Abstract
UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) represents emerging recognition of the importance of ‘women’s’ participation in building peace in conflict-affected societies. However, it is premised on universal female experiences of conflict, and of common priorities in peacebuilding and social reform. This overlooks the individual characters of women as political, economic, religious and cultural actors in their own societies, with their own agendas. As a result, military interveners who rely on WPS doctrine, without a detailed understanding of specific gender issues in the subject community, face significant risk that their reforms may fail as aids to peace. Nonetheless, WPS crystallised interest in gender-focused reforms by military forces. Experience in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 has spanned gender-focused electoral reform and gendered security enforcement through ‘Lioness Teams’ in Iraq, to a more ambitious programme of ‘Female Engagement Teams’ in Afghanistan. It has brought the risks of failure into sharp relief, and demands rapid progress towards a more nuanced understanding of women as individuals if WPS is to have long-term effect. A closer partnership with feminist theorists, who have debated essentialism and universalism for a generation, may smooth this difficult path. This is the next challenge in understanding war not just as a gendered experience, but an individual one.
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Notes
- 1.
Respectively, UNSC Resolutions 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009) and 1960 (2010).
- 2.
18 October 1907, The Hague, (1908) 2 AJIL Supplement 90–117, entered into force 26 January 1910. Article 43 has been found to be representative of customary international law in: Trial of the Major German War Criminals (1946) CMD 6964, Misc. No 12, at 65; US v von Leeb (The High Command Case) (1948) 11 TWC 10, at 462; and most recently in Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory [2004] ICJ Rep (Advisory Opinion of 9 July), para 89.
- 3.
12 August 1949, Geneva, 75 UNTS 287, entered into force 21 October 1950.
- 4.
For example, as set out in articles 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 16 December 1966, New York, 999 UNTS 171, entered into force 23 March 1976.
- 5.
For example, as set out in articles 12 and 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16 December 1966, New York, 993 UNTS 3, entered into force 3 January 1976.
- 6.
Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) Notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970) [1971] ICJ Rep 16 (Advisory Opinion of 21 June), and see further Roberts (1990, 49).
- 7.
On erga omnes rights, see East Timor (Portugal v Australia) [1995] ICJ Rep 102, para 29; Western Sahara [1975] ICJ Rep 68 (Advisory Opinion of 16 October), para 162; Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, above n 4, paras 88–9. Non-interference in domestic affairs is addressed in the Charter of the United Nations, 24 October 1945, San Francisco, 1 UNTS 41, entered into force 1 November 1945, article 2(7).
- 8.
UNSC Resolution 1483 (2003) noted the status of the Coalition as occupants in its prefatory remarks.
- 9.
CPA Order 7, Penal Code (9 June 2003), s 4. Substantive amendments to the Code were directed to matters other than gender, including the suspension of offences committed against the Ba’ath Party and the death penalty (ss 2–3).
- 10.
CPA Order 60, Ministry of Human Rights (22 February 2004), s 2(5). The prefatory remarks also recognised Iraq’s existing obligations under treaties including the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 18 December 1979, New York, 1249 UNTS 13, entered into force 3 September 1981. Iraq acceded to the treaty on 13 August 1986.
- 11.
CPA Order 98, Iraqi Ombudsman for Penal and Detention Matters (27 June 2004), including s 3(2) on the Ombudsman’s access to assistance, s 4 on receiving complaints and s 5 on investigations.
- 12.
CPA Order 31, Modifications of Penal Code and Criminal Proceedings Law (10 September 2003).
- 13.
CPA Order 29, Amendment to Law of Estate Lease (29 September 2003).
- 14.
CPA Order 90, Special Task Force for Compensating Victims of the Previous Regime (28 May 2004).
- 15.
‘No fewer than one out of the first three candidates on the list must be woman; no fewer than two out of the first six candidates on the list must be woman; and so forth until the end of the list:’ CPA Order 96, The Electoral Law (7 June 2004), s 4(3).
- 16.
Of the men, an overwhelming 90% were detained for violent crimes. For them, but not for women, the charges included offences related to possession of prohibited weapons. These statistics are drawn from the Rusafa Temporary Detention Facility Database as at 15 November 2007, copy on file with the author by permission of the Director, Law and Order Task Force. Female detainees were held in a facility at Kadhimiya, separate from the male detention facility at Rusafa, although listed in the same database. Some men were detained in a third related facility. This brief summary includes all Rusafa detainees, primarily pre-trial but including some post-conviction.
- 17.
Women as perpetrators is slightly different from the possibility of women as ‘combatants’ emphasised in, for example, UNSC Resolution 1325 in paragraph 13, and Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (2012, p. 7).
- 18.
- 19.
Although at the time the report was written several of the advisory positions had not been filled.
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Lewis, A. (2019). WPS, Gender and Foreign Military Interveners: Experience from Iraq and Afghanistan. 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_7
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