does not allow us to see the intimate connections between masculinity, armed conflict, generalized and gender-based violence. It does not allow us to address those forms of harm perpetrated against women as a result of conflict that cannot be clearly tied to the strategic objectives of armed groups. It cannot and does not account for how, for example, increased circulation of small arms and light weapons in a society correlates to higher rates of domestic violence and intimate partner violence in so-called ‘peace’ contexts.
So… do we really need another resolution on CRSV, regardless of whether or not the language of sexual and reproductive rights gets watered down? I don’t think so.
Sara Meger is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include feminist theory, international security, and global political economy. Her current research investigates drivers of political violence in contemporary conflicts, including Ukraine and Colombia. She is author of Rape Loot Pillage: The Political Economy of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, published by Oxford University Press.
Asserting his intention to build a peace that unites the country, Colombian president Duque announced on March 10, 2018, his decision not to sign the statutory law aimed at ruling the functioning of the Especial Jurisdiction to Peace (JEP). This judicial body is a mechanism of transitional justice created through the peace agreement signed between the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas in 2016. Its main purpose is to provide justice for victims of the most serious crimes committed in the context of the internal armed conflict, in particular, crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes. Therefore, the JEP is responsible for delivering criminal justice, while still embedded in a system of transitional justice whose main focus is restorative rather than punitive. This means for the JEP that it must strive to privilege the victims’ right to truth and reparation by inciting the perpetrators to acknowledge their culpability and to repair the victims in exchange for lighter sentences than those they would receive in an ordinary court. From March 15, 2018, when the JEP started its operations until March 2019, it has obtained the commitment of at least 9,699 guerrilla members and 1,973 militaries to appear before it. However, as Duque claimed that six articles of the statutory law were whether violating the rights of the victims or leaving open the door to impunity, it is not surprising that Duque’s refusal to sign the draft law has caused alarm bells to ring.
Thousands of voices who support the peace agreement, including groups of retired militaries, have gathered in social media and public spaces around slogans and hashtags such as #NoEnredenLaPaz (Do not entangle the peace) or #yodefiendolaJEP (I stand with the JEP). According to them, Duque’s position is putting in jeopardy the success of the Peace Accord. Yet, the lack of an own legal framework, resulting from Duque’s decision, does not prevent the JEP from ruling, as it can keep working in the light of relevant case law and the available constitutional rules. Against this background, how can Duque’s politics vis-à-vis the JEP, and especially in regard to the Peace Accord, be interpreted?
There is a shared view among public opinion that a turning back to war with the FARC is unlikely, all the more so given the achievements of the demobilization and disarmament of FARC guerrillas. According to Insight Crime, as of December 2018, more than 13,000 guerrilla members had demobilized. What is certain, though, is that the impact of Duque’s decision resides in its ability to trigger a climate of legal uncertainty in the implementation of the Peace Accord. However, is this effect a random outcome? Or, is it telling of an antagonistic politics aimed at undermining the capabilities of the system of transitional justice to bring about sustainable peace? A closer look at Duque’s politics towards the mechanisms of transitional justice through an intersectional lens of gender, class and location shows that Duque’s antagonistic politics is not so much a move against peace. Rather, he is deploying an antagonistic politics against the transformative dimensions included in the terms of Colombia’s transition to peace set out through the Havana Accord in 2016.
