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Making Friends with the Beast?’ Reflections on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda

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Making Friends with the Beast?’ Reflections on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda 16 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 2 2013 ‘Making Friends with the Beast?’ Reflections on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda BY ROBIN MAY SCHOTT At a recent reception, UN Res. 1325 is a revolutionary a friend at the Danish Institute for Human transformation of rhetoric Rights was taking leave of her colleagues to regarding issues of women, peace, start a new position at the Danish Ministry and security. In the last dozen years, of Foreign Affairs. She spoke of her feelings about moving to the Ministry from the there has been a proliferation of Institute, where she had worked for fifteen debates about its successes and its years as an expert on human rights, and failures. Should its limitations be recalled an experience from her girlhood. understood as failures in implemen - As any girl who rides horses knows, she related, there was always the big beast tation? Or should the concepts of which only the riding instructor had women, gender, and violence which permission to ride. Then the day came frame the resolution be critically when she too was allowed to take out the big horse. She found that he liked her challenged? carrots and was actually a nice guy. In fact, she could even begin to make friends with the beast – a useful image for her as she was taking up her new position at the Ministry. It struck me that this image is also useful in conveying some of the dilemmas faced by feminists, both NGO activists and aca-demic feminists, in assessing advances made within the United Nations system ‘MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE BEAST’ 17 with regard to the agenda known as women held peace talks, would it make a Women, Peace and Security. Is it friend or difference if the global arms trade con- foe? On the one hand, Security Council tinued to expand, with 80% of the profits Resolution 1325, adopted on October 31, going to the five permanent members of 2000, represents a revolutionary trans- the Security Council, if international finan - formation of rhetoric that is the result of cial institutions foreclose the possibility of relentless labor by the NGOs responsible creating a citizenry free enough from want for the groundwork. It is remarkable to that they can become democratically imagine the men of the Security Council empowered, if security continues to be putting into their mouths the language understood in terms of state security with underscoring the importance of main - huge standing armies, and if the role of streaming a gender perspective and the gender regimes in relation to these factors importance of the representation, participa - remains invisible (Cohn 2004: 18)? tion, and protection of women from rape From this brief summary, it appears that and other forms of sexual abuse (Resolu - NGO activists have been better at making tion 1325 of 2000), language noting friends with the beast than many academic women’s empowerment in peacemaking feminists. (However, the former also pay a processes (Resolution 1889 of 2009) and price for this friendship, as NGO activists in language reaffirming the need to end the Working Group on Women, Peace and impunity and to implement a policy of zero Security have changed their ways of speak - tolerance of sexual exploitation and abuse ing and thinking to make their activities (Resolution 1820 of 2008) (Kuehnast, de and political agenda more attractive to UN Jonge Oudraat, and Hernes 2011: 131- policy-shaping processes (Cohn 2004:8).) 155). 1 With this language ringing in our But when academic feminists challenge the ears, it seems that the limitations of the epistemological and political frameworks of Women, Peace, and Security agenda should the Women, Peace and Security agenda, be understood as lying not with its con - one can argue that they also are making cepts but with its implementation, despite friends with the beast by carrying out the the assiduous efforts of NGOs around the role of the gadfly. 3 In pointing out pro- world to translate Resolution 1325 out of blematic assumptions, gaps and blind spots ‘UN language’ into more than a hundred, in knowledge, and local variations, more accessible languages 2 (Cohn 2004: 7). academic feminists contest what counts as On the other hand, many academic femi - knowledge about gender and violence. nists have claimed that the resolutions are After providing some background to the organized around concepts of gender and Women, Peace and Security agenda, I will violence that falsely fix bodies into biologi - examine some key assumptions about the cally determined sexual differences concepts of women, gender, and violence (Shepherd 2008: 106). With the focus on embedded in Resolution 1325, which is a ‘women as peacemakers’, the Women, centerpiece of this agenda. In doing so, I Peace and Security agenda leaves the draw on debates in international relations, dominant political