Feminist Practice in an International Bureaucracy: Contestation Over the Field of Peace and Security at the United Nations

Home , Stephen Toope

Megan Alexandra Dersnah

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science University of Toronto

Feminist Practice in an International Bureaucracy: Contestation Over the Field of Peace and Security at the United Nations

Megan Alexandra Dersnah, University of Toronto 2016 Doctor of Philosophy, Political Science

Abstract

This dissertation looks at the community of feminists who seek to advance women’s rights from within the UN system. It broadly asks: how does this community that is invested in a set of ideals go on to develop practices that promote organizational change within a constrained bureaucratic setting? At its heart, this dissertation seeks to understand the role of these individuals in creating change within the UN system, both at the level of normative advancement, through the adoption of new institutional rules, and also at the level of practice, in terms of making these norms meaningful in the everyday functioning of the organization as a whole. It adopts a theoretical approach that brings

Bourdieu’s field theory into the IR literature on communities of practice, drawing to the foreground the dynamics of power and contestation in the field as actors struggle to drive change. In accounting for change, it analyzes how these feminists navigate emerging and persistent challenges and opportunities in and through their everyday practices, capturing their successes, failures, and compromises. It looks in particular at the practice of writing documents as key to strategic efforts to advance women’s rights. Through this approach, this dissertation makes visible the interactions between institutional constraints and strategic agency within the UN. It analyzes the case of the evolution of the ‘Women,

Peace, and Security’ normative agenda, as well as the creation of UN Women, to understand the complexity of feminist engagement in these bureaucratic spaces.

ii Acknowledgments

I am so grateful for the support I have received over the course of completing my PhD. I would first like to thank my supervisor, Ron Levi, for his expert guidance, brilliant insights and friendship throughout this process. My committee members, Emanuel Adler and Stephen Toope, brought an impressive depth of knowledge to their engagement with my work, asked tough questions and helped me to think through the nuances of my ideas. Sylvia Bashevkin and Elisabeth Prügl also provided me with rich insights into how I can develop my research further, and I am incredibly grateful for their contributions.

Thank you to the women and men that I interviewed at the United Nations. The work that they do everyday – going above and beyond the call of duty to advance women’s rights globally – is inspiring. Thank you in particular to Laura Turquet, who has been a champion for my career within UN Women, as well as Anne-Marie Goetz, whose generosity and willingness to open doors for me during my research was invaluable.

The relationships I’ve developed with fellow students and faculty at the University of Toronto made the process of completing this PhD so much more meaningful. Thank you to all of the faculty members who guided me through this process, including in particular Janice Stein, Nancy Bertoldi, Steven Bernstein, Karen Knop, Wilson Prichard, Judith Teichman, and Robert Matthews. Thank you to the individuals in the Department of Political Science for helping guide me through this process from an administrative perspective. To all of my friends in the program, being able to navigate this experience together has given the past seven years so much of its incredible character.

I am so grateful to have such a strong network of friends beyond the University to support me and keep me grounded. While there are too many to name, thank you all – from the bottom of my heart – for reminding me that there is life outside of graduate school and for helping me create balance in my life. Thank you to the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria for providing me with an intellectual community in the final year of writing my dissertation. Thank you also to my colleagues at The Humphrey Group for supporting me through the final revisions and the defense.

The support and love of my family means the world to me. Thank you to the Walkers: I am grateful that over the course of this PhD, we have become family. To the Symonds women, you bring so much laughter into my life. My brother, Graham and my sister, Stacey have been friends, roommates, and cheerleaders for the completion of this project. And to my husband, Andrew Walker: your support and love have been steady and consistent, and core to my ability to climb this mountain.

I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Nikki and Doug Dersnah. Your unwavering love and belief in me inspires me to reach to new heights.

iii Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgments ...... iii Table of Contents ...... iv List of Tables ...... vi Chapter 1: ...... 1 Introduction ...... 1 Feminists in Bureaucracies...... 3 Studying International Organizations from the Inside Out ...... 7 Understanding Stability and Change: A Practice Approach ...... 9 Gender Mainstreaming and the Case of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda ...... 12 Research Methodology and Data Collection ...... 17 Outline of the Dissertation...... 19 Chapter 2 ...... 23 A Theoretical Framework: Understanding the Feminist Community of Practice ... 23 Feminists within International Organizations ...... 24 Who Are These Individuals? ...... 24 Governance Feminism and the Question of Cooptation ...... 26 Feminist Practitioners Inside/Outside the UN ...... 29 The Logic of the UN as a Gendered Organization ...... 31 Informal Practices: Navigating Bureaucracy ...... 34 Understanding Communities of Practice Using Bourdieu’s Field Theory ...... 38 The Value of A Practice Approach for IR Theory ...... 38 The Theory of Communities of Practice ...... 40 Bringing Bourdieu into a Communities of Practice Approach ...... 42 Understanding Organizational Stability and Change ...... 49 Everything is Social: Interactions, Learning and Normative Change ...... 54 Feminist Practices in the UN System: The Practice of Writing Documents ...... 60 Conclusion...... 64 Chapter 3: ...... 66 Understanding the Feminist Community of Practice through the Lens of the Creation of UN Women ...... 66 Introduction ...... 66 The Creation of UN Women...... 68 Institutionalizing Conflict ...... 68 UN Women as a ‘Feminist’ Space? ...... 72 Growing Pains: Contextual Challenges ...... 77 An Unsteady Merger: The Case of the WPS Agenda ...... 83 Change in the Feminist Community of Practice ...... 87 To Be a ‘Feminist’ Practitioner: Feminists versus Technocrats ...... 88 To Do Gender Equality Work: An Influx of Development Focus ...... 91 Should We Expect UN Women to be ‘Feminist’? ...... 97

iv Conclusion...... 101 Chapter 4: ...... 104 The Success of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence within the UN: Navigating Bureaucracy for the Advancement of Feminist Ideals ...... 104 The Making of the WPS Agenda ...... 105 The ‘Miracle’ Resolution: A Shock to the Domain of Peace and Security ...... 105 The Aftermath of Resolution 1325 ...... 110 The Focus on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence ...... 116 Advancing Feminist Ideals in Peace and Security in Practice ...... 121 Feminist Know-How: Framing and Powerful Language ...... 124 Feminist Know-How: Navigating the Bureaucracy ...... 126 Feminist Know-How: Making Friends and Allies ...... 128 Wilton Park and Resolution 1820 ...... 131 ‘Buyer’s Remorse’ and the Focus on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence ...... 133 Conclusion...... 138 Chapter 5: ...... 141 Advancing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Day-to-Day Practice ...... 141 Contested Human Rights in the Context of the Security Council ...... 143 Human Rights in the Domain of Peace and Security ...... 143 Conflicting Interests: Limiting Human Rights in the WPS Agenda ...... 145 Progress, but at what speed? ...... 148 Sexual Violence and Feminist Engagement in the Security Council ...... 150 The Security Council as More than Realpolitik: Power in Practice ...... 153 Everyday Strategy: Pushing for the Advancement of WPS through Daily Practices ..... 157 WPS as a ‘Parallel Conversation’ in the Security Council ...... 158 Advancing WPS in Interactions between Colleagues ...... 160 Writing Documents as Practice...... 165 Formal Authors: Member State Diplomats ...... 166 Informal Authors: The Feminist Community of Practice ...... 168 Strategy in Writing: Emerging from Practice ...... 170 Conclusion...... 173 Chapter 6: ...... 175 Conclusion ...... 175 On feminist activism in the UN ...... 176 Gendered Hierarchy of Power ...... 178 Gendered organization, gendered agents, gendered activism ...... 181 On bureaucracies ...... 185 On feminist engagement with international institutions ...... 191 On change in organizations ...... 193 Works Cited ...... 196

v List of Tables

Table 3.1 Total contributions by year to UN Women, in core and non-core funding…...87 Table 3.2: Total UN Women programme expenditure by theme, 2010-2012…………...98 Table 4.1: The Inclusion of Gender and Women's Rights in Security Council Resolutions Since the Passing of Resolution 1325 (2000)…………………………………………..125

vi Chapter 1:

Introduction

“But I actually honestly think that you cannot advance feminist policy in an intergovernmental forum, in any inter-governmental forum. Because in the end, women’s rights work against established hierarchies. They have to, and especially in conflict situations. In the UN, where you have all the countries of the world, including the most arcane, archaic patriarchies, you cannot really advance women’s rights beyond a rhetorical commitment. I honestly, I really honestly don’t think so. And that is why, in the end, the feminists all leave. Show me a feminist at high levels of the UN. You can’t. She wouldn’t be tolerated.”1 – UN Women bureaucrat

Countless starry-eyed idealists have been drawn towards the possibilities that the United Nations promises. Thousands of feminists have flocked to this institution over decades, like moths to the flame, as the core site of their activism, and they have made incredible strides. For those who have managed to secure work within the UN, many – myself included – did not expect the battlefield that awaited us. There is a clear disjuncture between rosy activist ideals and the guerrilla warfare that awaits those feminists who enter into the UN system with the goal to advance women’s rights and gender equality issues. Those who enter with the goal to change the system quickly learn the back-alley tactics required to navigate within this domain. Those who don’t – or those who get tired of playing by the restrictive rules – leave. To work within the UN while committed to the advancement of women’s rights within this domain is no easy feat. It is a daily struggle for feminists who seek to prioritize and to change the way that the UN system addresses these issues. And yet, in spite of these challenges, feminists across the UN system are raising their voices and are demanding changes – in their own unique and strategic ways – in how the UN addresses women’s rights and gender equality issues, both within the organization itself and beyond. This dissertation focuses on these individuals. It looks at the community of feminists who seek to advance women’s rights from within the UN system and it broadly

1 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

1 asks: how does this community that is invested in a set of ideals go on to develop practices that promote organizational change within a constrained bureaucratic setting? At its heart, this dissertation seeks to understand the role of these individuals in creating change within the UN system, both at the level of normative advancement, through the adoption of new institutional rules, and also at the level of practice, in terms of making these norms meaningful in the everyday functioning of the organization as a whole. The feminist ‘community of practice’ within the UN system is analytically comprised of bureaucrats and diplomats who express high personal and professional commitments to the advancement of women’s human rights and gender equality globally and within the UN system2. They draw on specialized forms of knowledge, experience and training to inform their day-to-day actions, practices, language and interactions within the UN system in an effort to change the organization’s policies and practices around women’s human rights. Yet this community of practice exists within a bureaucratic setting that encompasses different, competing and conflicting interests, which can constrain feminists’ capacity to advance their ideals. This dissertation analyzes how these feminists navigate emerging and persistent challenges and opportunities in and through their everyday practices, capturing their successes, failures and compromises. This serves to better understand two sides of the same coin: first, how and why norms around women’s rights and gender equality issues have advanced within this bureaucratic space, and second, how and why – despite their best efforts – sometimes feminist activism within the UN system does not result in substantive changes in practice. This introductory chapter first addresses the question of feminist engagement within international bureaucracies, highlighting the fundamental conflict that can exist between feminist and bureaucratic ideals and the importance of studying everyday practices as essential for understanding the process and dynamics of normative change. It then explains how I conceive of the United Nations, expanding on existing approaches to understanding international organizations in global governance. It introduces the theoretical framework of the dissertation and its added value to international relations

2 Broadly speaking, ‘bureaucrats’ includes any individual working within the UN system that does not represent a Member State. Usually, bureaucrats are located working within the UN Secretariat and its agencies. ‘Diplomats’ includes any individual working within the UN system that officially represents a Member State. Usually, diplomats are located working within Member State embassies.

2 (IR) theory that will be elaborated further in Chapter 2, drawing together a communities of practice approach with Bourdieu’s field theory. It then introduces the core case study of the project: feminists’ efforts to advance women’s human rights, in and through practice in the case of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in the UN. It outlines the research methodology of the project and data collection methods. Finally, it provides a chapter outline to explain how the dissertation chapters will progress.

Feminists in Bureaucracies

Feminist strategizing may appear to be deceptively simple; imagining calculating actors that target their activities to bring about desired ends, but the reality is much more complex and contingent in practice3. As Caglar et al (2013) explain: “the idea of a unitary, strategizing, feminist actor is problematic.”4 Feminist practitioners cannot be understood as actors with fixed preference orderings, but instead these actors are located within a bureaucratic setting that demands flexibility and strategy; a field of struggle and competition over interests. To understand how feminist practitioners develop strategic practices within a constrained bureaucratic setting demands moving beyond the rationalist notion that political processes proceed in a straightforward fashion. For one, goals are not fixed, but are constantly being negotiated and adjusted within bureaucratic constraints. Plus, organizational politics and competing interests intervene in feminist intentions, which matter in how strategies emerge but also how they are implemented5. Feminist scholars have long asserted that international bureaucracies are “fundamentally opposed to feminist goals”6, due to their hierarchical and technocratic corporate culture. Because of this contradiction in terms, feminists are often left with the difficult decision about where to situate themselves and how to engage – or not – with these institutions7. Feminists within organizations consciously engage with the mainstream, while simultaneously seeking to infuse the structures, systems and processes

3 Caglar et al 2013, 3. 4 Caglar et al 2013, 4. 5 Caglar et al 2013. 6 Miller and Razavi 1998, 3. 7 Hendriks 2001.

3 with transformative feminist values and ideals8. Feminist practitioners may confront bureaucratic and hierarchical machinery that provides little institutional support, and if anything, is resistant to the integration of women’s interests and gender equality. This bureaucratic context embodies vastly different priorities and interests that can conflict and compete with feminist ideals. While these organizations are complex and not homogenous, certain recurring patterns can challenge feminist practitioners, and institutional politics and power structures may leave gender issues intentionally ignored, dismissed or rejected9. As Kabeer (1994) explains, because different social institutions are organized around different objectives, with different rules and procedures, hierarchies are not uniform but are produced in and through distinct institutional practices10. As such, these relationships are not fixed and immutable, but evolving and open to contestation. Miller and Razavi (1998) refer to the contradictory dynamics of pursuing transformative agendas from within established bureaucracies as feminists being ‘missionaries’ while adapting to the techniques and practices of the bureaucracy, as ‘mandarins’ would have to do11. In light of this engagement, how do feminists engage with structures and processes of international organizations, despite – and within – institutional, ideological and economic constraints? How do feminists create and sustain spaces of resistance and change within international organizations? These questions inform the direction of the research for this dissertation. Prugl (2009) argues that the measure for success of feminist engagement with institutions should be first, whether explicit rule has changed and second, whether the change in explicit rule has produced change in implicit rule12. Whether a challenge to institutional processes is successful will depend on power struggles around particular issues and in particular sites13. Change in explicit authority, such as changes in laws, policies, and procedures may not be sufficient to guarantee change in practice, but is necessary in order to gain permanence, coherence and direction for deeper change14. I adopt an interactional approach to understanding

8 Hendriks 2001. 9 Hendriks 2005. 10 Kabeer 1994, in Miller and Razavi 1998. 11 Miller and Razavi 1998. 12 Prugl 2009. 13 Prugl 2009. 14 Prugl 2009.

4 normative change to extend these insights, considering how rules and norms can be changed at a formal level (i.e. changes in explicit rule), such as through the adoption of a Security Council resolution within the UN system, but that change in practice and behaviour (i.e. change in implicit rule) occurs through the interactions between feminist practitioners and their bureaucratic counterparts15. It is in these interactions that norms change and come to gain meaning in practice. When considering the relative success or failure of feminist engagement with international institutions, I argue that – as a result of the competing and conflicting interests within this bureaucratic setting – these interactions, practices and efforts often do not result in their intended outcomes for the feminist community of practice. Successes achieved by this community are often characterized by tempered compromise and negotiated victories. As one practitioner noted: “It’s not linear where you say: I want to move this agenda and you’re able to just do it. There are so many different forces at play that impact whether you’ll be able to do anything and it requires alliances within your own organization, amongst organizations, civil society and with states. All those need to align. But there are great things happening.”16 There is a sense amongst many practitioners that incremental change is the reality of working within this bureaucratic space. When institutional developments occur for women’s rights, many practitioners feel that it is necessary to “just look and take what is positive”17 or “if there is a way to move forward on that topic, just do it”.18 The need amongst feminist practitioners to use whatever possible entry point reflects the need to continue to struggle despite constraints. As one practitioner notes: “Just use it, get in there, and then go from there. Everybody is going to start feeling comfortable […] and then you can introduce the other stuff. So the lofty ideals? It all comes down to practical realities. If it works, let’s do it. But I think you have to design your exit strategy and your next step from the beginning.”19 The focus here emphasizes the complexity of feminist engagement, when seen from the perspective of their everyday practices. The literature on feminist engagement within international institutions is overly simplistic. On the one hand, scholars tar the

15 Brunnee and Toope 2010. 16 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 01/08/2015. 17 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 18 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 19 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

5 efforts of feminists, in engaging with institutions, by claiming that their ideals have been coopted, without considering their agency in navigating the bureaucratic constraints and the reality of what it means for them to struggle within this field20. On the opposite end of the spectrum, scholars like Halley (2006) argue, through ‘governance feminism’, that feminists have now quite noticeably been installed in spaces of legal-institutional power and are comfortably walking the halls of global power21. This theory tends to only account for the outcome; it fails to consider that, in their everyday lives, feminist practitioners continue to struggle to keep these norms in practice within the UN. Indeed, they are far from institutionalized and taken-for-granted. Thus, by focusing on the everyday realities of feminist practitioners, this dissertation provides a more accurate picture of their position and experiences within these bureaucratic spaces. It has historically been very challenging for scholars to access information about the practices of bureaucrats within the UN system. As Eyben (2012) notes, these bureaucrats often find it very difficult to communicate their experiences; are unfamiliar with academic discourses; and may be cautious about revealing internal workings to the outside world22. Moreover, most scholars have little or no access to the organizations they study, and as such are unable to access and describe the micro-political processes of everyday bureaucratic life in which these feminist practitioners assert their agency and creativity through informal means23. As such, while the literature on gender and global governance has emphasized the significance of the role of supportive individuals who are strategically positioned within international institutions, as well as noting the nature and challenges of gender mainstreaming in international development organizations24, far fewer studies have focused directly on these individuals25. Eyben (2012) explains that, in order to truly understand the progress that has been made on gender equality in international organizations, it is necessary to understand both

20 Newman 2013. Regarding cooptation, see for example, Orloff and Schiff 2014; Charlesworth 2005; Otto 2008. 21 Halley 2006. 22 Eyben 2012. 23 Eyben 2012. 24 Goetz 2003; Prugl and Lustgarden 2006; Rao and Kelleher 2005. 25 Klugman 2008 and True 2003 address the significance of ‘insider’ individuals. Two notable exceptions: the classic Miller and Razavi 1998 edited volume of case studies and Eyben and Turquet’s recent 2013 study of feminists within bureaucracies. See also Eyben 2012.

6 the formal and informal strategies; it is “through their everyday experience of successes, failures and compromise as they navigate complex arenas of power, [that] politically astute feminist bureaucrats have learned to be effective strategists. If we want to understand better how gender mainstreaming works in practice, we need to pay closer attention to analyzing what they do and how they do it”26. This project responds to the call for attention to what feminists do within the UN system and how they do it, including capturing their everyday experiences of success, failure and compromise, in order to better understand how and why women’s human rights and gender equality norms have advanced or been resisted within this bureaucratic space. It is – however – important to note that the intention of this study is not to homogenize or to suggest there is a monolithic community that are entirely aligned within the UN system. The feminist community of practice has multiple sub-units. Just as there is no single global ‘feminism’, each individual within this community brings with them a unique trajectory of knowledge, beliefs, life and professional experience. This impacts not only how they show up and see themselves as ‘feminists’, but also how they see and understand the world within and beyond the UN. With greater time and in future studies, the unique dynamics within the feminist community of practice could be parsed out in greater detail with explicit attention to the differences and divisions, the conflicts and competitions within this community. The value of this approach, which takes the feminist community of practice as a single unit of analysis, is that it elevates the analysis of the phenomenon to address a broader thrust of effort and intention on behalf of a group of individuals. This study focuses on a group of individuals that – despite their differences – all fundamentally believe in the primacy of gender equality globally and who strive to actualize this belief. The value of focusing on this level analysis is that the study provides access to a deeper understanding of what it means to strive for one belief within a system that can resist – and fundamentally oppose – that belief.

Studying International Organizations from the Inside Out

26 Eyben 2012.

7 In this dissertation, I move beyond studying the United Nations as a monolithic international organization (IO) that merely serves Member States. IR scholarship has historically focused primarily on why states establish IOs and what purpose they serve, specifically whether and to what extend they can lead to cooperation in an anarchic global system, as characterized by the neorealist-neoliberal debate.27 While this approach shows how and whether cooperation in the global system is possible, there has been much less focus on how these institutions actually work28. Only recently has work in IR begun to address how these organizations function and how they might impact global politics. However, the focus still often remains squarely on decision-making and the role of states, rather than on issues such as internal functioning29. IR theory has focused so centrally on the role of states, with other actors in the international system being understood as by-products of state action, that the analysis of IOs as autonomous actors has been greatly simplified30. By privileging the state as actor, IR theory has neglected to analyze the ways in which other actors in the system might use institutions, how the nature or interests of the state are potentially changed by the actions of institutions or individuals, or how an IO may be a strategically independent actor in its own right31. This limits the possibility of a comprehensive analysis of how institutions matter in global politics. As such, it is important to refocus attention on IOs and to the possibility of autonomous policy-making occurring within these institutions32. IR scholars have also rarely considered the issue of change within IOs, and when they have, they have tended to assume that change is a result of changes in the interests of states and that states are responsible for the timing, direction and content of change33. To understand change within this dissertation, I adopt an understanding of IOs that seeks to look at the UN ‘from the inside out’34. This differs from conventional IR approaches to the study of IOs in two ways. First, I do not treat the UN as a monolithic bureaucracy. Instead, my approach opens the ‘black box’ of the UN to understand the different spheres

27 For example, Keohane 1998; Krasner 1983; Mearsheimer 1994. 28 Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal 2011. 29 Dijkzeul and Beigbeder 2003. 30 Barnett and Finnemore 2004. 31 Martin and Simmons 1998. 32 Reinalda and Verbeek 1998. 33 Barnett and Coleman 2005; Barnett and Finnemore 2004. 34 Hagan and Levi 2005.

8 of power and influence; and the different corporate cultures that develop, overlap and differ in terms of functions and also practice. It is these differences and overlapping interests that create struggles and tension within the UN, in terms of determining the meaning, practice and importance of various issues, such as women’s rights. Second, while state power clearly plays a role in influencing the direction of change within the UN, an approach from the ‘inside out’ emphasizes the role of individuals within international organizations. The UN is deeply controlled by states and state power is a clear theme throughout this dissertation, considering that ultimately, the UN is an inter-governmental organization. As such, I do not suggest that complete institutional autonomy of international organizations is at work35. The UN does not have autonomy from states; policy and practice are deeply controlled by state power. And yet, I argue that states are not the only actors to set the agenda and to influence change. By looking from the inside out, we can see that individuals and groups within the UN can exercise influence within constraints that are dictated by states. While states may set the ‘big picture’ agenda, often bureaucrats and diplomats are left to hammer out the details, and are sometimes able to insert their personal preferences. This is, of course, not always possible – especially when considering high stakes political issues where state officials may be under orders to seek a particular outcome. In these cases, states can easily override the personal preferences of individuals within the UN system. However, many issues within the UN do not experience that level of micro-management. As such, to understand change in IOs, there is a need to focus on the role of individuals within IOs, in order to fully account for how change in IOs can come not ‘from above’, from states, or ‘from below’, in the sense of transnational advocacy networks, but ‘from within’36.

Understanding Stability and Change: A Practice Approach

Theoretically, I draw on the practice turn in international relations (IR) theory to inform the analysis of how feminist practitioners engage within this constrained environment. The practice turn has emerged in IR theory in recent years as a way to

35 This is aligned with what Barnett and Finnemore 2004 argue in their study of IO autonomy. 36 Chwieroth 2008a, 2008b

9 understand what actors do, as essential to global politics37. Prior IR work focused implicitly on practices, such as, for example, realists’ focus on balancing and diplomacy, but this focus was rarely made explicit, with the consequence that IR had a limited understanding of decision-making, social action and change38. The ‘practice turn’ according to Adler and Pouliot involves the reorientation of the study of IR towards international practices understood as produced by practical, inarticulate, common-sense knowledge rather than by the application of rational choice logic or theoretical knowledge39. Practices are “socially meaningful patterns of action which, in being performed more or less competently, simultaneously embody, act out, and possibly reify background knowledge and discourse in and on the material world”40. Because practices are embedded in particular organized contexts, they are articulated into specific types of actions and are socially developed through learning and training41. Social action emerges from immanent practices, which are the product of practical sense (or background knowledge)42. Trajectories of experience produce background knowledge: “the inarticulate know-how from which reflexive and intentional deliberation becomes possible”43. This knowledge makes action appear ‘self-evident’ or like ‘common-sense’. Background knowledge and practices are embedded both in organized structural contexts and also within the identities of actors. The concept of ‘communities of practice’ provides a useful tool for thinking about how feminist practitioners within the UN system are part of a community of people with

37 Although social theories based on practices have been prominent within the social sciences since the second half of the 20th century, practice theories have had little effect on political science, and especially international relations until recently. 38 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 39 Adler and Pouliot 2011. For them, a focus on international practices promises four key advances for IR. First, by focusing on practices, we can understand international politics differently, and arguably better. This focus gives meaning to international action, makes possible strategic interaction, and illustrates how world politics are reproduced, changed and reinforced by international action and interaction. Second, the concept of practices supplies a conceptual ‘focal point’, making interparadigmatic conversations across IR possible. Third, a practice-oriented approach promises to overcome many of the traditional dichotomies that limit IR scholarship, including accounting for structure and agency, or stability and change. Finally, they argue that focusing on practices opens a new research agenda that allows us to revisit central concepts in the discipline of IR. 40 Adler and Pouliot 2011, 6. 41 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 42 Bigo 2011. 43 Pouliot 2008, 258.

10 shared background knowledge, dispositions and language, and which constitute and are constituted by their practices. As part of the broader practice turn, theories of communities of practice have emerged in IR as a way to theorize how background knowledge and practices can cement communities of individuals across borders. Adler (2008) defines communities of practice as “a configuration of a domain of knowledge that constitutes like-mindedness, a community of people that ‘creates the social fabric of learning’”44. The shared practice embodies the “knowledge the community develops, shares and maintains”45. This is key: that knowledge is not only “information that people carry in their heads, but also, and primarily, the intersubjective background or context of expectations, dispositions, and language that gives meaning to material reality” as well as that which constitutes and is constituted by practices46. Shared practices are sustained by a repertoire of communal resources, such as routines, sensibilities and discourse47. Communities of practice are both the intersubjective social structures that “constitute the normative and epistemic ground for action, but they are also agents, made up of real people who…affect political, economic and social events”48. I build on the theory of communities of practice by bringing it together with Bourdieu’s field theory. IR approaches to communities of practice have been critiqued for downplaying the conflict and competition within and between communities of practice49. An explicit focus on these power dynamics and competitions within and between communities of practice is essential for understanding knowledge creation, normative and institutional change, because it is in and through these struggles for power that normative outcomes emerge. Bourdieu’s field theory emphasizes that the field is not a domain of consensus, but is rather the product of permanent conflict, such that consensus within the field is rare50. The structure of the field and the possibility of social action within it are based on hierarchies of power that impact upon what actors are able

44 Adler and Pouliot 2011, 17. 45 Adler and Pouliot 2011, 17. 46 Adler 2005. 47 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 48 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 49 Dezalay and Garth 1995; Bigo 2011. 50 Bourdieu 1993; Bigo 2011.

11 (or not) to achieve in terms of social change51. Change in what is possible within the field is a result of the power relations – and changes in power relations – within the field52. This theoretical framework brings to the foreground of analysis the conflict and the struggles over power and interests, between and within communities of practice within the UN system. This framework accounts for change in and through practice and in interactions between social actors, but emphasizes that these processes of change are a struggle over what is at stake within a field or community. As such, it also explains how change in explicit rule, as Prugl (2009) argues, may not lead to a change in practices, but may rather reinforce the dominant power structures of the field53. For this reason, a communities of practice approach that is informed by Bourdieu can shed light on how feminist struggles may result both in stability – in terms of reinforcing dominant relations of power – or in normative upheaval and change, where change in ‘implicit rule’ is achieved by feminist practitioners, and where their victories demonstrate a real change in practice in how women’s rights and gender issues are addressed within the UN. I draw on IR theories of learning in and through interaction to help explain the everyday process of struggling to shift behaviours and practices. These interactions are struggles between actors who are trying to establish their legitimacy and expertise, and fight for their interests, within the field. Together, this approach provides for a better understanding of the process of change in norms and institutions, and the negotiations and struggles that lead to particular normative outcomes.

Gender Mainstreaming and the Case of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

Broadly speaking, this dissertation contributes to the assessment of the successes and failures of ‘gender mainstreaming’ within the UN system. Gender mainstreaming is traditionally – and formally – the practice of gender practitioners within the UN system. The original mandate for gender mainstreaming was developed in 1995 at the Beijing Conference54. As Hafner-Burton and Pollack (2002) argue, the provision calling for

51 Bourdieu 1977. 52 Bourdieu 1993. 53 Prugl 2009. 54 ECOSOC 1997.

12 gender mainstreaming across all policy aspects of the UN was one of the most important and innovative agreements within the Beijing Platform55. Gender mainstreaming in this provision was political in the sense that it was both a strategy for infusing mainstream policy agendas with a gender perspective, and also for transforming the institutions associated with these agendas56. It reflected the extent to which gender issues had entered the ‘mainstream’ and, from the 1990s, global institutions were increasingly vying to demonstrate their gender sensitivity in response to this policy management tool57. There are three distinctive aspects of mainstreaming, according to the 1997 ECOSOC definition that formally institutionalized the policy within the UN system: first, it demands the infusion of gender considerations into organizational processes; second, it requires the integration of concerns of women and men into policies and programs, that is, in the output of organizations; and third, it specifies that the goal of mainstreaming is equality between women and men58. As Baden and Goetz (1997) explain, gender mainstreaming “signifies a push towards systematic procedures and mechanisms within organizations – particularly government and public institutions – for explicitly taking account of gender issues at all stages of policy-making and programme design and implementation”59. Gender mainstreaming as a formal institutional goal has been adopted by most international organizations, and in that respect – as a significant shift in ‘explicit rule’ – can be considered a success. As Charlesworth (2005) explains: “Today, the vocabulary of gender mainstreaming is omnipresent in the international arena. Almost all UN bodies and agencies have formally endorsed it”60. However, while the purpose of gender mainstreaming as a strategy is to transform structures by integrating gender considerations into all institutional processes and outputs, in practice the definitions and implementation have been varied, such that gender

55 Hafner-Burton and Pollack 2002. Gender mainstreaming, in part, emerged from a discontent with feminist ‘Women in Development’ (WID) strategies that sought to advance women’s rights and gender equality as a special interest group, while holding in place gendered structures that perpetuated inequality, Prugl 2009; Charlesworth 2005. 56 Eyben 2013. 57 Baden and Goetz 1997. 58 See also Prugl and Lustgarten 2006. 59 Baden and Goetz 1997, 3. 60 Charlesworth 2005, 5.

13 mainstreaming is an “essentially contested concept and practice”61. In general, the concept of gender mainstreaming is somewhat vague and non-specific, which may be what has contributed to its rapid success overall62. There is considerable debate about what the concept means and how it should be implemented; the concept takes on meaning through organizational processes and politics63. Beveridge and Nott (2002) refer to the concept as “ownerless”, in the sense that no institution or body has any authority to determine which efforts at gender mainstreaming are ‘correct’ or ‘true’64. One outcome of this is that, as Charlesworth (2005) explains: “the technique of gender mainstreaming has stripped the feminist concept of ‘gender’ of any radical or political potential.”65 Another concern about gender mainstreaming that has been raised relates to how gender analysis has become a technocratic discourse dominated by technocratic experts, separated from its roots in radical feminism66. The shift to a technocratic (and bureaucratic) approach to gender equality is linked to the push to make gender more mainstream, institutionally respectable and fundable. In the process, new players are entering the field that bear no allegiance to feminist research and ideals67. These economists and statisticians are increasingly being hired by major development bureaucracies for research and analysis, and are relying on static and reductionist definitions of gender – seeing gender as ‘an interesting statistical variable’ rather than a defining one, which “strip[s] away consideration of the relational aspects of gender, of power and ideology and of how patterns of subordination are reproduced”.68 While many international organizations have been vocal advocates of gender mainstreaming, studies show that these commitments in discourse do not always translate into a change in behaviour or practice – or, differently put, in the ‘implicit rule’ – and

61 Walby 2005: 321 in Prugl 2009. 62 Beveridge and Nott 2002; Hafner-Burton and Pollack 2002. 63 Prugl and Lustgarten 2006. 64 Beveridge and Nott 2002. 65 Charlesworth 2005, 16. 66 Baden and Goetz 1997. However, ‘expertise’ is not necessarily against feminist goals. Prugl (2009) argues that gender expertise in itself is a strategy to help pinpoint the reasons for continued gender inequality and to find ways to advance feminist goals. There is an international cadre of gender experts who play a crucial role in translating feminist knowledge into policy applications. See also Prugl 2013. 67 Baden and Goetz 1997. 68 Baden and Goetz 1997, 7.

14 there is little follow-up and monitoring69. At the international level, most development organizations have adopted the discourse of gender mainstreaming, and many have put mainstreaming policies in place; the challenge remains at the level of implementation70. Overall, the commitment to gender mainstreaming has been haphazard, even within organizations like the UN, where considerable variation exists across agencies and programs71. The impacts and outcomes of the implementation of gender mainstreaming, in terms of gender equality, still remain fairly unknown72. Within this broader context of gender mainstreaming, this dissertation focuses on the case of the ‘women, peace and security’ agenda within the UN system. This agenda involves the incorporation of women’s human rights and gender equality issues into the UN’s policy and practices on peace and security, and has been considered one of the most successful instances of gender mainstreaming within the UN in recent years73. The landmark Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security (WPS) was adopted in 2000 and it brought, for the first time ever, a focus on women’s rights into the domain of the UN Security Council. The Resolution is largely framed by academics and civil society to be a victorious anomaly, a ‘miracle’ Resolution74. Without any existing documents in the Security Council to set a precedent on this issue prior to the passing of the Resolution, practitioners and scholars wonder how it is that the Security Council came to pass such a comprehensive Resolution on an issue that had never before crossed the Security Council’s floor. Civil society activism has largely been attributed with contributing to the

69 Charlesworth 2005. 70 Moser and Moser 2005. See the concluding chapter of this dissertation for data and statistics that shows the beginning of a comprehensive understanding of the current impact of gender mainstreaming within the UN. This data is the result of a UN initiative called the UN-SWAP (System- Wide Action Plan). 71 An early review of gender mainstreaming found that there has been sustained resistance, with inadequate budgeting for gender components of programs, poor supervision of the implementation of gender mainstreaming and a general lack of political commitment (Razavi and Miller 1998) 72 Moser and Moser 2005. 73 The WPS agenda is formally structured by a series of Security Council Resolutions, including: UN Security Council, ‘Resolution 1325 (2000)’ 31 October 2000; UN Security Council, ‘Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008)’ 19 June 2008; UN Security Council, ‘Security Council Resolution 1888 (2009)’ 30 September 2009; UN Security Council, ‘Security Council Resolution 1889 (2009)’ 5 October 2009; UN Security Council, ‘Security Council Resolution 1960 (2010)’ 16 December 2010; UN Security Council, ‘Security Council Resolution 2106 (2013)’ 24 June 2013; UN Security Council, ‘Security Council Resolution 2122 (2013)’ 18 October 2013; and UN Security Council, ‘Security Council Resolution 2242 (2015)’ 13 October 2015. 74 Cohn et al 2004.

15 strength of this resolution75. However, its passing did not lead to a massive push within the UN to address women’s rights issues in peace and security practice. In fact, while the Resolution gained strong momentum outside of the UN among civil society activists, 1325 seemed to fall flat within the UN system76. This is perhaps unsurprising: while Resolution 1325 was a deeply symbolic victory for women’s rights advocates, it is a non- binding normative resolution that is difficult to operationalize and contested in practice77. The stagnancy of Resolution 1325 in its initial years stands in stark contrast to the upsurge in attention that occurred almost a decade later. Following the passing of the second WPS Resolution 1820 in 2008, on conflict-related sexual violence, institutional momentum around WPS, and particularly on this singular issue exploded. Resolution 1820 (2008) and the issue of conflict-related sexual violence emerged as a flagship UN priority out of the stagnancy of the landmark Resolution 1325 (2000), subsequently shaping institutional momentum and shifting how women’s rights are addressed by the Security Council and within the UN system. In fact, the focus on conflict-related sexual violence has become so successful that many feminist scholars and practitioners are now worried about the implications of its success for the now-fragmented WPS agenda. While Resolution 1325 was pushed from beyond the UN system, Resolution 1820 and the focus on conflict-related sexual violence came from within the UN system. As my findings suggest, feminist practitioners positioned themselves, in and through their practical knowledge of how to navigate the UN system, to advance this singular issue in order to move beyond the stagnancy of the agenda in its initial years78. Since then, feminist practitioners within the UN are now active in trying to advance the normative framework of this agenda to an even greater extent; to rectify the imbalance in the focus on conflict- related sexual violence above the more rights-based norms within the broader WPS agenda; and to ensure that women’s rights issues and the provisions within the WPS Security Council resolutions are implemented in the daily practices of the UN system. This case is interesting and important for several reasons. First, the speed with which the focus on conflict-related sexual violence emerged within the UN system was

75 Cohn et al 2004. 76 E.g. see Otto 2009. 77 Tryggestad 2009. 78 This will be addressed in detail in Chapter 4 but is raised here as it provides context for the focus on the WPS agenda as a case study.

16 unprecedented, especially within an institutional domain (i.e. peace and security) that has historically been very resistant to addressing women’s human rights issues. As such, this is an example of relative success that can provide insights and lessons for the feminist practitioners who work within the UN system. However, the focus of this dissertation is on both stability and change – and the changes in the WPS agenda have not always successfully overturned the dominant power structures within the UN system. In fact, as this case shows, sometimes feminist victories, such as the adoption of new Security Council resolutions, can serve to reinforce rather than overturn existing relations of power in the field. Second, despite the rapid success of the agenda, the WPS is not yet institutionalized to the point where it is a taken-for-granted norm within the Security Council and the UN system more broadly. As such, this agenda provides a valuable case to illustrate the active struggle and day-to-day practices of feminist practitioners in their continuous efforts to advance women’s rights ideals at both the levels of explicit and implicit rule. Third, the domain of peace and security has traditionally been a bastion of patriarchal and state-based interests within the UN system, which have strongly conflicted with feminist ideals. As such, the hierarchies of power within this domain are deeply rooted and provide a testing ground for the power of feminist activism to promote change while also facing the risk of cooptation. Finally, this case is useful to illustrate the challenge for feminist practitioners of advancing changes in ‘explicit rule’ versus ‘implicit rule’. By focusing on how changes came about through the adoption of various Security Council resolutions, it is clear that changes in explicit rule may not always lead to significant changes in practice. The data shows that feminist practitioners struggle endlessly to translate the WPS resolutions into changes in practice. As such, these feminists are far from ‘walking the halls of power’ as governance feminism would argue. This case focuses on how feminist practitioners have sought to enter into this powerful domain, providing for an analysis of, arguably, one of the most challenging struggles that feminist practitioners within the UN system face.

Research Methodology and Data Collection

Methodologically speaking, I adopt a feminist approach to research that foregrounds reflexivity and my own positionality as a researcher. Reflexivity is a priority

17 for feminist scholars at a micro level, in terms of the analysis of individual researchers’ beliefs and behaviours as impacting upon the research process79. Bourdieusian methodology also pushes for reflexivity in the research process, focusing on the macro level, in terms of the dominance of the academic field of intellectuals80. My position as a researcher is unique, in the sense that throughout my dissertation process, I concurrently worked as a consultant for UN Women (UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women). My work with UN Women inspired the focus of the study, given that my colleagues were passionate feminist activists who believed that it was possible to ‘get in the system to change the system’, and who were active in the struggle to advance women’s rights within the UN system in their everyday practices. Because of this positionality, I had unique institutional access and knowledge that in large part allowed me to carry out this type of analysis, focusing on such detailed everyday practices. While I did not work from within the offices at headquarters, this position also offered me a sort of ‘quasi-insider’ perspective, such that participant observation of daily practices of UN Women bureaucrats was occasionally possible. This position raises questions about how to ethically and reflexively study a research group to which you partially belong. To address any ethical concerns, my consulting work focused largely on development-based research within UN Women, rather than the WPS agenda, so none of my interview participants were current (direct) colleagues. Two of my interview participants were former (direct) colleagues, although there was no conflict of interest in the sense that my work with them was complete. My paid consulting was in no way tied to my dissertation research and I was not being paid while conducting my dissertation research. In terms of participant observation, I consciously have not used any information as data that I gained when I was being paid to work for the UN, although this knowledge has certainly informed my subjectivity. I conducted most of my interviews in spring of 2013 with forty-one feminist practitioners from across the UN system. My interview subjects, on the whole, were either ‘indirect’ colleagues – in the sense that they work in the same building and may or may not have known who I was, but were willing to speak to me – and other practitioners

79 E.g. McCall 1992; Haraway 1988; Ackerly and True 2008. 80 Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Bigo 2011; Leander 2011.

18 who were introduced to me by my indirect colleagues. I used a snowball sampling method to gain access to interview subjects. I interviewed key UN officials, including governmental diplomats and bureaucrats, as well as some members of key civil society organizations. The positions of my interview subjects within the UN system were diverse, but, amongst others, I interviewed bureaucrats who worked within UN Women, UNDP, DPKO, and OHCHR, as well as diplomats from six different Member State missions. These interviews were semi-structured, in-depth interviews, and generally lasted for approximately one hour. Almost all interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Most of these interview participants were ‘feminists’ in the sense that I describe throughout this dissertation, in terms of the work that they do and their belief systems, with some also self-identifying as feminist. I also gathered documentary evidence in the form of written materials, that I was able to access online from various UN websites. I used UN documents, including committee and conference reports, statements, resolutions, declarations, conventions, annual reports and financial documents that are publicly available. I did not use any documents that were not publicly available. Together, my personal knowledge of the functioning of the UN system, my interviews with practitioners, and my document analysis provided the core of my dissertation research data. In terms of the process of analysis, I chose to map issues as they emerged, taking a grounded theoretical approach, in order to allow my research to reflect not only my intentions as a researcher but also the realities of the lives of my participants and what they see as priority issues within this broader research project. I felt this was an appropriate approach, given that I was trying to understand political processes, rather than testing or verifying hypothesis about causal relationships. In order to minimize critiques regarding the lack of reliability or validity of this methodology, I tried to employ a technique of triangulation – the use of multiple sources and types of information – in order to cross-validate the ideas and data.

