Rosemary Bechler

An OurKingdom conversation. This is Part 2 of Rosemary's response in our 'Which Plurality?' debate [History: Jeremy Gilbert > Rosemary Bechler > Jeremy Gilbert > first part of this reply > this post > Jeremy Gilbert]

Rosemary Bechler

An OurKingdom conversation. [History: Jeremy Gilbert > Rosemary Bechler > Jeremy Gilbert > this post > second part of this reply > Jeremy Gilbert]

Rosemary Bechler

An OurKingdom conversation. This is Jeremy Gilbert's response to Rosemary Bechler in OK's debate on liberalism and democracy [History: Jeremy Gilbert > this post > Jeremy Gilbert > Rosemary Bechler (part 1; part 2) > Jeremy Gilbert]

I want to pick up a strand of thinking in Jeremy Gilbert’s stimulating and useful tour de horizon of the left landscape as a potential driver for democratic change. If developed, I believe it leads us to another major source of transformation overlooked in his otherwise comprehensive survey. The strand I’m talking about is plurality – individualisation, diversification, fragmentation – and its relationship not only to deliberative democracy, but to the reinvigoration and rescue of democracy in the modern nation-state as such.

Before picking up on Jeremy’s commanding call for ‘a new kind of deliberative democratic institution… a social forum for us all … vital to the fostering of the kind of democratic climate within which … reforms could take root, flower and grow’ – I want to return to the more uncertain role accorded ‘plurality’ in his previous openDemocracy contribution,‘Postmodernity and the crisis of democracy.’ Here it is regarded with a residual leftwing ambivalence. The ‘full pluralism and complexity’ of our world is laid at the feet of ‘wild, unregulated capitalism’ or ‘globalisation’, as if these were little more than a conspiracy to unpick the organisational capacity of the labour movement. Alternatively, plurality is a siren voice created by postmodern cybernetic capitalism and only narrowly averted in the 1980s, when Baudrillard and Co tempted us to deliver ourselves to ‘the nihilistic thrill of a world without shared values and meanings’. But this is to treat plurality or diversity as the rootless relativism it is reduced to being in a culture like ours.

However, plurality in its higher form - as negotiation with the other, the encounter with difference and differences that is the source of self-awareness and adult intelligence is a very different story. There is an enormous and unstoppable democratic potential inherent in the process of individualisation that has accompanied capitalism throughout its history and this process continues with the boost it has received not only from post-war consumer culture and ‘consumer choice’, but also from the communication channels opened up across the silos of national organisation by war, tourism, the internet and globalisation. This is the energy and intelligence for a new political culture, in which people negotiate how they wish to live side by side in one polity, and win some, lose some, learn how to compromise. This much deeper form of democracy is waiting impatiently in the wings (although I note in a thoughtful if sometimes jaded interview that Tony Wright thinks ordinary people, as opposed to MP’s, incapable of it. He says: ”politics is complicated, it’s difficult, it’s frustrating, it requires compromise and often politicians are choosing the least-worst options and so it’s guaranteed to disappoint vast numbers of people all the time… there’s something about politics that’s a challenge in a consumerist culture, which likes instant gratification through shopping and celebrity and all that.”)

Rosemary Bechler

Jon Lawrence's book, Electing Our Masters: the Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair, was published this March by OUP. Now he has turned his attention to the next election and the urgent need for real-life political interaction. In this paper on ‘The hustings, broadcasters and the future of democracy' in the History & Policy series, he calls on broadcasters to reinvent the old, irreverent spirit of the hustings to ‘deliver both dramatic television and serious democratic politics.' We have a long and valuable tradition of politicians submitting themselves to rigorous interrogation by the general public - one that he has chronicled in detail -  but only broadcasters can now ensure that that tradition survives and flourishes in the twenty-first century.

The problem as he sees it remains residual paternalism and ‘that fear of abandoning professional control'. And the brief recent history that he gives contains few encouraging signs of a major step forward - broadcasters seem only slightly less cautious than their political masters. But Lawrence is clear,  ‘Further expansion of 'vox pop' coverage will not do. Political interaction must lie at the heart of a healthy democracy, and broadcasting is uniquely placed to help facilitate that interaction between public and politicians.'  He is also calling for new ‘public rituals ‘ that bring politicians and public together: ‘Candidates could be selected at open public 'primaries', official nomination hustings could be held in every constituency, and broadcasters could be encouraged to hold Question Time-style encounters across the country during an election, using new technologies to throw them open to the Facebook generation.'

Lawrence lays considerable emphasis on ritual, drama and the ‘theatre and entertainment that must be at the heart' of politics if it is to connect, but this does not dilute his ambition for such encounters between the public and their politicians. His aim is the kind of interaction that ‘allows ordinary voters a chance, not just to have their say, but actually to hold their political masters to account.'

Rosemary Bechler

Nobel Women's Initiative calls for the immediate release of Mairead Maguire and other Human Rights activists detained by Israeli authorities on June 29th.

