Week 15
DUBSTER
FSUWDCGender2CNationandConflict.pptxWeek 7: Gender, Nation and Conflict
Key Terms
gender and nation
women as “nation,” men as “state”
ethno-nationalism
ethnic cleansing
rape as a weapon of war
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Outline
Why Study Gender and Conflict Together
Gender, Nation and War
The Bosnian War-Background
Ethno-nationalism and the Bosnian War
The Multiple Roles of women in the Bosnian War
Rape as a Weapon of War in Ethnic Cleansing
The Bosnian War-Peace Agreement
Gender Analysis Framework
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Why Study Gender and Conflict Together
Gender is almost always wedded to conflict and peacemaking
Generally been assumed to be the purview of heterosexual men
Other people who do not fit into this category are bystanders with a limited role
Gender intersects with other categories of identity like race, class, religion, etc. to amplify the role of gender in conflict
Gender and conflict should be studied together because ignoring the impact of gender makes it difficult to address important elements of conflict resolution
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Gender, Nation and War
In society, women serve a special role in nation building
In their primary roles as wives and mothers, women may be idealized as the bearers of cultural identity and their bodies perceived as “territory to be conquered" (Bradshaw, 2013, 41-42)
Feminist Shulamith Firestone further argues that the root cause of male domination lies in the biological differences between male and female (Firestone, 1970). Because a woman can have babies, or produce “citizens” in the case of the state, it is necessary to regulate and control her sexuality, her body, her reproductive work
The same special role that women play in building nations, unfortunately also makes them vulnerable during conflict
Women and girls are often the target of sexual violence, with political aims. Gendered aspects of how the nation shapes itself for war, roles dictated to different genders and aberrations
The Bosnian War, 1992-95 provides an opportunity to examine how gender, nation and conflict interact together
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The Bosnian War-Background
The Bosnian War, rooted in ethno-nationalism, took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a former republic of Yugoslavia
Bosnia had a multiethnic population consisting of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Serbs and Croats
The war started on 6 April 1992, following a number of earlier violent incidents
The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of Herzeg-Bosnia and Republika Srpska, proto-states led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively.
These countries were a part of the former Yugoslavia. The war was part of the breakup of Yugoslavia
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Bosnian War-Background (cont’d)
Following the Slovenian and Croatian secessions from Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina whose population was mostly Muslim Bosniaks (44%), as well as Orthodox Serbs (32.5%) and Catholic Croats (17%) passed a referendum for independence on February 29 1992
The Bosnian Serbs boycotted the referendum, and rejected its outcome
Following Bosnia and Herzegovina's declaration of Independence (which gained international recognition) and following the withdrawal of Alija Izetbegović from the previously signed Cutileiro Plan (which proposed a division of Bosnia into ethnic cantons)
The Bosnian Serbs led by Radovan Karadžić and supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People’s Army mobilized their forces inside Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to secure ethnic Serb territory, then war soon spread across the country, accompanied by ethnic cleansing
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Ethno-nationalism and the Bosnian War
Ethno-nationalism is where the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity
The central theme of ethnic nationalists is that "nations are defined by a shared heritage, which usually includes a common language, a common faith and a common ethic ancestry”
“Gender plays a role in ethno-nationalism” (Goldstein, 2001)
The “nation” is considered female and the “state” male
This means that the women give birth to populate the nation and the men run the state through political decision-making
Again women’s work is in the private sphere, while men’s work is in the public sphere
Ethno-nationalism played a big role in the Bosnian War. A major tool aimed at accomplishing ethno-nationalism was ethnic cleansing
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Ethnic cleansing is the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society
It involves the systematic forced removal or extermination of ethnic, racial and/or religious groups from a particular geographical area
The intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous
Ethnic cleansing has often been driven by the rise of nationalist movements with racist theories fed by the desire to “purify” the nation by expelling and destroying groups considered “alien”
Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina was as a political objective of Serb nationalists in order to control territories with a Serb majority
Rape is a means of ethnic cleansing
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Ethno-nationalism and Ethnic Cleansing
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The Multiple Roles of Women in the Bosnian War
Victims, Ex-Combatants, Peace Builders, and Perpetrators
War generally affects the entire population, male and female
Men are usually portrayed as the aggressors and perpetrators
Women portrayed as the helpless victims
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Multiple Roles (cont’d)
The majority of perpetrators are men
But women too have been involved in the perpetration of war crimes
Because of the large scale of sexual violence, and Bosnian women are stereotyped as rape victims
Preoccupation with the rape of women has reinforced the identification of “the rape victim” that frames (Bosnian) females as (uniquely) vulnerable and “rape-able” (Zarkov, 1997)
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Multiple roles (cont’d)
”Rape victim” theory is problematic-neglects the suffering and victimization of men
Also ignores the role of women as perpetrators of violence
It also neglects women’s roles as activists, peace builders and civil resistors, bystanders or supporters of their husbands and sons, or political elites in a war effort
Biljana Plavšić was the first and only woman indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). In her role as co-President of the Serb leadership, she participated, planned, instigated, devised and executed the persecutions of Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb populations (Simic 2017)
There have been five women prosecuted and according to some sources there has been between 30 and 40 ongoing investigations against female war criminals
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Mothers, Monsters and Whores
Women today are idolized as pristine and pure objects incapable of mass murder and genocidal behavior
Sjoberg and Gentry argue that convicted female perpetrators, instead of becoming representations of female capabilities in the perpetration of genocide, tend to be stripped of agency, with the severity of their actions reduced to pure coincidence, or the result of male manipulation or previous abuse (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007)
Instead, these women often characterized as mentally disturbed or wicked, with a deviant sexual appetite
Female perpetrators are not portrayed as real women-crimes are sometimes monstrous, even though they commit the same crimes as males
But men are not viewed as monsters of their male counterparts, and this does not mean that they are monsters
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Rape as a Weapon of War and Ethnic Cleansing
As we discussed in Week 3, gender-based violence (GBV) is often rampant during a conflict
In the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian war, sexual violence was an important tool
The term “rape as a weapon of war” has been coined by feminist scholars to emphasize that GBV is often used as part of a military strategy normally targeted against the females of a society to cripple an enemy
Rape is not necessarily against women, it is also against men. It emasculates men in that it strips them of their role as protector
The thinking is that if you cannot protect your woman then you are not a man
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Rape as a Weapon of War-Resolution 1820
The Security Council noted that “women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group” (UNSCR 1820)
The resolution demands the “immediate and complete cessation by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians
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Rape as a Weapon of War (cont’d)
Warring groups use rape as a weapon because it destroys communities totally
“You destroy communities. You punish the men, and you punish the women, doing it in front of the men” (Major-General Patrick Cammaert, former commander of UN peacekeeping forces in the eastern Congo, 2018))
“It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in armed conflict” (Cammaert)
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Rape as a Weapon of War (cont’d)
The rape of women by soldiers during wartime has occurred throughout history
Rape was long considered an unfortunate but inevitable accompaniment of war
Its use as a weapon of war was gruesomely demonstrated during World War II when both Allied and Axis armies committed rape as a means of terrorizing enemy civilian populations and demoralizing enemy troops.
