from London, United Kingdom
Introduction
UNSCR 1325 is a landmark resolution adopted by the UN Security Council on October 31, 2000 that set the tone for the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda, recognizing for the first time the pivotal role of women within international security and peace processes. Nevertheless, feminist scholars and activists have criticised the ambiguous language of the WPS Agenda, arguing that it perpetuates gender stereotypes, reducing the roles of women in conflict to either victims or good peacebuilders.
In this regard, this article denounces the absence of violent women from the WPS Agenda. Despite the growing attention in feminist International Relations (IR) literature to the topic of female combatants and their exclusion from post-conflict reconstruction scenarios, this article calls for further feminist research. Such research should build on critiques to liberal peace and focus on tackling the root causes of the systematic dismissal and depoliticization of violent women such as female combatants within international security, including within the WPS Agenda.
The WPS Agenda
This article will now offer a literature review of the feminist IR scholarship on the WPS Agenda, and more specifically on United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security.
First of all, it is important to recognize that UNSCR 1325 is the result of the hard work and interchange among women’s civic movements and organizations, international organizations and member states (Olsson & Gizelis, 2013). Moreover, the adoption of UNSCR 1325 should be understood as part of the broader rise of influence and power at international level of the UN and its human rights agenda, in the post Cold War period (Bunch, 2012). Women’s rights were first recognized as human rights at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. Sexual violence against women was recognized as a crime of war and a crime against humanity in the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Four UN World Conferences on Women in Mexico City in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, Nairobi in 1985 and Beijing in 1995 contributed to the drafting of the WPS agenda.
It is also important to understand that the fall of the Soviet Union enabled the US to assert its power in the international arena in the post Cold War period as ‘the beacon of democracy’ and the leader of the Western liberal world (Harrington, 2011). Such position has been crucially supported by the US’ self-declared role as the sole protector of women’s security, and the de facto co-option of the women’s rights discourse as a means to delegitimize and criminalize military opponents around the world (ibid., 2011).
A Feminist IR critique of the WPS Agenda
Despite UNSCR 1325 being a major step forward towards the recognition of the role of women in peace and security, feminist scholars have widely criticised the Resolution for its reproduction of gendered concepts of peace and war that are dominant in the patriarchal system of international security, and that link war with masculinity, and peace with femininity (Pankhurst, 2003; Withworth, 2004). Women are described as inherently peaceful, caring and nurturing, due to their biological ‘destiny’ as mothers (Charlesworth, 2008; Ruddick, 2009).
This argument is highly problematic because it ends up supporting a narrative of men and masculinity as inherently aggressive and war-prone, to which peaceful women are the ‘Others’ (Charlesworth, 2008; Hutchings, 2008). Women also become the ‘natural’ victims of conflict, subordinate to men and in need of their protection (Cockburn, 2013; Sjoberg and Peet, 2011). In this regard, the word ‘women’ is often assimilated to ‘children’, ‘girls’ and ‘civilians’ in UNSCR 1325, creating a sense of vulnerability. This is evident in the fact that the bulk of the resolutions, policies and efforts of the WPS Agenda focus on the protection of women in conflict scenarios.
Therefore, there is a general refusal to accept the possibility that women could be willing to participate in conflict in active roles, such as combatants, and deciding to behave violently, perhaps even committing sexual violence (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007). The only accepted active participation of women in conflict is as peacebuilders and peacekeepers. However, such participation is once again based on gender stereotypes of women as inherently peaceful. This is evident from the list of reasons to promote the participation of women in peacekeeping: help limit conflict and confrontation; gain trust of local population and especially local women and help those victim of sexual violence; reduce the level of sexual violence (UN, 2020).
Female combatants and DDR processes
As discussed above, feminist IR critiques of the WPS Agenda make clear how the Agenda defines the accepted roles of women in conflict in binary terms, as either victims of war or as good peacebuilders (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007). There is no space here for violent women such as female combatants.
Recent years have witnessed a growing number of feminist IR scholars publishing papers on female combatants, especially in relation to their exclusion from Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) processes in post-conflict scenarios (see MacKenzie, 2009; Basini, 2013; Duriesmith & Holmes, 2019; Steenberg, 2020; Pauls, 2020; Sjoberg & Gentry, 2007). This literature plays an important role, as it highlights the complex and diverse universe of women’s conflict experiences and narratives, challenging dominant binaries in international security of war/peace, masculinity/femininity, soldier/victim and violent/peaceful, which are perpetuated by the WPS Agenda.
MacKenzie (2009) denounces the simultaneous securitization of former male combatants and the de-securitization and domestication of former female combatants in DDR processes in Sierra Leone, with the latters being expected to automatically ‘return to normal’. This attitude destroys any chance for long-lasting change in gender relations post-conflict (ibid., 2009). Crucially, when women do not conform to these positions they are delegitimised as ‘deviant’ (Hansen, 2006, in MacKenzie, 2009).
Nevertheless, while this article recognizes the importance of feminist IR scholarship on the WPS Agenda and on female combatants, it argues that said literature fails to tackle the root causes of the absence of violent women from the WPS Agenda, and to address the systematic dismissal and depoliticization of violent women such as female combatants within international security. For instance, most feminist IR literature takes a case-by-case reductionist approach to the issue of the exclusion of female combatants from DDR processes (see Basini, 2013 on Liberia).
Suggestions: a broader feminist critique of liberal peace
Taking a poststructuralist stance, this article argues that violent women are systematically dismissed and depoliticized because they represent a challenge to the hegemony of the liberal peace and to its hierarchical and gendered production of liberal subjects. Indeed, violent women such as female combatants are complex figures that evade dominant gender roles.
This article suggests that future research on the topic needs to combine feminist IR literature with critical literature on the hegemony of the liberal peace and the global liberal order. This literature argues that the system of international security -including UN peacekeeping- is designed to police and pacify resistance to the global liberal order, using (quite illiberal) strategies of governmentality and civilising discourses (Duffield, 2008; Neocleous, 2011). Dillon and Reid (2009) have coined the term ‘the liberal way of war’ to address how liberal rule and peace are deeply intertwined with and built on war.
According to this article, it then follows that the reason why the WPS Agenda does not challenge dominant gender roles is because the Agenda itself should be seen as a liberal institution that serves the interests of the global liberal order by prioritizing order instead of gender justice. Instead of preventing war, the WPS Agenda aims to “make war safe for women” (Shepherd, 2016), thus oiling the international liberal war machine.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this article has called for further feminist IR research to critically investigate the absence of violent women from the WPS Agenda and their systematic silencing in international security. Crucially, this research needs to start from a ‘liberal peace critique’ approach. Indeed, such theoretical design would obviate risks of potential co-optation into visions of ‘militarist’ feminism that define the empowerment and liberation of women in terms of their militarization and end up serving the interests of the liberal war machine.
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Autore dell’articolo*: Laura Mariani, studentessa MSc International Relations Theory presso London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) e laureata BA (Hons) presso School of Politics and International Relations of the University of Kent. Esperta di Relazioni Internazionali, Diritti Umani e Gender Studies del Think Tank.
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