Outline of the Dissertation

The dissertation proceeds as follows. Chapter 2 provides a conceptual and theoretical framework for the dissertation. It discusses first the question of what it means

19 to be a feminist within the UN system, drawing on the literature on femocrats and their role in international politics. An analysis of everyday practices of feminist practitioners not only allows for an understanding of the process of feminist engagement with international institutions, which attributes greater agency to these individuals, but also it responds to ‘governance feminism’ and the question of whether feminist ideas have been institutionalized within the global domain to the point that feminists are now walking the halls of power. It points to the complexity of feminist engagement with these institutions and shows that a practice-approach helps to illuminate the conflicts and competitions between the feminist community and the UN bureaucracy. Chapter 2 also elaborates on the theory of communities of practice, and explains how and why a Bourdieusian approach that emphasizes the field as a struggle is valuable for understanding communities of practice. This framework highlights the conflict between and within communities that leads to both stability and change, and the power embedded in that process. It also provides an explanation for how normative changes occur in and through practice in the interactions between social actors. It ends by looking at a practice that is critical for feminists within the UN system: the practice of writing documents. Chapter 3 is an empirical chapter that focuses on the creation of UN Women81. Through this institutional history, the chapter provides an illustration of the interaction between the feminist community of practice and the United Nations bureaucracy, including feminists’ engagement with resistant ‘non-feminist’ colleagues and the institutional origins of a persistent division within UN Women between feminist radicals and their career bureaucrat colleagues. It shows that the creation of UN Women shifted the space within which these feminists engage within the UN system, privileging certain bureaucratic practices for addressing women’s issues, at the expense of more idealist feminist practices and also black-boxing within a single entity the prior struggle between the feminists and bureaucrats. In so doing, the creation of UN Women brought new technocratic actors to bear in this domain and increased the visibility of feminist practices. However, this increased visibility had the counterintuitive effect of limiting the ability of feminist practitioners to advance their ideals within the UN system. This

81 UN Women united four formerly disparate gender entities within the UN system: UNIFEM, OSAGI, UN-DAW and UN-INSTRAW.

20 chapter provides context for the broader dissertation argument by focusing on how the feminist community of practice encounter and navigate this bureaucratic space, and their struggles at a high level to ensure gender mainstreaming within the UN system. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the case of the WPS agenda to show how the feminist community of practice engage in efforts to advance women’s rights issues within the domain of peace and security. These chapters highlight successful changes in both ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’ rule, but also emphasize that even seemingly radical changes can reinforce existing power relations. Chapter 4 looks at the creation of the WPS Security Council resolutions, and particular Resolutions 1325 and 1820. It looks at how feminist bureaucrats gained access to the field of peace and security through Resolution 1325 (2000); struggled to advance this agenda and made the choice to focus on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence, at the expense of other women’s rights issues. This choice was made in and through their efforts to mobilize for the adoption of a new Security Council resolution. This chapter also highlights how the success of the focus on conflict-related sexual violence is a tempered feminist victory: while in many ways it has been a success, it remains constrained by its bureaucratic setting and many feminists feel that the WPS agenda has subsequently lost some of its feminist intention, serving to reinforce the existing power dynamics within the Security Council’s approach to WPS. While Chapter 4 looks at the high level changes in creating resolutions that changed the ‘explicit rule’ of the UN’s approach to WPS, Chapter 5 looks at how feminist practitioners advance the WPS agenda in practice within the UN Security Council through their everyday practices. It highlights how the WPS agenda gains meaning in the interactions between feminist practitioners and their bureaucratic colleagues, and that feminists can wield power and influence in and through these interactions. It also shows how negotiation and strategy are embedded in the practice of writing documents, which is a key practice for feminists seeking to advance women’s human rights within the domain of peace and security. It highlights why and how the Security Council are resistant to addressing human rights issues, and how feminist practitioners are able to negotiate this resistance by strategically expanding from the dominant focus on conflict-related sexual violence in large part through the way that they write resolutions and support their colleagues in drafting other documents.

21 Chapter 6 offers conclusions for the project. It discusses the impact of feminist engagement within the UN system, and in the particular case of the WPS agenda. Beyond summarizing the findings of the dissertation, it offers two final points of theoretical discussion. First, it explores what makes feminist activism within the UN unique, by highlighting the specific challenges for feminists positioned within a gendered organization and seeking to advance an issue that faces particular institutional resistance. It offers data to contextualize the ‘gender regime’ of the UN that serves as the structure within which the feminist community of practice operates and against which they struggle, highlighting some of the successes and failures of gender mainstreaming more broadly. Second, it engages in conversation with Barnett and Finnemore’s (2004) findings on IOs as bureaucracies, highlighting what differs from their approach, and also how the findings in this dissertation build upon and support their theoretical framework, contributing overall to an understanding of how IOs function and behave. It offers concluding thoughts on the value of this approach for understanding stability and change within international organization, especially when considering highly contentious issue areas such as the advancement of women’s human rights and gender equality norms.

22 Chapter 2

A Theoretical Framework: Understanding the Feminist Community of Practice

This dissertation focuses on a community of feminists who seek to advance women’s rights and gender equality issues from within the UN system. This chapter serves as a theoretical and conceptual framework for the dissertation. First, drawing on the feminist institutionalist literature, it identifies these feminists as a group of individuals and looks at the role of ‘femocrats’ in international politics in order to better understand this community within the UN. It highlights the position of feminists at the margins of the institution, with linkages to both the broader global women’s movement as well as the bureaucracy internal to the organization. It also situates this feminist community within the UN, understood as a gendered organization. This study provides valuable insights for the literature on feminist institutionalism, by showing how what feminists do, in terms of their everyday practices within institutions, matters for their ability to advance women’s rights and gender norms. It also builds on the ‘governance feminism’ debate, addressing the dominant question of how feminists engage with international institutions. In particular, it problematizes the assumption that feminists have reached the top in institutions of global governance and are walking the halls of power, highlighting how the advancement of women’s rights remains a constant and everyday struggle. Second, this chapter engages with the literature on communities of practice and the practice turn in international relations (IR) theory, focusing on what actors do as essential to global politics. This approach provides a framework to understand how the feminist community of practice struggle within the UN system to promote change. I draw on Bourdieu’s field theory to inform the analysis of this community. The added value of a Bourdieusian approach to communities of practice is two-fold. First, it provides a better understanding of the conflict and competition between and within communities, and a nuanced understanding of power in the process, with the effect of providing a better understanding of the process of change in norms and institutions, and the negotiations and conflicts that lead to particular normative outcomes. Second, in understanding that everything is social within the field of practice, IR theory can better account for change in

23 and through practice and in interactions between social actors. A Bourdieusian approach focuses on how change in norms is a struggle in and through practice and in interactions over what is at stake in the field or community. These interactions are battles between actors trying to establish their legitimacy within the field, fight for their interests, for resources and for the dominance of their expertise. Ultimately, this approach illuminates both how feminist practitioners are able to push for change around global norms, and also how they continue to face resistance to change, which manifests as the reproduction of dominant power structures that can continue to exclude women and gender issues from the center of attention. This chapter ends by focusing on strategic feminist practices more specifically. It highlights in particular the practice of writing documents, which is a recurring theme throughout the dissertation project, and which is a core practice that comprises many of the interactions and struggles between feminists and bureaucrats.

Feminists within International Organizations

Who Are These Individuals?

The feminist community of practice within the UN system is comprised of bureaucrats and diplomats who express high personal and professional commitments to the advancement of women’s human rights and gender equality globally and within the UN system. They draw on specialized forms of knowledge, experience and training to inform their day-to-day actions, practices, language and interactions within the UN system in an effort to change the organization’s policies and practices around women’s human rights82. The literature on ‘femocrats’ is useful for understanding the role and position of feminist practitioners within the UN system, although a feminist practitioner is conceptually different from a femocrat. According to Eisenstein’s (1996) seminal work

82 While there are multiple forms of feminism, I consider feminist practitioners within the UN to have a shared repertoire and background knowledge that draws primarily from the human rights conferences and conventions related to women’s rights, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, and the 1995 Beijing Conference for Women in particular.

24 on Australian femocrats, a femocrat is a woman, feminist by personal conviction, who works within a government bureaucracy at a senior level to advance the status of women in society83. I would broaden and shift this definition when considering a feminist practitioner to include both men and women, who are feminist by personal conviction, working within any sort of bureaucracy, including international bureaucracies, at any level, to advance the status of women within the organization and around the world. Feminist practitioners are also conceptually different from femocrats because the focus is analytically centered on what these individuals do within the institution, in terms of their everyday practices and interactions that serve to advance women’s rights norms84. As Eyben and Turquet (2013) explain, femocrats might not be directly working on gender equality projects or as gender advisors: “not everyone in such posts is feminist and there are also feminists doing other jobs”85. To be a feminist practitioner might be understood as being a contradiction in terms: bureaucrats tend to seek the preservation of the status quo, while feminists tend to want to shift the status quo. It is this contradictory position that can often place feminist practitioners in conflict with the bureaucratic (hierarchical and hegemonic) organization86. Femocrats may particularly feel isolated and rejected within the bureaucracy, a feeling that can be exacerbated through awareness that their presence and expertise may not be welcome87. The reason for their lack of welcome is that many femocrats have jobs as a result of external pressures and prevailing global norms that have pushed the organization to include them, rather than because of any core organizational commitment to advancing women’s rights and gender equality norms within the organization88. Moreover, as a result of the bureaucratic ideal of ‘impartiality’ and ‘neutrality’, career bureaucrats may not respond well to colleagues who they perceive

83 Eisenstein 1996. 84 This chapter will address practices and their relevance in more detail to come. For now, and for the rest of this section, ‘feminist practitioners’ and ‘femocrats’ will be used interchangeably, because the focus of this section is on the ‘feminist’ dimension of the feminist community of practice, rather than the ‘community of practice’ dimension. 85 Eyben and Turquet 2013. 86 Eisenstein 1996. 87 Eyben and Turquet 2013. 88 Eyben and Turquet 2013.

25 to be ‘special pleaders’ for women’s rights – or any political issues – and thus out of place within the context of a ‘neutral and politically impartial’ organization89. However, it is also this contradiction between bureaucrats and feminists that can provide opportunities for femocrats to work towards change. By working strategically and exploiting their position within the organization, feminists within international organizations can change bureaucracies. As Eyben and Turquet (2013) explain, “when they learn to be comfortable with their position, feminist bureaucrats exploit their marginality through political strategies that include building and balancing internal and external alliances, leveraging outside pressure and turning dominant discourse on its head”90. Feminist actors within these systems are constrained by the rules but can also trigger institutional change through their interpretation or instantiation of the rules, exploiting ambiguities and pushing for greater clarity or the implementation of rules91. Eyben (2013) argues that feminist bureaucrats are motivated by their relative powerlessness to work for social change, taking advantage of their marginal position and dual identity inside powerful institutions; they learn to ‘rock the boat without ever falling out of it’ as ‘tempered radicals’, pushing for a succession of small victories that accumulate and add up to social change, while maintaining a profoundly radical social agenda92. It is the task of a competent femocrat to determine how to navigate these advantages and to balance them against the need for visibility, power and bold action.

Governance Feminism and the Question of Cooptation

Feminist practitioners face a significant challenge in their engagement with international institutions: on the one hand, they have access to spaces of power that were previously closed off to ideas and discourses about gender equality and women’s rights, but on the other hand, a growing literature shows the danger of the cooptation of these same feminist ideas by institutions. For one, many femocrats within institutional spaces are treated by the broader women’s movement and academia as if they have been coopted

89 Chappell 2002; Eyben 2013. 90 Eyben and Turquet 2013. 91 Oosterveld 2014; Chappell 2014. 92 Eyben 2013.

26 by the standard operating procedures within the organization and have betrayed the radical movement. Eisenstein explains, for example, that many voices from within the Australian women’s movement critiqued these femocrats: that they were not ‘true’ feminists because feminists work in collective non-hierarchical organizations; that they were elites whose interests diverged from those of most women; that they were not legitimate agents of the women’s movement because they were not representative, either demographically or politically, of the population; and that they were coopted, in terms of lending themselves to legitimizing the State, without fundamentally altering it93. Many observers consider that feminist ideas are used to maintain the status quo power relations of the organization, rather than change them. There are new questions being raised for feminists about the implications of voicing feminist values from within spaces of power, especially as a number of feminist achievements have served to simultaneously advance neoliberal political and economic projects94. While successes such as the turn to addressing sexual violence are seen as victories for feminist agendas, Orloff and Schiff (2014) acknowledge that these victories often reflect, at least in part, the unanticipated cooptation of feminist ideas into political projects that simultaneously meet the demands of capitalism and social conservatism. Beyond cooptation, there are examples where feminists have worked in actual alliance with socially conservative and neoliberal projects. Some recent works on feminist campaigns to address sexual violence have illuminated the consequences of feminist alliances with power and the cooptation of feminist ideas, with a key finding being that feminist anti-violence activists have played an unintended (and sometimes intended) role in harsher criminalization and punishment policies in the USA for crimes of sexual violence and in legitimizing border control and anti-immigration policies in the case of anti-trafficking work95. Arguably, the question of cooptation is an empirical question and the answer is more complicated than black or white. As Newman (2013) shows, there are contradictions in the relationship between feminism and neoliberalism, just as there are complexities in the dynamics of cooptation and power, and in questions about how processes of ‘gender mainstreaming’ have served to both acknowledge and depoliticize

93 Eisenstein 1996. 94 Orloff and Schiff 2014. 95 On violence, see Richie 2012; Bumiller 2008; on trafficking, see Bernstein 2012 and Chapkis 2003.

27 feminist claims within international organizations96. By focusing on the issue of cooptation, analysts erase spaces of agency and resistance within these institutions. In the case of feminism and neoliberalism for example, while feminism has had to adapt to neoliberalism, neoliberalism has also had to shift in light of feminist projects, adopting principles of equality, rights and welfare benefits97. By considering the complexity in these relationships, it is possible to better analyze political agency within these processes. Moreover, in focusing on these processes at their micro-levels, in terms of the daily practices of feminists in their struggles to advance women’s rights, the power at play, contestation over interests and strategies emerge as key considerations that offer a more complicated understanding of the outcomes of feminist agency and action. Feminism is no longer merely a counter-cultural minority discourse, as evidenced by the fact that many feminist ideas have been installed in State-level, legal and international institutions, and an increasing number of women and feminists occupy positions of authority and power within these institutions. Halley (2006) argues that across national governments, the human rights establishment, and international organizations, there are plenty of examples where feminism is not operating from the underground, but in fact is running things98. She refers to this as ‘governance feminism’ (GF), the “incremental but by now quite noticeable installation of feminists and feminist ideas in actual legal-institutional power”99. Halley argues that feminists are no longer helpless outsiders as they once were, but instead have infiltrated spaces of power, intervening in existing forms of power and participating in them in many (often conflicting) ways100. Within the governance feminism framework, the result has not only been the infiltration of these institutions by feminists, but has also meant the transposition of feminist ideas into specifically non-feminist forms of power. She notes that governance feminists do not experience themselves as wielding consolidated power, but instead often complain that they have no power at all, when the kinds of power they have are more

96 Newman 2013. 97 Newman 2013. 98 Halley 2006. 99 Halley et al 2006, 340. 100 Halley et al 2006.

28 fragmented, mobile and contingent than dominant101. While it is true that feminist ideas are increasingly being institutionalized within international organizations (especially in the form of ‘explicit’ rule) and that feminist individuals are increasingly walking the halls of power, this theory is short-sighted in the sense that it cannot really account for the dynamics of power in the everyday interactions of these individuals, and thus cannot account for the process of institutionalization of feminist ideas. Without an account of process, focusing instead only on the outcome, GF is an incomplete story about feminist engagement with institutions and the power (or the lack of power) wielded by these individuals. This approach mistakenly focuses on the outcome of changes in ‘explicit’ rule, such as the adoption of gender-based language in resolutions and laws, without accounting for the fact that those explicit laws are made meaningful in the continual and everyday struggles and efforts of feminists. By focusing on the daily practices of feminist practitioners in their efforts to advance women’s rights norms, this dissertation problematizes the assumption that feminists have simply reached the top in a linear fashion: their efforts, resistance, strategy, successes and failures are part of a constant struggle for power and resources within the UN system.

Feminist Practitioners Inside/Outside the UN

While the focus of this analysis is on individuals within the UN system, feminist practitioners draw legitimacy and support from the broader global women’s movement. Many of the feminist practitioners within the UN, in fact, were previously members of civil society organizations or were activists within the women’s movement. As such, the broader field of feminist activism informs much of the experience and knowledge that these individuals bring into practice in the UN and informs their day-to-day actions, practices, language and interactions within the UN system. The UN has been an important site of activism for the global feminist movement. Snyder (2006), the founding director of UNIFEM, argues that the UN has become the “unlikely godmother” – as women’s guardian and advocate – upon whom women have depended to advance global norms and to create the possibility of global connections and

101 Halley et al 2006.

29 discussions102. She argues that the growth in women’s rights norms in the 1990s and early 21stC in different parts of the world was made possible by the coopting of the UN as a site for mobilization, for its ability to build new institutions to sustain the movement and as a global institution that could legitimate the new policies that were being developed103. Snyder quotes Marilyn Porter, activist and scholar, in saying “There is no doubt about the importance of activity around the UN in the formation of an entire generation of feminist activists from around the world”104. Noeleen Heyzer, also a former director of UNIFEM until 2007, has explained: “The UN became the place where women could bring issues ignored at the national level into the international spotlight to be addressed by national governments”105. She further elaborates “the UN system provides legitimacy for marginalized groups to have a powerful space for the articulation of their ideas”106. The women’s movement in particular has taken advantage of the power of this space and the extent of their involvement within the UN system is unique. In terms of the role of the broader women’s movement, the focus in the literature, when considering why and how women’s rights and gender equality issues gain traction within international organizations, is usually on social movements and their advocacy from outside of the UN. This is, primarily, because the women’s movement have been so successful in lobbying the UN system over the past 40 years107. Scholars attribute most successes in institutionalizing women’s rights globally to the efforts of the women’s movement, including campaigns on ending violence against women, reproductive rights, women’s rights as human rights, and the turn to gender mainstreaming108. Scholars have focused on the organizational structures of the women’s movement, on their strategies and discursive framing, and their influence in problem definition, agenda setting and their impact on policy formulations109. International organizations and particularly the UN

102 Snyder 2006. 103 Snyder 2006 104 Porter and Judd 1999, 8 in Snyder 2006. 105 Weiss and Caryannis 2005, 260. 106 Weiss and Caryannia 2005, 262 107 Broadly speaking, this successful mobilization has been evident since the UN declared 1975 International Women’s Year. 108 See for example True and Mintrom 2001 on gender mainstreaming; Jain and Chacko 2008 and Friedman 2003 in general; Joachim 2003 on violence against women and reproductive rights; Bunch 1990 on women’s rights as human rights. 109 Caglar et al 2013.

30 have had a unique relationship to the women’s movement; they have “played a catalytic role in focusing feminist strategizing internationally, and they have been instrumental in advancing the status of women worldwide. In turn, feminist strategizing was crucial to bringing the issue of gender equality to the UN”110. The UN has been a key venue for feminist activism and has been a focal point of efforts to advance women’s rights norms. While the focus of this study is on the ‘insiders’ within the UN system, the alliances that are built and maintained between insiders and outsiders in the women’s movement are crucial. Work on issues related to gender equality and women’s rights inside the UN is significantly enabled through collaboration with the women’s movement outside of the UN system, as well as with the support of allies among Member States interested in supporting positive change in particular areas111. As Hannan (2013) explains, effective collaboration across these three groups of actors can provide enhanced potential to create momentum for achieving common goals112. A number of scholars have proposed concepts such as ‘triangles of empowerment’113, ‘feminist strategic partnerships’114 or ‘velvet triangles’115, whereby groups of feminists across a constellation cooperate in order to achieve certain collective goals. Each of these concepts is analytically slightly different, but tend to highlight the importance and necessity of bureaucrats, politicians and civil society working together116. While the focus of this study is primarily on two sides of the velvet triangle – the femocrats and the diplomats – there is an important role for the women’s movement outside of the UN in providing support, legitimacy and advocacy for feminists within the UN system.

The Logic of the UN as a Gendered Organization

110 Caglar et al 2013, 2. 111 Hannan 2013. 112 Hannan 2013. 113 Vargas and Wieringa 1998, in Holli 2008. 114 Mazur 2002. 115 Woodward 2003. 116 For example, in her analysis of 27 debates in 13 Western democracies, Mazur (2002) showed that partnerships between women’s movement activists, femocrats in women’s policy agencies and political women were very important for the policy outcome.

31 Feminist practitioners within the UN are operating within a particular organizational context, imbued with unique relations of power and domination. Feminist scholars of organizational theory emphasize that all organizations are gendered in particular ways, which impact the possibility of action within these institutional spaces. The gendered logic of an organization affects all actors within the organization, as well as shaping and being shaped by the rules and norms that constitute the organization. The feminist community of practice, as well as all other actors, operate within this gendered organization. Early feminist work on gender and institutions focused on macro-level causes of gender inequality, rooted in ‘patriarchy’ rather than in the institutional processes and practices that reinforce inequality and discrimination117. Since then, the focus has moved more directly onto how relations of power operating in and through institutions are a crucial part of the ‘structure’ of gender118, with organizations and institutions increasingly being understood as ‘gendered’ and affecting the ways in which gendered power relations and inequality are constructed, shaped and maintained119. Feminist institutionalism draws attention to the gendered nature of institutions and the ways in which institutions shape political behaviour and outcomes in gendered ways120. According to the seminal work by Acker (1990), to say that an organization is ‘gendered’ means that “advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine. Gender is not an addition to ongoing processes, conceived as gender neutral. Rather, it is an integral part of those processes, which cannot be properly understood without an analysis of gender”121. Gender relations play out in different ways across institutions, whether through the creation and reproduction of the gendered division of labour, the construction of symbols and images that reinforce gender relations, or the interpersonal day-to-day interactions between individuals within institutions122. Even as organizations begin to change, such as due to pressures for increased gender mainstreaming, women’s entry into masculine domains

117 Krook and Mackay 2011. 118 Connell 2002. 119 Acker 1990; Krook and Mackay 2011; Chappell 2002. 120 Gains and Lowndes 2014. 121 Acker 1990, 146. 122 Acker 1990.

32 can trigger complex adjustments where the symbolic gender dichotomy is preserved even if other more explicit changes in gender relations can be identified123. The way that the UN is gendered matters not only in terms of how the individuals within this system are impacted by relations of gender, but also how the issue area – the advancement of women’s rights and gender equality – is deeply embedded in a gendered logic. Connell (2002, 2006) argues that gender is, above all, “a pattern of social relations in which the positions of women and men are defined, the cultural meanings of being a man and a woman are negotiated, and their trajectories through life are mapped out”124. Within an organization, the overall pattern of gender relations can be called its ‘gender regime’, which can be divided along four dimensions: first, the gender division of labour is the way in which production and consumption are arranged along gender lines; second, the gender relations of power is the way in which control, authority and force are exercised along gender lines, including organizational hierarchy and power; third, emotion and human relations is the way in which attachment and antagonism among people and groups are organized along gender lines, including feelings of solidarity or prejudice; and finally, gender culture and symbolism is the way in which gender identities are defined in culture, language and symbols, as well as the prevailing beliefs and attitudes about gender125. Each organization has a different (and changing) gender regime that is produced by its organizational history and particular experiences. The focus on femocrats operating within this gendered organization and within the context of its ‘gender regime’ provides insight into gendered power relations, the functioning of organizations, and the dynamics of stability and change. The study of femocrats has provided two particular insights to the study of institutions: first, that institutions are not monolithic and can only be understood when seen as separate and distinct collections of entities and individuals; and second, while institutions are ‘gendered’, they are historically variable in their composition and effects and are therefore, theoretically, open to change126. When accounting for normative change, scholars have tended to focus on the role of social movements that are extra-institutional,

123 Gherardi and Poggio 2001, in Connell 2006. 124 Connell 2006, 839. 125 Connell 2002. 126 Krook and Mackay 2011; Sawer 1990; Chappell 2002; Connell 2002.

33 with change occurring from the ‘bottom up’ and from outside of the state or the international organization127. There is a need to ‘demystify the bureaucracy’ and to focus on how specific individuals engage within international organizations and deal with the challenging situations they encounter in seeking to advance women’s rights issues128.

Informal Practices: Navigating Bureaucracy

When considering how feminists engage within the UN system, it is necessary to think beyond formal gender mainstreaming strategies. While feminists are engaged in formal strategies for promoting an agenda for gender equality and women’s rights, many are also engaged in informal – sometimes covert – strategies to challenge organizational power relations. These practices are less well known and less visible, but no less important129. These informal practices encompass everyday forms of resistance that feminist practitioners employ as part of a “skilful manipulation of bureaucracies”130. There are a number of aspects of an informal feminist ‘engagement’ strategy; mainstream institutions are key terrains of political struggle131. In order to take advantage of and navigate these spaces, feminists must embrace and live with contradiction. As Eyben and Turquet (2013) quote a bureaucrat saying: “I am definitely contributing to re-building and regenerating this present structure. There’s no question about it. And at the same time to get anything done, I subvert it. I break the rule and I subvert it”132. It takes highly sophisticated political skills to engage in informal strategies, to identify strategic points of leverage, possible alliances, political opportunity structures, and to frame strategies in the most politically feasible ways. These strategies and skills emerge in and through practice133. Feminist practitioners within international organizations must not only strive to maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of their

127 Pettinicchio 2012; see for example Keck and Sikkink 1998, Joachim 2003. 128 Eyben and Turquet 2013. 129 Hendriks 2005. 130 Smyth 1999, 19, in Hendriks 2005. 131 Reinalt 1995, in Miller and Razavi 1998. 132 Eyben and Turquet 2013. 133 Miller and Razavi 1998.

34 bureaucratic colleagues, but also in the eyes of the women’s movement134. Key to this is the process of building alliances, both with other feminists within the international organization; with ‘feminist-friendly’ bureaucrats that could become potential allies; and with the women’s movement beyond. In internal relationship-building, feminists must strategically build relationships, maintaining an open and friendly demeanour, a sense of humour and an inclusive perspective; otherwise their views may be quickly rejected135. It is also necessary to build strong bridges with the women’s movement to foster external pressure to ensure that there is support beyond the international organization upon which internal practitioners can rely in their efforts136. In Eyben and Turquet’s recent collection, their authors emphasize the battle analogy of feminist engagement as ‘guerrilla’ force, requiring feminists to secure wins with scarce time and resources; exploiting opportunities for progress but not showing up too much ‘on the radar’ of an organizational system that is resistant to gender equality and that can sabotage their success137. One aspect of this is ‘compromising for change’; that is, balancing between neither pushing the gender equality agenda too far – thereby alienating potential allies – nor accepting the minimum requirements to maintain status quo operations138. Engaging with institutions necessarily requires compromises in order to promote change, but this can raise ethical questions for feminists in terms of where they invest their energies and for what ends139. As Razavi (1998) explains, feminist practitioners play an essentially conservative role as mediators of sorts; translating feminist concerns and demands into issues and language that can gain traction and hold weight within the institutional context140. In doing so, these feminist insiders have been able to make incremental progress, but often at the expense of diluting their ideals. Issue framing and the ethics of instrumental justifications for action, such as justifying the need to address women’s rights based on the benefits to market efficiency,

134 Miller and Razavi 1998. 135 Hendriks 2005. 136 Miller and Razavi 1998. 137 Eyben and Turquet 2013. 138 Hendriks 2005. 139 Staudt 1990, in Miller 1998. 140 Razavi 1998.

35 are important considerations141. Since gender equality and women’s rights policies are being formulated within a particular organizational context, and since the feminist practitioners are familiar with what ‘works’ and how to make progress, there is often pressure to ensure that the gender policy ‘fits’ with the organizational mandate142. For many feminist practitioners, the modification of feminist discourse is an intentional choice that involves an awareness of the contradictions and possible pitfalls of certain language, but that is seen as necessary in forwarding a feminist agenda by the most effective means possible within the organization143. As such, instrumentalism need not automatically lead to cooptation and a compromise on feminist demands144. Instrumental justifications may be inevitable given the constraints of the context within which feminist practitioners operate, but they also are strategic in the sense that when they are married to a specific feminist intention, they can be subversive145. As Razavi (1998) notes, in the ‘real’ world, compromises, strategic negotiations and instrumentalism are not aberrations but are par for the course146. While feminist ideas may no longer be in their purest form, there is progress in that they are becoming institutionalized in the organization at all. However, critics argue that by compromising on feminist ideals, it risks depoliticizing the feminist agenda; they often result in women or gender being simply a means to other ends; and instrumental arguments fail to recognize the gendered nature of institutions themselves147. Regardless of where one falls in this debate, it suggests a broader reality: feminist practitioners must be very aware of their language choices and the words they use in their efforts to advance their ideals. As Katzenstein (1995) argues: “feminist interest groups are often very word conscious, usually out of calculated instrumentality as to what phraseologies will ‘work’”148. Ultimately, the criticism of discursive compromises shows little understanding of the

141 See Ferree 2003 in general for feminist framing of issues and the question of resonant versus radical issue framing, and Razavi 1998 for a discussion of instrumental justifications for feminist action. 142 Moser and Moser 2005; Razavi 1998; Baden and Goetz 1997; Hannan 2013. 143 Hendriks 2005. Chapter 3 of this dissertation will address a situation where this rejection of human rights in favour of economic discourses may not, in fact, be strategic. 144 Razavi 1998. 145 Moser and Moser 2005. 146 Razavi 1998. 147 Baden and Goetz 1997. 148 Katzenstein 1995, 36, in Miller and Razavi 1998.

36 constraints face by these individuals, and the context within which these feminists operate. Within these constraints, strategic alliances, compromises and instrumental arguments are necessary in order to make progress in persuading those who are not convinced of the intrinsic value of gender equality, that it must become a priority149. In sum, this section has addressed the core literature on feminist engagement with international organizations, to provide context and conceptual clarity on what it means to be a feminist practitioner. This dissertation builds on this feminist institutionalist literature by providing an account of feminist practices in their everyday engagements with international organizations. The empirical insights provided by this approach inform the literature by emphasizing not only the results of feminist engagement (in terms of outcomes of action) but also their process of engagement within this gendered organization. For one, this focus provides a better understanding of the agency of these individuals within this constrained bureaucratic context. Also, this section offers a more complex understanding of how feminist ideals have been institutionalized within international organizations; not as a linear and finite process, but as a constant process of struggle and contestation over norms and ideas within which these actors engage on a daily basis. Later in this chapter, I will elaborate on how this process can be understood and explained using an interactional approach150. Using this approach, it is clear that norms must be built, maintained and continuously reinforced in practice. An interactional approach pushes back on linear feminist theories that suggest feminist ideals have been successfully institutionalized. Instead, it emphasizes that norms are shaped by continuing interactions between actors, that affect their making, re-making and un-making in practice – and thus affect how they are given meaning in global political arenas. The next section will address the literature on practices more specifically, drawing on the communities of practice approach as useful for understanding this group of feminist individuals. I expand the communities of practice approach by drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of fields, to emphasize the conflict and competition within and between communities that field theory makes evident. The feminist community of

149 Razavi 1998. 150 Brunnee and Toope 2010.

37 practice exists within a bureaucratic setting that encompasses different, competing and conflicting interests. Drawing this conflict to the foreground illuminates how feminist practitioners navigate the field and how their social action causes (or can fail to cause) normative and behavioural change within a constrained bureaucratic setting.

Understanding Communities of Practice Using Bourdieu’s Field Theory

The Value of A Practice Approach for IR Theory

The practice turn in IR is an attempt to resolve some key challenges in international relations theory regarding how we understand the decision-making behaviour of actors, social action and change151. For one, IR theory suffers a representational bias, tending to focus on the deliberate actions of agents, either through rational cost-benefit calculations about their choices (based on the logic of consequences) or with reference to norms and rules that correspond to identities (logic of appropriateness)152. These are conscious representations that are “emphasized to the detriment of background knowledge – the inarticulate know-how from which reflexive and intentional deliberation becomes possible”153. The problem with the logic of consequences is that there is a tendency to mistake the outcome of a practice for its process154. The logic of appropriateness also suffers a representational bias by assuming an external reflection of appropriate behaviour. The logic of practice, on the other hand, stresses the non-reflective side of social order155. It stresses the idea that the actions of actors in the social world are often not the product of deliberate and conscious calculation; that most of the time, most humans act non-reflectively156. The

151 Bueger and Gadinger (2015) highlight that there are multiple approaches to practice theory in IR. However, they usefully specify that there are six core commitments of practice theory, at the level of ontology, epistemology and methodology: Practice theories emphasize process, develop an account of knowledge as action, appreciate the collectivity of knowledge, recognize the materiality of practice, embrace the multiplicity of orders, and work with a performative understand of the world. 152 Hopf 2010. 153 Pouliot 2008, 258. 154 Pouliot 2008. 155 Pouliot 2008. 156 Hopf 2010. See also for example Mitzen (2006) who argues that it is routine, not conscious decision-making that anchors actors’ identities.

38 representational bias in IR theory means that conscious representations are emphasized to the detriment of background knowledge157. The focus on practices brings background knowledge to the foreground of the analysis of social action and in doing so, draws attention to the meanings that are woven into practice that often remain tacit and inarticulate158. In fact, ultimately, Pouliot (2008) argues that the logic of practicality is ontologically prior to the other logics of social action in IR theory because it is a result of practical sense that agents can feel whether a social situation calls for the logic of appropriateness or consequences. As Bigo (2011) argues, another challenge within contemporary IR is the way that the discipline has come to be organized through an “opposition between an empiricist- objectivist mainstream and an idealist form of constructivism that neglects the most basic knowledge of how social practices emerge, persist and constrain actors beyond their individual imaginations and beliefs”159. The chasm that exists between the two dominant IR approaches of realism and constructivism pits material and ideational factors against one another. Indeed, both of these theoretical traditions assume a false duality between matter and ideas. Materialist IR theories assume that physical conditions determine social outcomes; whereas the constructivist critique counters that material factors do not speak for themselves but acquire meaning through social interaction160. However, even constructivist theories that recognize the importance of both material and ideational factors rest on the false dualism, where meaning is merely “attached” to material objects161. Practice theory seamlessly combines material and ideational factors, as they both become part of social relations, with material objects, agents and meanings continually interacting162. By looking at the social practices of actors, realism’s material structuralism and constructivism’s ideational factors can be combined163. The practice-oriented approach also avoids the dichotomy in IR between structure and agency164. A relational approach to analyzing practices avoids the structure-agency

157 Pouliot 2008. 158 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 159 Bigo 2011. 160 Pouliot 2010. 161 Pouliot 2010, see Wendt 1999. 162 Adler and Pouliot 2011, see also Latour 2005. 163 Merand 2010. 164 Wendt 1987.

39 dilemma, by focusing on the relations, shared knowledge and practices between actors that bind them165. Practices are both individual (agential) and structural, in that agency and structure jointly constitute and enable practices166. Practices enable agency as they translate structural background knowledge into intentional acts and endow them with social meaning; but structures also constitute practices, especially in the form of standards of competence that are socially recognized167. The agent-structure debate is a particularly salient and sustained divide within constructivism, where most scholars agree on the mutual constitution of agents and structure but where in actuality the focus is contested, tending to fall to one side of the debate or the other168.

The Theory of Communities of Practice

In this dissertation, the concept of communities of practice provides a useful tool for thinking about how the feminist practitioners within the UN system are part of a community of people with shared knowledge, dispositions, and language, and which constitute and are constituted by their practices169. This lens is useful for understanding how feminists might create their own sense of community – and shared identity – within the larger organizational context of the UN system170. Wenger (1998) argues that communities of practice are important places of negotiation, learning, meaning and identity171. There are three dimensions of a community of practice. First, members interact with one another, establishing norms and relationships through mutual engagement. Practices exist because people are engaged in actions on an ongoing basis that develop into routines with meaning172. This engagement also leads to the constitution

165 Bigo 2011. 166 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 167 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 168 Kim and Sharman 2014; Sikkink 2014. 169 A number of studies across disciplines have looked at communities of practitioners from a feminist lens, although this has yet to be taken up in IR literature in a substantive way. See, for example, Callahan and Tomaszewski (2007) who study how women participate in male-dominated security organizations and develop support networks amongst themselves that shape their identities; or Paechter (2003, 2006) who uses the idea of communities of practice as a way of thinking about the formation and perpetuation of masculinities and femininities. 170 Callahan and Tomaszewski 2007. 171 Wenger 1998. 172 Bicchi 2011.

40 of identity, which “consists of negotiating the meaning of our experience of membership in social communities”173. Second, members are bound together by an understanding of a sense of joint enterprise. While not everyone in the community may agree on the specifics of the community, such as the end goal or how to reach it, there is a shared understanding of the ‘rules of the game’ of the community. Third, members produce over time a shared repertoire of communal resources, including for example, language, artefacts and stories. As Wenger (1998) explains, “over time, the joint pursuit of an enterprise creates resources for negotiating meaning”174. Meaning is negotiated through a process of participation and reification, which Wenger understands as the process of giving form to experience by producing objects such as symbols, stories, terms, and concepts that reify something of that practice in a congealed form175. Communities of practice are not stable or static, but evolve over time as new members join, as meanings and identities are negotiated and as learning occurs. While existing IR approaches to communities of practice address how activity emerges or changes through practices, they have “tended to downplay the conflict and competition”176 within and between communities of practice. They assume a degree of consensus around practices, which does not account for struggles over power within these communities, or the contestation, competition and conflicting interests of actors within a field. Marshal and Rollinson (2004) suggest that Lave and Wenger’s (1991) account of the negotiation over meaning can be misinterpreted as ‘excessively quiescent and consensual’, while in reality the negotiation of meaning is often plagued by struggle and disagreement177. As Bigo (2011) argues, IR constructivist theorizing on practices discusses norms and practices “without analyzing the power struggles, strategies of distinction, symbolic violence of ‘consensus’ and multiple tactics of agents”178. However, an explicit focus on these power dynamics within communities of practice is essential for understanding knowledge creation and change. As such, there is a need to better conceptualize interests, resources and power within these communities; and to remedy

173 Wenger 1998, in Adler 2005 174 Wenger 1998, 82. 175 Wenger 1998, 59 176 Dezalay and Garth 1995, 32. 177 As cited in Roberts 2006. 178 Bigo 2011, 234.

41 the idealism of the existing practice turn in IR, which de-emphasizes the power struggles that exist within fields and communities of practice. To this end, I draw on Bourdieu’s field theory to supplement and inform the theory of communities of practice179. Communities of practice contribute to understanding the process of normative change because they provide the context within which the knowledge or norms that shape actors’ understandings of the world are generated and, through participation, actors’ understandings and knowledge of the world are maintained or shifted180. However, bringing a Bourdieusian conception of fields to a communities of practice approach helps to better account for this process of negotiation over meaning. It draws to the foreground of analysis the power and politics at the heart of the interactions between and within communities of practice in order to highlight what is at stake in the competitions over meaning and legitimacy; the relationship between the trajectories of agents and the shape of the field as a whole; and the battles over expertise between and within communities of practice that produce institutional change and learning. A communities of practice framework that draws on Bourdieu’s field theory provides a better understanding of how social action can lead to normative change and also how and why attempts at change may not result in a changed or intended outcome, by highlighting the power dynamics and struggles at the heart of the interactions within and between communities of practice.

Bringing Bourdieu into a Communities of Practice Approach

A Field of Struggle and Power

Bourdieu employs three key interrelated tools to study practices: the concepts of ‘field’, ‘habitus’ and ‘capital’. A community of practice can be conceived of as a ‘field’ in the Bourdieusian sense, as a social configuration along the three main dimensions: relations of power, in the sense that fields are comprised of unequal positions, where

179 The move from field to community of practice has been suggested by S.A. Barab and T. M. Duffy (2000) and has also been suggested more recently by Emanuel Adler (2015). 180 Brunnee and Toope 2011.

42 some agents are dominant and others are dominated; objects of struggle, in the sense of what is ‘at stake’ in the field; and taken-for-granted rules, or the ‘doxic’ background knowledge that defines what is commonsensical181. For Bourdieu, a field refers to the organization of modern social life into different spheres of value and socially patterned activity, or ‘practices’, each partially autonomous from others and often disciplinarily and professionally defined182. A field is a collective structure, but also a field of individuals and of institutions. The concept of field locates actors within a structured set of relations and practices that orient “the strategies which the occupants of the different positions implement in their struggles to defend or improve their positions”183. Each field has its own distinctive sorts of resources, or capitals, and hierarchies of prestige and influence. These are related to each other in a larger field of power, and may be comprised of various sub-fields, like ‘Russian nesting dolls’. In this sense, a community of practice – such as the feminist community of practice – may be considered a sub-field unto itself, but this community also draws on the power, knowledge, dispositions and resources of larger fields, such as the field of human rights practitioners, feminist activists and security practitioners. Moreover, the feminist community of practice is engaging with the bureaucratic field within the UN and the bureaucratic actors who are located within it. While a community of practice is, in many ways similar to Bourdieu’s field, the emphasis in field theory is on the conflict and contestation over power at the heart of the field. It is a “field of struggles”184. As Bourdieu writes, a field “is not the product of a coherence-seeking intention or an objective consensus (even if it presupposes unconscious agreement on common principles) but the product and prize of a permanent conflict; or, to put it another way, that the generative, unifying principle of this ‘system’ is the struggle, with all the contradictions it engenders”185. It is political, as it considers the struggles over power in establishing practices, and it is a space where there is a hierarchy of actors and practices and where there is a possibility of distinguishing specific stakes186. Fields are social (relational) structures “evolving around particular

181 Pouliot 2008. 182 Bourdieu 1977. 183 Bourdieu 1993, 30, in Hagan and Levi 2005. 184 Bigo 2011. 185 Bourdieu 1993, 34. 186 Bigo 2011.

43 battles over domination”187. As Bigo (2011) explains, “the dynamic of the field is the rule, stability is the exception. It is why the notion of field fits so well with any approach insisting on struggles and change, trying to understand social continuities as fragile moments”188. Fields are constantly (re)produced in and through practices189. What is ‘at stake’ in a field, over which the struggles between actors occur, is various forms of capital, which can be understood as the resources that can count as valid ‘currency’ for exchange in a field190. Capital is “what is efficacious in the field, both as a weapon and a stake of struggle. It allows its possessors to wield a power, an influence, and thus to exist in the field, instead of being considered a negligible quantity”191. For Bourdieu, “the structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at any given moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e. the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices”192. The position and distribution of power within the field depends on the volume and type of capital to which actors have access193. Individuals act on the basis of differential resources to pursue their interests194. Capital is both necessary for individual action and also built into the structure of collective action, so that people are embedded in competition for capital even without the conscious intention of doing so195. Bourdieu explicitly focuses on domination, power and hierarchies, and as such, his approach to understanding practices is always embedded in power struggles. Studying the struggles over power provides a more complex and subtle understanding of power than has been conventionally told in IR theory196. As Adler-Nissen and Pouliot (2014) explain, structural perspectives in IR fail to address three relevant facets of power dynamics: a) how structural resources translate into actual influence; b) how endogenous resources may also be locally generated or undermined within the social process itself;

187 Bigo Madsen 2011, 221. 188 Bigo 2011, 240. 189 Leander 2011. 190 Adler-Nissen 2008. 191 Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, in Huysmans 2002. 192 Bourdieu 1986, 83. 193 Adler-Nissen 2008. 194 Calhoun 2011 195 Calhoun 2011. 196 Barnett and Duvall 2005.

