ABANDONING ‘WOMEN AND CHILDREN’

Middle East Online
2009-10-05

UN Security Council Resolution 1888 is a welcome intervention against
sexual violence and rape as weapons of war. But the phrase "women
and children" — long a patriarchal, disempowering categorization —
must be abandoned, argues Nadia Hijab.

The United Nations Security Council has just passed a welcome
resolution — U.N. Security Council Resolution 1888 — that strengthens
the international community’s ability to tackle sexual violence in
wartime. Sexual violence offences have already been included in
the founding statute of the International Criminal Court and, as
an earlier U.N. resolution reaffirmed, can constitute war crimes,
crimes against humanity, or part of a genocidal pattern of conduct.

The issue certainly needs the world’s attention. Rape as a weapon
of war and the use of other sexual violence has reached horrifying
levels. The perpetrators target women, aiming particularly to
destabilize communities during and after a war ends. Up to half
a million women were raped during the Rwanda genocide and 60,000
in the Balkan conflicts. In Sierra Leone, 64,000 women suffered
war-related sexual violence. Today, in the in the eastern provinces
of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1,100 rapes a month are
reported, committed by both security forces and rebel groups. As one
U.S. diplomat noted, "It is far more dangerous to be a civilian woman
than it is to be a soldier."

The importance of these resolutions is not only that they aim to end
impunity for such crimes, which have often been swept under the rug in
post-conflict negotiations. They also challenge entrenched cultural and
traditional values that see sexual assaults as somehow less important
than other crimes, even something that women "bring upon themselves."

Unfortunately, as ardent advocates of women’s human rights tackle one
set of unacceptable cultural practices, they reinforce another. The
text of 1888 refers repeatedly to "women and children,â ut the new
resolution.

The phrase "women and children" is as problematic in peacetime as it
is in wartime.

In peacetime, it reaffirms a patriarchal view still prevalent
in most parts of the world — that women are as helpless as
children and that they cannot function without male protection
and support. This problematic phrase, often used by well-meaning
development organizations, reinforces the neglect of women’s actual
and potential economic roles. Instead of being integrated into the
economic mainstream, women are sidelined into often market-irrelevant
activities like handicrafts and sewing.

In wartime, the phrase "women and children" communicates three
things: that all men are actual or potential fighters rather than
civilians; that men are not in need of protection; and that women
have no agency or capacity to act. It is worth examining each of
these points separately.

The propensity to treat all men as potential fighters was most recently
on display during the Israeli assault on Gaza this winter. At that
time, media reports constantly underplayed the number of civilian
casualties by focusing on the number of women and children killed. In
fact, the total number of civilian dead according to human rights
organizations stands at 1,172 unarmed civilians, of which more than
half, 719, were men.

And men do actually need protection too. The assumption that they are
potential fighters means, for example, that they are more frequently
killed on sight or taken prisoner to facing inhuman treatment and
conditions. In countries that still have military conscription,
young men can be badly brutalized without any recourse or defense. In
Armenia, for instance, hazing in the military was so bad that some
young men chose suicide as the only way out.

Finally, women not only have the capacity to act, they are, as experts
note, often the ones who enable entire communities to survive war
and armed conflict. However, their capacity for economic, social,
and cultural action has yet to translate into a commensurate ward
taking advantage of women’s agency. It highlights those areas where
women are particularly targeted in conflict so that these assaults
may be appropriately treated as the crimes that they are, bringing an
end to impunity. And it reinforces earlier resolutions that sought
to ensure women’s fair representation in post-conflict peacemaking
as well as in peacekeeping operations.

But these important steps should not hide the fact that — for the
sake of women as well as men — we need to stop using the phrase
"women and children." When it is necessary to draw attention to the
fact that many of those targeted are girls below 18 — the formal
end of childhood in the international Convention on the Rights of the
Child — then the speaker or writer should simply say so. Otherwise,
we are only dealing with part of the problem; we are marginalizing
women in development processes; and we are privileging some human
rights over others.

Nadia Hijab is an independent analyst and a senior fellow at the
Institute for Palestine Studies.

Copyright 2009 Nadia Hijab – distributed by Agence Global

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress