Cedaw and the Security Council: Enhancing Women's Rights in Conflict (original) (raw)
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The Security Council on women in war: between peacebuilding and humanitarian protection
International Review of The Red Cross, 2010
Having established that massive human rights violations in armed conflict constitute a threat to peace and that women are the most severely affected by the scourge of war, the Security Council has since 1999 adopted a number of resolutions intended specifically for this group. These instruments contribute to the development of humanitarian law applicable to women and acknowledge the value of active participation by women in peace efforts. The following article first analyses the foundations on which the Council has been able to assume responsibility for protecting women in situations of armed conflict, and then considers the actual protection it provides. It concludes that the Council has had varying success in this role, pointing out that the thematic and declaratory resolutions on which it is largely based are not binding and therefore, they are relatively effective only as regards their provisions committing United Nations bodies. The author proposes that the Council's role could be better accomplished through situational resolutions than through resolutions declaratory of international law.
2015
The adoption by the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (the Committee) of General Recommendation No. 30 on women in conflict prevention, conflict and post-con- flict situations (GR30) in October 2013 strengthened and made clear the applicability of the Convention to a diverse range of settings affected by conflict and political crises. It also set out and affirmed the Convention’s linkages with the UN Security Council’s WPS agenda. Brought together, they offer a substantive framework to ensure that gender equality becomes integral to conflict prevention, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and accountability. Commissioned by UN Women, this Guidebook increases knowledge on both sets of frameworks and expands understanding of how the Convention and the WPS resolutions can be implemented in congruent ways and used to strengthen and reinforce each instrument’s efficacy. The Guidebook provides an overview of the reporting and monitoring mechanisms inher- ent to both GR30 and the WPS resolutions, in order to enhance accountability for both frameworks. It provides guidance on how implementation of GR30 and the WPS resolutions can strengthen and reinforce each other, in particular through reporting.
Rethinking the transition process in Syria: constitution, participation and gender equality, 2018
Women's human rights when experiencing humanitarian crises and conflicts: the impact of United Nations Security Council Resolutions on women, peace, security, and the CEDAW General Recommendation no. 30, "has a Capter of Rethinking the transition process in Syria: constitution, participation and gender equality" Eds C. Padovani and F. Helm, Published by Research-publishing.net, not-for-profit association Voillans, France, info@research-publishing.net, 2018 Violence and insecurity are strictly linked to unequal political, social, and economic power. However, the continuity of violence is obscured by masculinist and patriarchal rules of security within gendered structures, especially inside the division of public/private dimensions and spaces, of production-reproduction activities, and of conflicts of war/peace. Nowadays, there is a general perception of the gendered dimensions of humanitarian emergencies in public policy outcomes and more in general in institutional contexts where the central role of women in security and maintaining peace, at all levels of decision making, both prior to, during, and after the conflict stage, hostilities, and peacekeeping and peace-building stages, as well as in trying to pursue a condition of reconciliation and reconstruction, has been formally recognized at international level. Nevertheless, it is necessary to focus on some problems related to the conceptualization of and legal provision for 'gender based security' and its subsequent effects upon accountability, with particular reference to transitional justice and post-conflict societies. It is important to assess a range of contemporary issues implicated for women and security, such as violence and other forms of harassment in times of post-conflict.
The UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 establishes the roles of women in the conflict solving process and here there will be an examination into what steps have been taken to put UNSCR 1325 in progress during this past decade. It is essential to emphasise that this action is generally considered a ‘landmark, legal and political framework’ as this was the first time that the Security Council addressed the disproportionate and extraordinary impact of armed conflict on women. The eighteen articles of UNSCR 1325 aim to transform the roles of women and recognize the crucial contribution they could make in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, peace and security. In particular, UNSCR 1325 encourages greater participation of women at the decision making level, for example in peace negotiations (Arts. 1&2) and in peace operations as soldiers or police (Art. 4). As highlighted in the preamble, another important aim of UNSCR 1325 is to protect women and girls from gender based violence (Art. 10). It also calls for the respect of the particular needs of women and girls in refugee camps (Art. 12). The decision taken by the Security Council in 2000 to adopt UNSCR 1325 suggests the importance of this issue, as a major characteristic of the Security Council is ‘selectivity...especially of the P5, in deciding which issues to address or not address.
