WUNRN
For Info & To Endorse,
Contact Betty Reardon: bar19@columbia.edu
Draft Statement to CSW 57 on Military Violence Against Women
(This
is an abstract for a longer paper being prepared for publication. The
assertions that comprise the arguments of this statement derive from literature
on gender and peace.)
Violence Against Women Is Integral to War and Armed Conflict: The Urgent Necessity of Universal Implementation of UNSCR 1325
Violence against women (VAW)
under the present system of militarized state security is not an aberration
that can be stemmed by specific denunciations and prohibitions. VAW is and
always has been integral to war and all armed conflict. It pervades all forms
of militarism. It is likely to endure so
long as the institution of war is a legally sanctioned instrument of state, so
long as arms are the means to political, economic or ideological ends. To
reduce VAW; to eliminate its acceptance as a “regrettable consequence” of armed
conflict; to exorcize it as a constant of the “real world” requires the
abolition of war, the renunciation of armed conflict and the full and equal
political empowerment of women as called for by the UN Charter.
UN
Security Council Resolution 1325 was conceived as a response to the exclusion
of women from security policy making, in the belief that exclusion to be a
significant factor in the perpetuation of VAW. The originators assumed that VAW
in all its multiple forms, in ordinary daily life as well as in times of crisis
and conflict remains a constant because of women’s limited political power.
Constant, quotidian VAW is unlikely to be significantly reduced until women are
fully equal in all public policy making, including and especially peace and
security policy. The universal implementation of UN Security Council Resolution
1325 on Women, Peace and Security is the most essential means to reduce and
eliminate the VAW that occurs in armed conflict, in preparation for combat and
its aftermath. Stable peace requires
gender equality. Fully functioning gender equality requires the dissolution of
the present system of militarized state security. The two goals are
inextricably linked one to the other.
To
understand the integral relationship between war and VAW, we need to understand
some of the functions that various forms of military violence against women
serve in the conduct of war. Focusing on that relationship reveals that the
objectification of women, denial of their humanity and fundamental personhood
encourages VAW in armed conflict, just as dehumanization of the enemy persuades
armed forces to kill and wound enemy combatants. It also reveals that the
outlawing of all weapons of mass destruction, ending the arms trade, the
reduction of weaponry, an end to the arms trade and other systematic steps
toward General and Complete Disarmament (GCD) are essential to the elimination
of military VAW. This statement seeks to encourage support for disarmament,
international law and the universal implementation of UNSCR 1325 as instruments
for the elimination of MVAW.
War
is a legally sanctioned tool of state. The UN Charter calls upon members to
refrain from the threat and use of force (Art.2.4), but also recognizes the
right of defense (Art.51) None-the-less most instances of VAW are war crimes.
The Rome Statute of the ICC includes rape as war crime. However, the
fundamental patriarchalism of the international state system perpetuates
impunity for most perpetrators. So the full extent of the crimes, their
relationship to the actual waging of war and the possibilities for the
enforcement of the criminal accountability of those who have committed them
need to be brought into the discussions on the prevention and elimination of
VAW. A greater understanding of particular manifestations of these crimes may
lead to some fundamental changes in the international security system conducive
to ending war itself. To promote such understanding here are listed some forms
and functions of military VAW.
Identifying Forms of Military Violence and Their Functions in
Warfare
Listed
below are several forms of military violence against women (MVAW) committed by
military personnel, rebels or insurgents, peace keepers and military
contractors, suggesting the function each serves to carry out the purposes of
the war. The core concept of violence
from which these types and functions of military violence are derived is the
assertion that violence is intentional harm, committed to achieve some purpose
of the perpetrator. Military violence comprises those harms committed by
military personnel that are not a necessity of combat, but none-the-less an
integral part of it. All sexual and gender based violence is outside actual military
necessity. It is this reality that is recognized in the Beijing Platform for
Action and the Security Council resolutions 1820, 1888 and 1889 that seek to
curb MVAW.
Included
among the types of MVAW identified below are: military prostitution, trafficking
and sexual slavery; random rape in armed conflict and in and around military
bases; strategic rape; the use of military arms to inflict violence against
women in post-conflict as well as conflict situations; impregnation as ethnic
cleansing; sexual torture; sexual violence within the organized military and
domestic violence in military families; domestic violence and spouse murders by
combat veterans. No doubt there are forms of MVAW not taken into account here.
Military prostitution and the sexual
exploitation of women have been
features of warfare throughout history. At present brothels can be found around
military bases and at the sites of peace-keeping operations. Prostitution - usually work of desperation
for women – is openly tolerated, even organized by the military, as essential
to the “morale” of the armed forces. Sexual
services are deemed essential provisions for waging war to strengthen the
“fighting will” of the troops.
Military sex workers are frequently victims of rape, various forms of physical
abuse and murder.
Trafficking and sexual slavery is a form of VAW that stems from the idea that sexual
services are necessary to fighting troops.
The case of the “comfort women,” enslaved by the Japanese military
during WWII is the best known, perhaps the most egregious instance of this type
of military VAW. More recently, trafficked women have been literally enslaved
in conflict and post-conflict peace-keeping operations. Women’s bodies are used as military supplies. Viewing
and treating women as commodities is absolute objectification. Objectification
of other human beings is standard practice in making war acceptable to
combatants and civil populations of nations at war.
