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Principled Pragmatism and the ‘Inclusion Project’: Implementing a Gender Perspective in Peace Agreements
Get PDFUN Security Council Resolution 1325 of 2000 provided that peace agreements should adopt a ‘gender perspective’. This commitment has been reiterated in women, peace and security resolutions since that time. This article uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis to consider when and how peace agreements have adopted a gender perspective, using a new PA-X peace agreement database to analyse over 1500 peace and transition agreements from between 1990 and 2016. It goes further to consider how inclusion of women is related to the other forms of political and group inclusion contemplated to form part of the new political settlement. The article begins by examining what might be meant by a ‘gender perspective in peace agreements’. It maps out when and how peace agreements provide for women, girls and gender, but also for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans communities, and for ‘men and boys’ and ‘family’ at different stages of a peace process. The article provides new data on the implementation of agreement commitments and specifically those issues singled out for attention by UNSC 1325. Finally, we consider the inclusion project on offer to women and its relationship to the conceptualisation of the conflict and its solution, by considering the relationship between gender, power-sharing and transitional justice. In summary, analysis of the dataset provides three main findings. First provision for women is still largely limited to once-off provisions, or issues relating to the victimhood of women, with holistic attempts to adopt a ‘gender perspective’ relatively rare. Second, the inclusion of women in peace agreement texts tends to be located in the more comprehensive stages of the agreement, with little consideration given to women and gender at either pre-negotiation stages of a peace process, or implementation stages. Third, surprisingly perhaps, political power-sharing is shown to be strongly correlated with several measures of gender inclusion rather than marking an exclusive focus on the inclusion of the groups at the heart of the conflict. In conclusion we argue that peace agreements indicate the presence of ‘principled pragmatism’ whereby elite commitments to political equality are used by a range of groups to push for a more pluralist conception of the peace settlement as also concerned with the political equality of groups beyond the conflict actors
Gendered Political Settlements and Peacebuilding: Mapping Inclusion in Practice
Get PDFThis paper looks at practice-research methods used by Conciliation Resources (CR), an international peacebuilding organisation, as part of the Political Settlements Research Project. Between 2015 and 2017, Conciliation Resources and its partners convened three learning workshops in Nepal, Colombia, and Bougainville. The workshops ‘tested’ understandings of political settlements in conflict-affected contexts, with a specific focus on gender, through participatory practice-based research. The paper explores how co-learning approaches were developed and designed between CR and its partners: including how questions of inclusion, gender and political settlements were adapted to specific contexts; the approaches and methods developed; and the challenges and potential for research to influence peacebuilding practice. It also provides a critical reflection on the processes and outcomes of co-learning between international and local partners
Gambling, Risk, and Law: Exploring the changing roles of the individual and the state in a multi-faceted gambling regulation arena
Get PDFThis paper presents an examination of ways in which risk is deployed to govern the gambling market. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, it seeks to explore how the dominant socio-political discourse of neoliberalism as well as the perception of risk as a rationality and technology of government inform the ways in which the gambling industry and its associated risks are increasingly governed through the individual gambler, rather than through state-enforced mechanisms. Besides confirming Foucault’s observations that the practice of government occurs at numerous levels and is delegated to various (non-state) actors, the growing reliance on individuals as a form of governance in the gambling industry also showcases the gradually changing relationship between the individual and the state. A relationship once characterised by the omnipresence of a paternalistic and assertive state becomes a relationship of cooperation and mutual reliance for the purposes of promoting both governance efficiency in an increasingly diverse and complex gambling market as well as the welfare for individual gamblers
Violence Against Indigenous Women: Literature, Activism, Resistance (Allison Hargreaves) and Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State (Shannon Speed)
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Reshaping How Political Settlements Engage with Conflict-Related Violence Against Women
Get PDFThe exceptionalism attributed to acts of sexualised violence in war has reinforced the idea that what happens in war is different from that occurring outside of war. This counters long-standing feminist scholarship which has argued that violence against women (VAW) in conflict is a reflection of the everyday, mundane ways that women experience violence in their everyday lives. The paper presents a new ‘pre, during- and post-conflict framework’ to map, on the basis of theory and empirics, the inter-relationship between VAW within and outside conflict. Applied to the case study of Timor-Leste, the paper finds that common across time and space are the sustained presence of gendered harms, and that VAW is ambulant in nature and responsive to context, identifying connections and distinctions in VAW across conflict-time and peace-time. Through analysis of the Timor-Leste truth commission’s outcomes, the paper argues that an understanding of this complexity to VAW is essential to advancing gender-inclusive political settlements. The findings underline that sustaining an approach to conflict-time violence out of sync with how women experience violence within political processes means sustaining the structural inequalities that cause that violence, regardless of whether it is during or outside of armed conflict
In the case of Zimbabwe, is the notion of rule compliance too limiting a lens through which to analyse the normative effects of international human rights law?