44 and c) why many political outcomes significantly differ from strictly distributional determinations197. Central to their framework is the notion of ‘emergent power’, which refers to the endogenous resources – social skills or competences – generated within practices198. This framework is based on the idea that power is not only a capability199, as a realist or liberalist might argue, but can also be vested in social relations, in the sense that it is embedded within and constitutes the social dynamic200. While power as a capability remains very important – as evidenced by the fact that powerful states can still strongly shape political outcomes – emergent power looks beyond a focus on state power alone, towards other forms of influence that can impact outcomes within the UN system. A practice approach spans these ‘types’ of power by showing that power in practice emerges out of micro-struggles over specific resources that are in part endogenous and locally contested, but in part defined by the structured context of the struggle201. Emergent power, in terms of the power that evolves in interactions between actors based on the negotiation of competent practice, works in tandem with exogenous assets, such as state power202. Thus, if we think of Bourdieu’s metaphor of the game, practice theory here focuses on the enactment of power: exogenous resources may lead to an unequal playing field or institutional biases, but it is also necessary to go beyond exogenous resources by focusing on how these forces play out in practice. As Adler- Nissen and Pouliot explain: “The way in which the game is played, not just its rules or the distribution of tokens among players, is crucial for explaining the outcome”203. While certain outcomes, such as the passing of a new WPS resolution, might appear to be the work exclusively of realpolitik, the process of reaching that outcome was the result of both exogenous and endogenous relations of power and the mobilization – in and through practice – of emergent power by individuals in the field.

197 Adler-Nissen and Pouliot 2014. 198 Adler-Nissen and Pouliot 2014. 199 In the sense of something that one owns, such as military or economic capability. 200 Baldwin 2013. 201 Adler-Nissen and Pouliot 2014. 202 Adler-Nissen and Pouliot 2014. 203 Adler-Nissen and Pouliot 2014.

45 Habitus: Key to Understanding Social Action

At the center of Bourdieu’s analytical model is the concept of habitus204. Habitus consists of deeply internalized dispositions, schemas and forms of know-how and competence that an actor can possess205. The dispositions of habitus are acquired through experiences of social interaction and they predispose their holders to generate new forms of action that reflect the socialization experiences206. Habitus is relational; “its dispositions are embodied traces of intersubjective interactions”207. The concept implies that we necessarily bring to action certain unspoken, unarticulated assumptions about the world and our place in it, without which we could not make sense of the world208. Individuals who are well socialized in a particular field are able to master it because they have a ‘feel for the game’209. The habitus is what gives actors a sense of who we are and how we exist in the world; it is how actors in a field intuitively and unconsciously position themselves and relate to the world210. Habitus is the meeting point between institutions and individuals, in that it is the way in which individuals connect with the socio-cultural order, giving their life meaning and also constituting and reproducing the social structures and cultures in place211. As Bourdieu writes, the agent “is a socialized body, a structured body, a body which has incorporated the immanent structures of a world or of a particular sector of that world – a field – and which structures the perception of that world as well as action in that world”212.

204 Bourdieu defines habitus as: “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all of this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor” Bourdieu 1977, 72. 205 Swartz 2002. 206 Swartz 2002. 207 Pouliot 2008. 208 Brown 2012. 209 As described in Dinovitzer and Garth 2007; Bourdieu 1998. 210 Calhoun 2011. 211 Calhoun 2011. 212 Bourdieu 1998, 81.

46 Habitus makes structured improvisation in any given situation possible213. For Bourdieu, habitus is “the strategy-generating principle enabling agents to cope with unforeseen and ever-changing situations”214. Actors may engage in strategic calculation in a given circumstance, but as Bourdieu writes, “practical evaluation of the likelihood of the success of a given action in a given situation brings into play a whole body of wisdom, sayings, commonplaces, ethical precepts…and, at a deeper level, the unconscious principles of the ethos which, being the product of the learning process”215, determines the scope of ‘reasonable’ versus ‘unreasonable’ conduct for every actor in any situation. It is through the concept of habitus that we are better able to understand strategy within Bourdieu’s model. For Bourdieu, the language of strategy does not derive from rational choice theory: interests and strategies shape action, but Bourdieu does not think that conscious intentions and choices can fully explain either the source or the outcomes of action216. For Bourdieu, it is a mistake to assume “that the principle of action is well-thought-out economic interest and its objective is material profit, posed consciously through rational calculation.”217 Bourdieu shows that action is always shaped by learning (habitus), social contexts, and structural conditions, including the distribution of capital, as well as by choice and creativity218. Structural factors are important as external resources and obstacles, but must not only be thought of as constraints, as social structure is internalized in what we learn from experience (in our habitus) and is thus at the center of how we generate action219. What appear in hindsight to be conscious strategies are often the effects of a combination of structural factors, habitus and actual conscious choices220. Individual actions may appear to be conscious, but they are given the effect of direction and are influenced by the larger social field221.

213 Calhoun 2011. 214 Bourdieu 1977. 215 Bourdieu 1977, 77. 216 Calhoun 2011. 217 Bourdieu 1998, 78. 218 Calhoun 2011. 219 Calhoun 2011. 220 Calhoun 2011. 221 Calhoun 2011.

47 Due to their habitus, actors are predisposed to select particular actions that are most likely to succeed given their past experiences and their resources222. However, past socialization ‘predisposes’ certain actions, rather than determining them; habitus is not determinative of human action. While habitus can change slowly, it is durable and does not change easily. Bigo (2011) explains that habitus is “a ‘grammar’ for practices but never the text of the practices or rules imposing themselves automatically”223. The strategies of actors will be determined by their structural position in the field relative to other actors, the dominance of their position, as well as their own creativity224. Therefore, the power structures of the field, as well as the perceptions and actions produced by those power structures, must be analyzed in order to understand social action and change225. In Bourdieu’s theory of domination, strategies of action are often based, on the one hand, on the conservation of dominance by those who benefit from the structure of the hierarchy; and on the other hand, a subversion strategy by those who seek to transform the relations of power within the field226. The relations of domination are embodied in and perpetuated by the habitus of individuals227. Because of this focus on domination and hierarchy, as well as the embodiment and embeddedness of those relations of power, feminist scholars have picked up and critiqued Bourdieu, considering what his approach offers (or not) for their analyses228. Gender as an organizing principle is not given systematic treatment by Bourdieu; gender characteristics appear in descriptions of dispositions but are usually considered to be secondary characteristics229. He does rectify this omission, to some extent, in his discussion of gender and habitus in Masculine Domination (2001), where he argues that his concepts provide a way of analyzing gender and sexual difference. He locates ‘gender’ as a particular kind of habitus that is powerful because it appears ‘natural’ as a consequence of practices of sexual division230. As McLeod (2005) explains, the relationship between habitus and

222 Swartz 2002. 223 Bigo 2011, 242. 224 Merand 2010. 225 Merand 2010. 226 Emirbayer and Johnson 2008. 227 Emirbayer and Johnson 2008. 228 See, for example, McCall 1992; McLeod 2005. 229 McCall 1992. 230 Bourdieu 2001.

48 gender in recent feminist scholarship has tended to take two forms. First, social fields are understood to be structured according to gendered power relations, which in turn shape the formation of habitus, which is structured by these differential relations of power as well as by unequal distribution of capitals. Second, subjective dispositions can be gendered, with gender constituting a repertoire of orientations and dispositions231. However, as the following section will address, many feminist scholars – along with others, especially from within the pragmatist tradition – critique Bourdieu’s framework for its over-emphasis on accounting for patterns of reproduction rather than change in fields, which, for feminists, is a challenge to the dynamism and fluidity of gender norms.

Understanding Organizational Stability and Change

While a Bourdieusian approach to understanding practices has gained prominence in international relations in recent years, this approach has also faced critique, especially from approaches rooted in the tradition of pragmatism, such as, for example, Wenger’s approach to communities of practice. This section highlights the key differences between Bourdieu and pragmatist approaches, emphasizing in particular their different accounts for understanding stability and change. Bourdieu’s approach is more structuralist and materialist than pragmatist approaches, and is critiqued for being more interested in reproduction than in change. After explaining how Bourdieu accounts for change, and the pragmatist critiques of this approach, this section will explain how an expanded reading of Bourdieu draws these approaches together providing an account that explains how the creativity of agents can result both in instances of stability and also change. Practice approaches are heterogenous and yet, of late in IR theory, there is a tendency to equate international practice theory solely with Bourdieu232. Many IR theorists are drawn to Bourdieu because of the fact that, at its core, his is a theory of domination that draws to the forefront power relations, conflicts and hierarchical structures233. Pragmatist approaches to practices have not yet received the same level of attention, although this is changing as their critiques emerge to counter the Bourdieusian

231 McLeod 2005. 232 Bueger and Gadinger 2015. 233 Bueger and Gadinger 2015.

49 focus234. Pragmatism itself is heterogenous, but the emphasis remains on practice: whether arguing that practices need to be theorized or that theorizing is always a practice in itself235. Despite their heterogeneity, pragmatist theories highlight two key points. First, new insights can be gained in pragmatist theory by means of abduction236. Abduction is an alternative methodological approach to induction or deduction that leaves space for the introduction of new ideas and theories and resists the need to categorize research and data based on pre-defined variables237. Second, pragmatist theory considers the world through the lens of human action, that is, their practices. While Bourdieu and pragmatists both focus on the importance of practices, they differ in their understandings of how practices are structured and ultimately, in their accounts of change. For Bourdieu, change occurs as a result of the relationship between the habitus and the field. Because habitus generally tends to reproduce the structures of which is it a product, change is most likely to emerge from a mismatch or misalignment between members’ habitus and the structure of the field238. Each member of an organization brings to it a unique habitus formed as a result of a specific trajectory, some conditions of which are shared with other members and some that differ from others in the field. This misalignment may create friction, contestation and social upheaval as alignment between habitus and field is restored. McNay (2000) argues in particular that the movement of individuals across fields can lead to dissonance and disjunction, which can produce change239. Instead of using the metaphor of ‘reflection’ to describe the relationship between field and habitus, she argues for ‘refraction’, which emphasizes the non-corresponding forms habitus can take, especially when considering gender norms, as

234 According to Franke and Weber 2011, the emergence of ‘pragmatism’ in IR has primarily been represented by Friedrichs and Kratochwil 2009, but has also been adopted by Neumann 2002, Adler 2008 and Pouliot 2008. 235 Franke and Weber 2011. 236 Friedrichs and Kratochwil 2009. 237 Friedrichs and Kratochwil 2009. See also Franke and Weber 2011. 238 Emirbayer and Johnson 2008; Schindler and Wille 2015. See also Pouliot 2010, who explains social change as the result of ‘hysteresis’, the misalignment between transformed social structures (as a result of the changes at the end of the Cold War) and the ‘outdated’ habitus of the security practitioners who continued to practice in this field. 239 McNay 2000.

50 feminist ideals (and more broadly, women) increasingly become embedded in and move across and between diverse social fields240. This approach provides insights for understanding change within an organization like the United Nations. In the case of the feminist practitioners, these individuals bring a habitus that is unique to the UN system, shaped by past experiences of, for example, working in the domain of feminist activism or the global women’s movement, with particular knowledge that derives from educational backgrounds focused on feminist politics, and – as primarily women – with gendered bodies that reflect an embodied capital that is gendered and which impacts their practices. As these feminists enter into the UN system and encounter the bureaucratic field, they face a situation where their deeply internalized past experiences are not matched by the social structure. Bourdieu leaves open the impact of this form of misalignment; it could lead either to an adaptation of the actors to the new conditions or to a struggle against the prevalent order241. While Bourdieu tends to see these misalignments as an explanation for the homogenization of domination across field, it is possible for these tensions to trigger social change242. In the case of the feminist practitioners, they respond to their misalignment by seeking to shift the structure of the UN to draw it in line with their way of seeing the world243. The critique of this Bourdieusian approach to explaining change is that it tends to emphasize stability and the reproduction of practices, rather than subversion and change. For Bourdieu, in most cases, the dynamics of competition within the field will not result in change, but rather in outward stability and reproduction244. Despite the prominence of micro-struggles and contestations within a field, these could in many cases result in only very insignificant change245. The structure of fields may appear unchanging and relatively consistent, but they are not. They are the product of historical action that creates them; they are never completely finalized, but rather are subject to reinforcement or change; and yet, they are usually more often reinforced than changed246. Bourdieu

240 McNay 2000. See also McLeod 2005. 241 Schindler and Wille 2015. 242 Bigo 2011. 243 Emirbayer and Johnson 2008. 244 Emirbayer and Johnson 2008. 245 Emirbayer and Johnson 2008. 246 Calhoun 2011.

51 emphasizes the reproduction of fields, in part because he thinks that people often overestimate how easily structures can change247. The focus in Bourdieu’s framework on reproduction rather than change is at the core of pragmatist critiques of his approach. One of the initial justifications for the evolution of practice theories was to enable a better grasp on dynamics of change, and yet Bourdieu’s framework, which emphasizes the patterned and repetitive nature of practice, is criticized for not being able to account for change248 and for being “irredeemably structuralist and determinist”249. Pragmatists claim to occupy a different position, where stability, rather than change, requires the explanation250. For pragmatism, the concept of practice is more closely aligned with ‘action’, and thus has much less structural connotations than the Bourdieusian approach251. It considers creativity and situated agency in a more robust way; “pragmatist vocabulary turns to fully relational, performative language and to describing the world as a continuous process of ordering, translating, engaging, producing, assembling, enacting, translating or constructing”252. By focusing on agency in pragmatist approaches, practitioners can either reproduce or transform how they make their decisions and take actions. In the process, this can lead to change, without the structural constraints imposed by Bourdieu’s habitus/field conception. The pragmatist tradition takes as its starting point the focus on creativity and change, as opposed to Bourdieu’s focus on routine and structures253. For Bourdieu, the habitus/field framework improves our understanding of actors and agency by recognizing that actors are embedded in social, economic and political structures of power, with access to particular resources254. The ‘choices’ of actors, though, are critiqued as not being the product of free will or freedom to choose, but rather as constrained by the logic of the field255. Individual agents, embedded in the field,

247 Calhoun 2011. 248 Bueger and Gadinger 2015. 249 McLeod 2005, 17. See also Arnot 2002, who argues that there is value in habitus for understanding the socialization and reproduction of gender, but that Bourdieu ultimately “offers no account of social change in the cultural arena” Arnot 2002: 49. 250 Bueger and Gadinger 2015. 251 Bueger and Gadinger 2015. 252 Bueger and Gadinger 2015, 455. 253 Bueger and Gadinger 2015. 254 Leander 2011. 255 Leander 2011; Bigo 2011.

52 choose actions that are congruent with their complex relations in the field, as well as their access to resources256. The benefit of this approach is that it draws our attention away from which ‘norms’ or ‘interests’ matter in determining action in IR, towards an understanding of why norms and interests are what they are, are expressed as they are, and have the consequences they do257. The critique of this account argues that the underlying rigid structuralism deprives actors of their individuality, leading to an underestimation of how actors can improvise, as well as individual factors such as feelings, talents and personalities258. Pragmatists push against the inescapability of the habitus; where, even if individuals strategize and have interests, they are constrained by the structures of the field259. However, this critique is a misreading of Bourdieu. Bourdieu makes much more room for the agency of the individual and for their improvisation and creativity than critics would suggest260. For Bourdieu, change agency is possible but is difficult to achieve. This is not an overstatement when considering the empirical evidence that change is, indeed, very difficult to achieve, including in the case of advancing women’s rights within the UN. His account is crucial for its attention to the structural conditions of agency and to the context within which individuals operate. By locating individuals within the field, with various endowments of capital, Bourdieu shows us the extent to which context matters in accounting for individuals’ capacity to cause change261. He provides “a powerful analysis of the persistence of difference and inequality, of the significance of embodiment and the translation of social and gender (dis)advantages into ‘natural’ qualities”262. This is particularly important in accounting for gender-related changes in relations of power: practices of domination resist change and in spite of their efforts, feminists often recognize and encounter this resistance. There tends to be a pattern of continuity in gender relations, which highlights the entrenched nature of gender relations and identities263.

256 Nentwich, Ozbilgin and Tatli 2015. 257 Leander 2011. 258 Leander 2011. 259 Leander 2011. 260 Leander 2011. 261 Nentwich, Ozbilgin and Tatli 2015. 262 McLeod 2005. 263 McNay 2000.

53 An expanded reading of Bourdieu offers greater flexibility in accounting for change and agency, and that gives the necessary space to the possibility of individual creativity and innovation. While Bourdieu’s work may suggest that there is little free will for social agents and that their actions are guided strictly by social structures, his work does not rule out agency, consciousness or change264. For Bourdieu, there is agency, but it depends on the agent’s ‘realistic’ expectation of what is possible in the field265. Finding the middle ground between reproduction and change, that resolves the rigidly structuralist misreading of Bourdieu, takes steps towards both understanding that the dominant power within the field will often lead to reproduction, while also allowing for the possibility of creativity, agency and change266. Change and continuity must co-exist; it is not productive to focus either on ‘reproduction’ or ‘freedom’, without accounting for the possibility that both change and continuity may result from social action in a given field267. This is especially important in the case of the feminist practitioners, because on the one hand, often their efforts to innovate do not ultimately result in structural changes, but rather serve to reinforce the dominant power structures within the UN system. On the other hand, they work within this system of power, and based on what they see, know and understand to be possible and ‘realistic’, are able to draw on their creative and improvisational strategies to push for change. Ultimately, as the empirical story shows, the success of their practices is visible in the changes that have occurred within the UN around gender, while we must simultaneously acknowledge that not all of their efforts have resulted in substantial changes in relations of power within the UN system.

Everything is Social: Interactions, Learning and Normative Change

This section addresses how change occurs in and through the practices of the individuals within the community of practice. An analysis of the actors’ interactions within a field, and their relationships to each other, allows for a focus on the field-level processes that facilitate or inhibit change. It is in the interactions between actors, through

264 Everett 2002. 265 Everett 2002. 266 McLeod 2005. 267 McLeod 2005.

54 their practices, that norms come to gain meaning and legitimacy within the field268. An interactional approach for understanding normative change shows how norms must be built and continuously reinforced by and within communities of practice269. Norms must be maintained in continuing practice, or else they could be undermined and destroyed. This approach is useful in the case of the feminist community of practice for understanding that women’s rights norms do not simply emerge and become institutionalized; the feminist community must continuously reinforce them, which they strive to do in their interactions with other individuals in the UN bureaucracy. Drawing on the literature on law as interaction helps to answer the question of how legal obligation can be understood, or differently put, how actors might come to feel obliged to act in accordance with certain legal or human rights norms, such as women’s rights norms. Legal obligation is not only the consequence of formal validity or of state consent to oblige – that is, through a change in ‘explicit’ rule270. Brunnee and Toope (2010) argue for a richer understanding of legal obligation that focuses on the interplay between internal markers of legality as well as the practices that sustain legality, rather than focusing on the formal manifestations of law. Rather than treating state practice as behavioural regularity or as the application of a pre-existing construct called ‘law’, they argue that a distinctive practice of legality is required for law and legal obligation to exist and be sustained over time271. Legal norms are upheld, manipulated and challenged continuously by actors within legal communities of practice, and change occurs when actors reshape, challenge and undermine the background knowledge that anchors the norms272. This framework shows that it is in the continuous recreation and practice of law, rather than just the formal adoption of a legal document that a sense of obligation to law emerges. Law and legal norms are shaped by continuing interactions between actors within the field that affect their making, re-making and un-making in practice273.

268 Brunnee and Toope 2010. 269 Brunnee and Toope 2010. 270 Brunnee and Toope 2010. 271 Brunnee and Toope 2010. 272 Brunnee and Toope 2010. 273 Brunnee and Toope 2010.

55 Scholars in the sociology of law argue that the struggle over the interpretation and direction of norms is also key to the constitution of the field274. The addition of new practices, modes of thought and expression reflect a process of internal competition between actors with different habitus and background knowledge275. Through this struggle, new modes of thought are changed into concrete practices, which then become part of the taken-for-granted background knowledge that informs habitus, constitutes the field and leads to change. These scholars agree that law and lawyers are at the core of the processes that structure, produce and reproduce fields of power276. Legal texts (and other symbolic objects) also bring specific possibilities to a field277. For Bourdieu, the force of law derives from its enactment and practice. As Hagan and Levi (2005) explain, the struggle over the interpretation and direction of legal texts is key to the constitution of the legal field, and socialized actors using formalized texts shape predictability within the juridical field278. As they illustrate in the field of international criminal law, the game of law is contingent on the struggles within the field, which lead to gradual and incremental change and recognition of new legal interpretations, which are a means of ‘replying to the challenges’ that are presented by entrenched approaches279. For them, the addition of new practices, modes of thought, and expression reflect a process of internal competition as well as cooperation in which different actors bring knowledge and experience to address unresolved international problems. In this process, new practices eventually are “asserted, enacted, concretized and thereby converted into legal doxa”280. The most fundamental social changes have to appear not only as changes in formal structures – or, ‘explicit’ rule – but also as changes in habitual orientations to action, the ‘implicit’ rule281. As such, a change in a formal law, or the adoption of a new Security Council resolution, for example, is not as important as having the power to interpret that law and for that interpretation to sanctify a correct or legitimized vision of

274 Hagan and Levi 2005. 275 Hagan and Levi 2005. 276 Dezalay and Garth 2002; Hagan and Levi 2005. 277 Hagan and Levi 2005. 278 Hagan and Levi 2005. 279 Hagan and Levi 2005. 280 Hagan and Levi 2005, 1525. 281 Calhoun 2011.

56 the social world, which has implications for how law is actualized in day-to-day life282. This struggle is between diverse actors with distinct interests within the field and the practical meaning of the law is only determined in the confrontation between these different actors, or communities of practice, with divergent specific interests283. This struggle draws the background knowledge of the field of practice to the foreground, and in so doing, the struggle “brings the undiscussed into discussion, the unformulated into formulation”284 and this can problematize what is practically ‘self-evident’285. Through this struggle, new modes of thought can be changed into concrete practices, which then become part of the doxic background knowledge that informs habitus and gradual change occurs in the field. What is at stake in the interactions between the feminist community of practice and the UN bureaucracy is how to define and understand what it means to practice women’s rights. This is the interpretation of the legitimate means to address these normative issues within this field. Learning occurs in and through interactions within and between communities of practice. As Adler explains, construing practices as a learning process makes communities of practice ‘emergent’ structures, which are neither inherently stable nor randomly changeable286. From this perspective, learning entails either the evolution of background knowledge or the substitution of one set of conceptual categories that the community uses to give meaning to reality for another such set287. Because background knowledge constitutes the communities people belong to, as well as their identities, an evolution in background knowledge will lead to a change not only in people’s minds, but also in their practices288. This learning problematizes what is practically self-evident within the field or the community, and makes evident the arbitrary principles of classification that were previously understood to be self-evident. As such, learning requires the creation, diffusion, selection and institutionalization of new knowledge within the community of practice that becomes the background of new practices289.

282 Bourdieu 1977, 817. 283 Bourdieu 1977, 821. 284 Bourdieu 1977, 168. 285 Stein 2011. 286 Wenger in Adler 2005. 287 Adler 2005. 288 Adler 2005. 289Adler 2005, see also Stein 2011.

57 In and through these interactions between and within communities of practice, background knowledge evolves and learning occurs, leading to a change in practices. However, paying attention to the structures of power and competition in the field allows us to see that drawing background knowledge to the foreground may not always result in learning and a change in practice. In drawing background knowledge to the foreground, feminist practitioners are able to draw the attention of their bureaucratic colleagues to their taken-for-granted practices. This may lead to learning as the bureaucratic community grapple with what they previously thought to be ‘self-evident’. However, it may also serve to reinforce existing practices, as the bureaucratic community reflects on this new knowledge and determines whether and how it fits within their habitus. This uncertainty is consistent with the previous discussion of the distinction between reproduction and change in the field. There will be times when the efforts of feminist practitioners will disrupt the background knowledge of their colleagues through their interactions, which will lead to a change in behaviour. And there will be times when their efforts will serve to reinforce existing approaches to practice, and learning and change will not occur. This uncertainty is at the heart of the contestation and struggle for the feminist community of practice. In considering the dynamics of norm change, this approach also illuminates how norm change is a struggle, in and through practice, over what is at stake in the field or in the community itself. IR theory has historically accepted until fairly recently, either implicitly or explicitly, that norms develop in a linear progression. This is consistent with Finnemore and Sikkink’s (1998) norm-life-cycle model. In this approach, norms are introduced by norm entrepreneurs, they cascade and are institutionalized, until finally they are internalized and institutionalized290. As Brunnee and Toope argue, in the norm life cycle and epistemic communities approach, learning is conceptualized as “the unidirectional diffusion of norms, rather than as an interactional, mutual process”291. When contestation over norms is emphasized, it tends to focus on the norm ‘localization’

290 Finnemore and Sikkink 1998. 291 Brunnee and Toope 2010, 62.

58 process during norm diffusion rather than contestation at all points in the ‘norm life cycle’, given that the norm is embedded in a field of power that is defined by struggle292. There is a need to focus on how norms are changing constantly over time, in response to the interactions between actors who are embedded in the system of rules and norms and as a result of their competitions within the field293. Norms at all stages of the norm life cycle are subject to battles over their meaning and usefulness, because norms are dynamic and a flexible social construct294. There is a tendency within IR to reduce complex concepts like ‘human rights’ or ‘democracy’ to mere ideas that take hold within certain spaces due to the efforts of transnational non-state actors. However, as Guilhot (2005) argues, these approaches fail to see that ‘human rights’ or ‘democracy’ “are not ideas but mediums through which conflicts are fought, fields within which different actors struggle to establish and impose their legitimacy and their expertise”295. As Guilhot explains, human rights and democracy have become the organizing principles of a new international order in the post-Cold War world and it is from these principles, increasingly, that States are required to derive their legitimacy296. And yet, the relative ambiguity of human rights means that they are far from a settled normative good297. These concepts and categories are the result of struggles between different position- takings of actors, inside a particular ‘game’ with a unique trajectory298. Navigating the meanings and understandings of human rights is complicated, but reveals that human rights are not freestanding but produced within these structures of contestation. At the heart of these struggles is the capacity to impose the relevant definitions of these concepts, because it is the definition of these concepts that effectively legitimizes certain actors in the field, determines who retains relevant knowledge, and decides what counts as an important issue299. The normative definition of human rights in theory and practice is an important stake, giving legitimacy and symbolic capital to those

292 Ben-Josef Hirsch 2014; see also van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007. For norm localization, see Capie 2008; Acharya 2004. 293 Sandholtz 2008. 294 Wiener 2007. 295 Guilhot 2005, 19. 296 Guilhot 2005. 297 Madsen 2011. 298 Bigo 2011. 299 Guilhot 2005.

59 who succeed in defining its meaning and the scope of its application in practice300. The interactional approach highlights how norms gain meaning and are negotiated in and through the struggles between actors within the field. Because the UN is a site of knowledge creation globally, these struggles over the meaning and practice of women’s human rights arguably constitute and ‘make knowable’ this issue for all global audiences. Ultimately, an interactional approach to understanding normative change and social action highlights the contestation within the field over what is at stake, legitimacy and resources, and shows how learning occurs in and through these processes of contestation. A communities of practice approach that draws on Bourdieu’s field theory emphasizes that everything is social, that change occurs in and through interactions between actors within the field (or community) and that, to understand normative change, it is necessary to understand how change in norms and the institutionalization of norms is a struggle in and through practice between individuals within the field. The next and final section will highlight one key practices of relevance for the feminist community of practice within the UN system: the practice of writing documents.

Feminist Practices in the UN System: The Practice of Writing Documents

Within this framework, the focus of the analysis is on what these individual do, as part of their everyday practice, that impacts upon global politics; in this case, on the ability of these individuals to change norms and practices around women’s human rights within the UN system. There are a number of key practices that could very well be the focus of the empirics in this dissertation: the feminist community of practice mutually engage in a variety of actions on a ongoing basis that develop into routines with meaning. For example, feminist practices that are embedded in the analysis throughout this dissertation project include the practice of NGO consultation, the structured routine of drawing on external activism for legitimacy and support; or the practice of measurement, such as the development of indicators to measure gender mainstreaming. Each of these practices is implied throughout the analysis, and is part of what constitutes the feminist community of practice. However, in terms of an explicit analysis of practice, this

300 Madsen 2011.

60 dissertation focuses in particular on one key practice: the practice of writing documents. It is in the writing of documents that many of the collegial ‘interactions’ occur within the UN. Not only is the creation of documents within the UN system, as a ‘knowledge organization’, key to what makes knowledge meaningful globally, it is also a practice that constitutes the feminist community. Documents, as the ‘paradigmatic artifacts of modernity’301, play an important role in everyday global governance, providing the ‘lubricant’ for governing society302. Documents are not just “accessorial element[s] of social reality” but “its condition of possibility”303. It is in and through documents that social reality becomes possible; not only the possibility of change but also – especially in large-scale organizations – the possibility of stability. In her ethnographic study of the 1995 Beijing Conference on women’s rights, Annelise Riles (2000) maps the ‘flurry’ of bureaucratic activity – the creation of documents, organization of meetings and conferences, and the production of funding proposals – that characterize the bureaucratic preparations required for these international meetings304. While the reason for this activity is always described in wider instrumental terms, such as for the good of the development of women’s rights, it has the effect of building an international community. She argues that the work of creating documents generates personal relationships that draw people together into community. In part, this community-formation is due to the nature of documents themselves. Especially within the UN system, resolutions and declarations are collective, anonymous, and highly labour intensive exercises that require great attention to detail. A “seemingly infinite number of hours of labor”305 are spent by an unknown number of individuals who work to produce these documents, and Riles argues that the process of producing the document is not only the practice of the community, but it constitutes the community. In the case of the feminist community of practice, the practice of writing documents first, constitutes the community, by linking them together through their interactions in the process of drafting documents, allowing them to learn what it means to be a feminist practitioner within this organization; and second, the practices constitute the field, where

301 Riles 2006. 302 Weisser 2014. 303 Ferraris 2012, in Weisser 2014. 304 Riles 2000. 305 Riles 2000, 80.

61 the process of negotiating the documents, and struggling over the final written form and content of the document, shapes the dynamic of power within the field. Looking at the process of writing documents as practice overcomes the material versus ideational divisions within policy research, which tend to either favour positivist accounts that see the document as if the content represents the organisation per se or representational accounts, which view documents ‘vehicles of discourse’ which pertain to broader regimes of knowledge306. The problem with these approaches is that, in the positivist account, the heterogeneity of the document disappears along with the arguments and varying interests embedded within the document307. The representational accounts, however, emphasize the constructed character of the document, but fail to address the contested process of the construction of the document itself308. Neither approach accounts for the material and ideational, as well as the structure and agency that constitute and jointly enable practices309. Documents do not just represent an organisation or its point of view, but reflect a whole contested process that brought it into existence310. Weisser (2014) argues that documents and the policies they contain must be understood as ‘effects of practice’, in terms of explaining how they are assembled and how they come into existence. Also, he argues that documents have ‘effects in practice’, in terms of the performative and structuring role of documents in organizational action311. Documents are deeply political, not only as a result of the process of contestation at the heart of their creation, but also because documents can ‘act’ politically, for instance in codifying certain ways of doing international politics312. Prior (2011) explains that documents act as “props, allies, rule-makers, calculators, decision-makers, experts and illustrators”313. As such, documents not only ‘say’ but also ‘do’: they can set hierarchies, assign tasks and responsibilities and can emerge independent from the decisions that brought them to bear. For example, Pouliot (2010) shows that documented timetables and meeting schedules allowed for resuming the suspended dialogue in NATO-Russia

306 Weisser 2014. 307 Mosse 2005, 15. 308 Weisser 2014. 309 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 310 Weisser 2014. 311 Weisser 2014. 312 This links more broadly to actor-network theory, Latour 2005. 313 Prior 2011, in Weisser 2014.

62 relations, even after a break in diplomatic relations314. Similarly, WPS resolutions have ‘effects in practice’ on the UN system, such as establishing the hierarchy of issues within the WPS agenda itself and assigning new responsibilities for all actors within the UN. According to Schatski (2002), there are practical understandings, rules, teleoaffective structures and general understandings that belong to a certain practice and govern its actions315. Weisser (2014) addresses these components in turn as they relate to writing documents. Practical understandings may include knowing how to draft documents, in terms of technical skills, and also knowing how to discuss and negotiate content. For feminist practitioners, this includes knowing how to make strategic advances on feminist ideals through negotiations and knowing how to write the drafts of documents such that the final product will reflect their intended outcomes. The practice of writing documents is tied to discursive language practices, such as framing. Rules may include formal and informal regulations that structure discussions, for example, how information can enter into the space of the Security Council and who is formally and informally part of the negotiation process. Teleoaffective structures include the emotional aspects attached to the practices, such as the intended or acceptable outcome for participants. This is especially important when considering that many feminist practitioners are emotionally attached and personally committed to the advancement of women’s rights issues, and as such, they have particular understandings of what should be addressed within agreed outcome documents. General understandings may refer to universal notions and views about, for example, different ways of achieving results, and material arrangements are those that sustain the practice of drafting the documents316. Particularly important among these factors, for the purposes of this discussion, are the practical understandings, or the ‘know-how’ that informs the practice of writing documents. Because practices are embedded in particular organized contexts, they are articulated into specific types of actions and are socially developed through learning and training317. Practices are also competent in that they can be done well or poorly, and are

314 Pouliot 2010. 315 Schatski 2002, in Weisser 2014. 316 Weisser 2014. 317 Adler and Pouliot 2011.

63 interpreted within the community according to similar standards318. While Neumann (2007) highlights consensus-building in the practice of writing speeches, my research shows that the practice of writing documents within the UN system is defined by a struggle over conflicting interests. As such, competence is recognized within the feminist community in the ability to strategically negotiate, make advances in the language that is eventually accepted, and in the progressive content of the resolutions319. Thus, while existing studies on how policy is produced focus on explaining bureaucratic inertia within a field of consensus320, this dissertation focuses on explaining change through the competence and know-how of the feminist practitioners who struggle to draft and write documents that will make changes in the overall field of practice. While the practice of writing documents will be the specific focus of chapter 5 on the politics within the Security Council, this practice is an implicit thread throughout the dissertation, given that writing documents is at the core of what feminist practitioners within the UN system do on a day-to-day basis.

Conclusion

This chapter has provided a theoretical and conceptual framework to address the broader question of how a community of practice that is invested in a set of ideals go on to develop strategic practices within a constrained bureaucratic setting. Focusing on the feminist community of practice within the UN system, this chapter considers the role and identity of these feminists; their everyday practices of resistance and agency in their efforts to advance women’s rights; and addresses how their social action can lead (or not) to normative change around women’s rights within the UN system. The chapter first focuses on what it means to be a feminist practitioner within the UN system, highlighting the contradictory position of these individuals within the institution – both as feminists and as bureaucrats. This study provides insight for the literature on feminist institutionalism by showing how what feminists do, in terms of their everyday practices within institutions, matters for their ability to advance women’s rights

318 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 319 Neumann 2007. 320 Neumann 2007; Barnett 1997.

64 and gender norms. It also speaks to the literature on the cooptation of feminist values by institutions, by creating space for agency and resistance for these individuals. Rather than merely being a process of cooptation, theirs is an active and contested engagement. It problematizes the assumption within governance feminism that feminists are now walking the halls of power, by showing that the advancement of women’s rights is a constant struggle in and through interactions between the feminist community of practice and the UN bureaucracy, rather than a unidirectional achievement of normative change. The chapter also engages with the literature on communities of practice, drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory to bring to the foreground an understanding of the conflict and competition between and within communities that lead to change in norms and practices within the field. This framework accounts for the possibility of change within the UN system, but also explains why sometimes, despite the efforts for change, social action only serves to reproduce the existing relations of power. Within this framework, I propose an interactional approach to understanding change. Change occurs in and through practice and in the interactions between social actors; interactions that are often characterized by conflict, but which can lead to learning. Norms are made meaningful through these interactions and are translated into sustained practice, but only through the consistent efforts of the feminist practitioners. Finally, this chapter focuses on practices of the feminist community within the UN system, and in particular on the practice of writing documents. This is the key practice of the feminist community, and is also one of the key sites of interaction over which the community of practice struggles. Feminists practitioners within the UN must be competent in this practice within the particular constraints of the UN as key to navigating the challenges and constraints of the bureaucracy. Strategy in the writing of documents emerges in and through practice: their strategy is derived from their background knowledge and experience of working within this bureaucratic space, and as they perform this practice, feminists become part of the community through this process.

65 Chapter 3:

Understanding the Feminist Community of Practice through the Lens of the Creation of UN Women

“We’re arguably losing the best opportunity we’ve ever had” – UN Women bureaucrat, in speaking about the creation of UN Women

Introduction

In 2010, UN Women – the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women – was created321. It merged four previously distinct entities within the UN system, that each individually focused on gender equality and women’s empowerment: the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW); the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW); the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI); and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). The creation of UN Women came as part of broader reform efforts within the UN system, with the intention to draw together the dispersed resources and fractured mandates of these separate entities in order to increase their efficiency and impact in the domain of women’s rights and gender equality, both inside and outside of the UN system322. The UN claims that the creation of UN Women demonstrated an historic step by Member States to accelerate the focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment across the UN system. Focusing on this institutional history, this chapter provides an illustration of the interaction between the feminist community of practice and the UN bureaucracy, and

321 UN General Assembly, ‘System-wide coherence’, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 2 July 2010, A/Res/64/289. 322 According to the UN Women’s website, UN Women’s main roles are to support intergovernmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms; to help Member States to implement those standards, standing ready to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it, and to forge effective partnerships with civil society; and to hold the UN system accountable for its own commitments on gender equality, including regular monitoring of system-wide progress. See: http://www.unwomen.org/en

66 analyzes how that engagement has shifted with the creation of UN Women. First, it argues that the creation of UN Women institutionalized a persistent conflict between feminist radicals, previously located within UNIFEM, and their career bureaucrat colleagues in OSAGI, in drawing together these separate entities with very different, and competing, priorities and interests. While it appears to be a united gender organization within the UN system, the move to UN Women had the effect of black boxing – but not eliminating – the prior struggle between the original feminists and their bureaucratic colleagues. Building on this institutionalized conflict, this chapter shows how the creation of UN Women changed how and to what extent feminist practitioners are now able to engage in the UN system for the advancement of women’s rights and gender equality. This institutional change strengthened certain bureaucratic practices for addressing women’s issues, diluting more idealist feminist practices. It had the counterintuitive effect of constraining the capacity of feminist practitioners to advance women’s rights within the UN system. The previously marginalized position of UNIFEM within the UN gave feminist practitioners certain freedoms that have now been shut down by the elevated mandate and increased scope of visibility of UN Women. In bringing these two communities together in a single organization, there have been two key institutional shifts against which the feminist community must now push: the increased focus on technical expertise rather than gender expertise, and a primary focus on development, rather than human rights. This is particularly evident in the composition of UN Women’s new leadership team, many of whom lack competence in work related to gender equality or women’s rights. As such, this shift has raised new conflicts over what it means to be a feminist and what it means to do gender equality work within the UN. It has also led to a struggle between the ‘original’ feminists and the new leadership, over what UN Women’s work and legacy will be within the UN system. Overall, this chapter uses the creation of UN Women to provide context and clarity on the broader dissertation argument, focusing on how the feminist community of practice engage within and navigate this bureaucratic space for the advancement of their ideals.

The Creation of UN Women

Institutionalizing Conflict

Prior to 2010, the gender architecture, comprised of the four disparate entities within the UN system, had been divided and plagued by ‘turf battles’, fragmentation and bureaucratic infighting for many years. The main ‘turf battle’ was between UNIFEM and OSAGI323. As one bureaucrat explained, there was “the recognition that the way that [the gender architecture] was structured with the four disparate entities was counterproductive and that we were working against each other.”324 This ‘battle’ began in 1995, when the Beijing Conference called for the creation of a High Level post, a special advisor to the UN Secretary General on gender issues. The Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues and Women’s Affairs (OSAGI) was created. The entry of this new actor into the UN system led to conflict and inefficiency that defined the gender architecture within the UN system for the next 15 years. The paradox is that OSAGI was created because feminists within and beyond the UN system identified the need for the UN to create a separate mechanism to ensure effective gender mainstreaming within the UN system, but that mechanism subsequently led to competition with the feminists. As one bureaucrat explained: “there was no good relationship between OSAGI and UNIFEM – they really didn’t work together – that’s why there was no coherence…”325. The core of the struggle was over the priorities, ideals and practices of the individuals within the different entities, and particularly between UNIFEM and OSAGI. In broad terms, the practitioners within UNIFEM were idealists; radical feminists who sought to upend the structures of power in the UN system, seeking to advance women’s human rights and gender equality against the bureaucratic (and patriarchal) constraints of the system. The practitioners within OSAGI were more oriented towards the functioning

323 DAW and OSAGI were institutionally linked within the UN Secretariat, so the individuals within DAW are analytically similar to their OSAGI colleagues and belong to the ‘bureaucratic’ community of practice. I refer here only to OSAGI but could also refer to DAW/OSAGI. 324 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/25/2013. 325 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013.

68 of the bureaucracy, were located in the UN Secretariat rather than as a separate UN agency, and had skills as career bureaucrats – addressing gender and women’s issues, but working within the status quo of the existing bureaucratic constraints. Before the creation of UN Women, both of these entities worked on issues related to gender equality. Two communities of practice operated and competed in a ‘turf battle’ within this broader domain of gender: the community of feminists and the community of bureaucrats. These communities were, in many ways, institutionally contained326. The individuals within these institutions brought into practice their prior knowledge and experience that informed how they practiced and how they saw their work within the UN system. Moreover, as these individuals continued to work within their separate institutional spaces, they learned differently how to operate given the different opportunities and constraints offered by their position within the UN system. The focus here is explicitly from the perspective of the feminist community of practice, and in this case, these individuals are more than the sum of their parts. Their identities are structured by what they have learned within and through being a part of this community, in terms of learning how to navigate the UN system from this position of marginality and struggle. In this process, they also see themselves as a community, seeing their alliances and relationships as critical to their individual and collective success. As this section will show, these individuals – within both communities – faced different opportunities and operational capacities, which constituted their practices and further impacted their priorities, knowledge and experiences of working within the UN system. Each of the four UN gender entities had distinct but overlapping mandates. UNIFEM had country offices and was in touch with the women’s movement and with civil society activists. They drew support and credibility from this outward-facing focus, and many of the UNIFEM practitioners were themselves previously civil society activists. This outward-focus contributed to their need to learn how to sit at the margins of the organization – neither activists nor fully-fledged bureaucrats operating in this system – and it positioned them as a vessel for translating radical feminist ideals into strategies for the advancement of women’s rights within the UN system. Many of the

326 For the purposes of this chapter and the specific analysis between UNIFEM and OSAGI, the communities appear to be institutionally contained. However, as the rest of this dissertation shows, the feminist community of practice spans across the UN system.