Understanding the Rationale behind Duque’s Flawed Objections
Broadcasted nationally on March 10, Duque’s
refusal to sign the draft law did not come out of the blue. Indeed, before
Duque’s objections went public, his political godfather and leader of the
opposition to the Peace Accord, the hard right-wing ex-president Alvaro Uribe, posted
a tweet asserting that the best that Duque could do was to eliminate the JEP. However, the strong signals sent by
local actors and the international community allowed some sectors of Colombian public
opinion to remain hopeful that the JEP will finally get a legal framework of
its own. For instance, the JEP has been incorporated into Colombian law and, insofar
as the debate and critiques to the JEP have arisen, the international community
and the International Criminal Court (ICC) have immediately reiterated their support to the JEP. The
role of the ICC in this debate must be considered through the lens of the
principle of positive complementarity through which, briefly speaking, the ICC
induces States parties to comply with their obligation to investigate and prosecute
crimes domestically (Bjork and Goebertus 2014). This international support added to the role played locally
by Colombian Constitutional Court which, after evaluation of the draft law, had already delivered a favorable decision on its constitutionality. Indeed,
the Court’s decision took off the table the possibility that Duque could invoke
the unconstitutionality of the law as an argument to justify his negative
decision. Despite this, Duque did not resist the pressure to meet the
expectations of his political godfather, and neither did he lose the
opportunity to recapture its hard-line constituency. Finding a way around, Duque
opted to refuse approval by challenging six articles of the law. But indeed,
these aspects had already been revised by the Constitutional Court. It is therefore,
to say the least, clear that Duque has provoked a clash between the executive
and the judiciary powers in which, as Rodrigo Uprimny
and Juanita Goebertus suggest, the executive power attempts to revive a discussion on issues
about which the Constitutional Court has already given its final decision.
Duque’s objections were rejected by the Chamber of Representatives a week ago. But as the decision of the Congress is still pending, the UN Special Representative for Colombia, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, has urged Duque’s Government to move forward in passing a statutory Law for the JEP:
“The Secretary-General has called for prompt action by all concerned to ensure that a Statutory Law consistent with the Peace Agreement is put in place as soon as possible. This Statutory Law is the last missing element of the legal framework for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and a necessary one to ensure that this institution can operate with the necessary independence and autonomy”
UN Special Representative Carlos Ruiz
The chances that Duque’s objections
obtain Congress’ approval are few. But it is worth referring to the objection touching on the criterion
of prioritization. According to this criterion, the JEP should give priority to the most representative and severe crimes, which is
explained by the large number of crimes committed throughout a conflict that
has lasted more than half a century. If Duque’s objection is upheld, all the
guerrilla fighters should be tried by the JEP, which most likely will result in
the overburdening of the transitional justice system and therefore in its collapse. Not surprisingly, it is asserted
that Duque’s objections deter guerrilla combatants from demobilizing and seek
the failure of the JEP.
The Peace Accord is constitutionally
shielded as the Colombian Constitutional Court issued in October 2017 a ruling
which states that the next three governments must comply with its
implementation. But this does not mean that disagreements over the Peace Accord
and its implementation have ceased to exist. During 2017, presidential members
of Duque’s political party, the Democratic Center (hereafter DCP), pledged to
undercut the Peace Agreement, whereas Duque asserted that once elected he will
not destroy but reform it. Once in office, however, Duque has gradually aligned
his politics with the practices and discourses of the DCP. I will provide some examples that show how
Duque and his Party have specifically targeted institutions and mechanisms of
transitional justice performing what could be termed as antagonistic politics against
transition to peace.
Submitted to the Congress in September 2018, an initiative prompted by the DCP sought to create a separate tribunal for the militaries, so that they and other members of state security forces did not have to appear before the same court as that of the guerrilla members. Underlying this initiative was the idea spread through social media according to which the peace accords were a means to besmirch the honor of the militaries. In terms of the DCP, the JEP would put national heroes on the same footing as the guerrilla members. Although this attempt failed to win Congressional approval, the amplitude of the debate in public forums and in the media allowed the DCP to pay lip services to their hard-line constituencies, as it made those militaries who support the peace process look as subordinated and kneeled.
Another target of Duque’s administration antagonism against the peace accords has concerned the program of coca substitution and rural development initiatives (PNIs). This program has sought to bridge the social inequality gap between urban and rural territories as well as to tackle the drug trafficking industry, a dangerous mix which has permitted the Colombian armed conflict to persist. The program entails to offer to coca farmers and their families a way out of dependency on coca bush cultivation. Along with granting financial incentives to the families who join the program, the PNIs is linked with development measures such as the building of social and economic infrastructure in the regions that have been most severely affected by the conflict. Viewed as one of the peace agreement’s transformative measures and as a flagship engagement of the Juan Manuel Santos administration, the voluntary substitution of coca crops has provided enhanced opportunities for transitional justice to not only tackle territorial inequalities but to bring about social and gender justice. By 2018, more than 77 thousand families have enrolled in the program and it has allowed the issue of more than 1,065 land titles to small farmers, 44% of whom are women. Such figures speak of the transformative potential of the PNIs to tackle a crucial and historically entrenched marker of gender inequality, specifically women’s access to land. For those populations living in rural drug trafficking areas, the almost only form of governance they have ever known is the alternation in power of armed actors, whether the Colombian army, the paramilitaries or guerrilla groups. Therefore, the PNIs represents as well a chance to bring holistic governance and justice to civilian populations, whose lives have been defined by a patriarchal military rule.