Get PDFThe idea of compliance assumes that International Human Rights are existent, protected and are actively enforced in different states. Measuring compliance is an exercise in policing this enforcement but what this exercise will not show is the state of the human rights in each state. This paper explores the inadequacies of using compliance as a lens to consider the normative effects of international law using Zimbabwe as a case study. This study seeks to illustrate that there has to be a wider outlook which creates space for scrutiny of the state of human rights prior to producing tables and figures which shed no light on the media censorship or the rigging of elections
Keeping Corruption at ‘Arms’ Length: The scope of the Foreign Corruption Practice Act in Combatting Corruption in the Arms Trade Industry
Get PDFIn an era dominated by global conflict, terrorism and the increasing need for defence, it is unsurprising that global arms trade is thriving. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, arms trade accounts for roughly 40% of all corruption in global transactions. However,there is little literature regarding the extent to which existing anti-corruption regimes can or have combatted arms trade corruption. This essay aims to contribute to the discourse on arms trade corruption by critically evaluating the scope of the Foreign Corruption Practice Act (FCPA) in combatting corruption, in particular bribery,within the arms industry. The discussion commences with an introduction of the FCPA’s origins, functions and extraterritorial jurisdiction. This will be followed by an examination of corruption within the arms trade industry and the role defence offset plays in contributing to bribery. Attention will be paid to the FCPA’s method (or lack thereof) of tackling defence-offset corruption. Subsequently, the paper will draw on FCPA’s enforcement power and its fines system to explore its effectiveness. This section will also analyse the FCPA’s implementation within the United States (US) and whether the act has succeeded in its primary aim to safeguard US business against corruption, particularly in the arms industry. Through a discussion on the FCPA’s vagueness and exclusion of grease payments, the final section will critically evaluate the FCPA’s limitations in combatting arms bribery and corruption. Whilst the essay acknowledges the FCAP’s role in helping combat arms corruption, it emphasises on the FCPA’s limitation and calls for FCPA reform to combat arms corruption.
The Missing Human in Human Rights Law
Get PDFThis article examines the meaning and potential usefulness of interpreting norms of torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, or punishment (CIDTP) through a ‘gender perspective’. It will place particular emphasis on discussing the denial of reproductive rights and gender-based violence and interpreting the actions arising from these violations as torture and CIDTP. I engage in a critical feminist study of the doctrinal aspects of the international human rights law on torture by analysing the legal practice of regional human rights courts and the UN Human Rights Council by evaluating their case law and other legal mechanisms arising from these systems. In addition to these primary sources, I also refer to secondary sources such as reports by UN Special Rapporteurs, studies by civil society organisations specialising in reproductive rights, and academic writing in this field. I suggest the necessity for integrating a feminist and intersectional framework to analyse the creation and implementation of human rights legislation and improve the resilience and effectiveness of the protection and redress provided by these rights. Doing so will further mainstream gender into the practice of international human rights law and will strengthen the protection of those who are victimised and disempowered
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