Rosemary Bechler

David Sifry described social networking and other new forms of communication in an emergent world of public opinion as a "conversation among the people formerly known as the audience". The phrase sprang to my mind when the Today programme wrestled with explaining to itself and its audience what is inspiring about Abbas Kiarostami's latest film, ‘Shirin', recently showcased in the Edinburgh festival. Is it subversive? What are its politics? What is the people's hunger and spirit behind the insurgency? Is it on our side? The problem is that the film consists of 90 minutes of close-ups of more than 100 women, including a headscarved Juliette Binoche, as they watch a film based on a 12th-century poem by Nezami Ganjavi about a love triangle involving an Armenian princess and a Persian prince. 

"Light from a screen flickers on the women's faces; their expressions alone create the drama."  I learn more when I repair to Maya Jaggi's interview with Kiarostami in the Guardian, although I have to flap away an intrusive advertisement that informs me ‘Your opinion matters' and invites me to complete a short survey before I can proceed. Eventually, it appears that the maestro has been willing to give us a couple of clues. He has gone so far as to say that the "beauty of art lies in the reaction it causes", and that "a work of art doesn't exist outside the perception of the audience".

The fact is that this is yet another of those moments when one has to say: "They just don't get it do they?" This interesting rhetorical question has peppered political commentary in the last few weeks, most recently when the limousines drew up outside Mansion House. In politics it always carries the danger of complacency, since the people who point the finger are invariably the ‘brother' that had the ‘mote' in his eye last time around. This week one feels even more nervous using it because the onion has begun to unpeel with a vengeance as foolishly self-serving expenses claims settle around the ankles of those other ‘civil servants', BBC top management, with all around in the media ducking for cover.

Rosemary Bechler

It’s Time to Return to the Hotel Brochure

Day Three. One of the plenary speakers, I can’t remember who it was, told the delegates, ‘We are the privileged ones’. People nodded and you could see that this struck a chord. I have been wondering exactly what it meant. The most obvious reading belongs to the same family as the jesting remark made by Jane Austen’s Elizabeth when she suggests that she fell in love with Darcy when she first saw his lavish ancestral home, Pemberley.

Rosemary Bechler

All events of this kind have their own shape and dynamics. If Day One was an eager and passionate Tatiana’s letter, not to Onegin, but to an already cynical yet surely reclaimable democracy – we seem to have collectively matured overnight. There are three major themes to this great day’s proceedings: lessons from some extraordinary women who have run for and held political office, strategic thinking from women reporting unforgettably from the front line of war-torn societies, and the sliding into place of the last gargantuan building block for our overhaul of democracy – the battle for women’s human rights.

Rosemary Bechler

STEPS is a women’s organization founded in 1991 and registered under the Tamil Nadu Societies Act 1975, based in Pudukottai, Tamil Nadu, to work on the empowerment of all poor women, and particularly Muslim women in the region. It aims to bring about a change in the dominant perception – including among Muslim women themselves – about the rights of women in Islam. It believes that interpretation of the Qu’ran through a patriarchal lens resulted in discrimination against the women of the community and forced them to lead subjugated lives in a way that is not sanctioned in Islam.

Rosemary Bechler

Thomas Rainsborough was the highest ranking supporter of the Levellers in the New Model Army when he spoke in the Putney Debates in July 1647, and uttered the immortal words for British parliamentary democracy:

"For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under."

Rosemary Bechler

The first day of deliberations was Women’s Day in Guatemala, and participants at the Nobel Women's Initiative conference had awoken to the sound of firecrackers in Antigua celebrating the role of mothers and the sight of a local volcano erupting ash, apparently an every day occurrence. Naomi Tutu as the first moderator deftly appropriated the motherhood theme, which she said needed renovating, to give an undertaking on behalf of participants: we were going to be gestating a new definition of democracy capable of celebrating women’s achievements over recent months and years. Many of these definitions were offered during the next eight hours of discussion, though none perhaps so pithy as Mairead Maguire’s emphasis on ‘empowering people where they live – giving them dignity and hope’.

Rosemary Bechler

First impressions

In 1998, nearly a decade after his influential post-Cold War piece, 'The End of History?', Francis Fukuyama addressed himself to the question of Women and the Evolution of World Politics in the influential journal, Foreign Affairs. Commenting on what was then an emerging gender gap in support for (US) national defence spending, he announced that it was quite evident that women were more peaceful than men. Women, he argued, are different.

Rosemary Bechler

Russell Brand: Hello Andrew Sachs, this is Russell Brand. I am a great appreciator of your work over the decades. You are meant to be on my show now mate … I am here with Jonathan Ross. I could still do the interview to your answerphone.

Rosemary Bechler

 Rosemary Bechler (London, openDemocracy): responds to Anthony Barnett's coverage of the campaign against 42 days:

Thanks for the cogent reading of this important moment in the decline of the Westminster hall of mirrors. Doesn’t one need to include in a third episode in this drama? – the refusal of the two main political parties challenged in this bye-election to participate in debating the issues. For all the commenting and blogging, as in the case of the Iraq war and an ever-lengthening list of crucial decisions for the UK, we still have not been told why 42 days is deemed to be necessary to our national interest. All the talk simply obscures this ominous silence.