Certainly, however, two main challenges threaten the sustainability of the PNIs. On the one hand, emerging criminal
bands (BACRIM) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) are taking over the
control of drug trafficking areas formerly controlled by the FARC. But not less
concerning is the announcement of the Duque administration to re-integrate forced manual eradication and to resume glyphosate spraying which was banned by the
Constitutional Court in 2015. Duque’s securitarian approach against coca
farmers has led ex-president Santos to intervene before the Constitutional
Court in order to defend the focus on voluntary substitution. Meanwhile, on the
ground, thousands of peasants are rallying against the return of glyphosate and the underfunding of the coca crops
substitution program by Duque’s government, which as Insight Crime asserts has
left “100,000 families in limbo”.
The Democratic Center: Its right-wing Populism and the Danger of its Negationist Discourse
The above examples are illustrative
of the ways in which Duque’s politics of peace are undermining social, cultural
and economic transformations that the transition to peace was aimed at bringing
about. Yet, symbolic mechanisms of transition have not been spared from Duque’s
antagonistic politics towards peace. In a move that has been described as an
attempt to re-write the history of the conflict, Duque appointed as new
director of the Center of Historical Memory (CHM), the researcher and historian Dario Acevedo. Known for his negationist statements about the Colombian armed conflict, Acevedo’s perspective echoes
Uribe’s discourse according to which Colombia has faced a terrorist menace and
not an armed conflict. Created in 2011 through the Victims’ Law, the CMH has
the mission “to investigate and to document the atrocities that took place in the
context of the internal armed conflict.” So, as soon as Acevedo was appointed in February 2019,
intellectuals’ and victims’ associations quickly manifested their disagreement,
raising the question of whether a researcher who negates the armed conflict is the
right person to lead the CMH to accomplish its task.
The implications that Acevedo’s negationism
might entail in allowing or preventing victims’ right to truth are still
uncertain. What is certain, though, is that the construction of memory of the
conflict is an aspect in which the political dimension of transitional justice
and peacebuilding is more visible. Willing or not, memory is produced through
agonistic processes in which there will always be moments of conflict regarding,
for instance, the terms of the narration, its time framework, the categories it
includes, the voices it allows to speak, as well as the methodologies and means
through which memory is produced and represented. The Center of Historical Memory
has been recognized for its independence from the government in office but also
for its participatory methodologies and for giving room to a plurality of
voices. However, according to the members of the Democratic Center, the CMH’s research agenda has until now being oriented by a leftist
perspective. In
their view, the CMH has given bigger weight to the role of paramilitaries in
the conflict while devoting less effort in documenting the violence of the
conflict undertook by the guerrillas. Bearing this critique in mind, it is reasonable
to be concerned about the politics of memory that Acevedo’s work and the Duque
administration are aimed at producing.
In a recent paper published by Peter Verošek on the
politics of memory, the author draws attention on a contemporary trend driven
by populist regimes which seeks to impose a “glorious national past” by portraying
those who contradict this kind of narrative as traitors. Reflecting on Verošek’s
work, one cannot help but think about the populist reactions of ex-president
Uribe against ex-president Santos. Since 2011, when the Santos government
recognized the armed conflict and the victims, thereby paving the way for a
dialogue with the FARC, Uribe has slandered Santos labeling him as a traitor. A
year later, when Santos engaged in peace talks with the FARC, Uribe expressed
his rage by portraying the peace process as a surrender of the country to Castro-Chavism.