and epistemological gender mainstreaming, 4 and philosophical frameworks about gender and security discussions of violence. As debates amongst untouched, despite its appearance of academic feminists illustrate, there is a serving more progressive goals. Moreover, ‘theory gap’ between researchers’ under - the dynamics of gender in security relations standing of gender and violence and the cannot be separated from the workings of way these terms are used in this security economic, political or military institutions. agenda. Many academic feminists are highly As Carol Cohn argues, even if peaceable critical of the way in which gender is 18 KVINDER, KØN & FORSKNING NR. 2 2013 treated in Resolution 1325 as if it were a relating to the protection of children (also characterization of pre-existing, natural in armed conflict), as well as the security differences belonging to the sexes (or more needs of women, children and the elderly accurately, belonging to the one sex that is in refugee camps (Shepherd 2008: 108). treated as having a sex). Instead of treating The resolution is the result of the bold concepts of gender and violence as if they work of NGOs concerned with women and were static properties for possession or use, war and their determination to influence it is crucial to understand them as dynamic ‘the most powerful global governance processes. Doing so enables one to move institution in the area of international peace away from a framework of interpretation and security’ (Cohn 2004: 3). Its genesis that treats violence as acts committed can be traced back to the 1995 Beijing against individuals because of their sexuality Platform for Action’s chapter on women and gender, and towards a broader under - and armed conflict, and its review in standing of how violence is productive of Beijing +5 . In March 2000, the NGO gendered subjectivities and bodies, as well Working Group on Women, Peace, and as how violence is immanent in gendered Security was formed to press for a resolu - norms. In doing so, one challenges the tion. Its founding members were the asymmetry in understandings of gender Women’s International League for Peace and violence in the Women, Peace and and Freedom, Amnesty International, Security agenda, while developing the International Alert, the Hague Appeal for ambiguity implicit in these relations, which Peace, the Women’s Commission for allows for more complex understandings of Refugee Women and Children and the the dynamics of gender and violence. Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice. The NGOs prepared the entire groundwork for the resolution, including reviewing every BACKGROUND TO THE WOMEN , UN document for relevance to the WPS PEACE AND SECURITY AGENDA agenda, providing a compendium of Resolution 1325 marks the first time that ‘agreed language’ and bringing women the Security Council directly addressed the from conflict zones to address the Security issue of women in armed conflict. It was Council. The working group self- also the first time that gender has been consciously positioned themselves as mainstreamed in relation to armed conflict helpers rather as adversaries of the Council. and security, rather than in terms of devel - NGOs have continued to make Resolution opment and human rights issues (Cohn 1325 a living document by making it 2004: 2). It has been supplemented by known to grassroots women’s organiza - subsequent Resolutions 1820, 1888, 1889 tions in conflict zones, by translating it and 1960. Resolution 1325 calls on the widely and by providing national and inter - UN and member states to address abuses national actors with timely information, so against women during conflicts, including they could no longer say ‘We had no way sexual and gender-based violence; to of knowing.’ In this way, although the protect displaced women; to train peace - Resolution addresses actors within the UN keepers and security forces in gender system and its member states, the NGOs awareness; to rebuild institutions that have successfully used it ‘on the ground’ provide essential services to women; and to for consciousness-raising, for gaining support women’s organizational efforts in political influence and for pressing for conflict prevention and peacemaking accountability (Cohn 2004: 4-6). (Willet 2010: 142). Its documentary As Carol Cohn notes, the Working heritage includes previous resolutions Group’s members defined themselves ‘MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE BEAST’ 19 neither as ‘anti-war’ nor as feminist. They distinctively are deprived of human rights as a shared divergent conceptual frameworks, deprivation of humanity. (MacKinnon 2006: but were generally cautious of falling into 41-43) the ‘too political’ category. In this way, they narrowed the realm of analysis of war, MacKinnon’s powerful rhetoric also under - militarism, and armed violence to focus on lines one of the paradoxes of the Women, two issues: 1) prising women from the Peace and Security agenda. On the one victim category that Cynthia Enloe has hand, women’s human rights should be dubbed ‘womenandchildren’; and 2) protected by all UN documents.
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