Rosemary Bechler

Thank you - all the MigrantVoice authors and bloggers for writing at short notice with passion and point. In a week we have moved beyond the shy introductions stage to 'pleased to meet you' and opened up a conversation on some of the big issues which has provided much food for thought. This excellent introduction will remain open not only for newcomers to browse, but for comment and addition.

Rosemary Bechler

Sonja Linden started out writing 'verbatim plays' and I like many others can testify to the 'palpable effect' these first hand accounts of detention and forced removal have had on her audiences. The Darfuris or Rwandans whose words and experiences she drew on thank her, however, in particular, for making their characters feisty and rounded - not just victims, however innocent. It's a moving account.

Rosemary Bechler

On one of the many earlier occasions when desperately provoked people broke out of Campsfield or some other detention centre, the message to the British people was not to approach them on any account because... the implication was.... or was it? ... let's say the suggestion ... that they were violent criminals of an indeterminate but horrendous kind.

No-one would expect a coffee-table book tete-a-tete. But 'Arresting Aram' and some of the other comments made this week about the 'surprising' pleasure and interest some of us have had in meeting the people involved - confirm my earlier suspicion that a much more 'dangerous' outcome, for the authorities at least, and for the militarisation of immigration and asylum which is under way, might be the formation of the kind of bridges that Jenny talks about in her last post: the bridge between the people behind bars and the people who don't know how innocent most of them are.

Rosemary Bechler

Another reason why many of us look away is simply because the scale of what we are up against is so huge and so daunting. At the opposite end of the problem from the individual moral dilemmas with which we are increasingly familiar - there are the coordinated actions of countries, at the UN or the EU.

Take the news from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees this week. Here are some of the headlines from UNHCR's Global Trends report:

Rosemary Bechler

Who cares for whom in this world? - is the question that Zrinka asks in today's article, 'Insult and injury' - to which Jenny replies, "For the people locked up in Campsfield (for what?) - not enough people." This is a very uncomfortable exchange for those of us in the middle ground or the silent majority. In her piece later this week Sonja Linden mentions some caring professionals that have inspired a character in her play, Crocodile Seeking Refuge, who ruin some aspects of their lives when they "step over the professional line in their dedication to their [asylum seeking] clients." But in the course of her work with the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum, Zrinka's encounter is with another type of professional, as she puts it:

Rosemary Bechler

One of the contributors to the MigrantVoice roundtable last week asked where were the writers and commentators who could make an impact on this debate on sanctuary or refuge - "There is no-one to speak with confidence and charisma on immigration and asylum issues. Very, very rarely does it happen." 

Today's MigrantVoice authors - Philippe Legrain and Irshad Manji - might well qualify. I was particularly struck by Philippe's question: "Since governments conspire to deny people the right to cross borders freely, is pretending to be a refugee really so terrible?" and by Irshad's thought that perhaps the Statue of Liberty should be sent back to France.

Rosemary Bechler

Welcome to our new blog partners, Jenny Allsop of STAR, Oxford and Craig Barnett of City of Sanctuary in Sheffield, and an old friend, Zrinka Bralo of MRCF, who are joining us today! They will be adding their thoughts and experiences to the discussions this Refugee Week, and helping us begin to get at the real picture around the UK - a picture that all our readers can help us fill out, since we are all experts on this fundamental challenge for ourselves and our societies - and we very much hope to hear your comments too.

Rosemary Bechler

‘Then cherish pity; lest you drive an angel from your door.’
From ‘Holy Thursday’, Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

The last line of Blake’s poem, with its echo of the Biblical injunction - ‘Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Unawares!’ (Hebrew, 13:2) – reminds us that giving sanctuary or refuge to strangers who need it is part of a longstanding and venerable tradition in Britain. Indeed, by some accounts, we pride ourselves on a liberal asylum tradition that dates right back to the welcome that we gave Huguenots from France and the Protestants expelled by Phillip III of Spain in the late sixteenth century.

Rosemary Bechler

In her final report from the Wilton Park conference, Rosemary Bechler speaks to Liberian peace activist Leymah Roberta Gbowee, about women's essential role in peacebuilding.

Click here for parts one, two and three

4. Empowerment - what it looks and sounds like

My last encounter is with Leymah Roberta Gbowee, Liberian Executive Director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa based in Accra, Ghana, committed to promoting women's leadership in peace and security governance in Africa. Leymah kindly agrees, although she is exhausted, to leave the supper table for another interview. She has her own advocacy and communication strategy well in place with a stunning feature film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, that has been doing the rounds on various continents where women asked this Liberian activist, 'how did you know my story?' and which she is taking next to Israel and Palestine.

Leymah came to prominence in the worst years of Liberian conflict when she somehow organised a collaborative network of 2,000 women peace builders from nine of Liberia's fifteen provinces. Curled up on a huge sofa, she tells me the story with a relish which doesn't suggest that she has covered the same ground three times today already:

"The activism started fifteen years ago, probably, with the anger and pain that built up over the years when I was a survivor of war in Liberia. It was by chance that this anger was redirected into something positive. I happened to meet a group of women from Sierra Leone who had come to Liberia as refugees. They had suffered the worst form of atrocity that you can suffer and still be alive - but these women had so much zest for life even after these experiences! I am sitting there considering myself a victim of war, when I have never been raped, no part of my body has been mutilated. I have suffered hunger and been uprooted from the comfortable space of my home. My family was displaced and later on became refugees. But just seeing these women and seeing that they still thought they had roles to play in the rebuilding process of their nation - that led me to rethink the self-image I had as a victim.