Investigating the experience of the
victims and survivors is much more than collecting facts about the past. It is about
reflecting on the causes and making sense of the violence by locating it in a
historical and political frame. Actualizing the right to reparation and
guarantees of non-repetition that are due to the victims involves building a
perspective of the past in which a plurality of voices are represented and
which does not erase local interpretations. It is through this agonistic dialogue
that victims and survivors obtain redress and societies might know and address
the causes of violence, so as to ensure that it will not happen again. To frame
the violence of the conflict, however, in the limited context of a terrorist
menace overshadows the violence from its social and political causes, whereas
it reduces the experience and suffering of the victims as being the result of
madness. The spread of such vision, prompted by Duque’s party, undermines
sustainable peace as it ends by delegitimizing the needs and efforts to transform
power relations of class, ethnicity, location, gender or political affiliation that
the Colombian transitional justice system is called to build up.
Duque’s antagonistic politics towards
peace is telling of the political and therefore inherent conflictual condition
of peacebuilding and transitional justice. Underlying this condition is the
fact that the building of peace implies making choices and transforming
relations of power. Duque’s antagonistic politics represents an articulation of
interests that contests these transformations. This contestation could be legitimate
and should have a place in an agonistic dialogue. But if societies are
seriously engaged in achieving sustainable peace, this dialogue should seek the
reform and consolidation of peacebuilding rather than to induce the failure and
collapse of its mechanisms and institutions.
Sonia Garzon-Ramirez received her PhD in Comparative Gender Studies from Central European University, Budapest. Her area of study includes the intersections between feminist theory, transitional justice, peacebuilding and critical race theory. Her current research focuses on societies of the global South experiencing democratic or post-conflict transitions. It explores questions concerned with how to make transitional justice truly transformative, how to transform resistances to peacebuilding into agnostic relationships, and the nexus between transitional justice, peacebuilding and socio-spatial justice.
Yesterday, Ukrainian neo-Nazis stormed a European lesbian conference due to be held in the capital city, Kyiv, with the aim of shutting down the gathering before it even starts. Using tear gas and armed with placards, the ultra-right wing ‘protestors’ have spent days hounding the hotel where the conference is to be held, including smashing hotel windows and spray-painting homophobic graffiti. Picket signs read “Go back to hell, sodomites” amongst other unsavoury sentiments.
This targeting of the lesbian conference is just the latest in a string of violence perpetrated by neo-Nazis in Ukraine against women and the LGBQ+ community, which has become increasingly frequent in the last few years. Women and LGBQ+ are not the only targets of this violence – last year, the targeted attacks against Roma in Ukraine by ultra-right wing nationalists made international headlines. Less reported on are the similarly systematic harassment and intimidation of immigrants and other ethnic minorities in the country.
In a country like Australia, we would have a hard time imagining that such harassment, violence, and intimidation against women, sexual and ethnic minorities could become so commonplace. But I think Ukraine is a litmus for the rest of the world in terms of how quickly the polarization of politics can become lethal, and threaten to undo nearly 80 years of human rights advances.
The reason this far-right wing violence has become practically acceptable in Ukraine has to do with the civil war that has affected the country for nearly 5 years and the fusing of militarism, masculinity, and the state that enables the policing of the gender order by these groups to take place.
Tracing the story of war, militarism, and the rise of a particularly violent and aggressive form of neo-Nazi, militarized masculinity in Ukraine requires us to go back a few years.
In 2013, the country was deeply divided between ‘East’ and ‘West’ (or perhaps better said ‘Rest’) on the geopolitical orientation of the country. A very large number of people, particularly in the capital city and Western regions, were deeply upset with the government and with the economy, and held hopes that a new economic arrangement under negotiation with the EU would improve conditions. When the Yanukovich government suddenly reversed its position and refused to sign the EU deal, it sparked mass protests in Kyiv and around the country, which culminated in the 2014 Revolution now known as ‘Euromaidan.’
Euromaidan came under heavy siege from the Ukrainian government. The violence perpetrated against protestors was a strong impetus for many to commit what time, energy, and resources they had to support the movement. But, as with any violence, it also attracted a certain kind of man in droves, seemingly seduced by the opportunity to wield and use weapons and act as masculine protectors. Many of them shared political views that would place them far on the right side of the political spectrum, fostered and developed for many through their love of football (but that’s a whole ‘nother story).