Gender in the UN: CEDAW and the Commission on the Status of Women
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This chapter introduces the development and competence of the Commission on the Status of Women, the main UN intergovernmental body, responsible for the advancement of women. Among its major achievements is the elaboration of the draft Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and its Optional Protocol. The Convention is overseen by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, whose competence and work are also described.
Women in the grip of conflict: the ambit of CEDAW and beyond
This paper will aim to look at the condition and the rights of women in conflict situations in light of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and some guidelines. It does so by recognizing that women have special needs and roles in all the three stages of conflict-prevention, conflict and post-conflict. Women's experience of conflict is essentially different, whether as civilians, combatants or as prisoners of war; however, the rights of those involved in conflict along with peace-building efforts have largely been conceived considering the male as the norm. Whether internally displaced, stateless, captive or combatant, humanitarian law and the rights framework have not come to the aid of women in spite of provisions and this paper will explore what these provisions are and why they have not helped.
The 'woman-in-conflict' at the UN Security Council: a subject of practice
Since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, the woman-in-conflict has emerged as a central figure in the discourse of the UNSC Women, Peace and Security policy community. She is an ever-present referent in discussions, the person in whose name critique is launched or action demanded. This figure is a representation of the needs and interests of the uncountable, faceless and nameless women affected by and living through war; a representation that takes place through imbuing her with particular meaning or characteristics. These meanings shape how the figure is understood in Women, Peace and Security discourse, which, in turn, constructs the horizons of possibility for both current and future policy and its implementation. This article explores how this figure is produced as a subject through layers of representation and is deeply embedded in the practices and relationships of power in the policy community. It suggests that accounting for these will offer an opportunity for feminist advocates to engage in this institutional space in more considered and effective ways.
Considered the single greatest achievement in ‘engendering’ global security policy, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR 1325) is celebrated as a triumph of women’s peace movements and transnational feminist organizing. My central claim is that SCR 1325 has both over performed and under delivered. The remarkable achievements it catalysed in establishing new international standards have not been fully appreciated, explored, or understood, while its successful utilisation by women rights and peace activists in the context of 'informal peace building' has not fundamentally challenged the workings of the Security Council itself, as feminists had hoped. This has resulted in an overestimation of SCR 1325’s symbolic and practical importance, and an underestimation of the broader institutional and geopolitical factors that shaped SCR 1325’s genesis and continue to drive Security Council decision-making in relation to women and gender issues. I suggest that SCR 1325’s perceived failures have less to do with its oft-criticized textual content than with the institutions, actors, strategies, and processes that have been most central to its implementation. Historically, the geopolitics of UN decision-making on gender issues demonstrate an extreme form of bureaucratic pathology that has circumscribed opportunities for bringing gender issues onto the UN’s peace and security agenda. I introduce the concept of ‘relegation’ to explain why decision-making on women has been extrinsic to the UN mechanisms and entities that have the greatest potential for autonomous action. SCR 1325’s implementation failures also reflect the absence of a collaborative feminist epistemic community of research and praxis in the nascent field of feminist security studies. This has further limited the UN’s ability to internalise, institutionalise, and implement actions that advance, rather than undermine feminist peace building agendas.
Scholars Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, 2020
Review Article Women as a minority group in every given soceity, are understandably strongly affected by armed conflict. This negative experience becomes very precarious for these women in situations where they are highly affected from the abuse and traumas emanating from the outcome of war especially those countries plague by the disaster of armed conflict. As a preliminary remark, it should be acknowledged that while the effects of armed conflict is not always discernible and quantifiable in women, they remain present and multi-dimensional to such an extent that it would be extremely ambitious for any legal or normative framework to pretend to tackle them holistically. The objective of this paper is in examining the role and place of international humanitarian law, human right law and even criminal law in the protection, and treatment of women in a controlled armed conflict. Continuous increase of abuses, rape, exploitation and even violations of women rights during armed conflict creates an impression at both the international and even legal communities of the efficiency and effective protection of women in armed conflict. The main question to be examined here is in analyzing a comparative study of the three legal frameworks, so as to ascertain their compatibilities, and even to a greater extent, complementarities of the three regimes.