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The Rise (and Fall?) of Transitional Gender Justice: A Survey of the Field

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Rethinking Transitional Gender Justice

Part of the book series: Gender, Development and Social Change ((GDSC))

Abstract

This chapter provides a broad outline of the field of transitional gender justice post-World War Two, surveying key legal, political and humanitarian developments, particularly those pertaining most directly to women. It traces the optimism of women’s rights advocates throughout the 1990s with prosecutions of sexual violence at the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, the strong global support for UN Security Council Resolution 1325, an increased focus on gender in humanitarian interventions, through to growing disillusionment as the lives of women in conflict zones remain marked by violence, displacement, exclusion and injustice despite significant shifts at the international level. This chapter provides a broad survey of major standpoints on the capacity of transitional justice to transform the lives of women.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While there is broad acceptance of this argument in the literature (see e.g. Teitel 2003; Grewal 2010). Paige Arthur (2009) mounts a persuasive argument that this narrative inaccurately truncates a much longer history and that colonial powers have a shared and active interest in maintaining either a post-Nuremberg or post-Cold War focus in order to exclude imperialism and the violence, oppression and exploitation inherent in colonialism from the current enthusiasm for ‘dealing with the past.’

  2. 2.

    Prosecutor v. Akayesu, Judgment, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, 2 September 1998.

  3. 3.

    Akayesu Judgment at para 693.

  4. 4.

    Prosecutor v. Naser Oric (Trial Judgement). Case No. IT-03-68-T. 30 June 2006 at para 322.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Lucy Fiske

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  1. Lucy Fiske
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Correspondence to Lucy Fiske .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Rita Shackel

  2. University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Lucy Fiske

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Fiske, L. (2019). The Rise (and Fall?) of Transitional Gender Justice: A Survey of the Field. In: Shackel, R., Fiske, L. (eds) Rethinking Transitional Gender Justice. Gender, Development and Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77890-7_2

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