69 individuals within this community learned how to translate their radical activist knowledge and experience into ‘know-how’ within the system. UNIFEM mainly focused on programming activities, providing thematic and policy expertise and support to UN field offices. However, despite their strong link to the global women’s movement, UNIFEM did not have a strong connection to the UN policy domain or access to UN decision-making powers. As one former UNIFEM practitioner noted: “We were really operating like a glorified NGO…we had almost no linkages with the rest of the UN system. And, as we were not in any of the processes, we were not in any of the meetings, we were not engaging with the other side of the road, you know, the rest of the UN system”327.

This marginalization within the UN system, including as a result of their lack of a mandate for high-level decision-making (including their lack of access to the Security Council) limited UNIFEM’s ability to engage in strategic policy-related action for women’s rights. One bureaucrat explained: “In itself, an NGO, no matter how large, in itself, it doesn’t have – it has moral authority, it may have moral authority depending on its size and so on – but it doesn’t necessarily have clout, or constituency, or power.”328

UNIFEM had moral authority within the UN, especially in an operational ground-level capacity and in relations with civil society. Operating like ‘a glorified NGO’ positioned UNIFEM away from the central powers of the UN bureaucratic system. It did not have ‘clout’ and was limited in its formal authority within the UN system. However, their direct connection to country offices and the women’s movement provided UNIFEM with legitimacy beyond the UN system and with an identity vis-à-vis the rest of the UN system. The individuals within UNIFEM increasingly learned how to be feminist activists who represented the interests of women globally from within the constraints of this bureaucratic organization. OSAGI was located in the policy division of the UN Secretariat. This institution focused on the inter-agency coordination and collaboration on gender issues within the UN system, such as internal practices of gender mainstreaming, as opposed to working on gender issues outside of the UN. OSAGI was institutionally linked to UN-DAW,

327 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/25/2013. 328 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

70 which focused on intergovernmental relations, such as servicing the Commission on the Status of Women, the Economic and Security Council and the General Assembly329. Due to its position within the UN system and its mandate, OSAGI had access to, and a voice within, the UN system itself, but had no operational capacity on the ground. OSAGI had a primary role to support and monitor the mainstreaming of a gender perspective into overall policymaking and programming in accordance with the Economic and Social Council resolution 1997/2330. As such, it was an inward-facing organization focused on the smooth operation of the bureaucracy. The practitioners operated within constraints that demanded they respect the status quo balance of power and their priorities, experiences and ways of seeing the world were coloured by operating from this position. In 2009, as part of its broader efforts to ensure system-wide coherence within the UN system, the General Assembly passed a resolution that strongly supported the strengthening of the institutional arrangements for support of gender equality and the empowerment of women, through the consolidation of these four existing entities331. According to the proposal, UN Women would be the center of the gender equality architecture of the UN system, combining the mandates and assets of the four existing gender equality entities and performing new and additional functions to close the gaps and address the challenges in the gender equality work of the UN system332. The vision was that UN Women would address significant gaps in the ability of the UN system to respond to country demand for support to advance gender equality, including as a result of inadequate coordination and coherence due to weak linkages between intergovernmental agreements and implementation on the ground; lack of accountability in relation to leadership and voice on gender equality in the United Nations system;

329 DAW also promoted and monitored the implementation of CEDAW and other international statements on gender equality. INSTRAW was based in the Dominican Republic and served as a small research and outreach facility and thus is not a key player in this analysis. 330 ECOSOC Resolution 1997/2. 331 UN General Assembly, ‘System-wide coherence’, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 14 September 2009, A/Res/63/311. This decision came as part of a broader trend within the UN system towards system-wide coherence. At the 2005 World Summit, the Outcome Document called for a study on a fundamental restructuring of the UN system. A High Level Panel was created in 2006 to explore how the UN system could work more coherently and effectively across the world in the areas of development, humanitarian assistance and the environment. In report of the High Level Panel, one recommendation was for the establishment of one gender entity within the UN system. See the report at: http://www.un.org/events/panel/resources/pdfs/HLP-SWC-FinalReport.pdf 332 UN General Assembly, ‘Comprehensive proposal for the composite entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women: Report of the Secretary-Genera’, 6 January 2010, A/64/588.

71 inadequate authority for the organizations and individuals in the United Nations system tasked with supporting gender equality; and inadequate resources333. As such, the mandate of UN Women called for universal coverage, strategic presence and to ensure closer linkages between the norm-setting intergovernmental work – the strength of OSAGI – and operations at the field level, the strength of UNIFEM334. But clearly, UN Women did not emerge, tabula rasa, within the UN system. As Chappell (2014) argues, institutional newness – of actors and of rules – overlaps and intersects with pre-existing institutions, actors, rules and practices to influence the outcomes of new institutions335. New institutions are ‘nested’ within a temporal context, and this ‘nestedness’ shapes the operations and outcomes of new institutional contexts336. Ultimately, UN Women was built from within the existing rules, practices and actors within the UN system, and particularly of the four gender entities. The legacies of the conflict and competition between OSAGI and UNIFEM became institutionalized within the new singular gender entity. UN Women combined two distinct communities of practice, working within the same domain of gender issues. It is a Janus-faced organization – outward looking towards activism, and inward looking towards the bureaucracy – that is pretending to be a unified whole. The challenge is that conflict is now rife, between the feminist idealists from UNIFEM who continue to seek to upend the power structures of the UN system, and their bureaucratic colleagues from OSAGI/DAW. Their fights continue to play out, even within this new and singular institutional space. There is competition within this organization, between the two communities, over what it means to do gender work, what it means to do feminist work, and what the place and practices of UN Women will be.

UN Women as a ‘Feminist’ Space?

333 UN Women, Strategic plan 2011-2013, UNW/2011/9. 334 UN Women, ‘United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women strategic plan, 2011-2013’ 16 May 2011, UNW/2011/9. 335 Chappell 2014. 336 Mackay 2014.

72 The creation of UN Women changed how and to what extent feminist practitioners feel that they are able to advance their ideals within the UN system. It shifted the space within which these feminists engage. In drawing together the feminist community with their bureaucratic counterparts, the positioning and politics of this new institution strengthened certain bureaucratic practices for addressing women’s issues, at the expense of their more idealist feminist practices. At the margins of the UN system, UNIFEM “were a small agency and, to be frank, nobody really cared that much in terms of the bigger picture”337. There were downsides to this arrangement, for example that they were not taken seriously by much of the UN system and did not have power as it might traditionally be understood within the UN. However, they were strengthened by their position at the margins that allowed them to engage in more radical or subversive tactics, ‘rocking the boat without ever falling out of it’338. The merger into UN Women provided UNIFEM with access to formal sources of power, and yet, many former UNIFEM feminists lament the fact that UN Women has lost the ‘progressive edge’ that uniquely characterized the entity. As one practitioner explained: “UNIFEM had more freedom, in certain ways, here. Obviously not in the capacity in the field, but they had more freedom of what they could say and what they couldn’t say, and how they could work”339.

There is a sense amongst many former UNIFEM practitioners that something was lost for feminists in the process of creating UN Women that will not be re-gained. Being located more centrally within the bureaucracy has put these actors in the spotlight and has created new bureaucratic constraints that hold them accountable in new and unexpected ways. Many of the expectations held by feminist bureaucrats, as well as by civil society activists, of UN Women as a progressive entity that would push the limits of the UN system for the advancement of substantive women’s rights and gender equality have not been met. Many hoped that UN Women would build on the advocacy and distinctively feminist spirit that characterized UNIFEM, and would merely add to it the increased power and ability to be part of UN policy- and decision-making processes.

337 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/07/2013. 338 Eyben 2013. 339 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013.

73 “When I was looking at UN Women being created, I was really excited, like the mothership is being created… And again, it’s that thing where you have this idea for the project, and then you have that it is happening, but in this political space. And so technically speaking, I want UN Women to be a radical feminist organization; I want it to do radical things; I want it to upend everything that doesn’t work for women. But it will never be that. And that is very obvious now being in here. It just will never be that; it will be a technocratic, femocratic business, that does the business of gender equality – but I’m not quite sure if we’re doing the equality bit and the feminist bit, as opposed to the gender bit.340

Despite the excitement amongst many feminists and women’s rights activists that the ‘mothership’ was being built as a central entity for addressing women’s rights and gender equality globally, many observers are now realizing that their enthusiasm should have been tempered by the reality that UN Women was not created in a vacuum. As a UN entity, UN Women was only ever going to be created within a political space whose ‘status quo’ approach towards dealing with women’s rights issues was not, by definition, radical or seeking to upend the existing power structures in the international system. In many ways, this aligns with the approach to women’s issues taken with OSAGI: the bureaucratic practices which seek to address women’s issues without upending power structures is characteristic of OSAGI’s mandate. These practices are dominant within the field. The above passage highlights another important insight: that UN Women was created to do ‘the business of gender equality’ but that it has been stripped of the focus on equality, which is ‘the feminist bit’. Focusing on ‘the feminist bit’ would require a shift in status quo power relations between genders, something that is the focus of the feminist community of practice. Instead, it is increasingly focused on ‘women’s issues’ and ‘gender’ issues, devoid of these more radical ideals. As such, UN Women has disappointed those who were hoping for such a shift and who were expecting UN Women to look like a more powerful version of UNIFEM. Instead, UN Women is a trade-off in opportunities and capabilities. As a technocratic organization in ‘the business of gender equality’, UN Women has been given a mandate by the UN system to address women’s issues, but as many feminists are learning, this has come without a mandate for demanding attention to dominant structures of power and privilege. Many bureaucrats feel that UN Women “absolutely need[s] to be out there and

340 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

74 politically overstep their boundaries on being champions for women’s rights”341. They haven’t yet done this, and this has been a disappointment for many feminists. UN Member States ultimately designed and created UN Women to fit within the dominant status quo power structures of the UN system. As one bureaucrat explained, “UN Member States decided that this was not going to be an entity that would radically upend inequalities. It decided that it would be an entity that would look after poor women.”342 Rather than focusing on feminist ideals that demand attention to power and inequality, which might be addressed for example through an institutional focus on human rights and equality, this quotation suggests that UN Women seeks to maintain status quo relations of power by focusing instead on women’s issues that do not rock the boat. This might include helping women as victims, poor women and development within a particular neoliberal economic paradigm. These findings confirm that UN Women is: “A product of a political system, where all of these countries have to agree on what the mandate of this organization is…They didn’t want to unleash the ability of an entity to actually look at structural inequalities. They were never going to do that. So in some senses, it’s back to this question of […]: if we see the need for a UN Women organization in the UN system, then we need to accept that it will look like the UN. It will be a product of the UN and we will do our best with that. If we want a radical feminist organization that does something else, then don’t put it in the UN, do you know what I mean?”343

The feminist expectations of an organization that would upend the system and shift status quo power relations in order to promote equal gender relations globally has come into conflict with the political reality of what UN Member States are willing to create within this international arena. The creation of UN Women increased the visibility and focus on women’s issues in the ongoing work of the rest of the UN system. As one bureaucrat explained: “when it comes to the creation of UN Women, what that has brought is visibility and status: elevated status of mandate of gender equality and women’s empowerment, and also increased scope of visibility”344. However, the move from the previously marginalized and subordinate position of UNIFEM within the organization, to a position of greater

341 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/06/2013. 342 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 343 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 344 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/19/2013.

75 visibility and elevated mandate, actually shut down certain freedoms and capabilities for feminist practitioners. “I think because they weren’t part of this much larger bureaucracy, you know, with five bosses above you and with the check, and the streamlining and so on.”345 Many feminists acknowledge that the increased bureaucratization that has accompanied the creation of UN Women has led to an increasingly technocratic and less progressive space for work within the UN system. Another feminist agreed, explaining: “[UN Women] are now part of the big juggernaut bureaucracy, so I think that some of the space [UNIFEM] had because they were a little small agency over there, it has been shut down. They’ve had to trade that space for other things, and I think that the jury’s out on whether that is a good or bad thing”346.

Because of the heavy bureaucratic limitations that are now being placed on UN Women, as one feminist explained, their progress “conform[s] to the system rather than upending the system”347, as many former UNIFEM practitioners hoped it might do. The increased visibility has meant that certain progressive actions for the advancement of women’s rights, that may have previously gone unnoticed, can no longer go undetected and are now under greater surveillance. As such, the greater visibility and elevated mandate is a trompe-l’oeil: it appears that the feminist community of practice will have greater success from their position of greater power in the field, but they have lost freedom in the process and are now more tightly bound by this new position of power. The creation of UN Women, then, is a stark illustration of the trade-offs that feminist practitioners face in their struggles for the advancement of women’s rights: on the one hand, UNIFEM represents their commitment to ‘radical’ feminist goals of gender equality, but it limits their access to power. On the other hand, UN Women provides feminists with a seat at the table, but fails to position these feminists in a way that allows them to advance their ideals. The creation of UN Women is a good example to show how the creation of a new institution is an important explicit change. Yet, without a change in underlying power relations, the creation of this institution serves to reproduce – and even strengthen – dominant power relations in the field rather than changing them. The creation of UN Women opens a new context for action and new possibilities for the

345 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013. 346 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/07/2013. 347 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

76 position-takings of individuals, but a change in practice will not necessarily follow. Change in practice comes when individuals struggle to make normative change meaningful in practice – something that the feminist community are working to achieve.

Growing Pains: Contextual Challenges

Beyond feminists’ perceptions about their limited ability to advance their ideals following the creation of UN Women, the context in which UN Women was born has had an effect on its ability to function according to its mandate in the initial years. The conflict between the feminist and bureaucratic communities was heightened as a result of the rocky political and economic context globally. This section analyzes these issues, showing that context affects how UN Women operates (and is perceived to operate). UN Women is still a very young institution and is undergoing organizational and institutional development and growth that will continue to shift its practices in the coming years. As such, in many ways, it is too soon to tell what UN Women’s impact on women’s rights and gender issues – both within the UN system and beyond – will be. As one bureaucrat noted: “Don’t get me wrong, with UN Women, you could do more once it gets into a decent level of comfort. UNICEF can push for things; it’s not like UN Women will not be able to. But it’s too young. And so it needs to grow as an organization, you know what I mean? It’s not necessarily – it’s not as simple as the other four organizations re-doing it again. It’s too young. It has to learn. You know what I mean? Position itself and all of that.”348

UN Women needs to learn to position itself within the UN system. There are two key interrelated issues to consider in this positioning process. First, UN Women has encountered a number of roadblocks in its initial years as a result of the particular political and economic context into which it was born. In light of these challenges, it is necessary to position itself and prioritize, making choices about what to address when they are unable to address everything in their operational mandate. Second, the positioning of how to spend limited funds is influenced by the jockeying for position of the individuals within this organization – whether ‘feminist’ or

348 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

77 ‘bureaucratic’. There is a question of which actors within UN Women will win in this positioning contest; which priorities and practices will emerge as dominant for UN Women in the conflict between the two communities. It is too soon to tell whether these communities will learn, in and through their interactions and contestation, growing into a single unified approach. So far, it appears that this alignment is not happening, but that the dominant bureaucratic approach is pushing out the radical feminist ideals. The outcome of these conflicts affects how UN Women chooses to allocate its limited resources. For example, in terms of UN Women’s operational effectiveness, in the early years many UN bureaucrats from across the system reported that they had seen no change because there had been no change in UN Women’s operational capacity on the ground. As many observers believe, UN Women has the potential to be a catalytic agency, but as one bureaucrat explained, “UN Women is top-heavy right now – it is all based in New York. There will be a growth period, but they need to deliver at the regional level and at the national level… There needs to be more investment at the country level”349.

At headquarters, UN Women are becoming stronger and are beginning to produce important policy initiatives on gender equality and women’s rights. However, UN Women is only now beginning to slowly roll out a strong and coherent approach at the field level, despite their claims from the beginning that the restructuring and upgrading of their capacity, effectiveness and presence on the ground is one of the highest priorities350. This lack of operational prioritization is linked to the conflict between UNIFEM and OSAGI, and between the beliefs of the two communities of practice. The emerging focus from within UN Women in its initial years has been dominated by a focus on UN-level practices rather than operational (and external ground-level) practices that would align more with the feminist intentions within UNIFEM. The fact that the operational side has not been prioritized indicates that the bureaucratic practices from within OSAGI are dominating over the feminist approach in the contest to establish and define UN Women.

349 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/15/2013. 350 Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, ‘Regional architecture: administrative, budgetary and financial implications and implementation plan’ 18 September 2012,

78 In a 2012 report presented by UN Women at the annual session of the Executive Board, the Executive Director noted the persistent weaknesses in UN Women’s regional architecture, including uneven capacity across the organization; overly centralized decision and approval mechanisms, leading to delays and high transaction costs; misaligned lines of reporting, which limit effective oversight; inconsistent internal communication and knowledge sharing; limited decision-making authority for UN Women representatives, including with regard to financial resources; and a lack of adequate technical capacity at the field level351. Another feminist bureaucrat noted, “with such small capacity, the resources that we [do] have, have been focused at the strategic level and not at something [such as] operations…And that is a huge challenge that we face across the board, is that we have all these commitments, we have all the mandates, we have all the action plans, we have all the guidance notes, you could fill this building with all the paper – but then at the country level the actors want to know how. And that's when we go, uhhhhh. We can't show them.”352

UN Women is ‘top-heavy’ in nature, with an abundance of strategy and policy-making, but an inability to execute those policies in practice. For example, a 2013 evaluation of the peace and security work in particular confirmed that the transition to UN Women has increased the strategic presence, leadership and influence of the entity at the global level but not necessarily yet at country levels353. Where UNIFEM prioritized its operational, ground-level work and connection to the global women’s movement, UN Women – in its initial years – has been unable (and unwilling) to prioritize its outward-looking side. While the conflict between what it means to do gender equality work within the UN is at the heart of this positioning process, the lack of financial and human resources has not helped the process. As one bureaucrat explained: “You can have all these policies and frameworks, but to actually do it you need the human resources and the financial resources to just make it happen, to figure out how to make it work, either by this way or that way. And UNIFEM and even now UN Women doesn't have the capacity to do this for the rest of the system,

351 Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, ‘Regional architecture: administrative, budgetary and financial implications and implementation plan’ 18 September 2012, UNW/2012/10. 352 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/25/2013. 353 UN Women, ‘Thematic Evaluation: The Contribution of UN Women to Increasing Women’s Leadership and Participation in Peace and Security and in Humanitarian Response’ Final Synthesis Report, September 2013.

79 and UNIFEM did not even have the mandate – at least UN Women has the mandate. So to answer your question, is it getting better? In some of our country offices they are really changing, but it is taking forever because the UN system always takes forever to roll out any change and to increase staffing, and on top of it, we are dealing with this in a financial crisis that is really unprecedented.”354

Many bureaucrats have been disappointed by the ineffective operational work of UN Women thus far, although they recognize that this requires heavy financial support, something that UN Women is struggling to guarantee. UN Women itself states that the relative youth of the organization means that priority must be placed on budgeting for organizational creation, in addition to funding the actual policy and programming goals355. However, under different management, this distribution of resources could play out differently, with focus being placed first on operational capabilities because they are essential to inform organizational creation. As such, while funding is indeed limited, the contest over how to spend the limited funds within this Janus-faced organization continues to prioritize bureaucratic practices that focus on an internal focus. In terms of economic context, UN Women was created in the wake of a financial crisis that has gutted funding for the UN on the whole, let alone a fledgling organization that has not yet established strong financial partnerships. Funding streams remain well below the original minimum budget set for UN Women of $500 million per annum356. UN Women financial statements show total revenue of $223.92 million in 2012, and $289 million in 2013357. Late-2014 projections estimated a combined total revenue of $274 million, with only $154 million in core contributions and around $120 million in non-core contributions. The Executive Director of UN Women has stated that this is ‘dismal’ and declared: “it is self-evident that aspirations are currently far outstripping

354 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/25/2013. 355 Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, ‘Integrated budget estimated for the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women for the biennium 2014-2015’ UNW/2013/7 356 UN General Assembly, A/64/588. “The report examines the implications of the functions of the composite entity for funding from assessed and voluntary contributions. It suggests that approximately $125 million per annum is needed for a basic staff complement, related operating costs and ‘start-up’ capacity at the country, regional and Headquarters levels, as well as an additional $375 million per annum in the initial phase to respond to country level requests for United Nations programmatic support”. 357 UN Women, ‘Financial report and audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2013 and Report of the Board of Auditors’, A/69/5/Add.12.

80 commitment”358 The graph below illustrates that funding has increased for the organization since its creation, but that the combined total of core and non-core funding still remains far below the minimum $500 million mark estimated as the minimum budget for the effective functioning of the organization.

Table 1.1 Total financial contributions by year to UN Women, in core and non-core funding359

The financial crisis has had a significant impact on the entire UN system. UN Women’s formative years were shaped by this extreme resource deficit. The lack of resources limited what UN Women was capable of accomplishing in its early years. As one feminist explained: “I think if we had been created in 2000 instead of 2010, it would have been a different scenario because it would have been so much easier for us to raise money, and easier for us to…change the way the system works”360. In the year 2000, not only was there political will for addressing human rights and human security priorities, in

358 Executive Board of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, ‘Report on the second regular session, 15 and 16 September 2014’ UNW/2014/7. 359 UN Women website, 2014. (http://www.unwomen.org/en/partnerships/donor- countries/overall-contributions) 360 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/25/2013.

81 the wake of the Millennium Development Goals, but funding was more easily accessible for UN organizations because of the relatively positive economic situation. As such, in a different financial climate, UN Women might have entered into the UN system at a time where feminist practitioners had greater access to capital – both financial and symbolic – that could have better positioned them in determining how UN Women should operate. The shift between what might have been possible in 2000 compared to 2010 is also related to the political context of the 2000s and particularly the impact of the 9/11 attacks and the War on Terror on the functioning of the UN system. The idealistic focus on human rights and human security of the Millennium Declaration was sidelined by the focus within the Security Council on fighting terrorism and more traditional security priorities. Moreover, the 2000s have seen an increase in extremisms and religious fundamentalisms globally and within many UN Member States, which often have deeply embedded cultural assumptions about women, men, gender and equality361. This trend towards conservatism globally has clawed-back women’s rights and has limited the willingness of many States to make advancements regarding women’s human rights. Likely in connection with this increasingly conservative global political culture, and the fact that UN Member States are increasingly concerned with how and to what extent women’s rights and gender equality are addressed within the UN, UN Women is heavily micro-managed by their executive board. UNIFEM had only a consultative leadership committee above them, and were loosely governed by UNDP’s executive board. They were significantly less accountable to a governing body than is the case with UN Women’s new governance structure. UN Women has, as one practitioner bemoaned, “the worst executive board of any UN entity”362. There are 41 Member States that make up UN Women’s executive board363. This is larger than the boards of both UNDP and UNICEF, two much larger and more resource-rich UN entities. Not only do these 41

361 Report of the Expert Group Meeting on Structural and Policy Constraints in Achieving the MDGS for Women and Girls: http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/csw/58/csw58-2013- egm-report-en.pdf 362 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 363 The Member States on the executive board are elected for a three-year term. Of the 41 Members, 10 are from African States; 10 from Asian States; 4 from Eastern European States; 6 from Latin American and Caribbean States; 5 from Western countries and other States; and 6 from the top financial contributing countries.

82 Member States have vastly different political views on how to promote women’s rights and gender equality, some are downright hostile to the advancement of women’s rights: “We have hostile Member States on our board… How can you have an entity that is managed by 41 countries with vastly different opinions? [...] When we were UNIFEM, we had no formal role in the Council, but we also didn’t have any executive board stopping us. So we yapped away on the sidelines.”364

For this bureaucrat, at least being at the margins of the organization meant that UNIFEM was less constrained by this new bloated executive board of Member States, some of whom are highly conservative, such as Russia and Saudi Arabia. Ultimately, what this section shows is how delicate and insecure the merger of these four entities has been. It also shows how these contextual economic and political factors exacerbate the pre-existing institutional conflict between the feminist community of practice and the bureaucratic community of practice. These factors have impacted how UN Women emerged since 2010 and how certain practices have been prioritized and funded in the early years, while others have not received sufficient attention.

An Unsteady Merger: The Case of the WPS Agenda

The creation of UN Women has been a moment of instability and insecurity, as four disparate entities were united in the form of a new institution. The new institution and the actors within it are left to determine precisely what role the institution will play in the field, how it will spend its resources, and what practices will emerge as dominant. As one practitioner noted: “While you think that [the creation of UN Women] should be a moment of strength, it obviously isn’t – any corporate merger is an intake of breath, not a powerful exhale. It is a moment of re-grouping and deep insecurity and instability”.365

This section draws on an example from the specific case of peace and security to illustrate an additional impact of this instability: the impact of the timing of the creation of UN Women on the case of the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda.

364 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 365 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

83 UN Women came at an unfortunate time for those working on advancing the WPS agenda. The merger of these four entities occurred just as the UN system as a whole was expanding its focus on conflict-related sexual violence. This was in the aftermath of the adoption of Security Council resolutions 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009) and 1889 (2009), which were heavily focused on developing a practical approach to addressing conflict- related sexual violence366. In particular, in 2010, the Office of the Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG) on sexual violence was created in response to the call for such a position in Resolution 1888 (2009). While the position of the SRSG was created as a mechanism to ensure sufficient attention was paid to the women’s rights issue of sexual violence in the domain of peace and security, it had the paradoxical effect of creating heightened competition amongst the actors working on advancing the WPS agenda within the UN. With the creation of this Office, a dichotomous split was institutionalized within the field of security between those who focus on conflict-related sexual violence, located in the Office of the SRSG, and those who work more comprehensively on the WPS agenda, located primarily within UN Women367. While one might expect that this new institutional arrangement would be conducive to cooperation between the two organizations, in reality there has been fierce competition. As one bureaucrat explained, “we should be supporting each other, and not competing, which is what we’re doing now”368. As another bureaucrat explained: “[Resolution] 1888 created her position and as soon as you create bureaucratic space, a new institutional space, anybody occupying that space – if they’re smart – fully recognizes that your survival depends upon expanding that space and establishing impermeable boundaries”.369

The competition between these offices is based on competition for what is at stake – legitimacy and financial resources – that allow these organizations to maintain certain

366 This process, and the expanding focus on conflict-related sexual violence, is elaborated in considerable detail in the following two chapters of the dissertation. 367 This institutional split mirrors the division between UNIFEM and OSAGI in the sense that both cases show that a new institutional mechanism was created – separate from the existing mechanism – as a way to demonstrate political will towards addressing a particular gender issue. However, in both cases, the effect of ballooning the bureaucratic mechanisms to address an issue (counter- intuitively) led to greater competition between them. 368 Author’s notes from observation, New York City, April 2013. 369 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

84 positions within the field of security. In this case, UN Women, itself internally fraught, found itself competing against an institutionally powerful and flexible new player. According to the observations of several feminist practitioners, recruitment patterns for the Office of the SRSG have been highly competitive, with staff who are very aggressive and who are used to fighting for institutional space: “they’ve basically been building and building and building this specialized space. That has been their teething pains and their initial process, and it doesn’t have to be that way…[It’s] the dogged pursuit of bureaucratic space”.370

The number of bureaucrats working within the Office of the SRSG on this single issue is the same as the team that addresses all women, peace and security issues within UN Women. The Office of the SRSG has a comprehensive team working on issues of sexual violence in conflict, reporting to the Secretary-General himself, while UN Women are responsible to address not only the issue of conflict-related sexual violence but also all other aspects of the WPS agenda, and particularly the objective of supporting women’s leadership and participation, which has become more prominent in the strategic frameworks of UN Women and its predecessor entities over time371: “If we try to match what the SRSG is doing, we’re going to go broke. They have the same size team as the peace and security unit at UN Women and the same level of power as UN Women overall, but sexual violence is also the only thing that they do. UN Women cannot compete with them.”372

While the Office of the SRSG have a singular focus and a competitive drive, the team at UN Women are primarily responsible for a more politically challenging issue (women’s leadership and participation) but are also juggling the responsibility of addressing multiple diverse priorities. A recent evaluation of UN Women’s peace and security work states: “relative to other thematic areas [within UN Women], women, peace and security is a multi-tiered area of UN Women’s work. Its different constituent themes and sub- themes have quite different objectives, and involve different modes of engagement at the

370 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 371 UN Women, ‘Thematic Evaluation: The Contribution of UN Women to Increasing Women’s Leadership and Participation in Peace and Security and in Humanitarian Response’ Final Synthesis Report, September 2013. 372 Author’s notes from observation, New York City, April 2013.

85 global, regional, national and subnational/micro levels”.373 Thus, even compared to other teams within UN Women, the peace and security team is thinly spread in their efforts to address the WPS agenda and at all levels. The positioning of the SRSG within the UN system also allows her unprecedented political power for addressing this issue. The highest level of leadership in the Office – the SRSG – is an Under-Secretary General (USG), which is the same ranking as the Executive Head of UN Women. What this means is that while the SRSG uses her power to focus exclusively on this singular issue, the USG for UN Women is responsible to focus on all issues related to women’s rights, gender equality and the empowerment of women within the UN system, of which peace and security is only one component. This power differential has an impact in terms of what is possible for each of the USGs. The position of the SRSG within the Secretariat, reporting directly to the Secretary General, rather than to an executive board made up of Member States, also gives the SRSG autonomy to make more contentious statements that critique Member States, under the protection of her title. For example, during her tenure, the former SRSG Wallstrom called the DRC the ‘rape capital of the world’374. While the government of the DRC was shocked and angry, she never retracted her statement and was able to push the limits of the system because of the institutional protection that her position afforded her. The UN Women peace and security team are worried about their ability to make progress on the issues within the WPS agenda that go beyond a focus on conflict-related sexual violence, in light of the growing strength of the Office of the SRSG. UN Women is also less able to provide inputs to the Security Council about women’s experiences of conflict – as opposed to the Office of the SRSG – because, as the previous section showed, UN Women does not yet have a sufficiently strong presence in the field. On the other hand, the Office of the SRSG have the political support and funding to provide inputs to the Security Council on the field-level situation for women, in relation to conflict-related sexual violence. As such, as one feminist explained:

373 UN Women, ‘Thematic Evaluation: The Contribution of UN Women to Increasing Women’s Leadership and Participation in Peace and Security and in Humanitarian Response’ Final Synthesis Report, September 2013. 374 ‘Tackling sexual violence must include prevention, ending impunity – UN official’ UN News article, 27 April 2010. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34502#.Vd5BymTF_EI

86 “The Office of the SRSG has more resources than we do to make sure that there is someone to deal with sexual violence. So the Secretary-General’s report is all sexual violence, and not anything else and the Security Council is increasingly discussing only sexual violence, and not leadership or other women’s rights issues.”375

As UN Women is dealing with the turmoil of the merger of the gender architecture, their failure to prioritize and provided funding for operational work and a sufficient field-level presence has meant that they are in a weakened position – relative to the SRSG – for providing inputs to the Security Council, and these inputs are essential in order to have the advancement of women’s rights issues within the domain of peace and security. Ultimately, in 2010, the momentum behind the establishment of the Office of the SRSG was not matched in UN Women. This moment of weakness and instability in the overall gender architecture within the UN system, with the creation of UN Women, corresponded precisely with the rise in strength of the SRSG, as Margot Wallstrom of Sweden took the helm of this new institutional mechanism. This was not only a moment of strength for the new SRSG, but also a moment of weakness for UN Women, and this has had an impact on how the peace and security team within UN Women have been able to engage within the domain of peace and security. As one bureaucrat noted: “I do think it has more to do with institutional turf than with the issues and the agenda, the impacts on the ground, stuff like that”.376 As such, the success of the focus on conflict-related sexual violence, which will be addressed in later chapters, has – in large part – been also a result of the institutional structure of UN Women and its position in the field.

Change in the Feminist Community of Practice

The remainder of this chapter analyzes how the creation of UN Women has led to two institutional shifts against which the feminist community of practice must now push: the increased focus on technical expertise rather than gender expertise, and a primary focus on development, rather than human rights. This is particularly evident in the composition of UN Women’s new leadership team, many of whom lack competence in

375 Author’s notes from observation, New York City, April 2013. 376 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/24/2013.

87 work related to gender equality or women’s rights. As such, this shift has raised new conflicts over what it means to be a feminist and what it means to do gender equality work within the UN. It has also led to a struggle between the ‘original’ feminists and the new leadership, over what UN Women’s work and legacy will be within the UN system. This fight for power is over the constitution of this community of practice and the legitimation of the correct and competent way of addressing women’s rights and gender equality issues within the UN system. The interaction between the feminist community and their bureaucratic counterparts illuminates how the interactions between individuals and communities can force actors to create and revise their interpretations of taken-for- granted realities. It allows outsiders to witness the struggle over how to define the new status quo.377 This process of contestation reinforces and is generative of identity, as the feminist community in particular define for themselves what it means to be a feminist within the UN, in contrast to what they see as ‘other’ and different from themselves.

To Be a ‘Feminist’ Practitioner: Feminists versus Technocrats

With the creation of UN Women, new technocratic actors without experience working on women’s rights and gender equality issues have begun to enter into this domain. These individuals go beyond the bureaucratic individuals previously located in OSAGI who had expertise in gender issues but who addressed them from a different perspective. UN Women is now considered to be a more legitimate professional step for technocrats, plus more jobs are being created in general that focus on the technical aspects of gender equality and women’s rights. As such, people with technical skills but who lack gender expertise are entering into ‘gender jobs’. Now, many people who work on gender issues are not gender experts and are not ‘feminists’; this is just another job on their longer career path. As one practitioner explained, “there [are] a lot of people that don’t know anything about gender that are now trying to become gender experts”378. The creation of UN Women changed the stakes for technocrats and the organization was opened for their entry. As such, the creation of UN Women can be understood as having

377 Espeland 1998. 378 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

88 let in new competitors to the field and feminist practitioners are now pushing back against these career bureaucrats who are changing what it means to work on gender issues and what it means to be a gender expert. Previously, it had never been prestigious to work on women’s issues within the UN system. As one feminist explained, career bureaucrats have rarely worked on gender issues by choice, because “Gender is not very prestigious. If you can do anything else, why would you work on gender?”379 However, the prestige associated with working on gender issues has changed with the bureaucratization and the increased visibility of UN Women as an organization within the UN system. Within the UN bureaucracy more broadly, there are many people who work on specialized issues, such as the environment, children’s rights, or health, who do not necessarily feel passionately about those issues, but who have the required technical skills to complete a designated bureaucratic task. Thus, this bureaucratization is not unique to the issue of women’s rights and to UN Women: “It’s like UNICEF: you will find in UNICEF people that really care about children, and people that really don’t! I mean, they care about development and about the world and about having a UN career, but they’re not, you know ‘about’ children only. I mean, they roam around the system. And the same will happen with UN Women because that is how UN bureaucracy works”380

Career bureaucrats will accept positions for reasons that advance their professional qualifications rather than based on their particular commitment to an issue. However, within UNIFEM and the other UN gender entities prior to UN Women, this phenomenon of working on women’s rights as a non-feminist technocrat occurred much less frequently. Feminists are now pushing back against what they see as a corrosion of their feminist values within UN Women, especially in comparison to UNIFEM, by these technocrats who strip away the feminist content of a focus on gender. Unlike UNIFEM, where the personnel and especially the leadership team, were primarily those who were passionate about women’s rights, the influx of technocrats is particularly visible in the new leadership of UN Women: “Now we see bureaucrats entering into UN Women without conviction for women’s rights, because it is good for their careers – so these people don’t debate

379 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 380 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

89 with conviction, they won’t fight to get women’s rights on the table in the same way. Career bureaucrats are taking positions in gender and UN Women because it’s good for their careers – including Michelle Bachelet. As a socialist, she believes in equality for all, but there is a big leadership problem when the head of UN Women is not a feminist.”381

The influx of ‘career bureaucrats’ has left many feminist practitioners questioning the competence of their leadership, with competence understood as their ‘conviction’ to ‘fight to get women’s rights on the table’. The above passage also takes aim at the first Executive Director of UN Women, Michelle Bachelet. In the eyes of many feminist practitioners, the fact that Bachelet was ‘not a feminist’, based on their understanding of the term, was a betrayal by the organization. This betrayal is rooted in their understanding that having a strong leader who is willing to prioritize women’s rights – and who is willing to stand up for gender issues – is key to making progress on gender equality. Many low- and mid-level UN Women feminists are very disappointed in UN Women’s new leadership team, most of whom have little or no previous experience working on gender and women’s rights issues. They believe that this leadership has undermined and constrained them; the feminists who see themselves as committed to creating change in the UN system around this issue. One practitioner explained, it is an “unfortunate fact that I have a hierarchy of bosses above me who […] aren’t necessarily feminists; don’t necessarily have experience in the women’s movement; so aren’t automatic advocates. Unlike UNIFEM, everybody was a feminist, nothing had to be explained. You’re a feminist organization. You know what you’re doing. It’s different now. We’re a standard UN organization, which is very disappointing.”382

The creation of UN Women, as a standard bureaucratic organization, with technocratic, career bureaucrats at its helm, has had an effect on the feminist community of practice, shifting the membership of the organization from being comprised of ‘feminists’ within UNIFEM, to including non-feminists, career- and technical- bureaucrats. There is a sense of disappointment that to be a ‘standard UN organization’ with a ‘hierarchy of bosses’ has meant a loss of the feminist spirit that characterized UNIFEM. She continues to say: “I’m sorry to say, I think some people above me at the moment don’t necessarily see the point and also don’t want to be seen as ‘special pleaders’, which I’m afraid

381 Author’s notes from observation, New York City, April 2013. 382 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

90 is our job. I’m sorry. We are special pleaders. We are pleading for a very specific, narrow interest.”383

While UN Women is now a ‘standard UN organization’, this feminist and others remain committed to the idea that UN Women could be a feminist space, or at least a space that promotes women’s rights in a significant way. She points to the disjuncture between UN Women’s leadership who don’t ‘see the point’ and who don’t want to be seen as ‘special pleaders’, and the reality for her: that in order to competently address women’s human rights, ‘special pleading’ is not only a reality but a necessity. ‘Special pleading’ is part of the feminist identity; as she says, it ‘is our job’. As such, she is pointing to what she sees as the incompetence of UN Women’s leadership in their current role. The leadership do not align with the understandings of the feminist community about what it means to work on gender issues within the UN system. This forces the community to reckon with what it means to be a feminist and what their role is within the UN.

To Do Gender Equality Work: An Influx of Development Focus

UN Women has shifted its focus away from feminist ideals focused on human rights and equality, and towards the field of development. Most of the feminist community of practice have a professional trajectory rooted in human rights, whereas the new technocrats and career bureaucrats tend to be development specialists. Almost all of the new management of UN Women came from mid-level UNDP positions, with experience primarily in development policy. The influx of ‘development-focused’ management and practitioners within the community has meant that human rights priorities have increasingly been sidelined. Instead, the focus is on how to do gender work from a development-perspective, with greater focus on economics and service- provision. This development focus neutralizes many of UNIFEM’s more radical characteristics. A focus on human rights is radical in the sense that it requires upending structures of power and privilege within society, whereas a focus on development can work more easily within existing structures. What is key here is that the turn to

383 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

91 development is part of the bureaucratizing process because the neutrality that is embedded in the practices of bureaucracy can align with development ideals. Development practitioners can be very resistant to work on human rights. Feminist practitioners explain that many development practitioners are “Not always human rights-friendly. They prefer not to use the word ‘human rights’…They want to do the work, but they don’t want to call it ‘rights’. Somehow, when you speak about those issues as rights, they prefer to see them as ‘services’ to women, support to women…and I understand that came from the very top at UN Women.”384

The language of services and support represents the developmental side of the UN’s work. For example, rather than appealing to a woman’s human right to fresh water, the language of services highlights how fresh water can serve development needs overall. This demands less accountability from powerful States. One practitioner explained, “Legally and politically, states won’t always respond to discussions of rights…the right to water? The US won’t sign a treaty if it talks about the right to water, because they don’t agree that this is a ‘right’”385. Human rights discourses and practices face pushback from development practitioners386. This dynamic has been especially apparent since the creation of UN Women; with development professionals increasingly defining how to properly ‘do’ gender equality work and who are silencing a strong focus on rights. Differently put, the turn to UN Women has been accompanied by a turn to development- focused policies and practices, which are a competing set of priorities and interests than the feminist community of practice. As such, this turn to development creates new challenges for feminists to navigate working within the UN system. This focus on development priorities is also evident in the failure of UN Women to focus on peace and security as a priority area. The issue of peace and security is particularly contentious and delicate for Member States as it deals directly in their domestic political affairs. As one bureaucrat noted, “UN Women has an executive board that responds to Member States, and women, peace and security issues, by definition, are not issues that Member States like

384 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/18/2013. 385 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/19/2013. 386 The resistance to human rights within the UN system will be addressed in greater detail in the final empirical chapter of this dissertation, on the Security Council.

92 that much – it doesn’t have the developmental focus. So, that complicates the emphasis that UN Women can put on women, peace and security issues.”387

The challenge of working on the WPS agenda has been magnified by the failure of UN Women leadership to prioritize this issue. One UN Women feminists explained: “Our first USG, Bachelet, [was] not really interested…she was more ‘development’, she wasn’t really interested in peace and security issues.”388 While UN Women has the formal mandate to work on all three pillars of the UN system (e.g. human rights, peace and security, and development), the majority of their operational capacity is now linked to development. Whether it is because UN Women leadership are responding to the constraints of an executive board that would prefer to de-emphasize peace and security, and human rights, or because of their own preferences and professional specializations, development priorities have gained more traction within UN Women’s operating budget. The following table illustrates just how marginalized the issue of peace and security has become within UN Women in comparison to more development-focused priorities. Between 2010 and 2012, ‘peace and security’ received one of the smallest expenditure budgets of the five UN Women priority areas. While this area is steadily growing, for example, increasing from $15 million in 2010 to $25 million in 2012, it continues to receive far fewer funds than the other priority areas such as leadership and participation, women’s economic empowerment and ending violence against women. These other areas would be considered ‘developmental’ in the sense that they focus on service provision, technical progress and they fit within a neoliberal economic paradigm. According to this table, there is no specific focus on human rights. While rights might be mainstreamed into each of the components, anecdotal evidence suggests that they remain strongly resisted among the UN Women leadership.

Table 3.2: Total UN Women programme expenditure by theme, 2010-2012 UN Women priority area 2010 2011 2012 $m. % $m. % $m. % Leadership and participation 34 26 35 25 38 22

387 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 388 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, Interview 05/08/2013.

93 Women’s economic empowerment 27 20 31 22 37 21 Ending violence against women 21 16 24 17 43 25 Peace and security 15 11 18 13 25 14 National planning and budgeting 22 17 17 12 19 11 Cross thematic 13 10 13 9 13 7 Total 132 100 138 100 175 100

Figures taken from UN Women, ‘Thematic Evaluation: The Contribution of UN Women to Increasing Women’s Leadership and Participation in Peace and Security and in Humanitarian Response’ Final Synthesis Report, September 2013

The development focus of UN Women’s leadership team limits feminists’ ability to work on conflict, post-conflict and crisis situations, as well as human rights. As one bureaucrat noted, in UN Women the “iron curtain between development and humanitarian work is massive”389. UN Women is so overwhelmingly focused on development work that human rights and peace and security work are overshadowed. Michelle Bachelet often explicitly excluded or deleted human rights from her discourses and her management team, as well as the management team of the new Executive Director, have explicitly cut references to human rights from the work of their staff390. The resistance to human rights within the UN system has trickled into UN Women, despite the fact that women’s human rights are at the core of their mandate and, as feminist practitioners would argue, are central to how to properly do work on gender. UN Women leadership may be resistant to addressing human rights for pragmatic reasons: it is hard to sell human rights to governments391. As one bureaucrat explained, “If you can say to a government, ‘You should include women because women are going to be able to vote and if you want to win elections, you need to get half the population to vote for you’ – if that is an argument that is going to get traction, why don’t you use it instead of saying, ‘Women have the right to be full citizens in their country’?”392

There is a need to articulate demands, especially ones that might make States nervous, in ways that do not cause domestic ‘problems’ for States and feminists recognize that this

389 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/07/2013. 390 Author’s notes from observation, New York City, April 2013. 391 Razavi 1998. 392 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/07/2013.

