Chapter Three: Implementing Women, Peace and Security: An Assessment of National and Regional Institutions
3. Gender Mainstreaming in context
Charlesworth observes that the term gender mainstreaming has become a “mantra” used in the international community for addressing gender inequalities’.43
This strategy became more prominent in the 1990s to respond to what was then seen as ‘gender side streaming’, but became omnipresent in the international arena44 and a critical tool for resolving the implied gender inequalities that exist on issues of peace and security.
The Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) adopted gender mainstreaming as an equality policy framework and global strategy offering opportunities for integration of gender concerns.45 It also provided goals – committed to by international participants – that would lead to development,
41 M. Thatcher, ‘Advice to a Super Power’ New York Times (New York, 1 February 2002) in Chinkin and
Charlesworth (n 8) 937.
42 A. Gosh, ‘The Global Reservation notes towards an ethnography of International peacekeeping’ (1994) 9:3 Cultural Anthropology. 412-422.
43 Hilary Charlesworth, ‘Not waving but drowning: Gender Mainstreaming and Human Rights in the United
Nations’ Harvard Human Rights Journal 18:1(2005) pp. 1-18.
44
ibid 5.
45 Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, P.R.C., Sept. 4–15, 1995, Beijing Declaration and Platform for
Action (15 September 1995) A/CONF. 177/20 BPFA DOC [135], Gender Mainstreaming: An Overview (2001) DAW/OSAGI and Gender Mainstreaming: Strategy for Gender Equality (2001) OSAGI.
peace, gender equality, and the full realisation of freedom for women.46 These were reaffirmed in the Economic and Social Council’s (ECOSOC) Agreed Conclusion (1997), which defined gender mainstreaming as:
The process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is gender equality.47
While the intention above might be to move the debate of equality between the sexes from being a ‘woman issue’ to the UN focusing on achieving gender equality concerns, it has been criticised as both too broad and too narrow to benefit the discourse of gender equality in the international arena.48
The UN has since been promoting gender integration through its establishments, such as the Inter Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) and UNIFEM; it also established a Taskforce on Women, Peace and Security.49 However, the inclusion of gender mainstreaming strategy in UN Security Council Resolutions reflects broader UN gender equality policies, which
46See Joyce P Kaufman and Kristen P Williams, Women and War; Gender Identity and Activism in Times of Conflict
(Kumarian Press 2010) 98.
47 The Agreed Conclusions are contained in “Report of the Economic and Social Council for 1997” (adopted by the
Economic and Social Council at its 33rd meeting, on 18 July 1997) A/52/3/Rev.1 where Gender mainstreaming was described as a ‘system wide and a broad based strategy’.
48 See Charlesworth (n 43) 13.
49 Sari Kuovo ‘United Nations and Gender Mainstreaming: Limits and Possibilities’ in Doris Buss and Ambreena
move away from addressing gender issues through specialised women-centred initiatives.50 Its efficacy is questionable, and it has attracted much criticism.51
One major criticism is the conflation of the words gender and women;52 oftentimes, in the international parlance of peace-building, one means the other.53 Charlesworth notes the defects in applying the concept of gender mainstreaming, which she describes as the ‘indistinct analogy’54 of gender and sex, whereby the roles of men and women are identified as ‘natural and immutable’.55
Otto’s work provides an example of this misrepresentation of women and gender in her analysis of the Secretary General (SG) Report. The report states that ‘a focus on gender mainstreaming in conflict and post conflict situations involves recognizing women. Girls, men and boys participate in and experience conflict, peace processes and post conflict recovery differently’.56
She argues that the report reduces gender to ‘biology’ and excludes gender equality, which is supposedly the major aspect of mainstreaming.57
Another study has shown that this misrepresentation has been responsible for the major set-back in the Women, Peace and Security agenda;58 those responsible for supporting peace-building processes pay less attention to the norms regulating gender, and as such, prevent the desired
50 ibid 238.
51 ibid 238; Chinkin and Charlesworth (n 8) 940. See Otto (n 12); Charlesworth (n 43) 2.
52 Richard Strickland and Nata Duvvury, ‘Gender Equity and Peace Building ’A Discussion Paper(International
Center for Research on Women [ICRW] (2003); see also Sally Baden and Anne Marie Goetz, ‘Who Needs [Sex] When You Can Have [Gender]? Conflicting Discourses on Gender at Beijing’ in Cecile Jackson and Ruth Pearson (eds), Feminist Visions of Development: Gender Analysis and Policy (Routledge 1998) 19, 24–25.
