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Alternative Approaches to Women, Peace, and Security in a Changing Era

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Alternative Approaches to Women, Peace, and Security in a Changing Era ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO WOMEN, PEACE, AND SECURITY IN A CHANGING ERA STUDENT WORKING PAPERS Penn Law Seminar on International Women’s Human Rights taught by Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Associate Dean of International Programs Report presented to UN Women and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on April 23, 2018 ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO WOMEN, PEACE, AND SECURITY IN A CHANGING ERA TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD RANGITA DE SILVA DE ALWIS INTRODUCTION SHANE FISCHMAN PART I: THE DOMESTIC SPHERE: “EDUCATION IS THE ONLY SOLUTION”: THE POWER OF GIRLS’ EDUCATION TO PREVENT CONFLICT AND FACILITATE PEACE GENEVIEVE LIM URBAN VIRGINITY TESTING IN LAW ENFORCEMENT: A CASE STUDY EXAMINING HOW INDONESIA’S VIRGINITY TESTS THREATEN WOMEN’S PEACE AND SECURITY DEVIN TROY FAMILY PLANNING: THE CLOSEST THING TO A SILVER BULLET FOR ARMED CONFLICT EMILIE RABER CONTINUED IMPUNITY AND 1325: WHY RAPE REMAINS IN LIBERIA DESPITE EFFORTS TOWARDS INTERNATIONAL NORM COMPLIANCE LAUREN WYSZOMIERSKI SEX TRAFFICKING AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS, PEACE, AND SECURITY: CASE STUDIES ON ROMANIA AND NEPAL KERRI GALLAGHER DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AS AN INDICATOR OF STATE STABILITY: LESSONS FROM EL SALVADOR AND TIMOR-LESTE MARY LESTER PART II: CULTURE AND RELIGION COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: CONCEPTUALIZING THE APPARENT CONFLICTS BETWEEN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW MEREDITH CHRISTIAN TRANSNATIONAL JUSTICE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF GIVING PRIMACY TO WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION IN SECURITY FORCES TALYA DJEMAL CULTURE IN PRACTICE: INTERNATIONAL POLICY MECHANISMS FOR A GENDERED APPROACH TO CULTURAL EXPRESSION IN TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE CLARK EDMOND HOW THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN SAUDI ARABIA’S VISION 2030 AND THE UN SDG GOALS PRESENT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY AGENDA SHANE FISCHMAN PART III: DEVELOPMENT, ECONOMICS, AND THE GOVERNMENT THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN TRANSFORMING NORTH KOREA FROM THE INSIDE AND OUT: AN UNTOLD STORY OF MARKETIZATION AND DEFECTION CAROLYN CARPENTER RWANDA: TRAILBLAZERS IN POLITICS, BUT NOT IN DAILY LIVES MALU MALHOTRA LEVERAGING NATIONAL ACTION PLANS TO FORTIFY PEACE ACCORDS: A CASE STUDY ON THE MINDANAO PEACE PROCESS ALLYSON REYNOLDS THE CONTINUING STATELESSNESS OF ROHINGYA WOMEN KARIN SHMULEVICH LAND GRABBING AND THE IMPACT ON WOMEN’S PEACE AND SECURITY JUSTINE CHIU LADIES FIRST- INDIA’S ACCOUNTABILITY UNDER UNSCR 1325: THE NEED FOR A NATIONAL ACTION PLAN ALEESHA JADHAV FOREWORD Rangita de Silva de Alwis On July 24, 2018, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Ms. Pramila Patten, and the Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee), Ms. Dalia Leinarte, signed a Framework of Cooperation between the CEDAW Committee and her Office. The Framework of Cooperation is a first between a Security Council-mandated body and a human rights treaty mechanism. The Framework of Cooperation reinforces and acknowledges that the rights of women and girls affected by conflict-related sexual violence is a human rights violation deeply rooted in gender discrimination before, during, and after conflict. This Framework of Cooperation is aimed at creating sustainable peace by ensuring that the pillars of peace and security are closely linked to the CEDAW’s human rights agenda and the development agenda of the Sustainable Development Goal Number Five on gender equality. This Framework of Cooperation reflects powerfully that the roots of conflict-related sexual violence are not isolated incidents but instead are a continuum of gender discrimination that are addressed by the CEDAW. The Framework of Cooperation obliges States Parties to the CEDAW to prevent discrimination against women as a harbinger of conflict and to address gender-based violence in times of war, as well as peace. The Student Working Papers developed for the Penn Law Seminar on “International Women’s Human Rights: Advancing Women’s Peace and Security” foreshadow and complement the Framework of Cooperation and have urged States Parties to address the Women Peace and Security Agenda: Security Council Resolutions 1325 (2000), 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013) and 2331 (2016) as linked to the values of the CEDAW and Goal 5 of the SDGs. The overarching themes of the papers advance the idea that while gender-based violence and discrimination could be early warning signs and indicators of crisis and conflict, addressing gender discrimination in times of peace and conflict will help prevent a conflict and gender-based