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.