Random rape in armed conflict and around
military bases, an expected and
accepted consequence of armed conflict, illustrates that militarism in any form
increases the possibilities of sexual violence against women in militarized
areas in “peace time” as well as war time.
This form of military VAW has been well documented by Okinawa Women Act
against Military Violence. OWAAMV has recorded the reported rapes of local
women by American military personnel from the invasion in 1945 to the present.
The consequence of the misogyny that infects military training, when it occurs
in war it functions as an act of
intimidation and humiliation of the enemy.
Strategic and mass rapes - like all sexual assaults – intends to inflict
violence as a mean of humiliating, not only the actual victims, but, most
especially their societies, ethnic groups, and/or nations. It is also intended
to lessen the adversary’s will to fight.
As a planned assault on the enemy, large scale rape is a form of
military violence against women, usually inflicted en masse in attacks that
demonstrate the objectification of women as property of the enemy, military
targets rather than human beings. It
serves to shatter the social cohesion of the adversary in that women are the
base of societal relationships and domestic order.
Military arms as instruments of VAW are used in the rape, mutilation, and murder of
non-combatant women. Weapons are often the emblems of manhood, conceived within
patriarchy, as tools for enforcing male power and dominance. The numbers and
destructive power of weapons are a source of national pride in the militarized
state security system, argued to provide defensive deterrence. The militarized
masculinity of patriarchal cultures makes access
to weapons an enticement to many young men to enlist in the military.
Impregnation as ethnic cleansing has been designated by some human rights advocates as
a form of genocide. Significant instances of this type of MVAW have occurred
before the eyes of the world. The
military objective of these rapes is to undermine the adversary in several ways,
the main one being by reducing the future
numbers of their people and replacing them with the offspring of the
perpetrators, robbing them of a future
and a reason to continue to resist.
Sexual torture, psychological as well as
physical, is meant to terrorize the
civilian population of an enemy nation, ethnic group or an opposing political
group, intimidating them so as to gain compliance to occupation or to
discourage civilian support of the military and strategic actions of the
opposing group. It is often inflicted on the wives and female family members of
opposing political forces, as has happened in military dictatorships. It manifests the general misogyny of
patriarchy intensified during war so as to reinforce objectification of women
and “otherness” of the enemy.
Sexual violence in military ranks and
domestic violence in military families
has recently become more widely publicized through the courage of victims,
women who have risked their military careers and further harassment by speaking
out. Nothing makes more obvious the integral relationship of VAW to war,
preparation for it and post conflict than its prevalence within the ranks of
the military. While not officially condoned or encouraged, it has been allowed
to continue, serving to maintain the
secondary and subservient position of women, and the intensification of
aggressive masculinity, idealized as military virtue.
Domestic violence and spouse murder by
combat veterans occurs on the return
of veterans of combat. This form of MVAW is especially dangerous because of the
presence of weapons in the home. Believed to be a consequence of both combat
training and PTSD, DV and spouse abuse in military families derives from the systemic and integral role
of VAW in the psychology of some warriors and symbolizes extreme and aggressive
masculinity.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The
present system of militarized state security is an ever present threat to the
human security of women. It will continue so long as states claim the right to
engage in armed conflict as a means to the ends of the state, and so long as
women are without adequate political power to assure their human rights,
including their rights to security. The ultimate means to overcome that threat
is the abolition of war and the establishment of gender equality. Some of the tasks we now may undertake toward
this end are: the implementation of the Security Council resolutions 1820, 1888
and 1889 intended to reduce and mitigate MVAW; actualizing all of the
possibilities of UNSCR 1325 with emphasis on the political participation of
women in all matters of peace and security; pursuing measures that hold promise
of achieving and end to war itself, such as the following recommendation for
the outcome document of CSW 57.
Among
these tasks recommended are measures to end violence against women and measures
that are steps toward the end of war.
1.
Immediate compliance by all member states with the provisions of UNSCR 1325
requiring women’s political participation in the prevention of armed conflict.
2.
Development and implementation of National Action Plans to actualize the
provisions and purposes of UNSCR 1325 in all relevant circumstances and at all
levels of governance - local through global.
3.
Special emphasis should be placed on immediate implementation of the anti VAW
provisions of UNSCR resolutions 1820, 1888 and 1889.
4.
End impunity for war crimes against women by bringing to justice all
perpetrators of MVAW, be they national forces, insurgents, peacekeepers or
military contractors.
4.
Conclude and implement an arms trade treaty to end the flow of weapons, many of
which are used as instruments of MVAW.
5.
GCD should be declared the primary goal of all arms treaties and agreements
that should be formulated with a view toward reduction of MVAW, the universal
renunciation of armed force, and with the full participation of women as called
for by UNSCR1325.
6.
Inaugurate a global campaign to educate about VAW, including special focus on
MVAW, assuring that all members of all military, peacekeeping forces and
military contractors are educated about MVAW and the legal consequences risked
by perpetrators.
List
In Process - To endorse, please E-mail bar19@columbia.edu
Drafted by Betty Reardon with
Endorsement from:
International
Institute on Peace Education,
World
Council for Curriculum and Instruction,
People’s
Movement for Human Rights Learning
Feminist
Scholar/Activist Network on Demilitarization
Global
Network of Women Peacemakers
Voice
of Women
International
Peace Bureau
Global
Kids