violence in conflict. In the final analysis, the legal status of women is a determinant of national peace and security. Rangita de Silva de Alwis Associate Dean of International Affairs University of Pennsylvania Law School Advisor, UN Sustainable Development Goals Fund UN Women High Level Working Group on Women’s Access to Justice INTRODUCTION Shane Fischman International security is an elusive issue. It vaguely references the amalgamation of different approaches to peace and security assumed by different organizations, ranging from the UN and NATO in the public sphere, to think tanks and independently contracted organizations in the private sphere. Since its conception in the post-World War I era, international security has waxed and waned, tipping from a balance of power approach on the one hand, to a complete rejection of war with the Kellogg-Briand Pact on the other. Yet despite its abstract nature, international security has always referenced air and land security. However, though traditionally consumed with military strength, conventional arms, political capital, and nuclear power, the strategies and concerns that had encompassed the international security play book since the early twentieth century have transitioned into a concern of softer, understated issues. International security jargon has progressed as well: what had once been a nebulous allusion to an unacknowledged state of being, the term “security” now addresses a plethora of interlocking problems. Strategy and lexicon today have embraced an understanding that security is no longer an exclusive issue relevant to physical borders. It affects the daily lives of men, women, and children in the most understated ways. Food; clean-air; soil; land; the ability to travel freely; the right to access courts; the basic entitlement to security of person. Today’s security threats are diverse. Yet despite this diversity, it is also understood that the variance between these issues is directly connected to the most traditional security concerns, namely violence and extremism. The world of practitioners, scholars and policy-makers finally understands that there is more than correlation between states that contract their citizens’ right of movement and states that have vibrant militant groups enforcing these laws. And that the bulk of these issues directly affect the lives of women. On October 17, 2000 the UN passed a landmark resolution. To date, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 is the world’s most translated UN resolution— the document, and through it its signatories, acknowledges that women experience conflict differently than men; that women and children predominantly account for the compilation of the refugee community; that sexual abuse abounds during armed conflict, disproportionally affecting women. However, most notable is the action plan that 1325 creates, reaffirming the critical role women play in conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and the need to incorporate women into peace-building teams. Though UN Resolution 1325 was a watershed in the movement to incorporate women into security and peacebuilding matters, establishing a normative framework for peacebuilding and conflict prevention, the document, and the subsequent National Action Plans written by a multitude of countries, was not created in a vacuum. It was built on the shoulders of the women who protested war at the Hague in 1915. It was structured around the1969 Commission on the Status of Women, the nucleus around which commissions and programs were established to advocate for women and children globally: the original interrogator that questioned whether the violence women and children face during conflict necessitates the creation of special laws to protect them during war. It was the fusion of these ideas that led to the adoption of the General Assembly’s 1974 Deceleration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency Armed Conflict. When the UN started hosting World Conferences on Women in 1974, landmarks started to be reached: the CEDAW was passed, crystalizing the women’s international bill of human right, and the Beijing Platform was drafted, recognizing how civilian casualties during conflict far outpace the death of militants, that women and children comprise a larger portion of the victims than men, and calling for the application of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in protecting women during conflict. Noise has a ripple effect, and the more noise you make, the grander your accomplishments. These breakthroughs all paved the way for Resolution 1325, which not only cemented women’s rights as an international issue but also sealed them as laws. Two important elements of 1325 and the road that led to its creation must be underscored. First, the most significant trope in this narrative is the constant call for the application of international humanitarian law, and international human rights law in protecting women and children during conflict. Law undeniably is the foundation on which
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