94 process is strategic and instrumental language can be used in ways that strongly contribute to the advancement of women’s rights. However, in many cases with these development-focused career bureaucrats, their unwillingness to use the language of rights does not appear to be based in strategy but is an indication that UN Women leadership are unwilling to ‘stick out their necks’ for women’s human rights as a priority and as an issue that demands attention within and by the UN system, even if it makes States nervous. This comes down to the basic division that has structured this chapter, between feminists and bureaucrats, and their vastly different ways of seeing and understanding the world, and of doing gender work within the UN system. Two examples illustrate this unwillingness of UN Women leadership to commit to taking risky strides with high pay-off for women’s rights. The first happened in the lead-up to the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty, where civil society and UN Women bureaucrats were working to incorporate gender-based violence language into the text of the treaty. UN Women co-sponsored a joint event with the CEDAW Committee and with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. However, the leadership within UN Women were unwilling to make a political statement on the matter, although a request was made for the head of UN Women to publicly discuss the importance of this issue. Feminists within UN Women were working to advance this issue but their senior leadership would not agree to make a statement, and were told: “it’s too risky, basically, for us to comment or to get involved in that sort of work”393. While certain individuals within UN Women supported the work being done, “as an institution, there wasn’t a voice”394. It was not until after the success of the Treaty, when there was arguably no political risk involved for UN Women’s leadership, that Assistant-Secretary General Puri made a short statement. While such a statement is not unhelpful, UN Women leadership were virtually absent in the “political hoist of getting an adoption and strengthening of the language. That is when it would have been critical.”395 Since then, UN Women branding has been self-congratulatory about this victory in incorporating women’s rights into the Treaty, but there is a sense amongst some feminists that UN Women’s leaders could have done much more to support this issue during the heat of the process.

393 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013. 394 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013. 395 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013.

95 A second example that illustrates how the leadership are responding to the WPS agenda and to women’s human rights came with a recent crisis that demanded a UN response396. After the UN system appointed a mediator in the crisis, a UN Women feminist approached her superiors to suggest that the head of UN Women immediately write a letter to say “Congratulations, now you need a gender advisor because you have got to involve women in resolving this crisis and women are suffering”397. The response of the UN Women leadership to this suggestion, as told by the feminist was: “No, I am not going to suggest that Bachelet write this letter. I’m not going to back your suggestion because why do you want to draw attention to women’s experiences of this conflict? Everybody is suffering. Why should we be saying that you need to look at women’s experiences?”398

By dismissing the focus on women and stating that ‘everybody is suffering’, the UN Women leadership were not ‘sticking out their necks’ to address women’s rights, and were refusing to demand attention for gender issues. This response illustrates how, in this case, UN Women leadership were not willing to make a public statement in favour of women’s rights in a situation of conflict. As the bureaucrat continued, “The decision was not to do anything, because it was shameful to be drawing attention to women’s experience right now. That is what I mean. They don’t get it!”399 In this case, it is not unreasonable to expect that UN Women would make a public statement in support of the women and girls in conflict, given that this is their mandate. The fact that they wouldn’t make such a statement, for whatever reason, is illustrative of the struggle that feminist practitioners are facing within the organization. They expect their leadership to take a stand for women’s rights, because they believe that to be a ‘special pleader’ for women’s human rights is necessary to properly and competently do gender equality work within the UN system. UN Women’s leadership obviously have a very different way of seeing the issue. Their practices are in conflict with the taken-for-granted ways of doing things amongst the feminist practitioners.

396 For reasons of anonymity, the location of the particular crisis is not included. 397 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 398 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 399 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

96 Should We Expect UN Women to be ‘Feminist’?

Part of the problem is that high-level leadership appointments across the UN system, including within UN Women, are political; they are not necessarily based on merit and expertise. High-level candidates for management positions are nominated by Member States. In describing the process of determining who would be the new head of UN Women, once the inaugural head resigned, one feminist explained: “So the SG right now has asked Member States to nominate good candidates to replace [Bachelet]. Is he asking them to nominate good feminist leaders? No. Good women’s leaders? No. People with experience on this issue? No. Canada nominated Kim Campbell! That’s your answer. Can you imagine her in charge? She is no feminist. No experience of this. So that is the point. Inter-governmental positions are political.”400

The reference to Kim Campbell is a statement of disappointment that Canada would nominate a candidate perceived as being completely inadequate for the task of leading a feminist organization401. While State-based nominations for leadership positions are standard practice across the UN system, the frustration for feminists is that they see the cards as already stacked against feminist agendas. Sometimes state preferences will coincide with what feminists believe are ‘merit- based’ appointments: individuals who are not only politically appointed but who are also deemed by feminists to be qualified to do ‘feminist’ work. These are cases where lower- level bureaucrats feel that they have the appropriate leadership to do their feminist work. However, when that is not the case, feminist practitioners are left frustrated. In the case of UN Women, they see that women’s rights issues are already so strongly resisted within the UN system, and UN Women is already so tightly controlled by its executive board, that without a head of agency that is willing to be a ‘special pleader’ for this issue, women’s rights will likely not advance past the existing status quo.

400 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 401 Campbell was the Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General between 1990 and 1993, where she did oversee a notable amendment to the Criminal Code in the area of sexual assault. She was also responsible for introducing Bill C-43 that would have recriminalized abortion, however this failed to pass the Senate. She was a member of the Progressive Conservative party. Regardless of whether or not Campbell is a feminist, she is seen here to be an unacceptable choice for leading a feminist agency, likely because of the conservative political background.

97 It is not necessarily that UN Women’s leadership are wilfully rejecting a focus on women’s rights within their mandate, although some feminists believe this to be true. Instead, their behaviour is connected to how they see the work that they do. One practitioner classified her colleagues and superiors on the basis of two kinds of practitioner: those who believe that the UN is serving Member States, and those that believe they are serving the people of the world, who are merely represented in the UN forum by Member States. This distinction makes a huge difference because: “if you are serving the Member State, you basically have to do what the government wants. If you are serving the people, you have to negotiate spaces with the government.”402

In reality, all UN bureaucrats serve Member States. They are an unelected bureaucratic body that was designed to meet the needs of an intergovernmental body. However, the distinction here is psychological: those who see themselves personally as serving the people rather than Member States are often more willing to push the status quo and try to make changes to the UN system. It is less about who they actually serve – in terms of their official mandate – and more about who they see themselves as serving. This is important when dealing with human rights and peace and security, which are often at odds with the vested interests of Member States. There is a difference between working within the status quo system that has been created by Member States versus trying to hold States to account and challenging the power relations that might be discriminating or damaging to certain groups of people. This is one of the core distinctions between UNIFEM and OSAGI; between the feminist community of practice and the bureaucratic community of practice. It is generally much more challenging to work as a bureaucrat that ‘works for the people’ and to negotiate spaces where you can make progress, especially if that progress contradicts State interests. Former UNIFEM bureaucrats tend to believe they work for ‘the people’, especially because many of them previously worked within civil society and the women’s movement, whereas former OSAGI bureaucrats tend to prioritize the support of governments. This distinction largely maps onto the roles that UNIFEM and OSAGI previously played as entities within the UN system:

402 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

98 “While UN Women embraced its expanded and new mandate and roles, the mindset of the people working within UN Women has been shaped by their previous experiences. You find the mindset of people who previously worked in UNIFEM is more oriented towards pushing for these frontier issues. While Secretariat colleagues [e.g. OSAGI], where there is a deeper tradition of UN staff as merely supporters of Member States developing normative standards, have a more restricted role, are less activist.”403

Conflict exists between the practitioners who see themselves as serving different purposes within the organization. There are those who are pushing at the ‘frontier issues’ in terms of advancing women’s rights issues, sometimes against the interests of Member States, and there are those who have become accustomed to working within the status quo of State preferences. This passage also confirms that the differences between the four previously distinct entities did not disappear in the creation of UN Women; that the trajectories of these practitioners have been shaped by their experiences of working within particular institutional spaces. Just as these former UNIFEM and OSAGI bureaucrats are shaped by their professional experiences, the high-level leadership of UN Women, most of whom did not work for UNIFEM or OSAGI, bring that same ‘Member State-focused’ approach to their work, rather than working as ‘activists’ for women’s rights or gender equality. As another bureaucrat agreed: “I think that a lot of career bureaucrats will think that they serve Member States only; they forget it’s the people”404. Overall, this chapter has raised the question of whether an organization designed for the promotion of women’s issues needs to be, or should be, by necessity, led by those who identify as ‘feminists’, in the sense that they are personally and politically committed to the advancement of gender equality and women’s rights. Many UN Women practitioners feel that being a feminist – in terms that they define based on whether or not an individual aligns with their community identity – is a necessary part of the job of advancing women’s rights and gender equality, and as such, that the UN Women leadership are lacking that characteristic. As one feminist explained:

403 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 404 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

99 “They are not activists! They are not women’s movement. That is an important distinction because you can be a good manager, but if you don’t feel the issue, and if you’ve never been part of a movement, then it is very hard to ‘get it’.”405

For those within UN Women who agree with this statement, it is important to distinguish between what it means to be a good manager and a good manager in the context of women’s rights. For the feminists, it is necessary that leaders be a part of the women’s movement; that they ‘get’ the issue so that they can be effective activists within and against the existing and emerging bureaucratic constraints of the UN system. On the other hand, the identity and understandings of the feminist community of practice are changing as a result of these struggles and this old understanding of feminism is perhaps no longer necessary or relevant for the effective leadership of this particular UN organization. As one bureaucrat questioned: “You know, the question is, in an organization like this, do you need everybody to be strong feminists? Do you need everybody to have that belief and principle drive it? I don’t know. What we have, is we have very skilled people at the top, who are needed, you know? Diplomats, experience in the UN system, experience in politics, running the organization – which is great. But they do what UN agencies do. They are not doing what a feminist organization wants to do. And that is the difference.”406

With the creation of UN Women, many feminists expected, or at least hoped, that this organization would be a force for change. In one respect, it will be – but this reality is much different than what these individuals imagined. Their dream was that UN Women would be like UNIFEM in spirit, but with more access to power and decision-making capacities. As a result, they have been disappointed that the leadership team behave, perhaps unsurprisingly, according to ‘what UN agencies do’. In hindsight, this should have been expected. Perhaps the difference is that these individuals were not expecting such a severe trade-off between feminist marginality with UNIFEM versus constrained inclusion with UN Women. For many bureaucrats within UN Women, their new ability to access power and high-level decision-making through formal institutional structures has not been worth this trade-off. They believe that they are losing the best opportunity they’ve had, to paraphrase the epigraph to this chapter.

405 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 406 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

100 “We’ve gone from being a radical scrappy feminist organization to being a good girl playing by the corporate rules. And that limits us enormously. It means we have access to better decision-making forums, which is wonderful. But that access is not worth it if the people accessing those forums don’t know why they are there. It is a terrible thing for me to say about my superiors. But they are there and they don’t necessarily argue our case very well. Because they don’t know it; they don’t get it”407

For many feminists, the benefits of gaining access to formal power was critically linked to how that power could then be negotiated for feminist gains. Ultimately, this trade-off has had positive and negative, intended and unintended gains for feminists. The struggles between the feminist community of practice and the bureaucratic community, however, are as-yet unresolved. While the culture of UN Women is different from what these feminists imagined it would be, they are still struggling to return the community – and the organization – to what they hoped it could be. As such, this process is still just beginning and will be a constant struggle for them: to establish new ways of doing gender equality, new understandings of how to advocate for women’s rights, and a new sense of what it means to be a feminist within the UN system.

Conclusion

This chapter has used the creation of UN Women as a lens through which to analyze how the feminist community of practice engages with the UN bureaucracy, in order to understand how this community develop practices within this constrained bureaucratic setting. The first section of the chapter highlights the creation of UN Women out of a context of bureaucratic infighting, primarily between UNIFEM and OSAGI; highlighting how the creation of UN Women institutionalized a persistent conflict between feminist practitioners from within UNIFEM, on the one hand, and their ‘non- feminist’ bureaucratic colleagues within OSAGI. The creation of UN Women shifted the space within which feminists engage within the UN system, strengthening certain bureaucratic practices for addressing women’s issues, at the expense of more idealist feminist practices. It had the counterintuitive effect of constraining feminists’ action

407 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

101 because the previously marginalized position of UNIFEM within the UN gave its staff certain freedoms that have now been shut down by the elevated mandate and increased scope of visibility of UN Women. It also details UN Women’s rough start within a tumultuous global economic and political context, and how the context of institutionalized conflict between the two communities is evident in the way priorities have been established within UN Women since its inception, and especially considering its limited resources. The second section of this chapter focuses on the community itself, analyzing how the creation of UN Women has led to an influx of new technocratic and career bureaucrats with little to no experience working on gender issues and lacking competence in the taken-for-granted feminist understandings of what it means to work on gender equality issues within the UN system. In the push by feminists against their bureaucratic colleagues, questions have emerged regarding what it means to be a ‘feminist’ within the UN and in terms of what it means to ‘do’ gender equality work. This is particularly evident in the composition of UN Women’s new leadership team, many of whom lack experience in work related to gender equality or women’s rights. This has created a challenge for feminist practitioners who want to see UN Women as a vocal advocate for gender equality and who want to push the frontiers on how women’s rights are addressed. The result has been a struggle by the feminists against this bureaucratization process; with conflict over what UN Women’s work and legacy will be within the UN system. It has also been a vocal process of self-realization in terms of feminist identity: about what it means for feminists to do gender work and to be a feminist within the UN system, and how these new individuals do not meet those requirement. Ultimately, there is a disjuncture between what these feminist agents expected for UN Women and the reality of the political context within which it was created. While the creation of UN Women provided a change that may on one level be seen as ‘governance feminism’ and as evidence of the successful focus on gender issues globally, this chapter shows that behind this significant change lies much more struggle and turmoil for feminists than one might initially expect. On the one hand, this institutional change has served to reproduce, and even strengthen, the dominant relations of power within the UN system that do not align with radical feminist ideals. In many ways, this chapter shows

102 that the feminist community are fighting a losing battle against the dominant bureaucratic approach within UN Women. On the other hand, it has created a new platform from which the feminist practitioners can operate. This institutional shift has brought opportunities for change that align with their ideals. As such, they are now engaged in a process of determining a new status quo, learning from this change, and negotiating how they fit within this new institutional space that is characterized by trade-offs between power and freedom. Based on what they know about navigating the UN system, these individuals must now determine how to proceed from this new position in the field.

103 Chapter 4:

The Success of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence within the UN: Navigating Bureaucracy for the Advancement of Feminist Ideals

This chapter addresses the case of the ‘women, peace and security’ agenda, and particularly the creation of the first two WPS Security Council resolutions. It seeks to understand the success of the WPS agenda, and its translation into an actionable agenda rather than remaining merely a symbolic – and sacred – victory. It focuses on how in and through practice and their knowledge of how to navigate the constraints of the UN bureaucracy, feminist practitioners positioned themselves to advance their ideals in the domain of peace and security. I argue that feminist practitioners gained access to the field of peace and security through Resolution 1325 as a change in ‘explicit rule’; struggled to advance this agenda; and ultimately, made the choice to sever the agenda and focus on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence, at the expense of focusing on other women’s rights issues within the broader WPS agenda. This chapter represents the first step of feminist engagement with institutions, where explicit rule has changed. The following chapter looks at how those changes in explicit rule, such as the adoption of a Security Council resolution, are made to stick, making norms meaningful and changing practices. This chapter will proceed as follows. First, it will explain the creation and adoption of Resolution 1325, arguing that while it is framed as a ‘miracle’ resolution, it was also a shock to the field of security that resulted from the external pressures caused by political changes throughout the 1990s. I argue that, in light of this, Resolution 1325 was never intended to shift the status quo approach to peace and security in the UN system, but that it created an opening for feminist practitioners to enter into the peace and security policy domain. Second, the chapter will outline how, in spite of the stagnancy of the WPS agenda in its early years, the WPS agenda gained prominence through the rising focus on conflict-related sexual violence and with the passing of Resolution 1820408. It

408 As a brief note to skeptics, the leap to addressing conflict-related sexual violence may not come as surprise to those who argue that issues such as violence against women are more likely to emerge as global normative priorities (see Keck and Sikkink 1998). However, issue attributes alone are insufficient to account for the process of change, and also the timing of the change. For example, a

104 will highlight how the feminist community of practice positioned themselves to advance their ideals in this domain, against these bureaucratic constraints, through their knowledge of how to build traction within the UN system; how to write and frame a subsequent resolution in order to effectively advance the agenda; and how to make friends and allies who could help them to advance their ideals. Finally, thinking about the dramatic change that occurred around the focus on conflict-related sexual violence following the adoption of Resolution 1820, this chapter argues that the success of the focus on conflict-related sexual violence is a tempered feminist victory. On the one hand, this is an example of feminist success in creating change against the bureaucratic constraints of the UN system. However, on the other hand the focus on conflict-related sexual violence reproduces the existing dominant power relations. It doesn’t require the Security Council to change – only supplement – their existing approach to security. Many feminists now feel that by focusing on conflict- related sexual violence, the WPS agenda has lost some of its original feminist intention. Ultimately, this case reflects the paradoxical position of feminists within international institutions – in order to make change, they must act in ways that may lead both to change but that may also reinforce dominant relations of power. In the process, they are able to make small changes that add up to more significant feminist victories.

The Making of the WPS Agenda

The ‘Miracle’ Resolution: A Shock to the Domain of Peace and Security

Security Council Resolution 1325 inspires awe amongst those who work on women, peace and security issues within the UN system and amongst the transnational activists who work around the world on women’s rights in conflict and post-conflict contexts. Very few WPS practitioners within the UN system can even fully grasp how this resolution came to be passed; for example, stating that it was “really a miracle”409,

previous failed effort in 2007 by certain UN Member States to advance this same issue indicates that there is a more complex explanation for the change. 409 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013.

105 “an amazing resolution”410 and that it was “genius”411. It is the only Security Council resolution that has an anniversary celebrated every year412. When the Resolution was passed, “[t]here was a lot of clapping – something unheard of in that particular chamber – and the word historic was used repeatedly”413. As one prominent scholar has noted, “[1325] is not only a landmark document, it is a potentially revolutionary one”414. Scholars emphasize the creation of 1325 as a result of the convergence of the right people, the right structure, the right moment and luck415. Hill et al (2003) argue that the explanation for the successful introduction and ratification of Resolution 1325 lies in three aspects of the UN system: the ideas and language from previous UN documents and treaties; the role of international and grassroots NGOs; and the “synergistic” relationship that was built between NGOs and internal UN actors416. One bureaucrat broadly agreed, referring more generally to “serendipitous moments”417 in time, such as the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action and the 1993 Vienna Conference, where the women’s movement and the UN institution have come together, are strategic and organized, and manage to secure wide buy-in on key issues. Other scholars highlight the role of NGO activism in advancing this Resolution418. As Cohn et al (2004) have noted, the passage of Resolution 1325 is “a formidable testimony to the efforts and skills of the NGOs responsible for its existence”.419 Resolution 1325 is one of the only Security Council resolutions that has ever been pushed so powerfully from civil society. As one interviewee noted: “I can’t think of any other resolution where civil society had such an impact”420. The involvement of civil society in creating the resolution is one of the key reasons attributed to why the Resolution has gained so much power beyond the UN system. Prior to Resolution 1325, while the Security Council had broadly condemned atrocities against women and had stressed women’s suffering in conflict, women’s rights

410 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 411 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/03/2013. 412 Cohn et al 2004. 413 Hill et al 2003. 414 Cohn et al, 2004, 9. 415 For example, see Black 2009; Hill et al 2003; Gibbings 2004. 416 Hill et al 2003. 417 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/07/2013. 418 Cohn et al 2004; Hudson 2010. 419 Cohn et al 2004, 130. 420 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/03/2013.

106 had not been formally incorporated into the Council’s agenda421. As Angela King, the Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Gender and the Advancement of Women noted, “It has taken the United Nations fifty-five years to have a full debate in the Security Council on ‘Women, Peace and Security’”.422 However, what makes the resolution amazing to many observers is its content. The Resolution detailed a holistic vision of women’s rights and gender equality, emphasizing women as active agents for inclusion and as participants in all aspects of post-conflict peacebuilding. As one bureaucrat noted: “It was certainly an anomaly; it was an innovation and that’s the thing. The really innovative part was the participation piece…The innovation was this end-of-the- century understanding that, yes, as some advocates have been saying, women participating in politics is good for politics, women participating in the economy is good for the economy in general, so the logical corollary to that is that women participating in conflict resolution and reconstruction after conflict is good for war and peace.”423

The introduction of language on women’s participation and agency was completely unprecedented in the Security Council. As a result, many – and especially those who had invested resources into creating this Resolution – believed that this agreement could be used as leverage to achieve substantive gender equality in post-conflict contexts, and as a powerful tool for mobilizing for women’s rights. In terms of precedent for the creation of Resolution 1325, the language and ideas for the resolution followed on decades of political advances that recognized women’s human rights. Since the first UN Decade on Women beginning in 1975, followed by the creation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1981, transnational women’s rights activists have been pushing to advance women’s rights and gender equality norms in the global domain424. The 1995

421 Hill et al 2003. 422 As cited in Cohn et al 2004, 130. 423 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/24/2013. 424 Throughout the 1990s, several UN conferences provided a critical platform to embed human rights priorities in the global arena. Through these conferences, the women’s movement advanced hard-won international agreements that expanded the recognition and scope of women’s rights and officially acknowledged women’s rights as human rights. Women’s human rights were declared universal, indivisible and interdependent. For example, Vienna 1993 brought attention to women’s rights with particular attention to violence against women; Cairo 1994 articulated a clear vision for women’s reproductive health and rights; Copenhagen 1995 did the same on poverty and social development; and the very important Beijing Platform for Action, was a global agenda for women’s

107 Beijing Platform for Action was particularly important, establishing ‘women and armed conflict’ as one of 12 strategic priority areas. Most scholars trace the beginning of the efforts to pass a Security Council resolution on this issue back to the 1998 meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). At this meeting, activists debated the obstacles to implementing ‘women and armed conflict’ as a priority area of the Beijing Platform425. However, it was not until 2000 that a formal NGO network was created to push for a Security Council document on this issue426. In March 2000, on International Women’s Day427, the ambassador for the Mission of Bangladesh to the UN, Anwarul Chowdhury, as President of the Security Council, made a speech that recognized that “peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men.”428 Not only was this the first time that a President of the Security Council addressed International Women’s Day proceedings, but he affirmed “that the equal access and full participation of women in power structures and their full involvement in all efforts for the prevention and resolution of conflicts are essential for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security”429. Many scholars claim that this speech paved the way for the Resolution, giving support and a “shot of enthusiasm and encouragement”430. It was seen by many to have been a crucial turning point, as a ‘speech act’ within the Security Council, opening space for the advancement of a Resolution431. This victory for the women’s rights movement can be situated within a broader turn towards addressing human rights issues within the Security Council. Within the short span of a few years between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, the Security Council had adopted a series of unprecedented resolutions, addressing new thematic human rights agendas related to children and armed conflict, the protection of

empowerment and an agreement to take immediate action for gender equality, especially around 12 critical areas of concern for women. 425 For example, see Hill et al 2003. 426 This network is called the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. 427 This date occurred concurrently with the 2000 meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), thus the number and scope of civil society representatives in New York in attendance was very high. 428 ‘Peace inextricably linked with equality between women and men, says Security Council, in International Women’s Day Statement’ Press release SC/6816. 8 March 2000. 429 ‘Peace inextricably linked with equality between women and men, says Security Council, in International Women’s Day Statement’ Press release SC/6816. 8 March 2000. 430 Hill et al 2003. 431 Black 2009; Cohn et al 2004; Gibbings 2004; Hudson 2010.

108 civilians, the responsibility to protect, and women, peace and security. With the end of the Cold War and the increase in ‘new’ forms of war432 in the 1990s, the UN system was arguably faced with a crisis in practice, being forced to re-consider its previous security practices that primarily emphasized the more minimalist outcomes of merely ending the bloodshed of conflict. Throughout the 1990s, peace and security practice increasingly emphasized a more ambitious goal of peacebuilding, not only seeking to ensure against conflict relapse, but also engaging in the complex processes of state- and nation-building as imperative to the process of building sustainable peace433. Intrinsically tied to this deepening international involvement in war-torn societies was a focus on human rights as a core component of building liberal, democratic and ‘sustainable’ post-conflict societies. Arguably then, this turn to developing various human rights agendas at the end of the 1990s within the Security Council was, in part, a response to the external pressure of the changing political, economic and security landscape. Increasingly, the legitimacy and authority of the Security Council was tied to its competence in peacebuilding, which demanded attention to human rights. In the case of the WPS agenda, for example, Otto (2010) builds on Ian Hurd’s concept of legitimacy as applied to the Security Council to suggest that Resolution 1325 constituted the Council’s means of managing doubts about its ‘gender legitimacy’, and that the Council responded to anxieties about its legitimacy by producing new rules to rebuild its symbolic capital434. Thus, while the adoption of Resolution 1325 was certainly an achievement for the women’s movement, it came at a particular moment in time when the UN system and the Security Council in particular were negotiating the changing dynamics of power in the post-Cold War world. Despite its ‘miracle’ status, the adoption of Resolution 1325 can be understood as a ‘shock’ in the domain of peace and security within the UN system that occurred in response to this external pressure. Exogenous pressure, such as institutional changes that serve as shocks, can create new opportunities for change in norms, boundaries and hierarchies435. This ‘shock’ meant that women’s rights norms were, for the first time, acknowledged within the domain of peace and security. However, as the next section will

432 Kaldor 1999. 433 For reference to the shift towards state-building and nation-building, see for example, Call and Cousens 2008; Goetze and Guzina 2008. 434 Otto 2010a. 435 Sauder 2008.

109 argue, the mere introduction of the norms in the Security Council – as a change in explicit rule – does not necessarily imply that practical change is inevitable. In fact, Resolution 1325 remained constrained by the bureaucratic setting within which it was created. It did not shift the underlying power dynamics in the field of security and arguably, was never intended to substantially shift policies and practices around peace and security. As such, while it created an opening for feminist practitioners to enter into the peace and security domain, a change in practice did not immediately occur. The WPS agenda subsequently stagnated in the aftermath of the adoption of Resolution 1325.

The Aftermath of Resolution 1325

On the one hand, the effects of Resolution 1325 outside of the UN system were significant. As Naraghi-Anderlini (2000) wrote, “On the face of it, this is just another Resolution that may or may not be implemented. But for women’s groups involved in peace building in war zones worldwide, it is a historic statement, with significant implications”.436 In the months and years following its passage, civil society activists around the world picked up Resolution 1325 and used it as a tool for mobilization. Civil society activists – many of whom were involved in lobbying for its adoption – sought to ensure that women in conflict and post-conflict contexts could use Resolution 1325 to hold their governments accountable to women’s rights and gender equality considerations. Within a year of its adoption, the NGO Working Group had produced and distributed 15,000 copies of the Resolution to civil society organizations around the world437. Resolution 1325 was also transformed to ensure its accessibility to all; transformed from the aesthetic of a bureaucratic UN document into a tool for activism. For one, it was literally translated into over 100 different languages. It was also translated in meaning, with organizations such as PeaceWomen working with UNIFEM to create an annotated resolution to indicate the ‘non-technical’ meaning of each paragraph438. While Resolution 1325 was formally created for use within the Security Council and the UN

436 Hill et al 2003. 437 NGOWG 2001; NGOWG 2002. 438 UNIFEM. ‘1325 Annotated Text: What It Means’ http://peacewomen.org/pages/about-1325/scr- 1325-what-it-means

110 system, its use and value quickly spread widely beyond the UN and gained momentum in conflict and post-conflict contexts, and within the global women’s movement. On the other hand, Resolution 1325 did not have the same effect within the UN system. For all of the victorious declarations of 1325 as ‘history in the making’, it appeared to stagnate in the aftermath of its adoption. With some exceptions, efforts to implement Resolution 1325 in the early 2000s were disappointing, leading many academics and practitioners to bemoan progress made both at the international and domestic levels439. As Otto (2009) contends, “You only have to lightly scratch the surface to see that the policies are not translating into action”440. By the fourth anniversary of the adoption of 1325, many official statements had been made that expressed deep dissatisfaction with the lack of implementation of the Resolution441. In their ‘Five Years On’ report on its implementation, the NGO Working Group reported that the integration of gender perspectives and Resolution 1325 provisions in Security Council resolutions had been very sporadic, inconsistent and disappointing442. As Cohn et al (2004) note, the primary initial challenge was in translating the statement of principles and commitment of the Resolution into actual daily practices and action. The lack of support for gender issues in practice was, for example, reflected in the continued staffing struggles experienced by Gender Advisors within the UN system, and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in particular, as well as inadequate funding overall443. In part, the difference between the stagnation within the UN and the momentum beyond the UN is a result of the disconnection that emerged between the symbolism of the resolution versus the reality of the text itself. This duality is evidenced by the words of one bureaucrat who commented, 1325 “wasn’t what civil society pushed for; what the text was. It was, you know, it then became a product of UN agencies who inputted very strongly at the time – UNIFEM – and then it became a Council product, which changed dramatically”444. The outcome of the Resolution was different than what the activists, lobbying the UN system, initially wanted. For example, for many feminist observers, the

439 Swaine 2009; Cohn et al 2004; Farr 2011. 440 Otto 2009. 441 Otto 2010b. 442 NGOWG 2005. 443 NGOWG 2005. 444 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013.

111 weakest part of the resolution is that it does not focus on ending war itself445. While civil society pushed to advance an agenda that focused on anti-militarism and a reduction in arms trade and military spending, this priority was negotiated out of the final resolution446. The Resolution seeks to ‘manage’ armed conflict, rather than transform the military underpinnings of the Security Council and the UN system447. Otto (2010) argues that, against the wishes of many feminist advocates, the Resolution selectively engages with feminist ideas, giving no indication that the Council is willing to address or re-think its fundamental approach to peace and security448. This selective engagement with feminist ideas helps us to see that from the perspective of civil society activists, 1325 was symbolically meaningful as feminist engagement with the institutional power of the Security Council. However, the text of the final document was constrained by the existing bureaucratic structures and relations of power of the Security Council. More broadly, the lag in implementation of 1325 can be accounted for by distinguishing between the principles that inspire the support of women in peace and security in theory, and the necessity of credible commitments to taking action449. This is particularly in light of the fact that arguably the Security Council was advancing these human rights agendas for reasons related to the external pressures they faced450. As Carey (2001) notes, most UN bodies and States are unlikely to oppose gender mainstreaming in principle, but they may ignore it or prioritize other issues when it comes to the necessity of action. While NGOs hail 1325 as having particular political and normative strength, due to the fact that it was unanimously passed, Resolution 1325 is a Chapter VI resolution, meaning that it carries normative imperative but is non-coercive451. Tryggestad (2009) suggests that perhaps the unanimous Security Council vote can be explained because the issue was seen by many as having both low priority and few, if any, serious implications in practice. As such, Resolution 1325 was arguably never intended to transform the UN peace and security paradigm – as many civil society

445 Cockburn 2007; Farr 2011. 446 Gibbings 2004. 447 Otto 2006. 448 Otto 2010b. 449 Carey 2001. 450 Otto 2010a. 451 Tryggestad 2009.

112 activists believed it might – but was instead intended to facilitate and support ‘business as usual’ politics within the Security Council452. It should thus come as no surprise that the WPS agenda stagnated in the aftermath of its adoption. It is also perhaps not surprising that Resolution 1325 stagnated within the UN system in the aftermath of its adoption because, while the Resolution held a symbolism and a sacredness that came with its ‘miracle’ status and its landmark content in the Security Council, it was not operational and was missing key features that might have helped to bolster support for this issue in practice. The text itself did not demand changes in practice or promote institutional changes that would ensure accountability to the agenda. For example, the lack of any reporting or accountability mechanisms or clearly identified targets and goals were a significant hindrance to effective implementation453. This is particularly salient when compared to the similarly non-binding Children and Armed Conflict resolutions, which quickly led to the establishment of a Security Council Working Group, monitoring and reporting mechanisms, and the post of a Special Representative in the aftermath of passing its first thematic Resolution in 1999. Scholars have also noted the lack of strong language and political action to fund gender initiatives within the Resolution. For example, Swaine (2010) compares the language of 1325, which uses terms such a ‘express’, ‘emphasizes’ and ‘requests’, to Resolution 1372 on counter-terrorism, which uses terminology such as ‘decides’, ‘directs’, and ‘declares’.454 The weakness of the language in Resolution 1325 and the lack of ‘teeth’ to put it into action likely contributed to the slow speed of implementation in its initial years. Thus, while the holistic vision of women in conflict and post-conflict contexts was celebrated beyond the UN system, the historic recognition of participation as a pillar of Resolution 1325 was actually very challenging in practice. As one interviewee noted about the Resolution: “while the genius thing is the combination of the pillars of the resolution…[it] makes it also more tricky for implementation”455. The participation and agency components of the resolution are “the most fragile and [are] harder to

452 See also Swaine 2010 and Tryggestad 2009. 453 Otto 2010b; Otto 2009; Swaine 2010. 454 Swaine 2010. 455 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/03/2013.

113 persuade”456, despite the fact that this was the most innovative pillar of the resolution. Thus, while the participation pillar is part of what gave Resolution 1325 its landmark status, this strength is also its weakness, as it soon proved very difficult to incorporate into the daily practices of the Security Council. Resolution 1325 was too broad and too difficult to tackle. As one bureaucrat noted: “Beyond having grand statements about the need for women’s empowerment and the need for women’s inclusion in all processes and blah, blah, blah. Well that was not happening…nothing was really happening much”457. The breadth of the Resolution was one of its strengths because of the full extent of issues that were brought into the Council for the first time, and the civil society network were able to use that breadth as a platform from which to speak on a number of political issues.458 But within the UN system, the breadth of the resolution was a significant challenge for bureaucratic practice. As the political victory of the Resolution receded into the bureaucratic reality of its implementation, it became clear that the Resolution was weak. One bureaucrat noted: “1325 is not well-written. It is not a decisive resolution. It is very tentative. It recommends not giving amnesty for crimes of sexual violence. That’s ridiculous. It is already a non-amnesty-able crime... So, it’s very tentative if you look at the language; even the language is very soft. It’s the first time... They didn’t know how far they could go. They were lucky to get a foot in at all. It was the first thematic resolution. Revolutionary, but still weak.”459

Resolution 1325 was primarily a political document, and its weakness was in its lack of strong legal or operational language. The weak, vague and broad language of the resolution inhibited it, in part, from being effectively implemented in the years after its adoption and allowed the Security Council to avoid taking it seriously. The Resolution was not sufficiently grounded in a framework for action, and there were still few actors within the UN system – whether within the bureaucracy or the Security Council – who were actively pushing to advance this agenda. As such, States either did not know how to address the Resolution in their daily practices, or were unwillingly to do so, with few consequences. As one bureaucrat noted:

456 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/24/2013. 457 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 458 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/15/2013. 459 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

114 “And the Member States, I mean, they were not in a hurry to develop any kind of national action plans; they didn’t know even how to approach it. And it was completely understandable – if you read the resolution, if you look at the resolution…you will say, ‘Ha! What’s that and what do I need to do?’”460

The Resolution was not clear on what role the UN system and Member States would or could play in taking effective action. The accountability mechanisms were weak, with no indicators, no enforcement mechanisms, and no reporting mechanisms to propel the resolution and the broader agenda forward. As a result, the subsequent reports to the Security Council on the WPS agenda were also weak: “They weren’t great because they didn’t know where to look; they didn’t know how to gather the information, I don’t think; it was piecemeal; it was little snapshots.”461 This is important because there are rigid avenues for the transmission of information into the Council that largely determine the kind of action the Council can take on a given subject. The piecemeal nature of the WPS reporting to the Security Council reinforced the lack of implementation of the agenda because the Council did not have access to comprehensive information that could inform their decision-making processes. As a result of these weaknesses in the document itself, Resolution 1325 was largely seen in isolation from the rest of the Security Council agenda. Resolution 1325 was a symbolic breakthrough for the Council and the UN system, but it was a struggle to keep this issue in the Council’s spotlight. As one bureaucrat noted: “It’s a constant push. Yes, you have a resolution, but at the time, you could see that people were seeing the resolution in isolation. We have a resolution we deal with once a year…but when you’re dealing with the review of peacekeeping mandates? No, no, no – those are peacekeeping, those are political. So yes, initially it was quite difficult because you could see that Member States were still looking at these in silos”462

1325 was seen in artificial isolation from other Council priorities. Some bureaucrats believe that Resolution 1325 didn’t take up quickly in the initial years because the Council members began to think: “We’ll just have this debate once a year; have some presidential statements, and we’re done”463. This is in line with the argument that the

460 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 461 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 462 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 463 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

115 Resolution was never really intended to change security practices within the Council. Others suggest that the Council felt that they had achieved so much by even having a resolution on women, peace and security. Despite a change at the normative level, this change did not drastically shift the structures of power in the field of security. This situation of normative stagnation began to change by the middle of the 2000s. While this section has shown that actually it should not be a surprise that Resolution 1325 stagnated in the aftermath of its adoption within the UN system, the following section will show that this makes the subsequent changes the WPS agenda all the more puzzling and interesting. How can we understand the success of the WPS agenda in light of what could have been its utter irrelevance in the UN Security Council?

The Focus on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

It was not until 2008, with the passing of Resolution 1820 (2008) that we can really begin to see a shift within the UN system around women, peace and security policy and practice. Resolution 1820 was the second WPS resolution to be passed, and is significant for recognizing conflict-related sexual violence as a tactic of war and as a matter of international peace and security.464 Where previously the UN’s response to conflict-related sexual violence was characterized by a humanitarian approach, Resolution 1820 reclassified this form of violence as a security issue, thereby requiring changes in peacekeeping doctrine and tactics465. Dating back to the mid-1990s, and especially as a result of the international criminal tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, international jurisprudence already classified sexual violence as a war crime, crime against humanity, form of torture or act of genocide. However, it was not until the passing of Resolution 1820 that the Security Council formally acknowledged that this form of violence sat within their mandate for action on peace and security issues466.

464 Security Council Resolution 1820; Jenkins and Goetz 2010. 465 Jenkins and Goetz 2010; Anderson 2010. 466 The issue of sexual violence was embedded within the text of Resolution 1325 but the main argument here is that Resolution 1820 was the first time that the Council articulated this form of violence as a security issue, rather than only as one of many humanitarian issues that must be addressed.

116 The shift to focus on conflict-related sexual violence in a Security Council resolution was a contested decision. Within the Security Council, many Member States disagreed with what they saw as a focus on human rights within a domain traditionally reserved for issues of ‘hard’ peace and security. Prior to 2008, resistant Security Council members argued that violence against women was a human rights issue, rather than a security issue, and thus should be addressed in other UN bodies, such as the Human Rights Council467. Previous attempts, such as in 2007, to have the Security Council pass a resolution on sexual violence were rejected, with Russia, China and South Africa refusing to sign, claiming that sexual violence was not part of the ‘security’ mandate of the Security Council468. Even by 2008, Russia, Indonesia and China similarly continued to express reservations, but even so, Resolution 1820 was passed unanimously, serving to establish that conflict-related sexual violence was firmly within the purview of the Security Council’s mandate. Through this Resolution, the Security Council affirmed its intention to consider taking measures against those who commit and sanction rape; provided explicit examples of possible measures to ensure women’s protection; and recognized that sexual violence can constitute a breach of international law469. Interestingly, Resolution 1820 was also contested by many women’s rights activists beyond the UN. Unlike Resolution 1325, 1820 was perceived to have been developed behind ‘closed doors’ within the UN.470 Many civil society activists were weary of advancing a resolution on this issue, as illustrated by the fact that when the UK consulted with civil society in 2006 about the possibility of advancing a resolution on conflict-related sexual violence, the UK were discouraged from doing so because civil society activists believed that this kind of resolution would ‘diminish the political importance of 1325’.471 Their argument was that the focus on conflict-related sexual violence undermines the progressive norms advanced through Resolution 1325472. Critics argued that to shift from a broad and comprehensive framework that prioritizes women’s participation, to the singling out of a particular issue, especially an issue that reduces the

467 Cook 2009. 468 Goldstoff 2010. 469 Cook 2009. 470 Swaine 2010; Goldstoff 2010. 471 Weiss and Anderlini in Swaine, 2010. 472 Swaine 2010; Cook 2009; Goldstoff 2010; Otto 2010b; Scully 2009.

117 WPS agenda to ‘making war safe for women’, to protective stereotypes, and to women’s victimhood alone, is dangerous and could undermine the overall agenda.473 They argued that 1820 returned the Security Council to a ‘traditional role as protector of women, rather than as a supporter of women’s emancipation’.474 Others within the women’s movement asked why it was necessary to focus on sexual violence in conflict, arguing that focusing on violence against women in times of conflict diminished the importance of combating violence against women in times of peace.475 And yet, in spite of these critiques – both from within the women’s movement and from within the Security Council itself – the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1820 in 2008. The quick rise in focus on conflict-related sexual violence, following the passing of Resolution 1820, is evident in the rapid creation and expansion of several institutional mechanisms within the UN system. First, within the five years following the adoption of Resolution 1820, the Security Council passed another five resolutions on WPS, including two in 2009, one in 2010 and two in 2013.476 These rapid-fire resolutions significantly bolster the normative strength of the WPS agenda; outlining mechanisms and policies that target WPS monitoring, accountability and financing. For example, Resolution 1888 (2009) called for, and led to the appointment of a high-level Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG) to provide leadership and to mobilize the UN system to prevent and respond to conflict-related sexual violence.477 It also called for the creation of a rapid-response taskforce, the Team of Experts (ToE) on Sexual Violence, to support countries in the prosecution of sexual violence crimes. It established the position of Women’s Protection Advisers on peacekeeping missions and mandated the creation of a ‘naming-and-shaming’ report on parties to armed conflict ‘credibly suspected of perpetrating patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence’, as well as more systematic monitoring and reporting.478 Overall, these measures not only provide stronger

473 Cook 2009; Goldstoff 2010; Scully 2009. 474 Swaine 2010; Otto 2009; Otto 2010b. 475 Cook 2009. 476 These resolutions focus on both the issue of conflict-related sexual violence and more broadly on other dimensions of the WPS agenda. 477 Jenkins and Goetz 2010; Security Council Resolution 1888. 478 Security Council Resolution 1888.