"Earlier on in my life I had worked as a caseworker in the trauma-healing project of the Lutheran church in Liberia. Then in 2001, I encountered a Nigerian young lady called Thelma Ikeja, who shared with me her vision of a woman's peacebuilding network for West Africa. She invited me to a consultative meeting. I took the idea back with me to Liberia and mobilised a few women to do capacity-building in women's organisations in peacebuilding and leadership skills. Two organisations then came together in 2003, as the war was closing in on Monrovia and anarchy was imminent, to collaborate in the fight for peace in our society: the Christian Women's Peace Initiative that I had founded and the Liberian Muslim Women for Peace. 'Let's do something' we agreed, and one idea for mass action just led to another.

"On a daily basis we consulted and as the news spread of what we were doing in one community, women began to mobilise around us. But they wouldn't start their process, until we had visited them and endorsed what they were doing. Gradually, all of the different communities began to invite us to come to them. They felt that our presence as the founder members validated what they were attempting to do. I don't really understand why to this day. But long afterwards, we were able to cooperate together very closely.

"For example, during the disarmament period, women in each community were busy sensitising combatants on the need to disarm. There were times that our contact with UN officials in the capital was crucial in the work that they were doing. In one community they had disarmed the fighters and promised them some incentives, but after one week, the incentives still weren't there. These combatants were saying to the women, 'Go to the town and let the authorities know that we haven't received our due. If you come back empty-handed, we will keep some of your women hostage, and we will deal with them.' Because they knew we worked closely with the Office of the Chairman of the Transitional Government, we were able to take them there and the Chairman called a meeting immediately with the EU, the UN, the US Embassy and the Coordinating Body on Disarmament. At first they accused our colleagues, saying that they were troublemakers and that everything had been done as promised, but the women insisted, and we helped them, that they hadn't fulfilled their side of the bargain.

"It wasn't just a question of saving those hostages, it reinforced the legitimacy of the work that those women were doing in their communities, and it certainly reinforced the authority that we had as leaders of the group. It instantly became clear to a lot of people that whatever we promised our communities would actually be delivered. That increased our credibility tenfold."

What did Leymah see as the main problem in dealing with sexual violence? She was not convinced by what she saw as too much of an emphasis on the potential brutalisation of men as combatants. "How was it" she wanted to know, "that soldiers could function as civil human beings in their own homes with their wives and daughters, but couldn't function in the same capacity on the field?" Military peacekeepers, she argued, needed to be aware of the huge responsibility they had and the extensive powers to rehumanise women after conflict, after rape, after their entire dignity has been taken away, "because peacekeepers come into a society when everything has broken down as the knight in shining armour. Whatever they do, society will, under those extreme circumstances, tend to dance to their tune. So if they came in with a very tough stance - and I am talking here about the foot soldiers who interact with the communities - and if their commanders in those areas make it plain that they have zero tolerance for violence against women, communities will follow suit. If communities see these combatants working alongside women on these high priority projects - then communities step into line."

She was talking from practical experience, she urged, "In Liberia, some African peacekeepers worked with women in small groups, and the result was amazing. They got so much respect from combatants who only a short time earlier were abusing women verbally, sexually and in every way possible. How did they get that respect? These women used to go into different communities with their message about peaceful coexistence, sensitising them to encourage their young children to lay down their arms. To get there, they would have to walk for hours - sometimes two or three hours to the next village. Then the West African peacekeepers started producing vehicles and escorts for them. Community members seeing this, noticed that these women were not being exploited. They were voluntarily collaborating with these peacekeepers, because the peacekeepers saw the advantage of these women going into communities that they couldn't reach. So, at the same time it raised the women's profile. Peacekeepers are seen as powerful people, and those they respect - the women who are seen to be dealing with the authorities - also have authority conferred upon them. Communities and combatants in those communities begin to think - we should follow suit."

In Liberia, Leymah continued, "we had an advantage. We had a group of drivers for peace who had seen peace before. It was not the first, the second, the third time - we had signed countless peace agreements, and each and every one had broken down sooner or later. People had become too complacent and it fell through again. So in 2003, we didn't want that to happen again. We knew we had to keep up the momentum until we had an elected democracy."

She is quite aware of the irony of the current situation in her country: "Now we have an elected democracy and things are finally moving - but I have to say that we no longer have a women's movement with a collective agenda that can address some of the many challenges of post-conflict rebuilding. Everyone has fallen back into the old individualistic way of doing things, 'I run my NGO: you run your NGO. We meet at meetings. We hug and kiss.' But we don't have a collective women's agenda. What can be done? Well, we have been having a series of discussions which look at where we have come from, where we are today, and how to move forward charting a course for our daughters so that they have much better lives. UN Resolution 1325 and CEDAW - these mean something to me as an educated person. But the challenge is, how do we make it mean something to a woman in a village who has no education? We're going to use cartoons, films and put it into local languages."

