Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T10:43:50.374Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Seeking gender justice in post-conflict transitions: towards a transformative women’s human rights approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2007

Niamh Reilly
Niamh Reilly*
Affiliation:
Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article critically examines the prospects for achieving a comprehensive vision of gender justice in post-conflict transitional contexts. It is divided into three main sections. The first reviews the gendered limits of mainstream approaches to transitional justice and highlights gender biases in related dominant discourses, which shape how conflict, and transitions from conflict, are understood and enacted to the detriment of women. The second focuses on the benefits and limitations of engendering wartime criminal justice with particular reference to the International Criminal Court. The third considers the prospects for a more comprehensive approach to gender justice that shifts the emphasis from ‘women as victims’ of conflict to women as agents of transformation, through an examination of the significance of Security Council Resolution 1325. Ultimately, the author argues that achieving gender justice in transitions is inextricably tied to wider bottom-up efforts by women’s movements to realise a comprehensive vision of women’s human rights within a framework of critically-interpreted, universal, indivisible human rights.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 155 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abeysekera, Sunila (2006) ‘Engendering Transitional Justice’, in Dam Truong, T., Wieringa, S. and Chhachhi, A. (eds.), Engendering Human Security: Feminist Perspectives. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Alvarez, Sonia (1990) Engendering Democracy in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Anderlini, Saram Naraghi, Conway, Camille Pampele and Lisa, Kays (nd) ‘Transitional Justice and Reconciliation’. Available online atwww.international-alert.org/pdfs/TK11_justice_reconciliation.pdj (last accessed, 13 April 2007).Google Scholar
Askin, Kelly Dawn (1997) War Crimes against Women: Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basu, Amrita (1995) Women’s Movements in Global Perspective. New York: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Bell, Christine, Campbell, Colm and Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala (2004) ‘Justice Discourses in Transition’, Social and Legal Studies 13: 305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Christine and Catherine, O’rourke (2007) ‘Does Feminism Need a Theory of Transitional Justice? An Introductory Essay’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 1:23–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhasin, Khamla and Menon, Ruth (1998) Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Bos, Pascale (2006) ‘Feminists Interpreting the Politics of Wartime Rape: Berlin 1945; Yugoslavia, 1992–1993’, Signs Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31:995–1025.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bunch, Charlotte and Reilly, Niamh (1994) Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women’s Human Rights. New York: UNIFEM.Google Scholar
Chinkin, Christine (2001) ‘Women’s International Tribunal on Japanese Military Sexual Slavery’, American Journal of International Law 95: 335–41.Google Scholar
Chinkin, Christine (1994) ‘Rape and Sexual Abuse of Women in International Law’, EIJL 5:1–340.Google Scholar
Chinkin, Christine, and Kate, Paradine (2001) ‘Vision and Reality: Democracy and Citizenship of Women in the Dayton Peace Accords’, Yale Journal of International Law 26: 103–78.Google Scholar
Chinkin, Christine and Hilary, Charlesworth (2006) ‘Building Women into Peace: The International Legal Framework’, Third World Quarterly 27: 937–57.Google Scholar
Cockburn, Cynthia (2007) From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis. London: Zed Publishers.Google Scholar
Cockburn, Cynthia and Dubravka, Zarkov (eds.) (2002) The Postwar Moment: Militaries, Masculinities, and International Peacekeeping. London: Lawrence and Wishart.Google Scholar
Cohn, Carol and Ruddick, Sara (2004) ‘A feminist ethical perspective on weapons of mass destruction’, in Hashmi, Sohail H. and Lee, Steven P. (eds.), Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Coomaraswamy, Radhika, and Dilrukshi, Fonseka (eds.) (2004) Peace Work: Women, Armed Conflict and Negotiation. New Delhi: Women Unlimited.Google Scholar
Copelon, Rhonda (2000) ‘Gender Crimes as War Crimes: Integrating Crimes against Women into International Criminal Law’, McGill Law Journal 46: 217.Google Scholar
Copelon, Rhonda (1994) ‘Surfacing Gender: Reconceptualising Crimes of Gender in Times of War’ in Cook, Rebecca (ed.), Women’s Human Rights: International Perspectives. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Cohn, Carol (1987) ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’, Signs Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12: 687–718.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, Carol (2004) ‘Feminist peacemaking’, Women’s Review of Books. Available athttp://www.womenwarpeace.org/csw/Cohn_1325.pdf (last accessed 4 April 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dyzenhaus, David (2003) ‘Transitional Justice’, International Jounal of Constitutional Law 1:163–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enloe, Cynthia (1990) Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Enloe, Cynthia (2000) Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freedman, Lynn (1998) ‘Challenging Fundamentalisms’, Reproductive Health Matters, 8:55–69.Google Scholar