118 mechanisms for monitoring and accountability but they also have led to a ‘snowball effect’ on institutional activity – increasing attention to this agenda – within the UN.479 Women’s rights norms are also more consistently being incorporated within the peace and security practices of the Security Council and the UN more broadly. Graph 1 (below) illustrates, for example, how the WPS agenda has been incorporated into the country resolutions of the Security Council since the passing of Resolution 1325.480 The graph shows a significant rise over time in the number of resolutions that mention both gender and the WPS resolutions. This graph suggests that, at minimum, the WPS agenda has not only progressed within the discourses of the Security Council, but also that it is increasingly being inserted into the binding practices of peacekeeping missions.

479 Otto 2010b. 480 The data for this graph come from the coding of each Security Council country mandate-specific resolution, based on whether we might reasonably expect gender or women’s rights issues to be included in the resolution; whether gender or women’s rights issues are mentioned in the resolution overall; and whether the WPS resolutions are referenced in the resolution. The methodology for this data collection was influenced by the Security Council Report cross-cutting report 2013 on women, peace and security. Resolutions that were excluded include thematic resolutions, technical resolutions for roll-over country missions, and Security Council process resolutions.

119 Table 4.1: The Inclusion of Gender and Women's Rights in Security Council Resolutions Since the Passing of Resolution 1325 (2000) 100

80 Percentage of 70 Relevant Security Council 60 Resolutions that Mention Gender 50 Broadly (%) 40 Percentage of

Percentage Percentage (%) Relevant 30 Security Council Resolutions that 20 Mention WPS Resolutions (%) 10

Given that Resolution 1325 was arguably never meant to shift the status quo of peace and security practice within the UN system, and given that the issues of conflict- related sexual violence was resisted by key stakeholders in the 2000s, what process led to the rising focus on conflict-related sexual violence and the growing success of the WPS agenda overall? The following section will elaborate how the feminist community of practice responded to the stagnancy of the agenda in its initial years and sought to advance their ideals by working within the opening that Resolution 1325 provided into the field of peace and security. I will show that their knowledge of how to build traction within the UN system was instrumental in the advancement of their ideals, in terms of how the WPS agenda should be re-framed and written, and also in terms of how to make friends and allies who could open doors within the UN system. The following section, in particular, will elaborate on the choice by individuals within the feminist community of

120 practice to focus on conflict-related sexual violence, while severing this singular issue from the broader norms within the WPS agenda.

Advancing Feminist Ideals in Peace and Security in Practice

In the aftermath of the creation of Resolution 1325, there were a small number of feminist practitioners who were formally tasked to address the Resolution within the UN system. These individuals were primarily located within the UN institutions mandated to address gender issues: the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues (OSAGI) and the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). However, in the initial years after the adoption of the Resolution, these institutions were fragmented, under-funded and plagued by bureaucratic infighting, which meant that despite their common tasking, they were not cooperating481. Without a unified organizational position for advancing this agenda, each agency fought to fulfill their mandates, struggling against limited funding and staffing constraints. UNIFEM in particular were facing bureaucratic isolation from the rest of the UN system and feminist practitioners within UNIFEM were further “frustrated by the fluff and the vagueness and lack of data…around women, peace and security”482, as one bureaucrat explained. They were frustrated by the weakness of Resolution 1325 and their inability to improve its implementation. Their frustration towards the stagnant implementation of this agenda in the daily functioning of the Security Council and the UN was the context that set the scene for their subsequent action in order to advance their ideals. By the middle of the 2000s, the global political context had opened new opportunities for addressing the issue of conflict-related sexual violence483. Increasing reports of conflict-related sexual violence were coming out of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the site of a major UN peacekeeping mission. This was made even more public when the film ‘The Greatest Silence’ emerged as the first major feature film on the subject. As one bureaucrat noted:

481 See the previous chapter on the creation of UN Women for more information on the bureaucratic infighting between these gender entities. 482 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 483 Joachim 2003.

121 “I think, you know, everyone was horrified by this. It’s sort of part of that ‘never again’ moment; ‘what are we going to do?’; ‘this is outrageous’; ‘hundreds of thousands of women raped’; so it all coalesced…there was much more information at the time that was coming out about how rape had been used in the Congo, that I think truly horrified people, including diplomats who often feel that they are immune from this kind of outrage, but I think it really did… And that is both a good and a bad thing because I think how rape has played itself out in the DRC was very influential in how the resolution was framed.”484

This mounting global attention towards conflict-related sexual violence in the DRC provided an opportunity for feminist practitioners to draw attention to the WPS agenda and to this singular issue. The context of what happens beyond the UN affects the dynamics of power within the UN and the stories emerging about conflict-related sexual violence created new pressures on the Security Council regarding how security was being addressed within the UN. However, in spite of this external pressure, the Security Council had still not formally acknowledged the particular relevance or the centrality of conflict-related sexual violence to its peace and security practices. The push for Resolution 1820, and for the re-framing of the WPS agenda around the issue of conflict-related sexual violence, was, as many of my interviews explained, “UNIFEM’s baby”485. While civil society played a key role in the passing of Resolution 1325, Resolution 1820 was driven “from within the UN system, rather than from civil society and was more technical”486. Interviewees noted that this was “absolutely”487 an initiative that was developed and advanced from within the UN system and that this was “definitely UN-originated”488, with much narrower collaborative ‘buy-in’ with civil society. The making of 1820 did not begin as a straightforward effort to advance a new Security Council resolution but rather to advance the WPS agenda in practice, although the making of a Resolution became a strategic priority and was its ultimate outcome. Instead, the individuals who initiated Resolution 1820 were primarily interested in addressing the issue of conflict-related sexual violence within the UN, and particularly what they saw as an insufficient effort to address this issue. The initial push to address

484 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/07/2013. 485 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 486 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013. 487 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 488 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

122 this issue started small; as one interviewee noted: “It’s amazing how small it was”489. It began within UNIFEM’s Peace and Security team when Anne-Marie Goetz, a feminist academic who started working with UNIFEM in 2005, and Letitia Anderson, a former Geneva-based international humanitarian lawyer, met in an elevator one day. They began to discuss the fact that there was a problem in the way that conflict- related sexual violence was being addressed within the UN system and they wanted to investigate why. The problem they identified was that the UN system largely considered sexual violence to be a humanitarian issue, and thus, the issue fell within the domain of OCHA (The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). Because conflict- related sexual violence was framed as a humanitarian issue, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) did not have any protocols for addressing this form of violence against women. As one bureaucrat noted, “it wasn’t seen as something they [e.g. DPKO] were responsible for stopping. And DPA [Department of Political Affairs] certainly had no protocols for bringing it into peace processes”490. While the issue of conflict-related sexual violence was formally within the mandate of Resolution 1325 (2000), the Security Council refused to see this form of sexual violence as a security issue. This had a very real impact on the way that the UN system engaged with the issue, in terms of their day-to-day peacekeeping and peacebuilding practices. The impetus to elevate a casual elevator conversation into a campaign for action was calculated. These UN bureaucrats realized that by focusing on the issue of sexual violence alone, there was the possibility of making progress on the WPS agenda as a whole. They saw the stagnancy and vagueness of Resolution 1325 and realized that something needed to be done to ‘unpack’ the resolution. As one bureaucrat noted, they realized that “you can’t make progress on the whole thing at the same time; and in order to actually achieve results, you needed to pick a focus”491. As another bureaucrat noted, they realized that “it was necessary to hive off a piece, to move forward, to know that we could do something”492. Ultimately, they recognized that the idealism of Resolution 1325 could not be maintained in practice. In order for the agenda to gain traction within the

489 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 490 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 491 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 492 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

123 UN system, these feminists recognized that the holistic norms of 1325 required translation into a more manageable language of action. Thus, their choice to focus on conflict-related sexual violence emerged from their practical knowledge of how to navigate the UN system and what possibilities existed for them in order to effectively advance their ideals within its bureaucratic constraints.

Feminist Know-How: Framing and Powerful Language

Focusing on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence was an effective frame because it resonated with global norms around violence against women and also within the field of international humanitarian law. These feminists were able to ride on the growing attention to sexual violence that had been developing globally since the 1990s. Historically, women and girls commonly and habitually faced sexual violence during wartime, having been considered ‘property’ that was owned and controlled by men493. Even well into the twenty-first century, the body of law regulating conflict failed to mention these crimes, minimally incorporated them, or ignored them in practice494. The first international prosecutions involving allegations of sexual violence occurred only in the wake of World War 2, and still only to a very limited extent495. This lack of attention to gender-related crimes globally changed drastically in the 1990s, a change that was ‘unparalleled’ in history496. The barbarity of the conflicts in Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, and particularly the widespread sexual violence against women, was brought to light in particular by media coverage. In recognition of widespread sexual violence in these conflicts, the statutes of both Tribunals explicitly included rape as a crime against

493 Wald 1997 494 Brownmiller 1975; Askin 2003. For example, as Askin (2003) explains, in the entirety of the Hague Conventions and Regulations, one single article (IV, art. 46) indirectly prohibits sexual violence as a violation of ‘family honour’. Likewise, within the 429 articles that comprise the fours 1949 Geneva Conventions, only one sentence of one article (IV, art. 27) explicitly protects women from ‘rape’ and ‘enforced prostitution’. 495 See Carson 2012; Askin 2003; Copelon 2000. The Nuremburg Tribunal did not specifically include any crimes of sexual violence, and cases involving violence against women were not pursued despite significant evidence of these crimes. At the Tokyo Tribunal, rape and sexual violence were not explicitly included in the jurisdiction, but it was minimally prosecuted as a ‘secondary offense’ in conjunction with other offences. This obvious obscures the legacy of ‘comfort women’ in Japan where up to 200,000 women were abducted, raped and sexually enslaved by the Japanese military. 496 Askin 2003.

124 humanity and the Tribunals successfully prosecuted various forms of sexual violence as genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and crimes of war497. These extraordinary developments were largely the result of feminist scholars, activists and practitioners who fought for justice for these gender-related crimes498. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court then solidified the trend of prosecuting crimes of sexual violence, providing a powerful platform from which to pursue these prosecutions and to crystallize feminist legal discourses about the necessity of addressing this wartime crime499. By 2008, the feminist bureaucrats within the UN system were able to draw on the strength of the global discourses on sexual violence, as a crime of the gravest concern to the international community and as crimes that constitute a threat to international peace and security, in order to strengthen their claims that this issue should also be treated as a priority within the UN system and by the Security Council. In addition to resonating with increasingly powerful international humanitarian legal norms, the explicit ‘security’ framing of the issue of conflict-related sexual violence was salient with the mandate of the Security Council500. As one bureaucrat notes: “It was a deliberate attempt not only to address a very important issue, which was sexual violence in war, without pretence of it being the most important issue or any of that, but in the sense that it was one of the issues that was more clearly and easily put in the agenda of the Security Council, or put in the remit of the Security Council tools, and the peace operations of the Security Council mandates.”501

These feminists knew that an appeal to issues directly relevant to armed conflict could be mobilized to show any resistant Member States that this issue was relevant to peace and security. This finding is consistent with the ‘securitization’ literature that stresses “the

497 Askin 2003. Case law at these Tribunals was key in defining and developing the jurisprudence of gender-based law. 498 Bos 2006; Askin 2003. The feminist movement was active throughout the 1990s in advocating for women’s rights at the international level, and this was one significant field for their activism. As such, these developments must be positioned within the broader trend of the 1990s that saw the recognition of women’s rights as human rights, asserting that human rights are indivisible, and calling for an end to impunity for gender crimes and discrimination, and that led to the adoption of international legal agreements and declarations that aimed to improve the protection of women’s human rights overall, such as the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights and the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995. See Carson 2012 and Copelon 2000. See also Bos 2006; Copelon 1994; and MacKinnon 1994 for additional information on the debates that occurred within the feminist community around how to advance the jurisprudence for these gender-based crimes. 499 Carson 2012. 500 Hudson 2010. 501 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/24/2013.

125 process through which an issue is presented as an existential [security] threat” as a motivation for behaviour502. They realized that conflict-related sexual violence could more easily be framed as an issue that contributed to the dynamics of global peace and security. The focus on this issue emphasized a challenge to state authority and societal well-being, by linking directly to the challenges of armed conflict, while minimizing the emphasis on conflict prevention and human rights. Moreover, the security framing shifted the understandings of who was responsible for the WPS agenda. On the one hand, when the agenda was framed in more holistic human rights terms, all Member States – even those not engaged in armed conflict – were responsible to ensure conflict prevention initiatives as well as women’s human rights within their borders. On the other, when framed in terms of security, the responsibility landed squarely on the States that were actively engaged in armed conflict. This garnered support from resistant States.

Feminist Know-How: Navigating the Bureaucracy

Re-framing the WPS agenda to emphasize the issue of conflict-related sexual violence was critical for the feminist practitioners, and yet it was not enough to put the issue on the Security Council’s agenda. It was also essential that they draw on their practical knowledge of how to navigate the UN system, in order to make their re-framing stick. They faced significant resistance when they tried to engage DPKO on its failure to address this key issue. For example, General Obiakor of Nigeria, a Military Advisor for DPKO, responded with two rebuttals when he was approached, which indicated how DPKO and the UN system overall understood the issue of sexual violence. The first response was “Don’t talk to me about sexual exploitation and abuse, we have a conduct and discipline office”503. The underlying argument here was that military people tended to assume that a discussion of sexual violence was necessarily an accusation of their involvement in rape, not a discussion of systematic use of rape in warfare. The second response was: “This is not a military issue, it is a policing issue”504. This framing of rape as a policing issue considers this form of violence to be an ‘ordinary’ crime. It

502 Buzan et al 1998. 503 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 504 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

126 overlooked the fact that global legal norms had shifted the register, showing that when it was organized and systematic, sexual violence was not only an ordinary crime, but also a war crime. These multiple framings are evidence of the competition over the definition and meaning of conflict-related sexual violence. The meaning of this form of violence was a key site of struggle for feminist practitioners. There were stakes, in terms of the legitimacy of the WPS agenda, and in terms of subsequent demands that could be made. As such, it was important that the feminist practitioners ‘won’ in the struggle to define this form of violence and make it meaningful across the UN bureaucracy. A new resource emerged for these feminists in 2007 that helped them to ‘win’ the struggle over the framing of conflict-related sexual violence as a security issue. In 2007, Jeffrey Gettleman published an article in the New York Times on sexual violence in Congo and Darfur, entitled “Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War”505. The article discussed how UN peacekeepers in DPKO trucks were driving into the forest at night and blaring their headlights and playing music in areas where they knew Mai-Mai rebels were operating in the Congo. Gettleman reported that in the morning, sometimes up to 3,000 villagers would be huddled around the trucks sleeping. This article played an important role for the struggling feminists. As one bureaucrat explained: “We thought, why hasn’t DPKO told us about this? This is a tactic, which is deliberate by peacekeepers to protect women from rape, clearly. Because it signals that they know that attacks happen at night, and a lot of the attacks are about sexual violence, and also the attacks happen early in the morning when women go and get water. Suddenly this whole thing clicked: if it is a war-tactic, you need security tactics to prevent it. You need to not patrol the main roads, but patrol at night in the forest and in the morning between the water point and the village. You need to get different sources of women, you need ‘intel’ from women themselves, you need to issue the women with whistles and radios, so they can warn you of the attacks. You need translators; you need more women troops; you need night-vision goggles. All of a sudden it was like, ‘Oh! It’s a military problem and there is a military response’ and obviously some commanders on the ground thought that way.”506

While formally there was no protocol within DPKO on how to deal with the problem of conflict-related sexual violence, this newspaper article was the key to their realization that there were peacekeeping missions on the ground that were informally taking military

505 Gettleman 2007. 506 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

127 action on this issue, and that there were existing military solutions that could be widely publicized and institutionalized as a way to systematically address this issue. In practice, conflict-related sexual violence was already being treated on the ground as a ‘weapon of war’ and thus as a security issue. The problem was that these informal practices had not yet been translated back to UN headquarters and into formal security policy. This New York Times article alerted the UN bureaucrats to the fact that there were others within the UN system who were working on addressing conflict-related sexual violence as a security issue. In light of this realization, the feminists began a process of gathering data, in a desk review of protection strategies employed by international and regional peacekeepers. This was ultimately published in 2010 as an Analytical Inventory of Peacekeeping Practice.507 While this New York Times article was a lucky break, their process of navigating the UN system is evident. In talking to colleagues, trying to build alliances, putting in the legwork to find evidence to support their claims, these feminists were engaged in the standard practices of the feminist community who seek to make change within the UN system. These daily efforts are what build and contribute to their ability to make changes within this bureaucratic space. The Analytical Inventory of Peacekeeping Practice, and the process of researching for it, served as a foundation for their growing efforts: armed with the knowledge about existing peacekeeping strategies to address this issue, these feminists were able to find new allies who were already engaged in informal practices around this issue. They knew that – in order to be successful within this bureaucratic space – they needed to link up to these other more powerful actors, who might be able to open doors that were previously closed to them, and who could help them to advance their ideals from a more powerful position in the field, and with greater resources.

Feminist Know-How: Making Friends and Allies

In navigating the bureaucratic constraints imposed by the UN system, feminist practitioners know that, in order to advance their ideals, it is necessary to make friends and build alliances across functions in order to overcome resistance. Allies are essential

507 UN Women, ‘Analytical Inventory of Peacekeeping Practice’, New York, New York. 2010.

128 to help the feminist community of practice to open doors that may be shut to them due to their lack of power or resources, and to help them to circumvent resistance they may encounter in advancing their ideals. In the case of advancing the WPS agenda, one such individual within DPKO, who served as a crucial ally for the feminists was General Patrick Cammaert, a Dutch General who had been a force commander in the Eastern DRC until 2007. A woman who had been a staff member in General Obiakor’s office, witnessing the fruitless visits from the UNIFEM feminists took them aside and said, “You need to talk to the previous military advisor (i.e. Cammaert)…He has been to Congo and he is talking the way you talk. He is saying that he can stop soldiers, not only his own soldiers from engaging in sexual exploitation and abuse, but he is saying that he can organize patrols to stop rape against women citizens.”508

Not only did he have a unique understanding of the problem of sexual violence from his experiences leading peacekeeping troops in the DRC, but he was also a powerfully positioned advocate in the field of security. He was willing to speak out about conflict- related sexual violence from his position as a peacekeeper and senior political official within DPKO. His authority was seen as legitimate within the UN system and amongst other military personnel because of his experience in the field and his rank in the Dutch armed forces. As such, his support for the framing of conflict-related sexual violence as a security issue was crucial was shifting the distribution of power in the field. Given that the UN system is an inter-governmental forum, the support of Member States and particularly the members of the Security Council can be critical in advancing or stalling an emerging normative agenda. From their junior position in UNIFEM, these feminists had very little political capital, with little access to political elites and decision- making capacities. That changed through the influence of Cheryl Benard, the wife of the U.S. Ambassador to the UN at the time, Zalmay Zhalilzhad. As my interviews explained, “1820 was a pet-issue of the US ambassador’s wife”509 and she was “pretty much determined to have [1820], was pushing that forward”510. She allegedly watched the film, ‘The Greatest Silence’ and became very focused on promoting the issue of conflict- related sexual violence. She is important not only because she had access to powerful

508 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 509 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/03/2013. 510 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013.

129 political actors from the intergovernmental side of the UN system, but also because she played a role in uniting individuals from across the UN bureaucracy who were supportive of working on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence. She organized three tea parties at the Waldorf Astoria for all the senior women bureaucrats within the UN, to discuss the issue of conflict-related sexual violence. Her main message was: “Ladies! It is on your watch, what are you doing?”511 These tea parties connected the UNIFEM feminists to Cheryl and also to other senior bureaucrats from across the organization. One such high-level bureaucrat was Kathleen Cravero, the (now former) ASG for the Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery at UNDP. Anne-Marie Goetz from UNIFEM, in collaboration with Kathleen Cravero, as well as other feminists from across the UN, decided to organize a major internal UN campaign on the issue of conflict- related sexual violence in order to formally build momentum on this issue. Cravero had been a resident coordinator in Burundi and understood firsthand the problem of sexual violence from her time in the field. Her position within UNDP meant that she was able to open doors within the UN system to make this campaign a reality, something that the less-senior UNIFEM bureaucrats could not do. Together, with UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), they formed the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict coalition, a UN coordination mechanism on this issue. UN Action operated, and continues to operate, at the level of the UN system and was particularly valuable because it brought UNIFEM, DPKO and DPA further into conversation about these issues. What is important here is that, at the time, these feminist practitioners within UNIFEM had relatively little power within the UN system. While it was their idea to change the framing of the WPS and to strategically push forward the issue of conflict- related sexual violence at the expense of the other more holistic norms within Resolution 1325, they were unable to push for the ‘stickiness’ of the re-framing, without the powerful allies that could help to shift the distribution of power in the struggle over the definitions and meanings of these issues. This need to build alliances and work in collaboration is a key characteristic of the feminist community of practice, and is key to their feminist identity; that in order to operate within these bureaucratic constraints, it is necessary to make friends and build alliances to overcome deeply ingrained resistance.

511 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

130

Wilton Park and Resolution 1820

In response to the growing momentum within the UN system around the new ‘UN Action’ campaign, the UNIFEM bureaucrats and their allies decided to organize a conference at Wilton Park, sponsored by the United Kingdom, on positive military approaches to preventing conflict-related sexual violence. This conference brought together for the first time Force Commanders and military personnel to talk about what actions they take in practice to address sexual violence in the field. It was an unprecedented moment for shared lessons learned. Because of the previously informal nature of these existing practices – without being ‘official’ DPKO policy – none of these personnel had ever formally shared their personal tactics for addressing this issue. The conference at Wilton Park became a powerful moment for coalescing the movement growing around the issue of conflict-related sexual violence. General Patrick Cammaert was a keynote at the conference. There, he famously made the provocative statement that “it is more dangerous to be a woman in conflict than a soldier”512. This statement, coming from a high-ranking DPKO General, served to establish and frame the agenda. Moreover, the US ambassador agreed to attend the conference with his wife, Cheryl Benard. The attendance of one permanent Security Council ambassador meant that others swiftly agreed to attend as well, including ambassadors from the UK, Ghana, DRC, and Canada, as well as representatives from other missions. As one bureaucrat noted: “That was important because we had Security Council people coming and that would never have happened if it hadn’t been for Cheryl [Benard]”513. Before the conference, it had not necessarily been the intention of these bureaucrats to advance a resolution. Instead, they sought to put the existing resolution 1325 into practice, by addressing how the problem of sexual violence was being addressed within the UN. Their goal was to make progress in practice on some dimension of the WPS agenda, and on a dimension that was not only important for

512 ‘Security Council demands immediate and complete halt to acts of sexual violence against civilians in conflict zones, unanimously adopting Resolution 1820 (2008)’ UN Security Council Press Release, 19 June 2008. http://www.un.org/press/en/2008/sc9364.doc.htm. 513 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013.

131 women’s rights but also that could reasonably gain traction within the Security Council and the UN system more broadly. However, as these powerful individuals from across the UN system met together at Wilton Park, and with members of the Security Council in attendance, the UN bureaucrats realized that they could draft a resolution that would not only advance the WPS agenda in practice but also in a normative sense as an official Security Council document. As such, their effect was two-fold – both at the level of normative advancement through the adoption of a Security Council resolution, and also at the level of practice in terms of building momentum for this issue to be addressed as part of everyday practice. It was in and through their knowledge of how to navigate the UN system that these feminist practitioners were able to advance their ideals within this constrained bureaucratic setting. The outcome of this process was the creation of a UN document. The conference at Wilton Park paved the way for Resolution 1820, which was passed in June 2008. Their feminist know-how is reflected in the text of Resolution 1820, which is filled with strong language on how sexual violence in conflict is a tactic of war; that there is command responsibility; it is a security problem requiring a security response; and that it is a political problem requiring a political response during peace-talks. As one bureaucrat noted: “It’s all in there. It is a really beautiful resolution actually, and it just shows huge evolution from 1325”514. The language of Resolution 1820 is different from Resolution 1325. It is more about triggering Security Council action and the effects on international peace and security. “1325 is grounded more in women’s rights and participation and inclusion. Whereas 1820 is about sort of, international peace and security, and the role of the Security Council in securing that, and the kinds of violations of rights that allow them to trigger their engagement on certain issues. So I think what 1820 did, it made it easier for the Security Council to say, ‘Well, when should we get involved? Ok, here is sexual violence, we should do that’.”515

1820 solved the problem of breadth and lack of ‘teeth’ that plagued Resolution 1325, by giving the Security Council clear and practical instructions for one instance when the WPS agenda demanded action. Conflict-related sexual violence could be identified; specific actions could be taken; and the Resolution created a new context of obligation

514 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 515 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/07/2013.

132 because of the embedded language of responsibility and accountability. In the process, their efforts created a stronger normative context within which to operate. This section has shown how a small group of feminists strategically advanced the single pillar of conflict-related sexual violence, as a way to make progress on the whole WPS agenda. The next section will look at the outcome of their efforts, in order to show how these strategies and good intentions have played out. Ultimately, while the strategic focus on conflict-related sexual violence has advanced the WPS agenda beyond what these feminists could have ever imagined, the success of the focus on conflict-related sexual violence is an example of the challenge of feminist engagement within a bureaucratic setting. While in many ways it has been a success, the agenda remains constrained by the bureaucratic setting within which it exists. It is debateable as to whether these efforts actually shifted the dominant power relations in the field. Many feminists now feel that the WPS agenda has lost its original feminist intention and has only served to reinforce the UN’s existing approach to peace and security.

‘Buyer’s Remorse’ and the Focus on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

While the decision to advance the issue of conflict-related sexual violence within the Security Council and the UN system was calculated, the focus on this issue has been so successful that even those who initially pushed for its advancement are beginning to worry that the momentum around this issue has gone too far and that the securitization of the women, peace and security agenda has undermined their ability to advance other important human rights, humanitarian and development priorities within the peace and security domain. As one interviewee noted, practitioners in the UN “are experiencing buyer’s remorse now”516. Feminists are increasingly struggling against the disproportionate focus on conflict-related sexual violence and are facing the consequences of a lagging focus on the other pillars of the WPS agenda. This section notes the worry and regret of certain bureaucrats regarding how far they pushed the sexual violence agenda when they mobilized for Resolution 1820. Not only is their ‘buyer’s remorse’ related to the singular focus on conflict-related sexual violence, but

516 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/24/2013.

133 also more broadly, it relates to the overwhelming securitization of the women, peace and security domain, at the expense of addressing human rights and development priorities. More broadly, this fear can be linked to the fact that the focus on conflict-related sexual violence reinforced the Security Council’s existing approach to addressing women in conflict; that is, focusing on women as victims and in need of protection. As such, while it appears to be a significant change within the UN, in many ways this change also served to reproduce the relations of power in the field of security. Resolution 1820 was followed by a wave of political, financial and institutional support for the issue of conflict-related sexual violence that exploded at an unprecedented speed within the UN system. The issue of conflict-related sexual violence has arguably been one of the most successful agenda issues within the UN system over the past decade, in terms of the speed of its institutionalization, within the Security Council and the UN system more broadly, and the level of political will and funding support it has enjoyed. Bureaucrats within the UN system cite progress on this issue as the fastest growing issue area they have seen in their professional capacity, in comparison to other key issue areas517. This is surprising considering that the issue of sexual violence was not considered to be of relevance within the domain of the Security Council just a few years ago and, as one interviewee explained, “it was not seen as a self-contained priority. It was just one of, you know, the crimes among the set of crimes being committed”.518 The change that has occurred in just over six years since the passing of Resolution 1820 has been remarkable. And yet, given that the initial push to focus on conflict-related sexual violence came from UN bureaucrats who intentionally severed the WPS agenda to focus on the singular issue of conflict-related sexual violence, there are conflicting and polarizing opinions amongst these feminists on how to interpret this success. The reason for these conflicting opinions is that the disproportionate focus on this singular issue has potentially negative implications for the gender-related policies and practices of the Security Council and the UN system. As one bureaucrat explained: “Our main job should be to make sure the Security Council does everything it can to address women, peace and security. But sexual violence is choking out the

517 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/18/2013. 518 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/19/2013.

134 WPS agenda. The Council now is only interested in women if there is mass sexual violence”519

The UN and the international community are increasingly demonstrating their unwillingness to act in the name of women’s rights if there is no evidence of conflict- related sexual violence in a peace and security context. This issue was raised in 2013 when, despite the fact that Human Rights Watch and other NGOs found no credible evidence that there had been systematic conflict-related sexual violence in Syria, certain UN Member States were looking for evidence of this form of violence, so that they could fund this issue. Many practitioners are worried that if the Security Council doesn’t find evidence of conflict-related sexual violence, they will not engage with the WPS agenda at all. As one bureaucrat noted: “If the Council doesn’t see widespread sexual violence, does that mean they’re no longer interested in gender issues for a particular situation? That is starting to look like the case…The Council is still trying to find it [in Syria]…but that is really sad”.520

What this shows is that despite progress on the WPS, the Security Council still will not address women’s rights issues in a comprehensive way in their work unless related to conflict-related sexual violence. And if the Security Council won’t address women’s rights beyond this singular issue, then feminists are left to wonder what was gained through this process of pushing for change. The focus on sexual violence has, in some contexts, also significantly distorted funding streams for foreign aid. One practitioner reported that a judge in Eastern Congo had told them: “Well, now the NGOs receive money, but they only receive money to investigate these types of cases and therefore, even if I explain why I want to conduct a mobile court in this area to deal with acts of murders, looting, and all that, they said no – it has to be focused on [sexual violence] because the funding is only for that”.521 Some feminists are worried when they hear that projects are allegedly only being funded if they are related to the issue of conflict-related sexual violence. As one practitioner noted, it can be challenging in some cases to even spend all of the funding that is earmarked for

519 Author’s notes from observation, New York City, April 2013. 520 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 521 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/19/2013.

135 the issue of sexual violence, because donors – both States and private philanthropists – are disproportionately earmarking their funds for addressing this issue alone. On the one hand, this is not a simple case of feminist cooptation in their engagement with an international institution. Many UN practitioners still feel that the choice to push for sexual violence as a singular issue area was the right choice. For them, it allowed for at least one issue within the broader WPS agenda to get on the table within the Security Council, arguing that this was a critical entry-point. While the focus on this issue alone has its flaws, these practitioners argue that the benefits of this success mostly outweigh the costs because of the new position it allows for them in the field and the new ways they can leverage these resolutions. One bureaucrat reflected on this, saying: “We thought we had more possibilities of having an impact if we focused on a single issue...It's difficult to say for sure but I do think that looking back, it was a good decision to focus on one issue. I am aware of the disadvantages of focusing on one issue, but you do have possibilities of having a more precise impact, because before that the discussion on women's rights and the women, peace and security agenda in general were too general…And there was this general thing that women need to participate in dialogue, that women need to be taken into account, but nothing – I don't see specific measures being adopted! And at least we had specific measures on conflict-related sexual violence, and the acknowledgment that this was a problem or a crime that needed specific focus and special attention, and that is not the same. So I don't know, it's difficult to say whether it would have been [different], if it was done differently…”522

For many feminists, the benefits of narrowing the very general WPS agenda to an exclusive focus on sexual violence were clear because of the possibility of a more precise impact, of specific measures that could be enforced, and of the power that came with mobilizing specific focus and attention on an issue, rather than no focus at all. However, as this quotation shows, this bureaucrat and many others are still puzzled and uncertain about what has been gained and what has been lost in and through their efforts. While most feminist practitioners agree that something needed to be done to advance the WPS agenda in the face of its stagnancy, many worry that the choice to focus on sexual violence was dangerous: “I knew it was going to happen, and I remember talking to a colleague […] and I said, ‘This is a very slippery territory we are going to, because as soon as we

522 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/23/2013.

136 continue to push sexual violence in conflict, they will bite; they will get it; but then it will dominate the agenda’”.523

Another practitioner expressed her surprise at the response of the UN system by saying: “I think it really distorted the agenda in ways that I don’t think we anticipated…certainly I didn’t. Because I was very happy that we were investing a lot of time into getting a good, strong resolution.”524 While these feminists were part of pushing forward the sexual violence agenda from the outset, the agenda has been successful in ways that they did not anticipate, and which – to them – is creating worrying patterns in the current UN approach to the WPS agenda. This worry and fear is part of their ‘buyer’s remorse’, as they now are dealing with the implications of their own choices, mediated by the bureaucratic constraints of the UN system. There are two key elements of the ‘buyer’s remorse’. First, as this section already shows, many practitioners are regretting their decision to push for sexual violence above the other pillars of 1325, due to their belief that the WPS agenda has so significantly fragmented as a result of this push. The second element of ‘buyer’s remorse’ is based in their choice to push a securitization approach to women’s rights, rather than a humanitarian/human rights or development approach. With the focus on advancing a ‘hard’ peace and security issue from within the WPS agenda, practitioners chose an issue that they knew would gain traction within the domain of the Security Council. Yet, many regret that a focus on humanitarianism, development and long-term human rights – all issues that the Security Council has acknowledged are relevant to peace and security – have been undermined. This is especially the case considering that the strength of Resolution 1325 was that it introduced a more holistic approach to addressing women’s needs in conflict and post-conflict contexts, which included an emphasis on these multiple issues. These alternative approaches have been sidelined by emphasizing this singular paradigmatic way of understanding WPS, through the lens of ‘hard’ security. Both of these elements of ‘buyer’s remorse’ are perceived to have a negative impact on the progress of the WPS agenda as a whole. These practitioners are now left to negotiate the new space created by the momentum of the singular focus on conflict-

523 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 524 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/07/2013.

137 related sexual violence, responding to their perception of fragmentation, while trying to re-establish balance on both of these fronts. This new dynamic of engagement will be addressed in more detail in the following chapter that looks at the daily interaction of bureaucrats as they seek to advance the WPS agenda within the Security Council, and will include a closer look at how both the focus on conflict-related sexual violence and the focus on ‘hard’ security at the expense of human rights considerations play out in the politics of the Security Council. More broadly, what this final section serves to show is just how elusive control can be in the engagements between the feminist community of practice and the constrained bureaucratic setting. It shows that these feminists exercised agency through their creativity and resistance, but that they were operating within a space that was constrained by the existing relations of power. As such, through these interactions, we can see how feminist ideals may be shifted such that these lose some of their original radical intentions and yet how their cooptation is not all-encompassing. They shifted the needle slightly through their agency, improving their positioning in the field and creating a new context for their actions and resistance.

Conclusion

This chapter analyzes the evolution of the WPS agenda within the UN system, highlighting how feminist practitioners gained access to the field of peace and security through Resolution 1325; struggled to advance this agenda; and made the choice to focus on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence, at the expense of other women’s rights issues within the broader WPS agenda. While 1325 was a ‘miracle’ in the sense that women’s rights issues had never been addressed in such a comprehensive way within the Council, the Resolution was arguably never meant to shift the peace and security practices in the field. Instead, it was meant to allay the external pressures on the Security Council regarding their treatment of human rights issues in peacebuilding and peacekeeping missions. In spite of the fact that the Resolution was never meant to drastically shift peace and security practices, it had the effect of opening new opportunities for change within the domain of peace and security.

138 Through their knowledge of how to build traction within the UN system, feminist practitioners re-framed the focus of the WPS agenda. For them, it was a struggle to define the meaning of women’s rights in the domain of peace and security, and for control over the agenda. They advanced the issue of conflict-related sexual violence in an attempt to gain traction within the Council on a singular issue within the WPS agenda, and one that already resonated with norms around violence against women and international humanitarian law. Their practical knowledge of how to effectively re-frame the agenda emerged from their particular knowledge and experience of working within the UN system as feminists invested in a set of ideals. Beyond re-framing the agenda, this chapter also shows the importance of building friends and allies as central to engaging within a constrained bureaucratic setting like the UN system, with several key individuals who were essential in opening doors for the feminist practitioners around this issue. Ultimately, this chapter has analyzed how these feminist practitioners navigated the emerging challenges and opportunities in the aftermath of the adoption of Resolution 1325, in order to advance their ideals in this policy domain. Scholars and the women’s movement have critiqued the success of the focus on conflict-related sexual violence for neutralizing feminist intentions that were embedded within Resolution 1325, and in fact, many feminists within the UN system are also worried about the unexpected success of this agenda. Yet, the outcome of their actions is the result of competing and conflicting interests within this bureaucratic setting. While their efforts may not have resulted in their intended outcomes (i.e. as a radical upending of power relations in the field of security), most feminist practitioners within the UN would agree that some progress is better than none. They are accustomed to accepting compromised, ‘small wins’ that build into feminist victories because the dominant relations of power in the UN are so deeply embedded and are difficult to change. In fact, this chapter shows precisely how this community operates, in terms of seeking out ‘small wins’. Their ability to shift the ‘explicit rule’, by pushing for a new Security Council resolution, created a new context within which to operate even if it didn’t drastically upend the relations of power in the UN system. The following chapter will show how the feminist community of practice are now actively engaged, in and through their day-to-day practices, in continuing to advance

139 this agenda from this new position – not a position of stagnancy, as was the case in the early 2000s, but one of disproportionate focus within the agenda on a singular issue.

140 Chapter 5:

Advancing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Day-to-Day Practice

The Security Council has adopted seven resolutions on women, peace and security (WPS) since 2000. Together, these resolutions contribute a normative framework that is meant to structure the incorporation of women’s rights and gender equality issues within the UN system’s peace and security work. However, while there has been considerable advancement in the global normative framework around WPS, one of the greatest challenges for feminists within the UN system working on this issue is pushing the relevant UN agencies, including the Security Council itself, to consistently bring the WPS agenda into their work and to translate their normative obligations into concrete action. In this chapter, I analyze how the feminist community of practice seek to advance the WPS agenda in practice, shifting the ‘implicit rule’ within the Security Council. This is where the high-level Resolutions are made meaningful, producing a change in practice. This happens in and through their everyday interactions with other UN practitioners. The Security Council is a key institution in the domain of peace and security. Understanding the politics and practices within this institutional space is particularly important for understanding how to advance the WPS agenda. For one, the WPS agenda itself is structured and constituted by Security Council resolutions, making it an essential site for understanding how the agenda has evolved, including the process of how and why the resolutions were adopted in their current form with their particular content. Moreover, the Security Council, in large part, constitutes the domain of peace and security through its country-based directives. The resolutions, declarations and decisions of the Security Council govern how security policy and practice evolve within the UN system, and dictates how all UN actors should implement the WPS agenda, including determining resources and the scope of peace and security mandates. As such, in analyzing the politics and practices within the Security Council around this issue, it is possible to gain a snapshot of both the competing interests that can constrain feminists’ capacity to advance women’s rights issues, but also of the strategic practices of these feminists who work to advance the WPS agenda within this constrained bureaucratic setting.

141 In this chapter, first, I analyze the strong resistance to addressing human rights in the Security Council, highlighting what is at stake in this conflict over what should or should not be included as a WPS priority within the domain of peace and security. I illustrate this conflict and competition over interests and resources by looking at the success of the singular focus on conflict-related sexual violence as a ‘hard’ security issue in comparison to the more rights-based holistic norms within the WPS agenda. Second, this chapter considers the dynamic of power and influence within the Security Council. This is a unique intergovernmental space where, traditionally, powerful States have been able to exert tremendous influence. I emphasize the role of powerful states in the Security Council, with economic or military power and who can significantly influence – and have influenced – the evolution of the WPS agenda. Powerful states have been able to assert influence both in resisting attention to human rights but also promoting certain domestic priorities related to WPS. However, as I argue, power is relational and, in practice, is often mediated by other forms of influence. In the interactions between UN practitioners, we can see the power of feminist practitioners to influence and shape the agenda. Third, I analyze how the feminist community develop practices to advance the WPS agenda overall, including their efforts to expand the focus beyond conflict-related sexual violence. I illustrate the daily interactions between the feminists and their bureaucratic colleagues, as they try to teach, convince and support them in promoting the WPS agenda in their work. Changes in background knowledge, practices and policies can occur in and through these interactions. Finally, I focus on one practice that pervades the UN system and the Security Council: the practice of writing documents. Documents, such as Security Council resolutions, play an important role in the everyday workings of the UN bureaucracy, and documents are a key avenue for feminists seeking to advance women’s human rights within this domain. In large part, feminist practitioners navigate bureaucratic challenges and opportunities through the negotiations and strategy embedded in the day-to-day practice of writing documents. Ultimately, however, as a result of the competing and conflicting interests within this bureaucratic setting, these interactions and practices often do not result in their intended outcomes for the feminist community of practice. As such, successes achieved for feminists in the Security Council, and in the practice of writing documents are often tempered victories.

142

Contested Human Rights in the Context of the Security Council

Human Rights in the Domain of Peace and Security

While human rights-based discourses are often used as a justification for action within the UN system, the implementation of human rights principles in practice remains highly contested, especially within the Security Council; a traditional bastion of ‘hard’ approaches to peace and security. As such, a number of Security Council Member States and their allies strive to keep human rights separate from the UN’s work on peace and security. These two pillars of the UN are separate in the eyes of many UN practitioners, especially those who believe that the ‘hard’ work of peace and security is the first priority and that ‘softer’ human rights issues are not relevant components of a security framework, or at least are secondary considerations. These conflicting interests are exposed in the case of the WPS agenda and in discussions over how the UN should (or should not) be addressing women’s rights, gender equality and empowerment issues – if at all – in their work on peace and security. To be clear, these are contestations at the heart of the UN over the meaning of ‘human rights’ and ‘security’. The struggle over the meaning of these concepts has deep implications for the policies and practices of the UN. These struggles make these concepts knowable globally, given the power of the UN as a global knowledge-producer. As such, the significance of these struggles cannot be understated, in terms of the real-life impact they have on countless people globally. One practitioner noted that in her experience, peace and security practitioners often argue that “we have a major crisis in this country, the crisis of peace and security, of safety – let’s talk about human rights once we have stability”525. Another individual explained to me that she had once suggested that it was necessary for a post-conflict country to address their obligations to human rights treaties. She received the response from her colleagues that: “This small country cannot possibly think about ratifying all these treaties. You know, it’s a new country; its focus should be on economic

525 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/18/2013.

143 development [and peace]”.526 The implementation of human rights within this paradigmatic way of seeing security is a secondary consideration; only a justifiable concern after the ‘serious’ work of ensuring an end to violence itself is done, and once the country is recovered in terms of economic and political considerations. On the other hand, human rights practitioners – and the feminist community of practice in particular – understand human rights as intricately tied to issues of security in a conflict or post-conflict context: “These things go hand in hand. We can’t forget about rights when we are trying to think about peace and security.”527 Within this paradigm, practitioners believe that it is only through the achievement of human rights that peace and security can be established in a conflict or post-conflict context. Their pushback against the conventional way of doing security is based on the argument: “we need to move human rights along with development issues or along with security issues. You cannot separate those things”.528 Many feminist practitioners in particular argue that gender dynamics are at the core of any society and will determine the possibility for peace. Thus, they argue that women’s human rights must not be secondary; they should be a central consideration at the earliest stages of peacekeeping and peacebuilding. While the division between security and human rights plays out in multiple domains of the Security Council and the UN system more broadly, the case of the WPS agenda is particularly illustrative of this contestation. It also has particular implications for how the WPS agenda is taken up within the Security Council. Many Security Council members believe that the WPS normative agenda should not be part of the work of the Council due to its explicit human rights content. There is consistent pushback from certain permanent as well as rotating members of the Council, who argue that elements of Resolution 1325 should instead be addressed within the purview of the ECOSOC, General Assembly or the Human Rights Council rather than within the Security Council529. As one diplomat explained, the position of these opponents is that “we should be concerned with wars, maybe this is something that goes to the Human Rights Council,

526 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/18/2013. 527 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/18/2013. 528 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/18/2013. 529 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013.