While by no means the majority of participants in the protest, these violent men soon gained prominence and prestige as the ‘heroes’ of Euromaidan. Volodymyr Ishchenko, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, has been tracing the influence of the far-right in Ukraine since Euromaidan. He noted early on that despite their media prominence, the values espoused by the far-right did not reflect the general values of those participating in the protests. Yet, their apparent heroism has allowed for the normalization and even valorization of these extreme views.
Now, the true impetus or cause of the civil war is contested and I’ll reserve my views for now, since the important thing to note for this analysis is how, as heroes of the Revolution, these far-right groups soon became national war heroes for volunteering to take their arms and transfer their violence towards their new enemies – the separatist forces in Donbas. With historical factors and the revolution leaving the armed forces in disarray, when the separatists declared independence in Donetsk and Luhansk regions and seized government buildings by force, the Ukrainian government depended on groups of civilian men who formed ‘volunteer battalions’ to source their own weapons, mobilize to the front line, and fight for the territorial integrity of the state.
Since then, though small in number, these militant far-right groups of men have become an increasingly powerful political force in the state and the government has proven itself unable or unwilling to reign in their violence when it is directed internally at civilians far from the front lines of the civil war. To the neo-Nazis, the enemies are one in the same. According to one with whom I spoke for my own research, the enemy against whom they fight is “homosexuals, paedophiles, and communists.” Those enemies do not just exist in the armed units of the separatist forces, but, by their rationale, in all aspects of Ukrainian society and have the potential to threaten the cohesion and stability of the state anywhere at anytime.
Certainly, as we have seen with the recent Christchurch terror attack, the values and sentiments expressed by the far-right are not confined to Ukraine. There is a rising polarization of politics, globally. We have to stop thinking of the violence perpetrated by far-right militant men in the West as “lone wolf” attacks and begin placing their violence within the context of militarism, misogyny, and xenophobia that unites their vision of the world and glorifies violence perpetrated against women and minorities.
Sara Meger is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include feminist theory, international security, and global political economy. Her current research investigates drivers of political violence in contemporary conflicts, including Ukraine and Colombia. She is author of Rape Loot Pillage: The Political Economy of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, published by Oxford University Press.
I recently attended a workshop aimed at preparing a submission for a UN consultation on business & human rights on the role of the so-called ‘sex industry’ in Australia. One of the key observations made by scholars, practitioners, and activists was that this legal, regulated industry in Australia enjoys a special, exempted status from the scrutiny of business ethics such as the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights. While there is much to be said about the incongruity of the ‘job like any other’ discourse regarding the sex industry and mechanisms to ensure corporate responsibility for upholding basic human rights, one aspect I find far less considered is the way in which both legal and illegal forms of sexual exploitation seem to undergird so many aspects of our regular, licit economy.
It struck me from socializing with men and women in the banking and IT sectors how normal it is for workplace socializing to be conducted in strip clubs. A number of my friends and acquaintances admitted the regularity with which their ‘team’ would wind up after Thursday night drinks at a strip club, while others relayed rumors of their company holding corporate accounts with such establishments. It has made me wonder just how integral is sexual exploitation to lubricating our core economic sectors in an advanced, capitalist country?
With this ‘feminist curiosity‘ in mind, I came across an article about 50 formerly prostituted women suing Salesforce for facilitating their being sexually trafficked. Salesforce is an American Fortune 500 tech company perhaps best known for its ‘customer relationship management’ (CRM) software, used by millions. This week, fifty “Jane Does” have filed a lawsuit in San Francisco accusing Salesforce of “sex trafficking, negligence, and conspiracy” for providing CRM services to the notorious classified advertising site Backpage.com.
Last year, Backpage made international news when its CEO pleaded guilty to an array of charges associated with sex trafficking and money laundering as a result of publishing ads relating to prostitution, sex trafficking, and the sexual exploitation of minors. This new lawsuit against Salesforce alleges that the company and CEO, Marc Benioff:
engaged in nefarious activities while claiming to be fighting trafficking. “Behind the scenes … Salesforce kept taking Backpage’s money and supporting it with the CRM database of pimps, johns, and traffickers that Backpage needed to operate.”