"We want to see peacekeepers before they are deployed, receiving not just two hours of gender training, but two weeks of intensive training packed full of case studies - real life examples of sexual violence and how and why it takes place. When one of the generals here from Liberia included in his presentation a graphic and disturbing picture of a woman who was raped and had a weapon inserted in her body before she was killed with three of her children. As he showed that clip, every general in that large room turned his head away. So there is a human in all of those men that people tend to think of as so military that they are inured to violence. We have to ask ourselves: what role can culture play in solving some of these problems of sexual and gender-based violence. But we have to do this with open minds, and not assuming that rape is implicit in African culture - or any similar dogma. I disagree with that assumption. I grew up in a home with family members who were typical Africans and who practised the traditional ways of doing things. There was never a day when my father raised his hand against any woman or any of his daughters. What we did see, frequently, was him getting upset in the community and walking into other homes to intervene when the husbands were beating their wives. Young men were socialised in that typical social setting to be the protectors of their women. In these traditional cultures, you would often hear these men say, jokingly, 'Well, we have had these meetings, and the women are absent. We can't take a decision until we have slept on it.' This meant that they would have to consult their wives overnight, and usually the ideas they then brought forward were the ones that we women had put to them!"

"There is a role for everyone in the fight to minimise the impact of warfare on women's lives and to stop rape. And we should begin that sustained advocacy now. That is what I think."

 

Women targeted by armed conflict

Read the four reports from the conference

The changing face of war

Protecting women and girls in conflict

Sexual Violence not just a gender issue

Pray the devil back to hell

 

Also on openDemocracy: Anne-Marie Goetz, "War and sexual violence: an issue of security" plus an interview with John Holmes, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs

Stop rape now: UN action against sexual violence in conflict

Rosemary Bechler

In the third of four reports from a UN conference on women targeted by armed conflict, Rosemary Bechler speaks to Nicky Dahrendorf, who as UN Action coordinator in the Congo holds "possibly one of the most challenging jobs ever devised".

Click here for parts one and two

3. A sobering reality

In that 'can do' atmosphere, I was very pleased to meet up briefly with Nicky Dahrendorf, who we last heard from on openDemocracy in late 2005. We repaired to a comfortable corner so that I could hear about what must be one of the most challenging jobs ever devised. On International Women's Day in 2007, twelve United Nations agencies came together to form the joint initiative, UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations

Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) joined forces to improve the quality of programming to address sexual violence, to increase the coordination of efforts for comprehensive prevention and response services, and to improve accountability. The new Secretary General is keen to work on gender issues and has picked up on the challenge of sexual violence, and there is a new sense of momentum in the air. Nicky has just returned to the UN after two years away, to be appointed UN Action coordinator in the Congo.

'Prevention' in the field of sexual violence in conflict tends to be seen as a long-term challenge, involving a combination of judicial processes to demonstrate that there is no impunity for rape, and socio-cultural interventions aimed at changing attitudes in the long run and building women's capacity to expose and protest this violence. However, this is a long term process and everyone at the Wilton Park conference knows that women in eastern DRC or Darfur cannot wait the decades it might take for these efforts to work. The disruption of communities, of society as a whole, for example in the Congo can be measured not only in death, disease and trauma, but in women being kicked out on to the streets with their children and no income, prostitution, criminality and abuse of the kids – there are thousands of street children in Kinshasa, and the problem is growing.

But however tangible the sense of urgency in the people I am talking to, there are real problems in translating this into action. Nicky is currently wrestling to establish the parameters of her huge new remit; on the one hand, helping the DRC Government to develop a strategy on sexual violence, and on the other responding to the UN's new-found commitment to an over-arching approach. "Sexual violence is not just a gender issue," she explains, "It goes right across the board - it is about human rights, security sector reform - it's political. It's strategic. I don't mean to be politically incorrect, but if you are going to deal with this properly you have to integrate it into security sector and law reform. There are two immediate priorities for me - rule of law and impunity. This is tangible. If we can bring both civilians and military people to justice, it will have been a good start." UN Resolution 1325 will be a useful mechanism for communicating what has been achieved on the ground, but first the work has to be done. And this is where the problems start.

Already, a raft of political obstacles have been strewn across Nicky's path. It is not just enormous challenges, such as the glaring lacunae in the relevant data that concerns her, "Anecdotal evidence is all we have and much of it is incorrect. We can't develop our peacekeeping programmes without understanding the perpetrators and victims better. We need dedicated sex crimes investigators who go straight out to talk to these people. But after all these years - nothing has been done to pull the crucial data together. We need a proper stocktaking so that we can find out who is doing what where, so that we can begin to predict trends."

But the biggest problem is the UN machine itself. Already, her new post is beginning to feel to Dahrendorf like a sticking plaster over a gaping wound:

"Everything in the UN is a very gradual awakening - we know that. It needs a lot of lobbying and a lot of criticism. But I am very concerned about my job - put there in a senior position, but with absolutely no support. I have to scramble to get a computer: it's the same old UN story. The whole sexual violence issue does not lack funds. There is too much money around in my view. But the resources are really badly allocated. Important governments are duplicating their efforts in their haste to contribute. This project-oriented approach is not helpful, when what we need and what the Congolese Government needs, is strategy.