144 this is a human rights issue maybe”530. While these bureaucrats and their respective Member States do not necessarily reject the importance of human rights overall, they believe that these should be dealt with in a separate UN forum and they have an interest in keeping human rights issues separate from security issues. However, as one of my interview participants explained, in the 1990s it was “impossible to introduce human rights language in a resolution of the Security Council”531. The fact that the human rights thematic agendas, and particularly the WPS agenda, have seen such growth within the Council shows that change is gradually occurring within this space. At this point, most countries generally agree that there are certain issues that relate to human rights that should be addressed within the Security Council. The question then becomes, if human rights are to be addressed, in what capacity and in what form? Russia and China in particular emphasize that, in the case of the WPS agenda, the focus should be on the limited issues that they have conceded to be more relevant to the domain of peace and security. The issue of conflict-related sexual violence is now seen and accepted to be ‘hard’ peace and security, whereas the rest of the WPS agenda continues to face resistance as too focused on human rights issues.

Conflicting Interests: Limiting Human Rights in the WPS Agenda

The challenge for the feminist community of practice is that the UN system encompasses different competing and conflicting interests that can resist and reject feminist ideals and which can constrain feminists’ capacity to advance women’s rights issues. As one interview participant suggested, many of the resistant Security Council members, both permanent and non-permanent, “would like that [holistic] part of the agenda to slide off at some point”532 because they do not see women’s participation, for example, as relevant to the mandate of the Security Council. In many ways, it is easier for the Council to consider these issues in isolation and to pick out the elements that have greater traction with their existing approach to security:

530 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013. 531 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 532 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013.

145 “The issue itself [of sexual violence], it just works so much better for the Council than women, peace and security does. The Council doesn’t understand women’s leadership and it doesn’t understand civil society. It doesn’t WANT to support that. Why should it? It sees it as a developmental issue. It is concerned with immediate hideous crimes and stopping conflict. Sexual violence is an immediate, hideous crime and they have finally accepted that, and now they are proving how good they are.”533

This quotation highlights the contestation over the meaning of human rights within the domain of peace and security and the conflict over what should or should not be included in UN security practices. The security-focused practitioners are resisting a change in what they understand as the meaning of security, trying to frame these human rights issues as irrelevant to their task. While conflict-related sexual violence was also once a contested issue, the Council has now accepted this as a security issue. However, as this quotation shows, the focus on conflict-related sexual violence does not expand the Security Council too far beyond its traditional approach that is ‘concerned with immediate and hideous crimes and stopping conflict’. This focus does not radically change their understanding of peace and security, and what needs to be done in conflict and post-conflict contexts. A focus on sexual violence is consistent with traditional State interests in the domain of peace and security, but it also has more political traction for Member States as they try to negotiate between their international commitments and their domestic obligations. As one practitioner argued: “It’s easier, politically, for Council members to see and deal with the numbers on sexual violence”.534 Other issues, such as women’s political participation, require Member States to make greater political commitments. For example, it is relatively easy to put in place short-term programming for victims of sexual violence while it is much harder to address deeper issues that require long-term structural change for gender equality. Member States, and especially donors, want to see short-term results that can specify precisely how many people were helped in how much time with what quantity of resources because these States are also accountable to their constituents. This ability to quantify is much easier when dealing with contained instances of violence rather than more elusive concepts such as gender equality and human rights.

533 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 534 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013.

146 Politically, the Security Council also have an interest in ensuring that the time- bound, conflict-limited nature of the issue is emphasized, so as to keep the focus of the WPS agenda on Member States in conflict and post-conflict situations. This is to avoid shining a spotlight on gender inequality and violence against women in countries that are not considered to be in conflict or post-conflict contexts. Accountability could also be demanded of these countries if the WPS agenda was to be applied in its holistic, rights- based form. The feminist community of practice argue that in order to comprehensively address the WPS agenda, it is necessary to upend power relationships that perpetuate gender inequality and that are linked to war globally, not only in conflict and post- conflict contexts. However, many States resist the application of the WPS agenda within their borders by focusing on the time-bound and conflict-limited issue of sexual violence: “Some important men are jumping up and down about it, without actually having to get into the stuff that would really demand that we re-think our approach. So the good thing, the thing about this type of violence against women in conflict, is that it is quite specific, it is quite time-limited and we can deal with this as part of our conflict package. [Violence against women more broadly] is not at all specific, not at all limited, pretty universal, and touches into all these prejudices about being private space…The way that this example has been split out and presented, is that you can do this without having to get into any of that other really complicated stuff about how we view women. So you can still, to a certain extent, float along the surface; pretend that you are dealing with the issue; without actually confronting power relationships, which in my view brings it all a bit too close to home.”535

How the WPS agenda is packaged within the Security Council is an important part of the contestation over the meaning of human rights in this policy domain. In focusing on conflict-related sexual violence, the Security Council is able to control the implications of their actions by separating this specific form of violence against women from its deeper connection to unequal relationships of power in society – which was, in large part, the original intention of feminists in pushing for Resolution 1325. This is really the heart of the issue when considering whether the change in focus, towards emphasizing conflict- related sexual violence, has led to the reproduction of power relations in the Security Council or not. In many ways, the Security Council has been able to fold the focus on sexual violence into their approach without actually confronting power relationships.

535 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013.

147 This struggle over the meaning of the WPS agenda can come down to the subtle differences in the words used to describe this singular issue. Some actors argue that it should be termed ‘conflict-related sexual violence’, whereas others argue for ‘sexual violence in conflict’. This distinction in language carries an important symbolic difference: the former terminology implies violence committed more broadly in situations that have dimensions of conflict, while the latter implies only situations that are formally on the Security Council’s peace and security agenda536. Using the language of ‘conflict- related sexual violence’ then, could implicate countries like Russia or China, who have a strong interest in being kept off of the Security Council’s agenda. Far from being an inconsequential issue, this debate over language is a high stakes contestation between actors within the Security Council. Many countries reject the former phrasing for fear that it might implicate them in this form of violence, given that they each have dimensions of conflict within their own borders. The struggle over language, as evidenced by this distinction in labelling, has been part of the contentious debates when negotiating thematic WPS resolutions within the Security Council.

Progress, but at what speed?

Overall, while the competition over defining the stakes and content of the WPS agenda in the Council has been fraught, the WPS agenda has been institutionalized to the point that: “nobody contests this, not even the Russians or the Chinese.”537. There is consensus, to some extent that, as one diplomat surmised, “it would be impossible […] to veto a resolution on women, peace and security, or children and armed conflict…because it’s politically incorrect! They would be smashed by everybody! It’s not possible. It’s not possible”538.

While there is entrenched resistance within the Council by some countries, progress on the WPS agenda has reached a point where States recognize the growing strength of the norms, even if they have not agreed to what extent the norms will or should be applied.

536 ‘Open Debate on Sexual Violence in Conflict’ Security Council Report, 21 June 2013. http://www.whatsinblue.org/2013/06/open-debate-on-prevention-of-sexual-violence.php 537 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 538 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

148 One diplomat noted that resistant countries are experiencing anxiety and are pushing against the WPS agenda “because it is becoming more and more real for them, so they feel, perhaps, under suspicion or that they are open for criticism, which they don’t like. But because it is becoming a bit more real, and they can see that the Council has a role to play”539. Because of the growing strength of this normative framework, it is now less a question of whether or not women’s human rights will be addressed within the Security Council, and more of a question of how, which rights and in what capacity. As such, as a diplomat explained to me, “there are two different speeds in the Council”540. At one speed, the diplomats within the Western like-minded countries in the Security Council would like to push the agenda forward quickly, with stronger language and more aggressive human rights provisions. However, at the second speed, this progress is “perhaps too quick, or too much further, when compared to what our Chinese, Russian, and [their] like-minded-colleagues would like to do”541. There is a need for human rights practitioners to convince their Russian and Chinese colleagues about why stronger language about human rights is beneficial to peace and security, and also why it is, in fact, aligned with their national interests. Thus, it is necessary to “Deal with the problem of the Russians and the Chinese that are always…a little bit behind us in the agenda. But if you can convince the others that the language that we have is good, is not a problem, that we would not create … an internal problem for these countries; that it’s needed, it’s the way forward, it’s what we need in the international community right now to move forward in this agenda; the Russians and Chinese will follow. They will need, obviously, concessions. We will not be able to get the stronger language, but we’ll manage perhaps to have compromised language that is not as good as we wanted, but pretty much better than what we have. And that’s a step forward. Perhaps we cannot make a big step, but a medium step – not the small step – a medium step, you know? And that’s the compromise.”542

This statement begins to illustrate the mentality of feminist practitioners. The goal for them – in the face of resistance from Russia and China and other non-permanent member states – is to gain stronger, albeit perhaps imperfect, language on the WPS agenda and within country resolutions. This is what they expect is possible within the constraints of

539 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 540 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 541 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 542 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

149 the bureaucratic field and they take their positions within what is possible. In order to take these ‘medium’ steps, they must convince their resistant colleagues that it is in their country’s best interest to advance the agenda in particular ways. While they face daily resistance from those whose interests are different from – and in conflict with – their own, this quotation also shows how their ability to operate effectively and create change in practices exists largely in and through their interactions with these resistant colleagues.

Sexual Violence and Feminist Engagement in the Security Council

Feminist practitioners in the Security Council work within a context where the issue of conflict-related sexual violence has progressed, and where the more holistic human rights norms on the agenda have been severed from focus and are difficult to move forward. As one diplomat explained: “I think its human nature to simplify things in order to get support and movement. But the negative consequence is that you simplify it too much, so you lose some of the fundamental pieces that you need in order to move things forward.”543 Feminist practitioners now seek to find a balance between their desire for the Security Council to address the comprehensive human rights norms of the WPS agenda, while also articulating human rights priorities in a way that will not immediately be rejected as irrelevant to the issue of security by more resistant actors. These practitioners are “constantly”544 challenged in the peace and security versus human rights debate. They are challenged to keep their language clear and on point for use in a peace and security domain, avoiding the explicit use of overly ‘rights-based’ language, while they simultaneously strive to increase recognition of what they see as the critical intersections between these normative pillars of the WPS agenda. The process of navigating this balance between trying to make some gains on the agenda versus staying true to their feminist ideals may come at a cost. Practitioners are often forced to make compromises and to make choices that may undermine certain human rights principles at the expense of advancing others. This is especially the case in the emphasis on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence:

543 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 544 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

150 “In some ways, there has been this self-reinforcing cycle of an increased attention to sexual violence, which then – because it is easier to make gains on something that is bounded, easier to get language into the Council, easier to push that agenda forward – overtakes the rest of the agenda in a way that, I think, is having negative implications…in terms of how women are being portrayed in relationship to peace and security issues.”545

While on the one hand, the focus on conflict-related sexual violence has been a success for feminist practitioners, creating new opportunities for advancing their ideals, many believe that it has had implications for how they are able to work, creating new constraints on what can be said in the name of human rights. These practitioners feel that they have had to give up their focus on the broader WPS agenda and have lost some of their integrity in advancing women’s human rights. Differently put, in exchange for a seat at the table, these human rights practitioners traded their ability to speak freely. As one feminist practitioner explained: “People were forced to make a choice in order to raise awareness around the issue. So we called it a peace and security measure; it is linked definitively to the maintenance of international peace and security; ‘you have to do this’; ‘you have to consider this’; ‘you have to look at these things’. And I think [we] didn’t want to muddy the waters with the human rights angle. I don’t know. It is kind of like talking about it from a human rights perspective would confuse the issue for the detractors.”546

These practitioners feel that they compromised on their ability to use explicit ‘human rights’ discourses for fear that, in doing so, they would ‘muddy the waters’ and provide ammunition for those who were resistant to human rights gains. However, within the new bureaucratic constraints posed by the singular focus on conflict-related sexual violence, feminist practitioners are now working to do what they can to continue to advance a rights-based approach to the WPS agenda. This new space of contestation is evident in their more recent efforts to promote particular ways of addressing the issue of sexual violence. While some actors in the Security Council have attempted to keep the WPS agenda fractured, and to focus only on this ‘hard’ peace and security issue, feminist practitioners are now trying to convince the Security Council that ‘softer’ tactics are essential to effectively address this ‘hard’ issue:

545 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013. 546 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

151 “Sexual violence cannot be addressed without the umbrella Resolution 1325… We know that sexual and gender-based violence; it’s a power relationship. You cannot address these issues by picking them out of context. It’s a very complex phenomena, which needs to be addressed in a very holistic way.”547

Because feminist practitioners believe in the interconnectedness of the WPS pillars, their strategies now focus on pushing the Council towards what they believe is the logical endpoint of addressing this singular form of violence: violence prevention. In so doing, these practitioners are able to make the argument that the Council must address the sensitive root causes of sexual violence, that are tied to unequal human rights and a lack of development, in order to prevent its recurrence. The Security Council has become so embedded in addressing conflict-related sexual violence – having tied their ‘gender legitimacy’548 to this issue – that feminist practitioners are now able to leverage this commitment and push the Council back to the ‘softer’ norms of the broader WPS agenda. For example, a focus on violence prevention – as the logical endpoint of addressing conflict-related sexual violence – once again requires that the Council begin to look beyond the countries that are exclusively on its mandate, to address any country that may exhibit early warning signs of sexual violence. As such, despite resistance, this broadens the scope of focus within the Council, to conflict-related contexts rather than to the Council’s mandate list alone. One practitioner explained: “[Conflict-related sexual violence is] not the most resonant piece of the agenda, but it is certainly one that is easiest for people to ‘get’; to understand. It happens. It is out there. It is atrocious. But it is also one of the pieces that is, perhaps, the most difficult to address. And now you’ve got the debate in the Council [that is] all about prevention and addressing it when it happens…and the prevention piece is a huge challenge for the Council. Because prevention of sexual violence or grave violence against children or general threats and attacks against civilians: prevention requires early warning mechanisms; early warning tools. It also requires the Council to talk about countries that may not be on the Council’s agenda, or that may not be defined as ‘armed conflict’. And that makes a lot of Council members extremely uncomfortable, and can be seen as broadening the scope of the mandate of the Council, going beyond its tasking…That being said, if we’re serious about prevention of sexual violence, or prevention of violence overall, the Council is going to have to re-think how it does its work.”549

547 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 548 Otto 2010a. 549 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

152 The Security Council has avoided the ‘softer’ human rights issues within the WPS agenda by focusing on women’s protection through the lens of effective response rather than effective prevention of sexual violence in conflict. However, as Security Council members increasingly commit to addressing the issue of conflict-related sexual violence, feminist practitioners have been active in pushing for attention to prevention as part of a comprehensive approach to addressing this issue. In this process, these practitioners are better able to negotiate the inclusion of their rights-based priorities. And ultimately, feminist practitioners have been fairly successful working within these new bureaucratic constraints: more recent negotiations on the WPS agenda have resulted in thematic resolutions where the Council offers new solutions and commitments that are increasingly addressing human rights, access to justice, humanitarian priorities, such as access to health care, and women’s participation as interrelated with violence prevention.

The Security Council as More than Realpolitik: Power in Practice

The Security Council is traditionally considered to be a domain of hard power within the international system, where realpolitik reigns and the major global powers – the USA, Russia, China, the UK and France, as well as ten elected Council members – negotiate the pressing political questions of the day. In many ways, the distribution of States’ power is very important for explaining the evolution of the WPS agenda. For example, countries like the USA and the UK have played a key role in mobilizing their resources to advance the WPS norms in particular ways that support their national interests. Countries like Russia and China have often resisted the advancement of the agenda for reasons related to their national interests. However, realpolitik alone does not always explain how power works in practice550. There are indeed instances when powerful countries have tried to strong-arm progress on the WPS agenda in order to suit their domestic and national interests. For example, conflict-related sexual violence quickly became a priority for several key political actors, including former U.K. Foreign Secretary, William Hague. Hague

550 Pouliot (2016)’s recent work provides unique insight into power in the Security Council. Namely, he shows that power comes not only from states, but that it primarily develops through practice as Security Council practitioners interact.

153 launched an initiative in 2013 on preventing sexual violence in conflict that became the centerpiece of the UK’s foreign policy. The initiative not only brought new pots of funding to the table, but also included the assembly of a large team of experts on sexual violence to support the UN and other international missions, as well as to build national capacities. The UK used its 2013 Presidency of the G8 to run a yearlong diplomatic campaign on preventing sexual violence in conflict, which in April 2013 had raised $35.5 million to combat the issue, and which led to the adoption of a G8 Declaration on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, on 11 April 2013551. The UK also used its Presidency of the United Nations (UN) Security Council in June 2013 to push for the adoption of another resolution devoted to combatting sexual violence in conflict. This effort to focus on sexual violence was dictated by a national political agenda with national pressures for the particular prioritization of funding and political attention. It was also driven by Hague’s personal commitment to this issue. However, even with Hague’s determination to have a new Resolution passed on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence – which became Resolution 2106 (2013) – the feminists within the Security Council worked within this context in order to negotiate for the best possible agreement on the issue. This is where we see emergent power in terms of the ability of these practitioners to influence, within the broader constraints of state power politics. As one practitioner stated: “We’re going to have another resolution in June [2013]. This is given. You cannot fight it because [it’s] the UK, the permanent member of the Security Council. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is coming. They WANT to have a resolution. You can bring all the arguments of why we shouldn’t have one. But for them, it’s political. So the approach, I think, should be…to absorb this reality, but get something useful out of this.”552

While there are certainly political pressures coming from Member States and donors, which influence the way that the WPS agenda evolves, practitioners respond to these political pressures by working within these constraints to influence and coerce what they believe to be ‘inevitable’ outcomes in a way that is also desirable for them, in terms of the broader WPS agenda, and by negotiating so that their interests in advancing the WPS

551 This Declaration has now been endorsed by 155 countries. See: ‘Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict’ Written Statement to Parliament. Foreign & Commonwealth Office, UK. 14 July 2014. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/preventing-sexual-violence-in-conflict-next-steps 552 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013.

154 agenda can benefit, at least in part, from the inevitable political demands of Member States. One practitioner noted: “I guess we try to just leverage it now, wherever we can. Figure out how it is useful to us, and how it can advance our agenda”.553 Thus, even when the exogenous political power of a country like the UK is dominating the WPS agenda, feminist practitioners still strive, through their power in practice to shift the outcome in favour of their ideals. Beyond the particular interests of the permanent Members of the Security Council, power is also mediated by the elected membership at any given time. Ten new Security Council members are elected on a two-year rotation, alongside the five permanent Member States. The ideologies and political priorities of the non-permanent Member States significantly affect the kind of agreements that will be made during an election period. Amongst the permanent Council members, the WPS agenda continues to face significant resistance from China and Russia, and then from a rotating and varied group of non-permanent Council members, depending on the year. While the permanent members tend to be fairly consistent in either their support or their resistance to the WPS agenda, the key for feminist practitioners is to build alliances across the Security Council, identifying colleagues in human rights-friendly non-permanent Member States, as a way to improve their influence within WPS negotiations: “the ones who come on, the non- permanent ones who come on and off, it is more about convincing them”554. Whether progress can be made on the WPS agenda is largely based on the alliances that are built between diplomats within the Member States. As one diplomat noted, “it really depends on the relationships that you have with other colleagues in the Security Council”555. In this sense, power is emerging in and through relationships, with these alliances playing a role in determining power in practice. In recent years, like-minded non-permanent member states like Austria, Australia, Portugal, Germany, Canada and Japan have been “really instrumental”556 in supporting the WPS agenda. When non-permanent members on the Security Council are resistant to the WPS agenda, they tend to ally with Russia and China to push back against the inclusion of

553 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/07/2013. 554 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 555 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 556 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

155 women’s rights and gender equality issues within the Council’s mandate: “When [Russia and China] have allies in the Council, that means – when there are some issues that directly target members of the Council and where they can get allies – that becomes a problem for all of us, the like-minded Western countries.”557 One diplomat felt, for example, that the presence of India (2011-2012) and Pakistan (2012-2013) on the Council brought a “sudden halt”558 to progress in the WPS agenda. These resistant non-permanent states can significantly stall the agenda: “I think when you have Member States like that, you have real resistance on the Council – because [China and Russia] just need to build other allies within the Council, and that is it. When they have two or three [allies], it would be a struggle [to advance the WPS agenda].”559

Having allies within the Council can help China and Russia to make claims that appear more competent and their arguments have more political traction, and thus more power, because they fall on friendlier ears. Adler-Nissen and Pouliot (2014) describe a similar situation in the case of the intervention in Libya, where, in the struggle to look competent, it became difficult for a Council member to abstain or reject the resolution, as the majority of countries were in favour560. They quote a diplomat who says, ‘you don’t want to be seen standing alone’ because being isolated would compromise your competence in the eyes of your colleagues and would undermine your influence561. Similarly, Russia and China do not want to be seen ‘standing alone’ against the WPS agenda, but their interests are significantly bolstered when they have non-permanent allies to support and stand with them. The balance of power in the Council can shift based on whether or not Russia and China’s position appears isolated, and this can change the outcome of negotiations. For example, in the past few years, there were problems regarding the content of the reports of the Secretary General on sexual violence and on the children in armed conflict agenda. In these reports, some countries that were not formally on the agenda of the Council were rebuked for their human rights practices related to women and children.

557 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 558 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 559 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 560 Adler-Nissen and Pouliot 2014. 561 Adler-Nissen and Pouliot 2014, 14.

156 This made some non-permanent members in the Council very nervous, and as one diplomat reported, the result was that “those countries made a clear and obvious alliance with the Chinese and the Russians”562. Conversely, as that diplomat continued, “when these countries go out of the Council and are not replaced by countries that have problems with reports or being targeted by reports, the Russians and the Chinese are pretty much isolated in these issues. And they tend to create less problems”.563 Ultimately, this section begins to show how the power that evolves in interactions between actors, based on the negotiation of competent practice, works in tandem with exogenous assets. Exogenous resources may still tip the playing field to the point where strong states can push for their particular national interests, as in the case of the UK’s push for a resolution on conflict-related sexual violence in 2013. However, as the issue of negotiating alliances in the Council shows, power is also embedded and constituted (endogenously) in relationships. The next section will take up this same issue in more detail, showing how the norms within the WPS agenda gain meaning and power in and through interactions between colleagues within the Security Council.

Everyday Strategy: Pushing for the Advancement of WPS through Daily Practices

Using the example of Security Council country-mandate resolutions, this section looks at how the feminist community develop practices to advance the WPS agenda. I illustrate the daily interactions between feminists and their bureaucratic colleagues, as they try to teach, convince and support them in promoting the WPS agenda in their work. The advancement of this normative agenda is interactional: it is in and through their daily interactions that learning occurs, shifting background knowledge and the taken-for- granted assumptions of their bureaucratic colleagues, and in the process, shifting practices and the incorporation of WPS norms within country-mandate resolutions. Part of the problem for feminists is that, through their interactions, they may draw background knowledge to the foreground and raise new ideas about previously taken-for-granted

562 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 563 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

157 assumptions, but this may not always lead to learning or change in practice. This is why it remains a struggle for feminists, rather than a simple linear process of promoting change. Feminist practitioners seek to translate the WPS resolutions from formal documents into a sense of obligation to the norms. They actively introduce new practices and knowledge that are consistent with their ideals, knowledge and interests, regarding how to ‘do’ peace and security work properly; what is considered ‘peace’; and what constitutes a peace and security ‘priority’. It is in their collegial interactions that feminist practitioners and their bureaucratic counterparts essentially compete for the institutionalization of their practices, with feminists seeking to shift the background knowledge of their colleagues, thereby shifting how they ‘do’ security work and how they address the WPS agenda.

WPS as a ‘Parallel Conversation’ in the Security Council

In spite of the normative progress that has been made on the WPS agenda, a significant challenge for the feminist practitioners working on WPS lies at the level of implementation. As one diplomat explained: “We’re 13 years on now, we have great indicators, we have wonderful international norms and standards, and now it is just about figuring how the Council takes up their commitments and becomes serious about them…[And] the country situations are where the rubber hits the road in terms of the Council’s work”564.

Implementation of the WPS commitments in the country-specific resolutions, is important because these actions directly shape the composition, mandate and funding of UN field missions. Statistics show that of the total 47 resolutions adopted by the Security Council in 2013, 76.5 per cent contained references to WPS565. Of the 20 resolutions that concerned the establishment or renewal of UN and non-UN led mission mandates, 70 per cent had women, peace and security references, which is an increase from 47 per cent in

564 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 565 UN Security Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on women, peace and security’ 23 September 2014, S/2014/693.

158 2012566. While these statistics indicate that progress has certainly been made, implementation remains far from ‘taken for granted’. Moreover, as one feminist explained, even achieving those implementation rates is a struggle: “This is a huge problem. The Security Council has all these nice resolutions on women, peace and security, but when it adopts a country-specific resolution, most of the time it’s really difficult for the Council to really apply its own standards to the country-specific work”567. Despite the strong normative framework within the Council, there is a persistent challenge in translating those obligations into action, and making those normative changes in ‘explicit rule’ meaningful and legitimate in practice. One of the main problems is that, despite the normative developments, the Security Council – in practice – considers WPS in isolation from the rest of its work on security issues. The WPS agenda has not been ‘mainstreamed’ into the rest of the Council’s work, or institutionalized as part of everyday practice across the broad spectrum of the Council’s work. As one diplomat noted, “there has been a disjuncture and a parallel conversation”568 from the rest of the Council’s work. This diplomat continued, “There doesn’t seem to be that linkage being made, either by the Council or by those bodies around the Council, about the way in which a women, peace and security lens needs to be applied to everything that the Council does. This is not just a debate that comes once a year…it is a lens that needs to be applied to every single matter that is on the Council’s agenda”569.

As the first half of this chapter explained, human rights agendas are not considered by many actors to be central to the Security Council’s larger body of work on peace and security. This problem is exacerbated as a result of the structure of the UN Member State embassies. Within an embassy, or mission, there are colleagues who are ‘country experts’ and there are colleagues hired as ‘human rights experts’, and there is rarely crossover in terms of responsibilities. Most of the UN Member State missions are divided according to these paradigmatic silos, with security experts focusing on country-mandates, tending to reflect traditional state-based interests, such as security and economic prosperity, and human rights experts, who are also usually part of the feminist community of practice,

566 UN Security Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on women, peace and security’ 23 September 2014, S/2014/693. 567 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 568 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013. 569 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013.

159 assigned to the thematic human rights agendas and the advancement of the WPS agenda. As one interviewee noted: “most efforts [by country experts] are focused on the mission force and how it is articulated, the contributors, the scope etc. Women’s issues are sidelined or secondary”570. As such, the conflict between feminist practitioners and their fraught bureaucratic engagement is embedded within the structure of each Member State mission and between colleagues both across and within Member States. There are human rights practitioners within each UN Member State, who are responsible for whatever work needs to be done on human rights issues. These experts also tend to be the core human rights representatives in other UN institutional forums, such as the General Assembly. Some missions, such as the P3 countries, have instructions from their governments that predispose them to being ‘friendlier’ to certain human rights issues. But even in the US or UK missions, the human rights experts are rarely also country experts. As one practitioner elaborated, “the people, the experts, the individuals that represent the countries that come to ‘Friends of women, peace and security’ meetings, which includes the P3 and a number of Council Members, are not the experts that are responsible for country situations, rarely. And so they are not the ones in the room negotiating the [country] mandates.”571

Even amongst the countries that are the most vocal and supportive of the WPS agenda, there is an organizational separation between the human rights and the security practitioners. As such, human rights experts rarely handle geographic files and so they are ‘not in the room’ when country mandates are being negotiated. This means that within every Member State, it is the individual responsibility of the human rights expert to convince their co-national security colleagues to incorporate human rights – and in this case, the WPS agenda – into their work.

Advancing WPS in Interactions between Colleagues

570 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/07/2013. 571 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013. Each of the diplomats that works within a Member State mission are considered to be the ‘experts’ on certain portfolios, whether on specific country situations or on WPS and other human rights agendas. The P3 of States ‘friendly’ to WPS: The USA, the UK, and France.

160 It is largely the daily interactions between these colleagues that determine how and whether WPS is implemented into the country-mandate resolutions. As one diplomat confirmed, the main struggle for these human rights practitioners comes in the form of “internal advocacy to ensure that their colleagues, who are, of course, coming from a country that is 100% behind the agenda, but may not understand it”572 incorporate these norms into their work. The key here is that a Member State may in theory support the implementation of women’s human rights, but in practice, it is the diplomats who draft and negotiate the resolutions. As such, if the individual practitioners who are drafting and negotiating do not prioritize or ‘understand’ the WPS agenda, regardless of their country’s official stance on the issue, they may not include WPS issues in their work. The incorporation of the WPS commitments into the practices of the Security Council in reality then means “mainstreaming it within each of the missions; each of the countries that are on the Council”573, and it means convincing individual country experts to address women’s rights in their individual daily practices. This is a huge challenge for the WPS experts: “their struggle is convincing their country experts […] The challenge remains within missions – translating [the WPS agenda] to others who don’t see the priority. And that’s frustrating”574. The success of this interaction between colleagues with different interests, knowledge and allocated duties determines, in part, how effectively, and in what way, the Security Council will address the WPS agenda. The diplomats who work on country-specific mandates often strongly resist including language in their resolutions that supports the human rights thematic agendas. As one practitioner explained, “For the guys that deal with the geographical issues, this is very often seen as a detail, you know? And a detail that complicates somehow the negotiations of the ‘very political things’…the ‘serious’ things that they deal with”575.

Regardless of whether a diplomat may work within a ‘WPS-friendly’ State, they still see security through a particular lens that is informed by their pre-existing knowledge and experiences; in this case, one which frames women’s rights issues ‘as a detail’ that complicates negotiations rather than as a core priority for peace and security.

572 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 573 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 574 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013. 575 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013.

161 Feminist practitioners, in their role as ‘human rights experts’ must therefore struggle within their diplomatic missions to show, convince and teach their security colleagues that these thematic resolutions, such as the WPS agenda, are as important as the ‘harder’ security issues: “The country specific experts, on Somalia, or Afghanistan or whatever, have certainly a lot of knowledge about the country itself and security issues, but is not necessarily a gender expert, ok? So what’s happened is that, in bigger UN missions, the women, peace and security experts will give input to the country- specific expert, but you know, most of the time, this is traded against security concerns that seem to be more important for them, yeah? So it is very difficult, even within missions…that those thematic-specific experts are taken seriously by the Council on country-specific work.”576

This quotation acknowledges the lack of conscious knowledge about gender issues, but it is also connected to subconscious ‘background knowledge’ that informs what these security practitioners see as ‘more important’. For example, one diplomat explained: “The integration of the two, the political issues with the women, peace and security agenda, is not obvious for them”577. In this sense, convincing their colleagues to include WPS draws attention to the background knowledge that informs their practices, in an attempt to shift how they prioritize women’s rights and to question why they are not being addressed within their negotiations in drafting the country resolutions. Sometimes the feminist practitioners are successful in shifting their colleagues background knowledge – and promoting learning – in order to change their practices in a more sustained way; other times, they may draw to the foreground this background knowledge, but may still not be able to change the deeply embedded beliefs that shape their actions. However, the unwillingness of country-experts to implement the WPS norms within their country-specific work is often a result of ignorance rather than explicit contempt for the WPS agenda. As one diplomat explained, sometimes country-specific experts do not make explicit mention of their obligations to Resolution 1325 because of their ignorance: “they never read it…they don’t have a clue. Never read it… One thing is what the country wants and what the experts on women, peace and security work on and adopt. Another thing, completely different, is to make sure that the geographic

576 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 577 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

162 colleagues read the things that we pass, right? So, I’m not sure that half of them have ever read 1325.”578

The country experts are aware that the WPS resolutions must be integrated into their country-specific mandates. They know that in their country resolutions, there must be mention of women, children and the protection of civilians, and they generally recognize that it is politically correct to integrate these issues into their work. However, as one feminist explained, country experts tend to be “very comfortable with the idea that we only need to make reference to the resolutions, saying ‘bearing in mind 1325 and the following resolutions’. [That] would be, for them, enough”579. Many of them are not aware of the specific obligations within WPS resolutions, or indeed have (allegedly) never read them. As such, they often do not know how to incorporate these issues into their work. Thus, human rights practitioners consider the education of their security colleagues to be an essential component of their efforts to advance the WPS agenda. Human rights practitioners also take steps to support their colleagues who may omit WPS norms not because of ignorance but for practical cost-benefit reasons. There is a resource problem in terms of how much time and effort country-experts are willing and able to devote to ensuring that each of the thematic agendas is sufficiently represented in their mandates: “in order to really have an understanding of the thematic issues, and apply each and every thing that should be applied, it’s just almost impossible, for resources issues.”580 As one diplomat explained, “it really is just a question of resources; of the person who is drafting the resolution; if he has all the information available; if he has talked to the thematic expert; what input does the thematic expert have within the mission?581

Human rights practitioners can make significant gains in advancing the WPS agenda, and in translating the formal resolutions into action, by supporting their security colleagues by reducing their workload and strategically helping “to build bridges”582 between the country mandates and the WPS agenda. For example, when the Security Council is adopting a new mandate, there already exists a significant amount of agreed-upon

578 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 579 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 580 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 581 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 582 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013.

163 language from previous resolutions on the same topic that can literally be copied and pasted into the new mandates. As such, human rights experts can provide the precedent- setting language as a way to help bypass that extra work for their colleague: “Having this precedent is really important and knowing what the good precedents are is even more important. And this is something that a senior person can’t do. You’d basically have to go through ten years of Security Council resolutions to find what the best language is; it’s just completely impossible.”583

In drawing out the precedents for their colleagues, the human rights experts are building bridges through interactions and are translating the WPS normative agenda into practice. These efforts boil down to making the process of writing country mandates easier for the penholder, by bridging the resource gap that they face in not being able to devote the sufficient time to a comprehensive analysis of how to incorporate WPS norms into the country work: “You really help them to bridge some of those resource gaps, you know? Because otherwise the expert who was drafting this mandate would have to do all the work themselves.”584 A key strategy here is to write an actual paragraph that could be inserted directly into the mandate: “You have to be specific, and you have to make it really easy; easy to ‘paste and copy’. If you have those kind of tricks, a little bit, you know, you can get very far”585.

By writing a paragraph about women’s participation or the need for gender advisors, the country expert does not have to write it themselves, which can make the difference between whether or not these particular issues enter into the country-specific mandates. This is an interaction between colleagues that serves to advance the WPS agenda in practice. The feminist practitioners strategically support their security colleagues in their work, through the provision of information and writing support and this is part of their day-to-day effort to ensure – or at least improve the chances – that the Security Council will implement the WPS agenda within their country resolutions. In so doing, these interactions lead to a ‘practice’ of WPS: the formal documents are brought into sustained practice in and through the interactions between these individuals.

583 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 584 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 585 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013.

164 Writing Documents as Practice

Implicit thus far in the analysis of this dissertation as a whole is the importance of documents for the functioning of the UN system. Documents, such as WPS resolutions and country resolutions, play an important role in the everyday workings of the Security Council, and the UN system more broadly. Documents are a key avenue for feminists seeking to advance women’s human rights within this bureaucratic context, and in the specific domain of peace and security. In large part, the contestation over meaning and what is at stake occurs in the negotiations and strategy embedded in the practice of writing and drafting documents. This final section of the chapter will show how the practice of writing documents is one of the core functions of feminist practitioners working within the UN system and that competence in writing plays a major role in determining the advancement (or not) of the WPS agenda. I consider ‘writing’ to include both the original drafting as well as the negotiation process that leads to the adoption of a final document. I look in particular at how in and through the everyday practice of writing the WPS thematic resolutions, feminist practitioners are able to make strategic advancements on the agenda. Feminist practitioners use the process of drafting new WPS thematic resolutions to mobilize for future action on the agenda and to create new leverage to promote WPS in peace and security practices. Formally, it is Member State diplomats alone who write and negotiate the resolutions. However, informally, diplomats also draw on the support of practitioners from across the UN system, including from the UN bureaucracy and from closely affiliated civil society organizations586. This section will first look at those who are formally involved in the process of drafting and writing resolutions, and will then elaborate on who is informally involved in order to show how, in practice, the rules around writing documents may be manipulated when practitioners know the ‘rules of the game’ and can navigate the constraints of the system in order to make their advances.

586 To be clear, this is distinct from the broader women’s rights movement that provide support to the feminist community of practice. These individuals are a very small, select group of civil society professionals who work in NGOs that are closely affiliated with the UN and as such, provides them with a quasi-insider vantage point.

165 Formal Authors: Member State Diplomats

Diplomats within Member States are ultimately the actors who can really influence the decision-making process for the advancement of the WPS agenda, because they are formally engaged in the process of negotiating the resolutions. The first round of drafting, as well as most negotiations on language and content are done by the feminist human rights experts within the Member States: “It’s me and my friends”.587 As such, it is often their responsibility to convince their Council colleagues to adopt certain provisions or language within a given document. As one practitioner noted: “You can push as an outsider, from outside, meaning UN agencies or even concerned Member States outside the Security Council; you can push as much as you want to push. But if you don’t have a convinced Security Council member who can convince others, forget it. You need somebody inside who is willing to stick their neck out.”588

A general understanding within the feminist community of practice is that, in order to make progress on the agenda, feminist practitioners are required to go ‘above and beyond’ what is formally required of their professional position. These diplomats must be willing to ‘stick their neck out’ to ensure that WPS issues are addressed both by their own Member State and also within the Council as a whole. To make progress on the agenda, rather than to maintain the status quo of the agenda takes individual effort: “It takes some commitment, some interest in the agenda. This is perhaps more than is required from ‘normal’ diplomats. But I guess people that are really interested in the agenda do that”589. Another practitioner noted, about personal effort in the case of writing resolutions: “If we don’t have this extra commitment, the agenda will not move fast enough. And it takes a lot of extra strength to make sure that we have extra words, different words, better wording”590 than in previous resolutions. Diplomats work within the confines of what their governments will ultimately support. As such, they are constrained by the orders that they are given by their states. This is particularly important when dealing with high stakes issues, where a particular state may give direct orders about what they will and will not agree to. However, feminist

587 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 588 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/10/2013. 589 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 590 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

166 diplomats often have significant autonomy in terms of how negotiations over resolutions unfold and what the end result can be for a resolution. As one diplomat noted, the negotiations take place “obviously, hopefully, with instructions from our capital, but most of us do not have instructions from the capitals at all! Capital is busy!”591 While ‘friendly’ governments broadly support the WPS agenda at a high level, the details of that support are often decided from within the UN mission. Diplomats can often be left to hammer out the details of their state’s level of agreement, especially around lower-stakes political issues. As such, this disconnect between the high level mandate of the state and the specific instructions given to the diplomats can leave diplomats with a large degree of latitude. In these cases, practitioners can be left to negotiate the contents of a new agreement, meeting their instructions but also inserting their own priorities. As one diplomat noted, the government often seems to have an attitude that says: “You deal with it and you bring us a good result”592. There are some political issues, for example with references to the ICC, which often receive specific government instructions. Or, there may be instances when a government has very specific instructions for WPS-related agreements, such as in the case of Hague’s push from the UK to advance a resolution on conflict-related sexual violence. However, broadly speaking, the drafting of the resolutions and the negotiations over their content often come down to the preferences and interests of the diplomats sitting at the negotiating table. When a new WPS resolution has been initiated by a Member State, is being drafted and is up for negotiation within the Council, feminist diplomats involved in the process must build alliances to strengthen their bargaining position. A crucial first step is to consult the human rights practitioners within like-minded ‘sympathetic’ permanent and non-permanent Member State missions: “When you go to the rest of the Council with the text, there might be an attack. You need the strong support of allies, and if people are convinced that this is good, and that this is the way forward, then they will support you. If they are not convinced, because they were not part of the idea and the concept, they might remain silent… And if I remain silent, like this, it’s going to create a problem for the person that has to defend their own text.”593

591 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 592 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. 593 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

167 This quotation highlights why building relationships is essential in the drafting process. Without them, problems may emerge later in the negotiating process. This also points to a certain ‘know-how’ in the writing of the document; that these individuals know how to engage in the writing process in a way that will minimize rejection and avoid the risk of having to ‘defend their own text’ against an ‘attack’ when the document is presented to their wider Council colleagues. There is a practical understanding that it is first necessary to privately convince other colleagues that the drafted language will be in the best interest of – or at least will be agreeable and will not cause problems for – their Member States, before opening up the draft to the broader Council population. Finally, this section highlights the way that these feminists see themselves and each other; they are part of a community that are working together, pushing the boundaries, in alliance with each other.

Informal Authors: The Feminist Community of Practice

Officially UN bureaucrats or civil society actors contribute to the writing of resolutions by providing public information to the Security Council to help them make their decisions594. Bureaucrats may be consulted by diplomats for expert opinions and advice in the initial drafting stages, especially for expertise of a technical nature: “If and when they find it necessary, they obviously knock on our doors and we provide them with technical inputs on drafting different sections of a resolution”595. The sharing of technical expertise is not surprising, as it is part of the mandate of the UN Secretariat to assist diplomats in properly articulating human rights priorities. For example, in the drafting stage of the resolution, as one diplomat commented: “We need to sit…those who are more progressive, who want better results, sit around the table, invite Anne-Marie and her team, the NGOs, like Sarah Taylor, and try to discuss language and the concept…What could be important…for UN Women or for civil society, to get into the text? So, we have a strong idea of the needs of the agencies, DPKO, UN Women, civil society…and then we can move

594 For example, the NGO Working Group publicly provides material to the Council such as ‘Monthly Action Points’, which offer coherent policy advice each month on the agenda of the Security Council. 595 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/01/2013.

168 to the negotiations with a stronger knowledge of what is really needed and where we can compromise”596

This technical advice can be strategic in the sense that feminist diplomats rely on the advice of specific feminist practitioners from across the UN system for ideas about what is needed to advance the WPS agenda in an advantageous way for their interests. Unofficially, feminist practitioners from across the UN system can have a significant impact on the writing of the Security Council resolutions – in terms of the content, the language, and the timing of the adoption of a resolution. Beyond their formal role, UN feminists can be centrally involved in driving the Security Council agenda. When one practitioner was asked what contribution UN bureaucrats or individuals from civil society make to writing Council resolutions, she responded: “Formally, very little. Informally, quite a bit.”597 This informal participation offers support to the feminist diplomats who are ‘formally’ drafting and negotiating the resolutions: “What is the role of UN practitioners? Well, frankly, a lot of them have no role at all and technically they shouldn’t. Technically, these are inter-governmental arrangements, which is not our business. But of course, behind the scenes, we do have a huge amount of influence, those of us who are very, very interested. But a lot of UN practitioners are not that engaged.”598

While most bureaucrats across the UN system do not participate in writing the Security Council resolutions, for those who do, there is a distinction to be made between their official and unofficial professional capacities. As a result of the fact that these UN practitioners should not technically be engaged in the writing process, the role they play comes as a result of “personal engagement”599. This is about the relationships that are formed across the community, and the interest that these individuals have in the advancement of the community ideals. As one feminist noted: “To be honest, I worked in drafting all of them… It comes to your desk, yeah? That’s why the resolution becomes a document”600. These resolutions are not

596 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/02/2013. ‘Anne-Marie and her team’ refers to the UN Women peace and security team. ‘The NGOs, like Sarah Taylor’ refers to the NGO Working Group on WPS. 597 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013. 598 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 599 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 600 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/01/2013.