Two of the worst examples were the sexual enslavement of women in territories conquered by the Japanese army and the mass rape committed against German women by advancing Russian soldiers
In the 1990s, Bosnia rape was used as an instrument of ethnic cleansing
In the former case, women belonging to subjugated ethnic groups were intentionally impregnated through rape by enemy soldiers
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Rape as a Weapon of War-the International Response
In the late 20th century, in part because of the prevalence of rape in the Balkan and Rwandan conflicts, the international community began to recognize rape as a weapon and strategy of war, and efforts were made to prosecute such acts under existing international law
The primary statute, Article 27 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949), already included language protecting women “against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution or any form of indecent assault”; this protection was extended in an additional protocol adopted in 1977
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Rape as a Weapon of War-International Response
In UNSCR 1325 the Security Council noted that “women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group” (UNSCR 1820)
The resolution demands the “immediate and complete cessation by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians
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Rape as a Weapon of War-the International Response
In 1993 the (UN) Commission on Human Rights declared systematic rape and military sexual slavery to be crimes against humanity punishable as violations of women’s human rights
In 1995 the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women specified that rape by armed groups during wartime is a war crime
The The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established to prosecute crimes committed in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia included rape, making these tribunals among the first international bodies to prosecute sexual violence as a war crime
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Bosnian War-Peace Agreement
The peace agreement called the Dayton Accords, was reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton Ohio on November 21, 1995
It was formally signed in Paris, on 14 December 1995
These accords put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War
The warring parties agreed to peace and to a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of two parts, the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
The agreement has been criticized for creating ineffective and unwieldy political structures and entrenching the ethnic cleansing of the previous war
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Bosnian War-Peace Agreement
The agreement for peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina was called the Dayton Accords
The peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Bas near Dayton Ohio on November 21, 1995
It was formally signed in Paris, on 14 December 1995
These accords put an end to the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War
The warring parties agreed to peace and to a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of two parts, the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
The agreement has been criticized for creating ineffective and unwieldy political structures and entrenching the ethnic cleansing of the previous war
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Bosnian War-Women at the Dayton Accords
Women largely absent from the peace process
Tatjana Ljujić-Mijatović was the most publicly visible female politician in Bosnia-Herzegovina working on the peace process during the war. She was the only woman elected to government following the 1990 election
Two female interpreters: Amira Kapetanović and Sabina Berberović. Kapetanović and Berberović translated for the Bosnian teams throughout the peace process. Interpreters are agents in the negotiation process
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Bosnian War-Women at the Dayton Accords (cont’d)
International teams were involved. Pauline Neville-Jones, the leader of the UK team, was one of the signatories to the Dayton Peace Agreement (Neville-Jones 1996, 45)
The US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, pushed the Clinton Administration to become more engaged in the peace process in the summer of 1995
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Bosnian War-Women at the Dayton Accords (cont’d)
Women also acted as administrators to key negotiators: Maggie Smart (working for David Owen) and Rosemarie Pauli (working for Richard Holbrooke), or professional advisors from the US State Department (Elizabeth Jones, Miriam Sapiro, and Laurel Miller)
Organizers invited Elisabeth Rehn, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in former Yugoslavia, to attend one day of the Dayton negotiations
Swanee Hunt, the US Ambassador to Austria, was one of just five women present (compared with ninety-nine men) at the White House signing for the 1994 Washington Agreement that created the Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina
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Gender Analysis Framework-Bosnia
What are the causes of the conflict? Are there differences or similarities between women’s and men’s views and experiences in different groups, from combatant to peacemakers?
Who are the key actors in the conflict? Who are taking the lead in contributing to conflict? Who are taking the lead in contributing to peaceful resolution of the conflict or humanitarian response? What is the gender composition of these key actors?
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Gender Analysis Framework-Bosnia (cont’d)
What types of violence are there and at what levels? Is there political violence and by whom, sexual and gender-based or conflict-related sexual violence, attacks on human rights defenders, physical or online harassment? Who are the perpetrators and the victims? Which groups of women and men are particularly at risk in this conflict setting?
Who is involved in the peace process and how? Are women represented and are gender issues addressed at each level? Can addressing women’s roles in the existing cultural and societal structures create opportunities for peace (i.e., supporting women’s grass-roots peace leadership, women’s access to land, etc.)
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