It's very late in the day. I think, to be truthful, it's too little too late. A lot of donors have got upset with the fact that the money that they have put into DRC and sexual violence has not seen results. It is a fact that certain lead agencies haven't delivered. Some of the international NGOs - IRC, Oxfam and others - have quite rightly asked why, with all the guys we have on the ground, we haven't been able to focus more on sexual violence as a priority. I've got about a year, but so far the work has been tedious and demoralising."

I come away from that conversation with a challenge of my own. Nicky has been thinking about her advocacy and communication strategy - radio, theatre, whatever it takes: "At the moment we are doing something with posters, and I can't help asking myself what some Interahamwe soldier sitting in the jungle in East Kivu is going to make of a little poster saying, 'Don't rape'." She wants to know if we have any good ideas...

The realities as Nicky describes them are sobering from every point of view: "We are nowhere near understanding the complexity of the problem. The way we are programming at the moment certainly does not address the complexity of the problem. This is not just about armed men in uniform: there are a whole host of other issues. Some are related to the conflict: some existed before the conflict, in belief systems such as fetishism, and whole cultures where notions prevail such as that raping a young girl cures HIV/Aids, or that raping an old woman strengthens the spirit. It is the human rights issue, I think. I might change my mind totally after a few more weeks in the job, but that is what I think now - and it has never been addressed that way."

 

Women targeted by armed conflict

Read the four reports from the conference

The changing face of war

Protecting women and girls in conflict

Sexual Violence not just a gender issue

Pray the devil back to hell

 

Also on openDemocracy: Anne-Marie Goetz, "War and sexual violence: an issue of security" plus an interview with John Holmes, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs

Stop rape now: UN action against sexual violence in conflict

Rosemary Bechler

In the second of four reports from the UN conference on women targeted by armed conflict, Rosemary Bechler talks to military peacekeeper Patrick Commaert about the responsibility to protect, and learning from Rwanda, Somalia and Srebrenica.

Click here for the first report

2. "The good news"

I caught up with Patrick Commaert once he had delivered his speech on how to meet the protection needs of women in armed conflicts. After serving in Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Major General spent eight years with the DPKO both in the field and at HQ, and the last years of his career in the DRC, as the General Officer of the Eastern Division of the UN mission, MONUC, commanding some 15,000 men and women from 53 different nations 'with robust armament'. His paper drew its examples largely from the DRC, where the unchallenged use of sexual violence especially in the eastern part of the country was "probably among the worst things I have been directly confronted with during my entire military career". I asked him why this conference was being held now? He was ready to acknowledge that when he first encountered this disturbing problem in 1992 in Cambodia, it had not been obvious where to turn. Now, over fifteen years later, thanks to global communications, there was a wide enough understanding of the epidemic scale of the damage to make it impossible for the international community to ignore. The DPKO, especially in the wake of the landmark 'Brahimi Report' that recommended sweeping changes in the way that UN peacekeeping and associated post-conflict peacebuilding were conceived, planned, and executed, had 'advanced enormously' in that time. To be sure, it now had to deal with 21 missions all over the world, and up to 125,000 people in uniform deployed in the field at any one time, on a budget of only seven billion dollars. But the climate now was very different.

Commaert's main message was a simple one: despite decades of neglect and the absence of state authority in these countries, "provided with a robust mandate, peacekeepers can play an important role in protecting civilians from sexual violence during armed conflict." In the aftermath of the failure of the UN Missions in Rwanda, Somalia and Srebrenica, the United Nations Security Council mandated new UN missions to "protect civilians under imminent threat of violence within their capabilities and deployment" under Chapter VII of the UN Charter; i.e. using all necessary means, including the pre-emptive use of deadly force. This phrase, as the Major General sees it, gives force commanders in the field all the tools they need to act. In his opinion it is not a stronger mandate that is needed, but that troops, and in particular, their commanders, fully understand this mandate and their rules of engagement. The willingness of UN Commanders to take swift decisions when the presence of armed groups is reported is key to the effective protection of civilians: 'If they fail to act because they give scant regard to sexual violence, perhaps because their society or culture does not pay this much attention - then they have failed in the implementation of the mandate. That is the job. Commanders of all sorts of levels of command must understand this. They need to be taught this in their staff colleges, think tanks and preparation for missions by people who know the business. Preventing and dealing with sexual violence is part of that protection."

If it was amongst military peacekeepers that the analytical gap in identifying this type of threat seemed most glaring, it is also amongst military actors that innovative ad hoc responses could be found, thanks to the individual commitment of certain commanders in the field and the empathy of some of their troops. To the firewood patrols, night patrols in camps for internally displaced persons, and efforts to protect women collecting water, Commaert added the suggestion that donor countries should invest in the training of military prosecutors and judges and the establishment of Mobile Military Courts of Justice. After three years of lobbying, the Congolese Army Chief of Staff had issued a call for the setting up of Follow-Up Committees to monitor proceedings on human rights violations perpetrated by his soldiers and ensure a follow-up. This was a start. As for the UN, Commaert had found that a visible UN presence on the ground could inspire a sense of security among populations and encourage them to continue their daily lives. Of course they had to take action if needed, and limited troops often found themselves saddled with an enormous area of responsibility: the DRC is the size of Western Europe.