53 Chinkin and Charlesworth (n 8) 940. 54
Hillary Charlesworth, ‘Feminist Scholarship in International Law’ in Sari Kuovo (ed) Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary International Law; Between Resistance and Compliance?(Hart Publishing 2011) 30.
55 Charlesworth (n 43) 15 56
Otto (n 12) 166, where Otto refers to the SG report ‘Women, Peace and Security; Study submitted by the Secretary General pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1325 (2002) E.03.IV.1.
57 ibid 166.
transformation to more equal gender relations. For example, in the UNSCR 1325, there appears to be confusion about the meaning of gender mainstreaming in the text. One of the central goals of the Resolution is to mainstream gender perspectives in peace negotiations; however, the Resolution presents gender as related only to women, not connecting it with the masculine identities accepted during conflicts, because they are coded as male.59 Considered globally, this misrepresentation may be inimical to the desired transformational outcomes for the targeted beneficiaries.
Proponents of gender mainstreaming argue that its proper understanding will be beneficial, since it is a strategy that targets ‘equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunities’.60
However, the extent to which efforts have translated to equal opportunities in the UN, or have promoted gender equality through gender mainstreaming, is debatable, particularly in the context of WPS at the national and regional levels. Moser’s review of the progress made within the UN and other international organisations on gender mainstreaming shows that while most institutions have put in place policies of gender mainstreaming, ‘implementation remains inconsistent’, and as such the supposed ‘gender equality outcomes remain largely unknown’.61
The adoption of the concept in 1997 has no doubt led to an increased feminist presence in the UN,62 and more attention to the issue of WPS. One of the gains of gender mainstreaming in the UN has been the increase in the number of women in peacekeeping operations – in East Timor, for example, the UN established an official institutional mechanism to deal with WPS issues,
59 Charlesworth (n 43) 15. 60
Barrow (n 31) 225.
61 Caroline Moser and Annalise Moser, ‘Gendermainstreaming since Beijing: A review of success and limitations in
international institutions (2005) 13:2 Gender and Development 11-22.
which later crystallised into the appointment of a special gender adviser as part of the peace operations.63 The first female police adviser in the Department of Peace Keeping Operations was appointed in 2011, while gender advisers – mostly women – have been provided to several field missions; Slovenia appointed the first female brigadier, and another woman was deployed to the UN Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO) in Lebanon, along with several other appointments of women and gender experts.64
Since 2002, countries have been encouraged by the UN Secretary General to adopt NAPs to support the implementation of UNSCR 1325’s peace building agendas,65
and state parties have begun adopting these to address gender equality and security issues post-conflict. Presently, NAPs have been incorporated in 37 countries, of which nine are African, including Sierra Leone and Liberia.66 The integration of UNSCR 1325 and the National Action Plans in these two West African countries is significant to the discourse of gender justice for post-conflict transformation. In these countries, the NAPs localise the aspirations of the first two UNSC Resolutions; their adoption thus brings the global legal WPS framework to African women’s doorsteps.
63 Chinkin and Charlesworth (n 8) 940. Catherine Mackinnon was also appointed as the gender adviser on gender
crimes to the International Criminal Court, and a female special representative of the UN to Liberia was also appointed see (See Press Release ‘Catherine Mackinnon as Special Adviser on Gender Crimes’, 26 November 2008ICC-OTP-20081126-PR377).
64 Security Council ‘Report of the Secretary General on Women, Peace and Security’ (29 September 2011)
S/2011/598, 11.
65 Security Council, ‘Statement by the President of the Security Council’ (31 October 2002) S/PRST/2002/32, 2,
where the President states that ‘The Security Council, recalling its resolutions 1265 (1999), 1296 (2000), 1324 (2000) and 1379 (2001), encourages Member States, the entities of the United Nations system, civil society and other relevant actors, to develop clear strategies and action plans with goals and timetables, on the integration of gender perspectives in humanitarian operations, rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes, including monitoring mechanisms, and also to develop targeted activities, focused on the specific constraints facing women and girls in post-conflict situations, such as their lack of land and property rights and access to and control over economic resources’.
66 See Peace Women ‘List of National Action Plans’ <http://www.peacewomen.org/naps/list-of-naps> accessed on
4. Post-conflict reformulations: Gender mainstreaming in peace negotiation and