Most perniciously, at the same time the company was attempting to paint itself as ‘good guys’ concerned with global corporate responsibility,
“Salesforce knew the scourge of sex trafficking because it sought publicity for trying to stop it. But at the same time, this publicly traded company was, in actuality, among the vilest of rogue companies, concerned only with their bottom line,” the suit alleges. “And human beings—many more than just these 50—were raped and abused because of it.”
“The Jane Does were forced, coerced, and made victims of sex trafficking by means of force, fear, fraud, deceit, coercion, violence, duress, menace, or threat of unlawful injury to themselves and others, including family members,” the lawsuit claims. “Salesforce committed acts at issue with malice, oppression, fraud, and duress.”
The claim of Salesforce’s complicity rests on the recognition that the industry of sexually exploiting women and children cannot operate alone, but requires all the same support services, technical services, and financial services as any other. Thus, the claim lodged by the 50 women accuses Salesforce of complicity in actively maximizing “customer acquisition” of johns/punters and aggressive marketing towards this acquisition. As such, the suit claims that not only did Salesforce’s technology provide “the backbone of Backpage’s exponential growth,” but it was also under Salesforce’s guidance that Backpage came to dominate the illicit industry in the trafficking and trade in women’s and children’s bodies.
Sara Meger is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include feminist theory, international security, and global political economy. Her current research investigates drivers of political violence in contemporary conflicts, including Ukraine and Colombia. She is author of Rape Loot Pillage: The Political Economy of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, published by Oxford University Press.
I spent the morning of Saturday, 16th March the way many in Australia and New Zealand did: glued to the morning news, watching hours of analysis regarding the previous day’s terrorist attack in Christchurch, NZ. That morning, it was still believed multiple individuals were involved, but because of his livestream, the focus was on Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year old Australian man deeply embedded in the far-right movement.
After several middle aged, white male analysts were rolled out from Universities across Australia to talk about the how and why of this attack, the absence of a gender analysis was striking. How, in 2019, do so many experts in terrorism studies still not look at masculinity as a factor that drives these attacks?
This question drove me to post to Twitter that a gender analysis was needed.
While I appreciate the effort one individual went to to look up my Academia.edu profile to private message me and mansplain why I was wrong about the need for such an analysis, I must respectfully disagree. So, this post is a preliminary discussion based on my cursory glance at Tarrant’s manifesto, The Great Replacement, to unpack some of what this sort of gender analysis may reveal.
A fixation on reproduction is about control of women’s bodies.
Most of Tarrant’s manifesto is focused on what he calls “The Great Replacement,” which hearkens to a popular right-wing conspiracy theory that holds the white race (specifically, Europeans) is in decline and going to be overtaken by non-Europeans. This replacement is due to declining fertility rates in the West compared to, in the views of the beholders of said theory, robust fertility rates of non-Europeans.
Sure, at first glance, this would seem to have nothing to do with gender. But just as fascists in the 1930s held, such obsessions over fertility rates belie an underlying desire to control women’s bodies and most often go hand-in-hand with beliefs that feminism is ultimately to blame for the decline in fertility rates (NB. I don’t disagree that feminism and/or the advancement of women’s rights correlates and even causes declining fertility rates, but we can debate the merits of this another time).
If one were to probe Tarrant about how he thinks the Great Replacement might be halted, I would hazard a guess that immigration controls is just one step. Most who hold these views also espouse so-called ‘family values’ ideas about sex roles.