Goetz, Anne Marie and Shireen, Hassim (eds.), (1995) No Shortcuts to Power: African Women in Politics and Policy Making. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Grenfell, Laura (2004) ‘Paths to Transitional Justice for Afghan Women’, Nordic Journal of International Law 73:505–34.Google Scholar
Hill, Felicity (2001) ‘Women’s Participation in Security and Peace Policy Making’ presented at Columbia University, 5 March 2001. Available online athttp://www.wilpf.int.ch/publications/2001scr1325.htm.Google Scholar
Hill, FelicityMikele, Aboitiz and Peohlman-doumbouya, Sara (2003) ‘Nongovernmental Organizations’ Role in the Build-up and Implementation of Security Council Resoultion 1325’, Signs Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28: 1255–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Human Rights Watch and Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l’Homme (1996) ‘Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and its Aftermath’ available athttp://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/Rwanda.htm. Last accessed 13 April 2007.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch/Helsinki Watch (1993) War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina: Volume II. New York: Human Rights Watch.Google Scholar
ICTJ (2007) Truth Commissions and Gender: Principles, Policies and Procedures. New York: ICTJ.Google Scholar
Kesic, Vesna (2002) ‘Muslim Women, Croatian Women, Serbian Women, Albanian women’ in Bjelic, Dusan and Savic, Obrad (eds) Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalisation and Fragmentation. Boston Mass: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lentin, Ronit (ed) (1998) Gender and Catastrophe. New York: St Martin’s PressGoogle Scholar
McNeill, David (2007) ‘Japanese prime minister plays nationalist card’, Irish Times, March 31, 2007.Google Scholar
Molyneux, Maxine and Shahra, Razavi (2006) Beijing Plus 10: Ambivalent Record on Gender Justice. Geneva: UNRISD.Google Scholar
Ní aoláin, Fionnuala and Turner, Catherine (2007) ‘Gender, Truth and Transition’, UCLA Women’s Law Journal 16 (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Ní aoláin, Fionnuala (2006) ‘Political Violence and Gender during Times of Transition’, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 15: 829–49.Google Scholar
Ní aoláin, Fionnuala (1997) ‘Radical Rules: The Effects of Evidentiary and Procedural Rules in the Regulation of Sexual Violence in War’, Albany Law Review 60: 883–905.Google Scholar
Nikolic-ritanovic, Vesna (1998) ‘War, Nationalism and Mothers in the Former Yugoslavia’ in Turpin, and Lorentzen, (eds.), Women and War Reader. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Pateman, Carole (1988) The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: PolityGoogle Scholar
Reilly, Niamh (2007) ‘Cosmopolitan Feminism and Human Rights’, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 21 (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Reilly, Niamh and Linda, Posluszny (2006) Women Testify: A Planning Guide for Popular Tribunals and Hearings. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Women’s Global Leadership. Available athttp://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/globalcenter/womentestify/index.htm (last accessed, 13 April 2007).Google Scholar
Reilly, Niamh (ed.) (1996) Without Reservation: The Beijing Tribunal on Accountability for Women’s Human Rights. New Brunswick, NJ: Center for Women’s Global Leadership.Google Scholar
Rooney, Eilish (2006) ‘Women’s Equality in Northern Ireland’s Transition: Intersectionality in Theory and Place’, Feminist Legal Studies 14: 353–75Google Scholar
Rooney, Eilish (2004) ‘Counting Women’s Equality in West Belfast and Finding failings in the Northern Ireland Equality Commission’, Women’s Studies Review 9: 151–59.Google Scholar
Ross, Fiona (2003) Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Aftica. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Shaheed, Farida (2001) ‘Constructing Identities: Culture, Women’s Agency and the Muslim World’. London: Women Living Under Muslim Laws. Available athttp://www.wluml.org/english/pubs/rtf/dossiers/dossier23-24/D23-24-03- construct-id.rtf (last accessed 13 April 2007).Google Scholar
Paul, Streeten (2001) Globalisation: Threat or Opportunity? Copenhagen: Cophenhagen Business School Press.Google Scholar
Smart, Carol (1989) Feminism and the Power of Law. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
United Nations (1993) Vienna Declaration and Programme for Action.Google Scholar
UNIFEM (2004a) Women, Peace and Security: UNIFEM Supporting Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325. New York: UNIFEM.Google Scholar
UNIFEM (2004b) Women, Peace and Security: CEDAW and Security Council Resolution 1325: A Quick Guide. New York: UNIFEM.Google Scholar
Waylen, Georgina (2000) ‘Gender and Democratic Politics: a Comparative Analysis of Consolidation in Chile and Argentina’, Journal of Latin American Studies 32: 765–93.Google Scholar
WILPF (2007) Peacewomen E-News Issue 85 http://www.peacewomen.org/news/1325News/Issue85.pdf.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion (2000) Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar
yuval-davis, Nira (1997) Gender and Nation. London: Sage.Google Scholar