169 the exclusive domain of Member States; the writing of resolutions tends to be an iterated process of building up, “word by word”601, what will finally be accepted; through countless emails back and forth, where information is added then deleted, then added again, then deleted again. UN bureaucrats, however, “cannot really be seen as the ones writing the resolutions…so they have to, to a certain extent, also keep the distance”602. While many individuals within the community of practice contribute to the outcome of Security Council resolutions, their impact is not formally recognized. Informal consultations between Member State diplomats, UN bureaucrats, and some very select civil society advocates, usually occur in the drafting stage of a UN document. This is an important moment where they are able to influence the content of the outcome document. This input may range from drafting full portions of the resolution to providing ideas about how a resolution in theory might best advance the WPS agenda. Despite the informal nature of these consultations, one bureaucrat explained that it is: “normal practice [for Member States to ask] for a draft, for the ideas…of course they’re coming for advice […] So, there is a process; there is an opening where you can get some influence, of course.”603

Drawing on the support of the feminist community of practice, including requesting drafts or ideas for language is ‘normal practice’, despite the fact that it is not technically the business of UN bureaucrats to contribute to the internal workings of the Security Council. These actors who are external to the Security Council can often help to shift ideas, policies and practices from behind the scenes. Their separation from the politics of the Security Council allows them to strategically support their diplomatic colleagues while the negotiation processes continue to ‘technically’ occur within the Council’s domain.

Strategy in Writing: Emerging from Practice

Strategy emerges from the practice of writing resolutions and in determining the language that will be negotiated and adopted. The drafting process in particular requires

601 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/01/2013. 602 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 603 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013.

170 certain ‘know-how’ in order to push language in a way that will make gains more broadly for the agenda. As one bureaucrat explained, there are “numerous entry points that need to be hit in order to make sure that that language is in there”604. Knowing what those entry points are and how to hit them is part of the competent practice of writing documents within this bureaucratic space. One writing strategy that several practitioners highlight as a key to advancing women’s human rights in a document is the strategy of pushing the language in a draft resolution far beyond what could be reasonably expected to pass, under the assumption that it will be cut back in the end to a comfortable ‘middle-ground’ compromise: “You can be proactive. [For example], you can provide professional drafts, maybe taking it too far. You know what I mean? And then the Member States will roll it back… If you can provide a draft that may be too – how do you say? – too much for the Member States, but it is professional. Then they will start with this, but you still have something.”605

During the drafting process, feminist practitioners will provide inputs that intentionally ‘push the limits’ on the existing agreed language, knowing that, in the process of negotiation, the compromised document will ultimately include some of their inputs and not others, but that it will likely be an advancement from the existing agreed language. The practice of writing resolutions also depends in large part on how information enters into the domain of the Security Council. It is an institution with very particular rules and regulations for the transmission of information, which can have effects on the process of writing resolutions. Formally, if UN bureaucrats beyond the Security Council wish to provide inputs for the drafting of a new resolution, they are expected to do so at the specific and rigid entry-points that have been established for the transmission of information into the purview of the Council. As one bureaucrat explained: “It is really like a tightly-run ship, in terms of page limits, word limitations, each country report has a bit on women, like two small paragraphs.”606 These rules can be challenging for any efforts to comprehensively communicate the importance of a particular WPS-related issue to the Council. The structure of this form of information management means that the Council is often very limited in the type and amount of information about WPS that it

604 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013. 605 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 606 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 05/10/2013.

171 receives and often resolutions are drafted based on this type of information. As such, if this is insufficient, it can limit the extent of progress that can be made on the agenda. However, because of the personal and collegial relationships between feminist practitioners across the UN system, they can strategically ensure that information reaches the Council, in order to overcome this challenge of information management and to ensure sufficient information is available for the document writing process. Either the feminist diplomats will directly incorporate the contributions of the UN bureaucrats into the draft PRST or resolution or their advice may be strategically inputted into a report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council, with a recommendation for immediate action. At that point, once the information has entered into the domain of the Council through a more ‘formal’ channel, with the strategic recommendation for action, the diplomats are able to subsequently draw on the information to build their case in negotiating a resolution that includes the specific WPS information. As one diplomat explained: “the Member State who is drafting the resolution can say, ‘Oh look! It’s in the report of the Secretary General’”607 and this gives their claims additional legitimacy. This type of action can ensure that the necessary information becomes available to the human rights diplomats in a legitimate and formal way and that it can be used to bolster their bargaining power in negotiating for the most progressive WPS resolutions possible. Ultimately, what this section has shown is how the WPS resolutions are ‘effects of practice’608: the practice of writing – which includes drafting, building relationships, knowledge sharing and negotiating, among other things – produces documents that are reflective of a very particular process, often as a struggle on behalf of the feminist practitioners within a domain that is resistant to human rights. The practice of writing documents constitutes and is constituted by the community of feminist practitioners. Because writing documents is one of the key practices of actors within the UN system, feminist practitioners learn how to become part of the community and their identity as feminist bureaucrats within the UN is shaped by and through the process of participating in how documents are drafted and produced. Moreover, it is largely in and through these everyday practices of writing documents that the advancement of the WPS agenda

607 Author’s Interview, UN Diplomat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 608 Weisser 2014.

172 occurs. This section has focused in particular on the practice of writing the WPS thematic resolutions, but this applies equally to other documents, such as country-mandates or Secretary-General reports, through which the struggle over the WPS agenda also occurs.

Conclusion

This chapter has focused on how feminist practitioners seek to advance the WPS agenda in their everyday practices in the Security Council, in spite of the bureaucratic constraints posed by the institution. I analyze the resistance within the Council to addressing human rights issues and consider what is at stake in this resistance, including the conflicting and competing interests of various actors within the field. Using the particular case of the focus on conflict-related sexual violence, this chapter addresses how a competition over how to define what is relevant and what is a priority for the WPS agenda is embedded in the Security Council. The focus on conflict-related sexual violence also highlights the role of feminist practitioners in advancing the WPS agenda within this bureaucratic context, highlighting how they now carefully seek to push for greater attention to human rights in addition to the existing focus on sexual violence. The chapter analyzes how the WPS agenda gains meaning and power in and through interaction. It looks at the dynamic of power within the Security Council and argues that while powerful countries are able to define the contours of the WPS agenda, power in practice is much more malleable and depends on the competencies of actors within the field and their relationships. It also shows how norms are constituted, diffused and institutionalized in practice by showing the interactions between colleagues within UN Member State missions, and the efforts of human rights experts to convince, teach and support their colleagues in order to shift their taken-for-granted understandings of how to ‘do’ peace and security work. Finally, this chapter analyzes one particular practice within the Security Council and UN system more broadly – the practice of writing documents. It shows that, in large part, feminist practitioners navigate bureaucratic challenges and opportunities through the negotiations and strategy embedded in the day-to-day practice of writing documents. Ultimately, however, as this chapter more broadly has shown, as a result of the

173 competing and conflicting interests within this bureaucratic setting, these interactions and practices often do not result in their intended outcomes for the feminist community of practice. As such, successes achieved for feminists in the Security Council, and in the practice of writing documents, for example, are often tempered victories; considered to be ‘better than’ the existing normative framework, if not everything that the feminist community of practice might hope for, for the advancement of the WPS agenda. Ultimately, this shows that while success can be identified in feminist engagement with the Security Council, and changes have been made in the past 15 years, the changes have not been a linear and inevitable process, but rather a struggle in the everyday to advance these normative issues and to translate them into meaningful sustained practice.

174 Chapter 6:

Conclusion

In October 2015, the UN system celebrated 15 years since the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325. A High-Level Panel was commissioned to assess 15 years of progress on the WPS agenda at the global, regional and national levels. The Secretary-General of the UN also commissioned an independent Global Study – spearheaded by Radhika Coomeraswamy609 – on the implementation of Resolution 1325 and recommendations on the way forward for women, peace and security. This Global Study was supported in the drafting phase by UN Women’s peace and security team. Findings of the Study suggested that while progress has been made at the normative level in developing the WPS agenda framework, and also practices are beginning to change informally around the incorporation of women’s rights within the domain of peace and security, women continue to bear the brunt of harmful effects of conflict and continue to be underrepresented in the areas of conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding610. The UN system and UN Women in particular are now active in building momentum around this Global Study and High-Level Panel, organizing events and campaigns, adopting a new Resolution611, and have claimed that these processes will reinvigorate the women, peace and security agenda to ensure that the rhetoric of the normative framework matches the reality of implementation612. Whether or not this reinvigoration will happen is perhaps beside the larger point, which is that this High-Level Panel and Global Report are the next frontier for feminist practitioners in advancing the WPS agenda. In supporting the drafting of this document and in the strategic preparations for these meetings, feminist practitioners continue to navigate the UN system with competence and skill in and through practice for the advancement of their ideals within the bureaucratic constraints of the UN system. How

609 Coomeraswamy was the Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict until 13 July 2012 and was previously the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. 610 See UN Women’s website: http://wps.unwomen.org/en/high-level-review 611 UN Security Council, ‘Security Council Resolution 2242 (2015)’ 13 October 2015. 612 See UN Women’s website: http://wps.unwomen.org/en/high-level-review

175 they are able to capitalize on this momentum and what comes next are part of a long history of navigating the UN system for the advancement of women’s human rights. This relates to a broader point about how and whether we can measure the success of the efforts of the feminist community of practice. When considering the relative success or failure of feminist engagement with international institutions, their efforts often do not result in the intended outcomes for the feminist community of practice. In the case of the WPS agenda, did the feminist community of practice make a difference? Were they effective? Certainly – if we understand change not in linear terms, but within a context of complexity, and competing and conflicting interests that push and pull on their efforts. What we can see is that their efforts moved them towards their vision of substantive global gender equality, a benchmark against which to measure success. This concluding chapter will first provide an analysis of feminist activism within the UN, highlighting what makes the feminist community of practice unique in their efforts and providing a broader context for understanding the gendered nature of the UN system. It will then engage in conversation with Barnett and Finnemore’s (2004) book, Rules of the World, to elaborate on the insights gained through this dissertation about the functioning and behaviour of IOs in world politics. Finally, the specific empirical and theoretical contributions of this dissertation will be summarized, highlighting in particular what this dissertation teaches us about organizational change, as well as feminist engagement within international institutions.

On feminist activism in the UN

This section reflects on activism within the constraints of institutional bureaucracies and on what, if anything, makes feminist activism unique at the UN. In general, strategies for change are shared among people who engage in advocacy, whether or not those are explicitly gendered issues. Research in IR is increasingly unpacking the black box of international organizations to show how individuals within bureaucratic organizations strategize and push for change613. Many of the strategic practices in this

613 Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Weiss and Caryannis 2005; Biermann and Siebenhuner 2009; Eyben and Turquet 2013.

176 dissertation, such as framing, alliance building or writing bureaucratic documents, carry over into other forms of activism. As Weiss and Caryannis (2005) argue, for example, the ‘second UN’, made up of the secretariats of international organizations, as well as outside experts and consultants, is capable of leadership and influence that can alter international outcomes614. Biermann and Siebenhuner (2009) argue, in the case of environmental activism, that organizational change is often the result of the individuals and their leaders within these bureaucracies. While these studies are not always explicit about the specific strategies of activists seeking to advance their respective advocacy issues, it is often implied – if not fully specified – that these activists, like feminists, are strategically working within bureaucratic constraints to advance their issue areas. Broadly speaking, this dissertation seeks to show that in an organization that can seem opaque with bureaucratic structures and protocols, the individual actor matters in explaining normative change. In this sense, it is one example of how a group of individuals can influence within an IO to promote change in a normative agenda. However, many interview participants in this study shared with me that there is something unique about the strategies of those who work on gender issues. As one interview participant noted, “You don’t think that [individuals matter], when you’re looking from the outside. You think, ‘oh UN Women is this agency, or DPKO; whoever holds the post is going to do the job and the job is going to get done.’…It’s not the case. The person makes the job, and particularly in terms of gender”615.

When it comes to working on gender, practitioners are working against the status quo; “you really have to challenge what structures have put in place. So you have to be able to be innovative, and not just file your reports or whatever, or accept answers that come down from the top”616. To make change within a bureaucratic organization, around any issue, it is necessary to challenge the structures in place and to be innovative. However, arguably the individuals working to advance gender and women’s rights issues face unique challenges that individuals within other issue areas do not face – and this makes

614 Weiss and Caryannis 2005. 615 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013. 616 Author’s Interview, UN Civil Society Activist, New York City, 05/01/2013.

177 feminist advocacy distinctive and particularly challenging within the UN system. The dynamics of power within which feminist activists operate are unique for analysis. I argue in this section that, compared to other kinds of advocacy that encounter similar bureaucratic constraints, feminist activism is unique because it combines women’s positionality within a gendered organization in conjunction with the fact that they are advancing an issue that faces particular institutional resistance. This creates unique challenges for feminists in terms of how they make their arguments and in how their claims are heard, and affects how they are able to function within this bureaucratic space. This section will highlight the challenges of advocating for gendered issues that face resistance within the UN system, in light of its ‘gender regime’. This resistance is a question of degree and cannot be directly measured in comparison to other issue areas. However, it is nonetheless one of the key issues that is heavily contested and resisted within the UN. In so doing, this section will emphasize that while feminist strategies are not necessarily unique within the UN system, feminist activists face particular challenges as a result of their positionality and advocacy within this bureaucratic space.

Gendered Hierarchy of Power

The UN is no different from other organizations in being ‘gendered’. Its ‘gender regime’ provides an understanding of the context within which activists operate and the particular challenges they face. The gendered hierarchy of power and gendered division of labour within the UN are particularly notable when analyzing the data on the status of women within this organization. The hiring and representation of women in the UN system remains characterized by gender inequality. A 2014 report of the Secretary General on the status of women in the UN system noted that there is an inverse relationship between the level and representation of women. At the lowest professional levels, women make up over 50 percent of the staff, whereas at the highest level, women only make up 26.7 percent617. While women are well represented in entry-level positions,

617 United Nations General Assembly (2014) ‘Improvement in the status of women in the United Nations system: Report of the Secretary-General’ 25 August 2014. A/69/346. The report shows the following statistics: The inverse relationship between the level and the representation of women

178 this does not equate to the representation of women in decision-making positions618. Notably, the representation of women at the D2 level (senior director) is approximately the same in 2013 as it was at the beginning of the decade. This report noted “the continuing challenge for the United Nations system, including the Secretariat, is to reverse the inverse relationship between seniority and the representation of women”619. A 2013 General Assembly resolution expressed serious concerns that the goal to have 50/50 representation of men and women had not been met, especially at senior levels, and that the representation of women in the UN system remains almost static620. The impact of this low representation of women at higher levels is significant. To make change in the UN system, men – as the primary decision-makers – become the gatekeepers to decide what issues will change and what will remain status quo621. This can be seen in the case of the WPS agenda when the lower-level bureaucrats tried to lobby the decision-makers at DPKO to address the issue of conflict-related sexual violence: having male allies like General Cammaert went a long way in contributing to normative change. This is not to say that men will not be interested in advancing women’s rights issues, or that women will be interested, merely because they are women. However, within this gender regime, power is concentrated in the hands of men. This creates relationships of power within the organization and unique hurdles that must be overcome in order for organizational change around women’s rights to occur. The way that gender is addressed within the UN is also characterized by a gendered division of labour. Specifically, women tend to be the professionals who work on advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment issues. While increasing numbers of men are advocating for gender equality within and beyond the UN system, this is a unique phenomenon in the sense that often women are designated as ‘gender experts’, even if they have no particular expertise in working on these issues. Across the UN system, any woman may be expected to be a gender specialist merely because of her continues: P2 (57.9 percent), P1 (54.3 percent), P3 (45.3 percent), P4 (40.5 percent), P5 (34.2 percent), D1 (32.4 percent), D2 (30.1 percent) and ungraded (26.7 percent) 618 United Nations General Assembly (2014) ‘Improvement in the status of women in the United Nations system: Report of the Secretary-General’ 25 August 2014. A/69/346. 619 United Nations General Assembly (2014) ‘Improvement in the status of women in the United Nations system: Report of the Secretary-General’ 25 August 2014. A/69/346. 620 General Assembly Resolution 68/140. 621 Connell 2005.

179 gender. In comparison to other issue areas, it is much less likely for someone to be designated an environmental specialist, for example, without expertise in this issue. This has an impact on the quality of gender work within the UN system. Inexperienced practitioners work on gender issues for reasons that go beyond their particular expertise. As a result, they may not be particularly interested in advancing women’s rights issues beyond the minimum requirements of their duties. Most units and departments within UN agencies have gender focal points as part of their institutional mandate for gender mainstreaming. Many of these gender focal point positions are assigned to women due to the fact that they are women rather than because they have any particular expertise in gender mainstreaming. As one bureaucrat explained: “Yeah, but very often, as we know, many people are working on the women issues because they are women – and that is enough qualifier to work on that”622. This correlates to the fact that many of the gender focal points are of very low quality: “The quality of gender advisors is appalling. It seems like anybody, but anybody, can badge themselves as a gender advisor and run around the world giving advice, and doing whatever the hell they do. It’s terrible”623. Many practitioners note that just because a practitioner is a woman, does not mean that she will work to advance women’s issues. In fact, as one bureaucrat explained, “Sometimes for women, the best thing they can do is to be against gender issues, especially in the UN. There is a whole generation of 25 to 30 year olds in the UN that make their career by disagreeing on gender issues, so male senior managers really like that. Because she’s here, and instead of you as a man disagreeing, you have your woman who comes and disagrees on gender issues. It’s perfect!”624

As the feminist bureaucrats in this study have shared, in order to advance women’s rights concerns beyond the status quo, individuals must go above and beyond their formal requirements and be willing to push the boundaries of their role. This inexperience and lack of commitment of some gender advisors – who are positioned as such only because of their gender – can be a major barrier to the advancement of women’s rights. Ultimately, the unequal division of labour and hierarchy of power create and reproduce particular gender relationships and meanings. While it is beyond the scope of

622 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 04/30/2013. 623 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013. 624 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/02/2013.

180 this study to detail precisely how the gender regime impacts upon the work of feminist activists or to detail the UN’s particular gender regime, this section serves to show that organizations, including the UN, are gendered. This gendering impacts how actors are able to manoeuvre and it provides the context for understanding how feminist activists push for the advancement of women’s rights and gender equality.

Gendered organization, gendered agents, gendered activism

While the United Nations’ gender regime affects all actors within the organization, the added challenge for feminist activists seeking to advance women’s human rights issues is that this issue faces such steep resistance within the organization. This is, of course, a question of degree and a comparison to other issue areas is beyond the scope of this project. However, women’s human rights have long been one of the crucial areas of backlash within this organization. Particularly over the past 15 years, throughout the 2000s, the growth of the feminist movement has been threatened by powerful traditionalist conservatives and religious fundamentalists625. Despite widespread support for this issue in some domains, a number of well-organized and powerful individuals and groups seek to block progress around this issue at all costs; groups that hold crucial government votes and control key UN forums for discussion626. The overall resistance to advancing women’s rights within the UN can be seen in the disconnect between discourse and practice within ‘gender mainstreaming’ efforts. Gender mainstreaming efforts can be superficial due to the challenges of advancing these issues in practice. There has been a general lack of leadership in demanding gender mainstreaming efforts in all UN work. Whether this is due to outright resistance or ambivalence is beyond the scope of this study. However, as one bureaucrat shared: “I don’t think gender mainstreaming failed, I think people have not put in effort required to do it and to really infuse in systems capacity-building and building people’s skills and ownership and performance around delivering on these projects. Rather, they say ‘let’s just have the gender advisor do it!’ or ‘We’ll ask

625 Snyder 2006. 626 Snyder 2006.

181 the women to do it!’ So we haven’t mainstreamed anything because we haven’t put the effort into it.”627

There has been a lack of effort within the UN system as a whole to ensure that gender is successfully mainstreamed across the organization in discourse and also in practice. While there has certainly been progress over time, as this dissertation shows, there are significant barriers to these efforts. As one bureaucrat pointed out: “I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, but at the end of the day, I don’t think you can completely rule out the fact that senior men in the organization just don’t care that much.”628 These quotations point to an overall ignorance or ambivalence towards gender mainstreaming. This attitude at the practical level, in combination with the documented resistance by traditionalist groups who actively seek to refute advances, creates a unique challenge for feminist activists. The UN system has recently implemented a new strategy for rectifying the relative failure of gender mainstreaming to date. The UN has endorsed the SWAP (System-Wide Action Plan on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women), a framework that addresses key areas of importance to improve gender mainstreaming within the institutions of the UN and to create a common route to success629. This strategy assigns performance standards for the gender-related work of all UN entities, ensuring greater coherence and accountability. UN Women is playing a leading role in supporting the implementation, using 15 indicators that require all UN organization to adopt policies and practices to ensure gender equality. While the SWAP has so far been unprecedented in its effects, the current state of gender mainstreaming within the UN – which has been revealed in the initial data gathering for the SWAP – is indicative of just how appalling gender mainstreaming efforts have been so far over the past 15+ years. A 2014 review of findings founds that even when accountable to the SWAP indicators, most UN entities have very limited performance around improving their gender architecture and ensuring gender parity630.

627 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/07/2013. 628 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013. 629 United Nations Economic and Social Council (2014) ‘Mainstreaming a gender perspective into all politics and programmes in the United Nations system: Report of the Secretary General’ 17 April 2014. E/2014/63. 630 Only 19 per cent of UN entities rated as meeting or exceeding requirements in 2013, which is up from 13 per cent in 2012. United Nations Economic and Social Council (2014) ‘Mainstreaming a

182 For example, while 96 per cent of UN entities have gender focal points or equivalent in place to support the incorporation of gender concerns into the work of the entity, the strength of the gender focal point system is undermined by the lack of seniority of the focal point and the failure to formalize their functions631. This reporting points not only to how gender mainstreaming is resisted in practice, but also to the pervasive and unequal gender regime that governs the UN system. Because of the institutional resistance to the advancement of women’s rights and gender equality, feminist activists have to arguably think more carefully about how they make their claims. It is necessary that they silence certain opportunities for action because they might be shut down pre-emptively for being too progressive. This has been a theme through the dissertation: that bureaucrats must think strategically about how to frame and present their ideals so as to not immediately shut down the conversation. This demonstrates that feminist strategies and actions are shaped by gender in very real ways. This context of resistance impacts feminist activists personally, as well as their claims making. Joanne Sandler, former Deputy Executive Director for UNIFEM, describes some of the ways that feminist activists within the UN system are beaten down for seeking to advance women’s rights. She argues that those who seek to promote gender equality face pervasive institutional discrimination that has a complex impact on these individuals632. She says, “continuously and systematically, you and others are reminded that you are unequal, less, disadvantaged. It means that your voice is restricted and the issues you try to put on the table are easily dismissed.”633 Sandler continues and says that this has a battering effect on feminists. She identifies evidence of the four components of battered women’s syndrome in how feminists operate within these bureaucratic constraints: denial, guilt, recognition/awareness, and empowerment.

gender perspective into all politics and programmes in the United Nations system: Report of the Secretary General’ 17 April 2014. E/2014/63. 631 Only 53 per cent of focal points are at a P-4 level and above (P-4 is mid-level career and requires a minimum of 7 years of work experience) and only 42 per cent of entities with focal points have written terms of reference and only 31 per cent have at least 20 percent of their time allocated to focal point duties. United Nations Economic and Social Council (2014) ‘Mainstreaming a gender perspective into all politics and programmes in the United Nations system: Report of the Secretary General’ 17 April 2014. E/2014/63. 632 Sandler and Rao 2012. 633 Sandler and Rao 2012, 14.

183 First, in terms of denial, Sandler explains that gender units in UN organizations will regularly hyperbolize or tweak information to avoid unveiling the sexism inherent in their organizations, for fear of being designated as someone who is not a good ‘team player’ or because powerful colleagues will turn the blame and accuse gender units of failing to provide adequate gender support. Second, feminists feel guilt: “When we are in denial about the structure being irrepressibly and unapologetically discriminatory, we have only ourselves to blame.”634 This can be a toxic space for feminist activists until they are willing to stop making excuses for those in power. At this point comes the third stage, recognition and awareness. She explains that patriarchy closely guards its ‘sacred’ policy spaces in the UN such as the General Assembly and the Security Council, and that intrusions into these spaces by feminists have only happened in moments where individual feminists within the UN system have challenged the institutions that continue to hold back progress on women’s rights. She explains “change […] is only possible when you use your position in the institution to bring in the voices of those who are most affected to speak directly to power-holders.”635 At this point, comes the fourth stage: empowerment. Here she says feminist activists learn “how to use the rules on which bureaucracies run, in support of – rather than against, gender equality”636. It is in these moments of empowerment that we see the strategic practices of feminist bureaucrats who seek to advance women’s human rights against the constraints of the bureaucracy. Because of the heavy resistance they face, feminist bureaucrats must take extra effort to figure out which strategies will work to achieve their goals. One bureaucrat explained, “Depending on where you are and what is the level of freedom that you have to push for certain development agendas, you can push for certain doors. But it’s not always easy. You try different doors because you’ll find you have someone that is willing to work with you”637. Another practitioner further explained, “I won’t try every door, but I’ve got a good sense of which doors might work.”638 This strategizing is important for overcoming the institutional resistance they face.

634 Sandler and Rao 2012, 16. 635 Sandler and Rao 2012, 18. 636 Sandler and Rao 2012. 637 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/08/2013. 638 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013.

184 “I will do what I am not allowed to do, which is that I am not really allowed to speak to friendly states, and I will go to all the others who I think will give me a hearing […] So I can talk to the advisor and say ‘Please can you make sure that when your minister next comes, she says this’.”639

This ability to work within the constraints of the organization and to push past them by breaking their rules is unique for feminist activists working to advance gender equality issues. One bureaucrat referred to their behaviour as “guerrilla strategies” which are “career-risky”640 but are the necessary tactics to advance gender equality agendas within this gendered institutional space. Ultimately, what makes feminist activism unique is the position of feminist activists within this gendered organization in conjunction with the fact that they are seeking to advance an issue that faces particular contestation. This creates unique challenges for feminists in terms of how they make their arguments and in how their claims are heard, and affects how they are able to function within this bureaucratic space. It is beyond the scope of this study to assess the comparability of feminist activism relative to other forms of activism, or to determine the relative scale of resistance that feminist issues face in comparison to other normative issues. However, this section makes clear that while certain strategies and practices for change may overlap across issue areas, feminist activists do face unique challenges and are required to work in unique ways within these bureaucratic constraints in order to advance their ideals.

On bureaucracies

The findings from this study contribute to the growing literature in IR on the nature, behaviour and functioning of international bureaucracies in global governance. This section analyzes the findings from this dissertation in direct conversation with Barnett and Finnemore’s (2004) findings in Rules for the World641. It considers what makes the two studies different and also how my research findings contribute to and build upon certain dimensions of their theoretical approach. In so doing, it considers how

639 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013. 640 Author’s Interview, UN Bureaucrat, New York City, 05/09/2013. 641 Barnett and Finnemore 2004.

185 bureaucracies are vulnerable to internal activism and it provides a deeper understanding of the internal functioning of international organizations. Barnett and Finnemore develop a constructivist analysis of international organizations (IOs) that provides a theoretical basis for treating IOs as autonomous actors. By considering IOs through a sociological lens, they explain how IOs exercise influence and power, and explain IOs propensity for pathological behaviour. They argue that IOs are bureaucracies that are a “distinctive social form of authority with [their] own internal logic and behavioural proclivities.”642 This analysis stands in sharp contrast to how IOs have traditionally been treated within IR literature, which has not given systematic consideration to how IOs actually behave. Rather than being merely the agents of powerful states, seeing IOs as bureaucracies allows for an analysis of the collection of rules that define complex social tasks within these spaces, and “through their rules, create new categories of actors, form new interests for actors, define new shared international tasks, and disseminate new models of social organization around the globe.”643 Overall, the analysis in this dissertation is broadly consistent with Barnett and Finnemore’s approach to considering IOs, in terms of considering the UN as having some degree of autonomy from states (in terms of there being alternative sources of influence beyond states), and emphasizing the need to unpack the black box surrounding IOs in order to understand how they function, their power, how they behave, and how they change. However, the two studies differ in two key ways. First, their approach is focused on understanding IO behaviour globally (i.e. IO interactions externally), rather than focusing on what happens within them. As such, my approach is the preceding step to their analysis: my study of the internal dynamics of conflict and contestation over norms within an organization is a process-based analysis of how norms evolve that subsequently have implications for how IOs behave and function externally. Second, while they do acknowledge that there might be cultural contestation within organizations, Barnett and Finnemore adopt a monolithic understanding of organizations with a singular bureaucratic culture that shapes behaviour. They do not account for how individuals within these organizations are differently positioned and

642 Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 3 643 Barnett and Finnemore 2004, 3

186 compete for their own interpretation of rules. My findings suggest that it is necessary to consider the deeper struggles amongst actors over the rules that govern the organization. Success in the interpretation of rules is paramount to determining the culture of the organization – and indeed, within the UN system, different organizations have different established cultures that are in conflict. Adopting an approach that looks at IOs from the inside out allows for an understanding of the conflict and contestation within the UN, which goes beyond a monolithic understanding of bureaucratic culture. This approach is a necessary first step in understanding how an organization behaves and changes. Barnett and Finnemore argue that treating IOs as bureaucracies allows for insight into four aspects of IO behaviour: autonomy, power, dysfunction and change. The remainder of this section will address how my findings contribute to these four insights. First, for Barnett and Finnemore, IOs are not just servants that have been delegated authority by states, but rather are authorities in their own right. This authority gives them autonomy. It comes from the missions they pursue, which have been delegated to them by states, and because of the ways they pursue them, using their credibility as rational, technocratic and impartial actors to make them seem more legitimate. Yet, this is a myth of impartiality. Bureaucracies present themselves as impartial and neutral, but for Barnett and Finnemore, they also serve some sort of social purpose or set of cultural values. My findings confirm that the UN is comprised of individuals engaged in intentional and strategic practices who operate under a banner of neutrality. Individuals across the UN system may have the ability to shift the behaviour of the UN in their competitions over the interpretation of global norms. It is in this conflict and competition that the interpretation and meaning of global norms are defined. For example, in the case of the WPS agenda, the feminists focused on changing the way the agenda was framed in order to shift how it was being understood, leading to understandings of these issues that were autonomous from state interests and that, in fact, ran counter to the preferences of some states. However, as I have shown, this level of autonomy may not always be the case. State power remains an important aspect of the functioning of the UN and individuals will have varying degrees of influence depending on the specific context. Second, IOs have power and influence that runs much deeper than even neoliberal scholars would propose. While state interests remain very important, these are not the

187 sole determination of IO behaviour. My findings show that while the UN is mandated to act within certain constraints of what states dictate, individuals within the UN system are able to influence, coerce and persuade; in certain circumstances, they have independent authority to influence the direction that is taken. Even when dictates come from powerful states, such as the need of the UK in 2013 to focus on conflict-related sexual violence, individuals within the bureaucracy can soften the edges and shift meaning in a particular direction to the greatest extent possible. Their power comes in large part from how they use their authority to orient action and create social reality. This occurs within the internal workings and interactions of individuals within the organization, and has an impact more broadly on the external behaviours of the organization. This can be seen, for example, in chapter 5 where feminists within the Security Council both alter the behaviour of states by changing the stakes in what can be defined as ‘legitimate’ in addressing the WPS agenda. It can also be seen in chapter 4 where the feminist practitioners introduce new ideas about WPS, using their knowledge to constitute the domain of WPS. These efforts create new interests and actors – such as the SRSG on sexual violence – during the process. Third, for Barnett and Finnemore, the features that make bureaucracies authoritative and effective, such as rational, technocratic ways of thinking, the creation of standardized sets of rules, and the division of labour, can also encourage bureaucratic dysfunction, including undesirable and self-defeating behaviour. The bureaucratic focus on rules, specialization and compartmentalization can create different pathologies. My findings show that feminist activists are able to work within these pathologies to open space for their ideals, but that they are also vulnerable to the impact of the pathologies. A few examples illustrate the double-edged sword of bureaucratic pathologies:

 Bureaucracies often tailor their action according to their existing, well-known rules rather than tailoring rules and procedures to specific goals. This can be particularly challenging for feminist bureaucrats because they are required to work within existing rule systems that are not necessarily compatible with their aims. In the case of the Security Council, for example, this institution only addresses information that enters into its purview through the specific and

188 narrowly defined channels for information transfer. This limits the kind of information that enters into this space. However, knowing this pathology, feminist bureaucrats can act strategically to think about what information needs to be fed into which channels in order to hit all their targets so that the Security Council in many ways is forced to address their priorities.

 Bureaucracies tend to flatten contextual concerns because they are meant to generate universal rules and categories for governing the world. This can be a challenge for feminist bureaucrats who derive legitimacy from the broader global feminist movement, which places a strong emphasis on the need for context- specific and situated analyses. The feminist approach to the WPS agenda that emphasized the importance of being context-specific was part of the strength of Resolution 1325, which had been pushed for by the broader women’s movement. However, feminist bureaucrats were strategic in ‘flattening’ the WPS to focus on an issue that was universally understood to be important – conflict-related sexual violence – in order to get some key issue on the table. The focus on sexual violence was a broad brushstroke approach that eliminated some contextual complexities, including questions about why sexual violence occurs and how it is related to crucial dynamics of power and politics in relationships and conflict, but this was seen as necessary to work within this particular pathological tendency.

 Increasing specialization and compartmentalization through the creation of new institutional capacities is a characteristic of bureaucracy. Weiss and Caryannis (2005) argue that institution-building is the veritable stuff of bureaucratic battles644. On the one hand, feminist bureaucrats have been willing and able to take advantage of the bureaucratic proclivity towards institutional expansion as a necessary strategy to help get women’s rights onto the agenda within the UN system. The creation of the Special Representative to the Secretary General on sexual violence is an example of this tendency in the WPS agenda. Here, as chapter 3 illustrates, a new institution was created to legitimate the issue of

644 Weiss and Caryannis 2005.

189 conflict-related sexual violence and to focus specialization on this issue. However, the double-edged sword in this case is that – in spite of the fact that institutional expansion can help to cement norms within the organization – the specialization can create new competitions and contestations within and between actors, or can exasperate existing divisions. While institutional expansion has been a key strategy for feminist bureaucrats in advancing the WPS agenda, it has had negative repercussions for a unified feminist approach to this issue.

Ultimately, these examples illustrate how bureaucratic pathology can impact upon the efforts of feminist bureaucrats – both in how they are able to use the pathologies to open space for their activism, and also how they remain constrained by those pathologies. The final insight that Barnett and Finnemore highlight in treating IOs as bureaucracies is with regards to what we can learn about change in international organizations. Most IR theories assume that change comes from the changing demands of strong states. However, organizations often change in ways that states do not ask for or anticipate. Ultimately, the findings from this dissertation not only confirm that change can be driven from within the organization, but it begins to show the process, as one of competition and contestation. In this process, change in IOs can come from within. It also shows that, even when change is being pushed by powerful states, the precise contours of the outcome may also be defined within, by the individuals tasked with supporting and representing state interests who each have interests of their own. This section has engaged with Barnett and Finnemore’s key study on IOs as bureaucracies. This dissertation differs in its lens of analysis, focusing more squarely on the internal processes of contestation that lead to changes in IO behaviour. It also adopts a core assumption that the UN is not a monolithic organization, and that conflict between individuals within the UN, over interpretations of meaning, are central to the way that the UN behaves. By highlighting how the findings in this dissertation align and contribute to the four key aspects identified by Barnett and Finnemore, this section considers how bureaucracies are vulnerable to the activism of internal idealists and contributes to understanding the everyday processes that constitute IOs and affect their behaviour.

190 On feminist engagement with international institutions

Drawing from the case of the WPS agenda within the UN system, this dissertation has sought to explain how a community of practice that is invested in a set of ideals go on to develop strategic practices within a constrained setting. It focuses on the feminist community of practice within the UN – a group of individuals who express high personal and professional commitments to the advancement of women’s human rights and gender equality globally and within the UN system – in their everyday practices and in their efforts to advance women’s rights in this bureaucratic space. The challenge for these feminists is that they are engaged in a bureaucratic setting that encompasses different, competing and conflicting interests, which can constrain their capacities and which can create opportunities and challenges that they must navigate. The heart of the dissertation is an explanation of how these feminists skilfully navigate these constraints, in and through their everyday practices. In so doing, this dissertation seeks to capture their successes, failures and compromises in order to better understand how and why women’s rights and gender equality norms have advanced within the UN system. This dissertation responds to the broader literature on feminist engagement within international institutions. It builds on a contradiction at the heart of this literature: that feminist ideals are fundamentally opposed to bureaucratic ideals. Scholars have sought to analyze the outcomes of this confrontation to determine what happens when feminists engage in institutions, as well as whether their engagement has been defined by cooptation by the institution and power over the feminists. The problem with these studies is that, empirically, it has historically been very challenging for scholars to access information about the practices of bureaucrats within international organizations. As this dissertation argues, it is only in the analysis of the everyday successes, failures and compromises of feminists that we are able to understand how these individuals navigate the complex terrain of the bureaucratic space, and indeed that we are able to understand more accurately how and why women’s human rights and gender equality norms have advanced or been resisted within the UN system. As such, in providing an empirical study of the everyday practices of UN feminist practitioners, this dissertation begins to

191 answer the theoretical question of feminists’ engagement with structures and processes of international organizations, despite – and within – institutional constraints. Feminists engage within this space in multiple domains and at multiple levels, and they create spaces of resistance to the bureaucracy, and are agents of resistance and change in often-covert ways. Between the poles of idealism and bureaucracy, feminist practitioners within the UN engage in a struggle in and through their practices and in interactions with their bureaucratic colleagues to advance their interests. A key finding in this study is that often these feminist efforts – in practice and in interactions – do not result in their intended outcomes for the community of practice. The reason for this is that these actors are embedded in a field of practice characterized by competing and conflicting interests. They learn that a tempered victory or a negotiated compromise may not be the idealist-feminist solution but that within these constraints, some progress is better than none, and that any progress can provide the foundation for subsequent progress. Their agency may not always result in ‘ideal’ outcomes, but they act from a place of resistance that seeks to shift the structure of power from within this system. This was made evident, for example in Chapter 3 in the implicit question of whether having UN Women as a platform for building a feminist UN entity was ‘better’ than operating from the margins in UNIFEM. While the responses were mixed, many practitioners felt that some progress was better than none and that they would work within this new institutional space. It was also made evident in Chapter 4 in the question of whether a singular focus on conflict-related sexual violence was better than an overall stagnant WPS agenda. Finally, this question was at the core of Chapter 5, in terms of how to effectively write documents in the Security Council (and beyond) in order to advance the WPS normative agenda, making explicit feminists’ sense that small victories could be developed to reach larger goals. Overall, this finding tells scholars about the reality of feminist practitioners’ lives within a context that is characterized by struggle between idealism and bureaucracy. Feminists are both agents, resisting cooptation, but are also embedded in a field that demands compromises. And they are far from happily walking the halls of power, as the theory of governance feminism might suggest. Instead, feminists are engaged in a constant struggle to ensure that their ideals remain in practice, and in the work of their ‘non-feminist’ colleagues. They struggle to advance the ‘explicit

192 rule’, in terms of the normative framework within which they can act, and also to advance the ‘implicit rule’, making those norms meaningful in sustained practice. Some may look from the outside and see that feminist ideals have been coopted. Others may look to see that feminist efforts have succeeded been institutionalized to the point where feminists are walking the halls of power. This dissertation complicates these approaches to show the paradoxical position of the feminist community of practice and their spaces of resistance, creativity and agency within the UN system.

On change in organizations

A focus on practices, and drawing on the literature on communities of practice has provided a framework for considering how feminist practitioners within the UN system are a part of a community of people with shared background knowledge, dispositions and language, and which constitute and are constituted by their practices. Chapter 3 in particular emphasized how this community has developed a shared sense of identity that draws on background knowledge that is informed by feminist theory and practice; and that is constituted by their shared practices of navigating the UN system to advance their ideals. Theoretically, this dissertation has contributed to the literature in IR theory by elaborating the value of a Bourdieusian approach to communities of practice. Bringing to the foreground an analysis of the conflict and competition, and the struggles over power and interest, between and within communities of practice within the UN system provides for a better understanding of the process of change in norms and institutions, and the negotiations and struggles that lead to particular normative outcomes. Understanding change in norms, rules and practices from a perspective that draws on Bourdieu’s field theory illuminates how the structure of the field, the hierarchical relations of power, and the struggle for legitimacy impact upon what is possible for social action. It is an approach that gives space to the possibility of individual creativity and innovation, while also recognizing that these individuals operate within a field of power that impacts upon what they can realistically expect as a possibility for action within the field. This approach takes steps towards finding a middle ground between reproduction and change. It understands that change may serve to reproduce the dominant power

193 within the field, but may also change the context of what is possible within the field. This is part of the paradox for feminist practitioners – that in seeking change, they often have to reinforce the status quo of power relations. Change and continuity must co-exist; it is not productive to focus either on ‘reproduction’ or ‘freedom’, without accounting for the possibility that both change and continuity may result from social action in a given field. In this dissertation, I draw upon an interactional model for understanding normative change. Not only can rules and norms be changed at a formal ‘explicit’ level, for example in the adoption of a Security Council resolution, but a change in practice and behaviour occurs in the interactions between individuals within this field of struggle, leading to changes in ‘implicit rule’. It is in and through these interactions that norms change and come to gain meaning. These interactions are a struggle over what is at stake within the community; for example, what it means to practice human rights or security; what it means to strive for peace; and what it means to prioritize women’s rights in the domain of peace and security. These concepts are not ‘given’, but are rather determined and gain meaning in and through interaction. Ultimately, in these interactions, learning may or not may occur and practices may change, but not without first requiring that feminist practitioners skilfully navigate these conflicting interests in order to arrive at acceptable compromises. Ultimately, this dissertation is able to provide insight on broader questions related to the type of international practices that occur within the UN system, and the possibilities and constraints – both for feminists and also for other forms of idealism that may be resisted or in conflict with the bureaucracy, such as, for example, LGBT activism. In understanding how the poles of idealism and bureaucracy are managed within the UN, in the case of feminist practitioners, and particularly the case of the WPS agenda, we can see that social action within this space is possible, but is constrained by the realities of the bureaucracy. The idealism of any social movement, including the women’s movement, must be tempered by the reality that the UN encompasses a field of struggle that is characterized by competing and conflicting interests, and that in the interactions between idealists and bureaucrats, compromises and negotiations will be made. However, a focus on practices in this dissertation also shows that change is possible. In the field of struggle,

194 resources, interests and relations of power change, and the field can change and evolve in and through these struggles and interactions.

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