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Human Rights Through The Rule of Law

Global Justice Center E-News June 6, 2007

May has been a busy month for us, and we are pleased to report a couple of highlights:

On May 23rd, Global Justice Center President, Janet Benshoof was invited to participate as an international law expert on a panel entitled "Women's Rights in Islam" at the New York City Bar Association.

Olivia Kraus, GJC Managing Attorney, participated in a series of meetings in Sweden this month on SCR 1325 and women in politics. She was invited as the gender expert a t a high level conference on Transitional Justice In Africa, hosted by the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). She also presented at Operation 1325, a consortium of 5 Swedish NGO's on the work of the GJC.

Meanwhile, Andrea Friedman, GJC Senior Counsel, was invited to present to Nicaragua's Supreme Court as an expert consultant to discuss the Amicus Curiae process in the context of a pending abortion case at Nicaragua's highest court.

The biggest surprise, however, was a last minute visit from the chief Judge on the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT) Dujail decision, Judge Basil Mohammed. We were honored to host the Judge for lunch at our NY office while he told us about his work on the Dujail case, his impression of the trials, and his insight into the future success of the Tribunal.

As always, we look forward to sending our next batch of updates in early July!

Best, The GJC Staff

Feature article: Gender and the Responsibility to Protect

Introduction

On Tuesday, May 29th, President Bush ordered new U.S. sanctions against Sudan in order to pressure the African nation's government to halt bloodshed in the Darfur region. More than 200,000 have already died in the conflict between ethnic African rebels and pro-government janjaweed militia and the U.S. has condemned the killings as a genocide. The international community is at a standstill on how to proceed in this situation, and how to intervene on behalf of the terrorized populations of Darfur without infringing upon Sudan's sovereignty. It is in answer to these kinds of conflicts-the ones that happen inside state borders-that the ideas behind the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) have been developed.

Gender and R2P: A complex relationship

The fundamental principle underlying the Responsibility to Protect is the expectation that with state sovereignty comes state responsibility to ensure the rights of citizens and to protect them from systematic abuse. If a state fails do so, the responsibility then lies with the international community to protect the population from the mass violations of their human rights. R2P's three core principles consist of: 1) the responsibility to prevent, including both the root causes and direct causes of internal conflict and other man-made crises; 2) the responsibility to react to situations of compelling human need with appropriate measures; and 3) the responsibility to rebuild, particularly after a military intervention. However, contrary to the growing trends within international human rights and humanitarian law, gender has been conspicuously absent from the dialogue around R2P.

The inclusion of gendered considerations around conflict and post-conflict reconstruction policies is not new, and there have been decades of theory and analysis on the importance of including a gender perspective in each of the three core elements of R2P. For example, the R2P doctrine should recognize that rape is a key element of war, particularly genocide, and should be explicitly included in the doctrines of and criteria for both "prevention" and "reaction". Rape was used as a tactic of war in both the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, and it is currently being used as a weapon of war in Darfur. Despite this, reports and articles about R2P, almost never mention mass rapes as a reason for intervention or as an element of the "just cause" threshold which dictates the point at which intervention under R2P becomes relevant and/or necessary.

Similarly, gender must be a core element of the responsibility to rebuild. Since the Security Council passed Resolution 1325 on Women Peace and Security in 2000, it has become widely recognized that peacemaking and peacebuilding processes should include the voices and perspectives of women in order to ensure enhanced protection of all sectors of the population after a conflict, and to ensure that the principles of democracy, including gender equality and non-discrimination, are enshrined in new constitutions, new governments and new judiciaries. The absence of gendered analysis from "the responsibility to rebuild" risks re-entrenching the gendered imbalances that existed before conflict.

Finally, the line between legitimately protecting women from conflict and using women's vulnerability to promote conflict, as many argue occurred with the American intervention in Afghanistan, necessitates a deeper dialogue around gender and the R2P principles even before an intervention occurs.

R2P in Practice

Currently, the Global Justice Center is working in two regions that could benefit from a more gender-sensitive R2P analysis. In Burma, for example, the SPDC, has been expanding its army since the rebellion of 1988. Stationed all over the country, and concentrated in ethnic areas, Burmese troops terrorize local populations and rape is one of their favorite tools. (See the report "Unsafe State" by the Women's League of Chinland, a member of the Women's League of Burma, at www.womenofburma.org). Despite the numerous reports of rapes, the international community has failed to take any steps necessary to protect the women of Burma from systematic sexual abuse. R2P should require that states, particularly those that border and trade with Burma, meet their obligations in protecting women from state sponsored abuse.

Another example is in the Darfur region of Sudan. Since 2005 African Union peacekeepers have been escorting Darfuri women on so-called "firewood patrols" outside of the camps where they are living. This is an excellent example of incorporating women into the R2P framework, but recently, as attacks against AU soldiers have increased (by both Government and rebels), firewood patrols have been reduced, leading to a sharp increase in the number of women raped. Rather than drawing down protection for women, R2P should demand that more peacekeepers be sent to Darfur to protect women living in refugee and IDP camps from the threat of rape.

In response to this growing dialogue around R2P, the Global Justice Center has also recently joined the Responsibility to Protect Civil Society (R2PCS) Network, which consists of concerned civil society organizations (particularly women's groups) who are lobbying to change the way governments and international organizations respond to emerging humanitarian crises in favor of women.

Conclusion

The R2P doctrine is groundbreaking, and is the closest thing that the international community has developed to a clear protocol for how to respond to humanitarian conflict. Many argue that the Rwandan genocide could have been avoided, at least in part, if there had been international consensus around the concepts of "state sovereignty" and the responsibilities that entails. To that end, the R2P principles, if effectively adopted, have the potential to dramatically impact the ways in which states are held accountable for grave and systematic violations of human rights that occur within their borders. Additionally, R2P may someday be utilized to avoid conflict and genocide on the scales of Rwanda, Yugoslavia and WWII. However, in order to ensure that R2P is effective, gender must be fully incorporated into the concept and analysis of appropriate international responses. Relationships between men, women and their families drive society. Further, rape is not just a crime against women, but it is a crime that destroys the fabric of social and human relationships within communities, and can leave scars that last for generations. Therefore, without examining R2P through a gendered lens, key aspects of the dynamics of conflict, including rape and the need to push for gender parity in post-conflict reconstruction, are left out of the picture, and the lasting peace for which R2P strives will remain forever at risk.

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