Here, Mobile Operating Bases were invaluable. Temporary camps set up in areas dominated by illegal armed groups could lay on intensive day and night patrolling for a few days, before moving to another site, only to return shortly afterwards. This effectively deterred illegal armed groups from settling in the vicinity of villages and committing atrocities. Quick Reaction Forces were able to identify hot-spots through close collaboration with the local chiefs of villages and humanitarian actors on the ground to set up alarm systems that could alert UN forces, using church bells, beating drums or mobile phones. Further measures Commaert was after included supporting the International Criminal Court; strengthening national judicial systems; effective investigation and documentation of alleged sexual violence; and strengthening medical services in places where health infrastructure is often entirely absent. Lastly, "a critical mass of women in peacekeeping missions can enhance confidence-building with the host community by presenting an organisation that looks more like a civilian society than a military occupation force. Military and police components should include female community police, liaison officers and military observers, female medical doctors, and language assistants."

Of course, it wasn't all unalloyed progress. This March, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations had complained bitterly at the decision of the United Nations Human Rights Council not to renew the mandate of its independent expert on human rights for the DRC, calling this "a betrayal of its responsibilities toward the Congolese people." Patrick Commaert had to agree. It was contrary to the UN Secretary General's commitment to intensify actions to end violence against women and children. But, "it shows yet again that any UN mandate is only as strong as member states want it to be."

Commaert's final message however, he directed once again to the commanders of UN military peacekeeping troops:

It doesn't specify in the mandate against whom they have to act: it can be militias, gangs, it can be criminals, and it can be government security forces who may arrest and threaten their own populations. So that means that if you are faithful to your mandate, the force must look into and act in all those eventualities. And that, as you can imagine, has political consequences - because that means that you may find yourself saying to your host nation, 'Hey listen - your forces are misbehaving! Do something about it because otherwise I have to do something about it - I will have to arrest the perpetrators of that violence.' If you want to preserve the credibility of the United Nations in general and your mission in particular, and if you want to keep the confidence of the local populations, then you should act. Otherwise those people will say, 'Why are you here? You are not defending us. You are not protecting us.' Now, of course, you can argue that, 'In my division I had 15,000 troops in an area twice the size of France.' But you have been told to do, 'everything within your capacity and where you are deployed' and you cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening where you are deployed. Don't give me Rwanda, Somalia and Srebrenica. Yes a lot of things went wrong then. But since then, we have made good progress and we can and must do more."

Women targeted by armed conflict

Read the four reports from the conference

The changing face of war

Protecting women and girls in conflict

Sexual Violence not just a gender issue

Pray the devil back to hell

Stop rape now: UN action against sexual violence in conflict

Rosemary Bechler

1. "The bad news"

My lightening visit to the Wilton Park conference on "Women Targeted by Armed Conflict: What Role for Military Peacekeepers?" last Wednesday was a real eye-opener. Since this trip was sandwiched between International Peacekeeping Day on Thursday and Tuesday's release of a new report by Save the Children UK showing that girls and boys in conflict-affected countries such as Sudan, the Ivory Coast and Haiti fail to report sexual exploitation and abuse by some humanitarian aid workers and UN peacekeeping troops through fear, you might expect this revelation to contain further information about abusive peacekeepers. Actually, the eye-opener was about the nature of war today.

The hall and flanking sitting rooms were crammed with high-level military commanders, tacticians and academics with experience of peacekeeping operations; policy-makers from major troop contributing countries (TCCs) and those affected by armed conflict; police commanders, representatives from regional security organisations, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and other high level UN representation. They were all there to address the uncomfortable fact that today, as Patrick Commaert, a Major General recently retired from the Netherlands Armed Forces, put it: "It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in armed conflicts."

This is because of the changing nature of warfare, as a result of which civilians are increasingly not just random, incidental victims of conflict - collateral damage - but targets of it. Captive male combatants are also subjected to sexual torture and terror, but women and girls are the majority of civilians targeted for this particular form of atrocity, on a frightful scale: three out of four women in parts of the Eastern Kivus in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); 90% of all females above the age of three in parts of Liberia; up to 50% of women and girls in Sierra Leone. This sexual violence against women is not confined to rape. International law now encompasses within this definition forced prostitution; sexual slavery; forced impregnation; forced maternity; forced termination of pregnancy; enforced sterilization; indecent assault; trafficking; inappropriate medical examinations and strip searches. These acts amount to a method of warfare when they are used systematically to torture, injure, extract information, degrade, threaten, intimidate or punish in relation to an armed conflict.

For millennia, sexual violence and rape have been attributed to the opportunistic behaviour of renegade combatants preying on female civilians during the fog of war. After the experiences of the Second World War, the 1949 Geneva Conventions included explicit reference to rape, calling for women to be "especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault." It is interesting to see that this talk of "honour" has been subsequently interpreted by judicial bodies as an attack against the psychological and physical integrity of the victim as an individual, rather than as a community symbol - since it is precisely social, political and religious norms identifying women and girls as the property of men that has turned them into such potent tools of war, when violence against women constitutes a direct attack on the values or "honour" of the enemy community.