The White Male Saviour and Militarized Masculinity
The second key area ripe for a gender analysis is a further exploration of the conditions that have produced a vast and growing number of disaffected, middle-class men in the world who find the opportunity to pick up a gun and perpetrate mass violence an attractive alternative to their everyday lives. As I wrote in a 2014 article published in IFJP:
Changes in global economic and political processes have affected gender relations in domestic contexts, resulting in traditional entitlements being lost by some men (True 2012). Efforts to resist the globalization of these orders by marginalized men have increasingly relied on a resurgence of domestic patriarchy through militarization, problematizing neighboring masculinities or appealing to overt symbolic expressions of a distinct masculinity defined in cultural terms (Kimmel 2005). For many men who lack access to the opportunities of the formal international economy, illegal economic activity represents an alternative means to pursue wealth and attempt to attain the status afforded to the “economic man.” Because economic success is so closely tied to men’s social value, efforts to resist the hegemonic effects of globalization have also become organized chiefly around notions of gender. Violence may not only serve to resist oppressive economic and political conditions, but is also an alternative mode of asserting masculinity and reestablishing patriarchy to benefit men (Kimmel 2005, 416).
Meger (2014) “Toward a Feminist Political Economy of Wartime Sexual Violence,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17(3): 416-434.
For Tarrant, his obsession with protecting white children from invading races is an obvious expression of paternalism. But there are many ways to be paternal, and the one he chose was through the end of a large semi automatic, military-style weapon. One need not delve far into feminist psychoanalysis to recall the metaphors of guns as penile extensions, first brought to mainstream IR attention by Carol Cohn (1987).
The Globalization of Right-Wing Extremism
Finally, a far less explored area ripe for gender analysis is how these disenfranchised, white men are finding each other through globalized social media networks and becoming radicalized to commit mass violence. In my own research, I have been fascinated by the number of foreign nationals fighting in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, which both sides of the political spectrum see as the front-line for a potential third world war, based on ideology. Tarrant mentions only briefly in his manifesto having been to Ukraine. If it was to volunteer in the armed conflict, he wouldn’t be the only radicalized right-wing Australian.
There is something to be said for the way that both ideology and affective attachments to those ideologies are being circulated and promulgated online. The appeal of fascism is spreading amongst a particular demographic of men like wildfire. But if we keep thinking of them only as ‘lone wolves’ rather than connected through shared ideology and increasingly shared political agenda, we miss the political component that makes right-wing extremism as dangerous as jihadist terrorists against whom we’ve mobilized trillions of dollars of military, security, and political resources.
Sara Meger is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests include feminist theory, international security, and global political economy. Her current research investigates drivers of political violence in contemporary conflicts, including Ukraine and Colombia. She is author of Rape Loot Pillage: The Political Economy of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, published by Oxford University Press.
Initiated in the year 2000, the UN Security Council’s Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda calls for women’s participation in security governance and protection of women from security threats around the world. Despite its grand plans, the agenda’s implementation has been spotty, with greater attention to women’s participation in security solutions than to the structures of violence that have threatened them.
Furthermore,
though the WPS agenda was initially driven by women’s organizations around the
world and its intent acclaimed by many more, the UN Security Council resolutions
and other policy documents that comprise the agenda do
not always reflect the needs of the women who are the object of
these policies, particularly women in the Global South. Instead, international discourses
about women in the Global South stereotype them and reify them simultaneously as
passive victims and as inherently peaceful. This characterization positions women
solely as targets of the WPS policies rather than as powerful actors in their
own right.
In a 2017 article in Global Affairs, “Pragmatic scepticism in implementing the Women, Peace, and Security agenda,” I outline two ways in which women and their work in local women’s security and peacebuilding organizations challenge international discourses at the same time that they reclaim them for their needs. This challenging is the “pragmatic scepticism” of the title – a way for women to be wary about certain essentializing stories told about them while simultaneously realizing that some stories can be useful as forms of organization and fundraising. Drawing on interview and participant observation research conducted among local women’s security and peacebuilding organizations in Côte dʼIvoire in 2014–2015, this article identifies two such stories that frame women’s activism around their own security: vulnerability and motherhood.
Vulnerability as a strength
Discourses
around wartime sexualized violence tend to create binaries between victims and
saviors, between the vulnerable and the strong. This has been echoed in the WPS
agenda, which was not designed to reduce vulnerability by fundamentally
remaking the system of gender relations. And though the first resolution of the
WPS agenda, 1325, incorporated perspectives of anti-militarism, later
resolutions and other aspects of the policy agenda have comprised this intent.
Instead, the WPS agenda now highlights women’s vulnerability, and its programs
are intended deal with, not question this vulnerability.
Many
women in Côte dʼIvoire expressed frustration about how their day-to-day
peacebuilding work was overlooked by the WPS agenda, which emphasizes external
interventions rather than support of pre-existing grassroots organizations.
Côte dʼIvoire, in fact, has a long history of women’s peace activism, during both
the
colonial period and more
recent civil conflicts.
These women did acknowledge that they were vulnerable to particular forms of violence in conflict and in their daily lives – economic, political, and physical. However, they did not want this vulnerability to define them; they did not want a sense of victimhood to permeate women in the country. They reconfigured the vulnerability from being based on fear to being a place of strength from which they can organize.
Photo courtesy of Organization of Active Women in Côte dʼIvoire (OFACI)
As
part of my research, I attended trainings run by local women’s peacebuilding
organizations that had the goal of teaching women about their rights or
empowerment opportunities. I watched the trainings shift from the morning’s
formality to a relaxed camaraderie in the afternoon. Women told stories about
their experiences of vulnerability and used that vulnerability to develop a
solidarity on which, the training leaders hoped, they could build peace in their
communities going forward. In the words of one participant, “Women need to help
women because it is only us who know what each other is experiencing.”
But
vulnerability can be used instrumentally by these women’s organizations, as
well. These organizations use the language of vulnerability stemming
from sexualized violence in the WPS resolutions to ask for increased
funding for their work. Vulnerability is a pathway to access funding for some
of these organizations, and women
allow themselves to be vulnerable to establish their credentials as at-risk
and open to the intervention of the international community.
Motherhood as an identity
Another frame produced by international discourses that women in Côte d’Ivoire adapt and work from is motherhood. This identity is often collapsed with ideas of vulnerability because of women’s specific health needs and mother-only caring responsibilities for very young children. African feminists like Catherine Acholonu and Obioma Nnaemeka note that motherhood in many African societies is not just a biological role but also a social one. Even if a woman does not have children, familial roles such as “sister” or “aunt” are liberally given and come with nurturing duties.
Motherhood,
then, is not only taken on by those who have birthed and raised children but is
claimed by a majority of women in Côte dʼIvoire and is naturalized for all
women. As with vulnerability, women are pragmatic about their mothering roles,
noting that there are specific ways they can work with their identity as a
mother, but also instrumental ways to sell motherhood as necessary to security.
At
the core of the activism by the local women’s organizations was a commitment to
security, peace, and anti-violence. In particular, it was the attachment to
their children through birth and caretaking that provided women power in their
communities and compelled them to act publicly. Especially for poor women, who
have little formal power or access to resources, motherhood provides them with
the capacity to act. The director of one women’s organization passionately
claimed, “A woman, child, there is not a more horrible pain than giving birth.
Do you think she can give birth to her child and then let her child die like
this? Maybe he’s going to die because you can do nothing. If you can do
something, you will snatch your child from death.”
Just
as with the frame of vulnerability, women used motherhood instrumentally to
attract attention and funding to their cause of peace and security. Women’s
organizations often premised their programs on women’s roles in their families
and their communities. Conflict management programs, in particular, relied on
women’s domestic management and intimate knowledge of their families. Local
justice officials sometimes depend on women to report if their adolescent sons
or husbands are coming and going from the house at odd hours, if there are
weapons or large amounts of cash in the house, and if there are new people in
the community.
Implications of reclaiming the
discourses
My
goal is not to reify women in Africa and specifically in Côte d’Ivoire as
motherly or “natural” but to note and understand their experiences in their
work, as they operate in their own contexts, both as vulnerable and as actors
in conflict and post-conflict. Because the WPS resolutions are based on
assumptions of women, allowing Ivorian women to the space to push back against
these assumptions can help them redefine security for themselves, through their
own advocacy. Only by listening to African women can we open up space for their
voices and analyze their words and actions vis-à-vis state structures and
international discourses.
Carrie is an assistant professor of Political Science and International Studies at Washington College. Her research and teaching interests include global governance, human security, development, NGOs, African politics, and feminist theory, particularly where they intersect in policy, namely the UN Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace, and Security.