But now there is gathering evidence of commanders 'turning a blind eye' towards mass actions, as well as explicit command leading to sexual violence and humiliation. It was the sheer scale and magnitude of sexual violence in the Balkans and Rwanda that made this impossible for the world to ignore. Today, this is a recognised characteristic of recent conflicts on the Security Council's agenda in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Somalia, Chad - the list continues. There are of course problems with gathering evidence. In particular in the case of women who have been raped, atrocities go unreported because the community's reaction is often to stigmatise the victim rather than prosecute the perpetrator. Only 2% of the perpetrators of reported cases of rape in the DRC province of South Kivu were taken to court. Even if a perpetrator was arrested, he will be released when an agreement is reached outside court with the family of the victim. Meanwhile, a study conducted there suggested that 45% of raped women were subsequently rejected by their husbands.

There is a new understanding among peacekeepers as well of the spiral of descent that can grip these conflict zones. Peacekeepers make a key distinction between 'widespread and systematic' sexual violence and that which is 'widespread and opportunistic'. The former is a crime against humanity - an organised campaign directed against the civilian population contrary to international law. The conference press briefing contained a thought-provoking definition: this is 'rape as a sexual manifestation of aggression, rather than an aggressive manifestation of sexuality.' 'Widespread and opportunistic' sexual violence however describes something very different. When rape is perpetrated on a massive scale with apparent impunity by armed actors, state and non-state alike, ordinary citizens may feel they too can get away with it, and they do. Rape becomes socially normalised and generalised.

This happens in traumatised post-conflict societies, where demobilised militias flood back into communities awash with small arms and light weapons, "without the requisite psychological debrief for reintegration into civilian life and standards." Peacekeepers find that this sort of social breakdown makes a mockery of efforts to reassert the rule of law, and profoundly undermines community recovery and the long-term sustainability of any peace efforts. It also poses massive tactical challenges to peacekeepers because of the vast range of contexts in which it occurs, in homes, streets, fields or woods.

The current climate of impunity in most post conflict contexts allows the many forms of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, to flourish. In a climate of impunity, sexual violence can be safely committed without perpetrators risking arrest, prosecution or punishment. When this happens, there is a risk that sexual violence will degenerate into a widespread and systematic crime. Often the political will to end the vicious cycle of impunity does not exist. In the DRC, for example, all armed groups involved in the conflict have perpetrated sexual violence against women and girls, and Government security forces have become the largest violator of human rights. It is in such degenerated contexts as those in the DRC, Liberia and Haiti, that a minority of UN personnel and other international actors have also been implicated in perpetrating sexual violence. In Wilton Park, military peacekeepers were gathered to discuss not just the implied leadership problem behind infringements by their own personnel and the growing call for a revival of a dedicated unit to deal with it - but the much wider challenge of what to do about this new form of conflict. It is a carnage that the military has been slow simply to see - and to acknowledge as the major security issue that it is.

Women targeted by armed conflict

Read the four reports from the conference

The changing face of war

Protecting women and girls in conflict

Sexual Violence not just a gender issue

Pray the devil back to hell

Stop rape now: UN action against sexual violence in conflict

Also on openDemocracy: Anne-Marie Goetz, "War and sexual violence: an issue of security" plus an interview with John Holmes, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs

 

 

Rosemary Bechler

We linked to a notice of the upcoming exciting Women's Peace Building Cyber-Dialogues on October 21. Mavic has written to us with a brief report-back from that event:

"As part of the 5th anniversary of United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security, the International Women's Tribune Centre in collaboration with Isis-WICCE convened a Peace-Building CyberDialogue on UNSCR 1325. Envisioned as a global town hall meeting, this 'real time' discussion with voice and web camera facilities, connected women working on peace-building issues at the national and community levels with gender advocates, policy makers and diplomats meeting at the UN as well as with women attending the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) International Forum in Bangkok, Thailand.
 
Women gathered in Nepal, the Philippines, Timor Leste, Uganda and Zimbabwe as well as in Bangkok, Thailand and New York, USA to discuss their experiences with using UNSCR 1325, including ways to use the resolution to strengthen women's participation in key decision-making bodies that deal with peace and security issues and the issues that they want to bring to the attention of decision makers. Participants in New York included Rachel Mayanja, the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women. Ms. Mayanja noted the women's concerns and suggestions and took their messages to the Open Debate of the UN Security Council, which took place immediately following the CyberDialogue.
 
Peace activists from Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as advocates from Canada who came for the UN Security Council Meeting in New York also joined the peace-building cyberdialogues.
 
Some of the key points that participants in the cyberdialogues raised were:

-        the need to ensure that women understand SCR 1325 and along with this, their need to be trained to gain skills in negotiation and in understanding and analyzing conflict - so that they can participate more effectively in discussions and negotiations on peace and security issues  

-        the need to educate the general public to develop a broad constituency of people who are aware of the issues [arising from conflict and those that bring about conflict] and how these can impact on their daily lives

Rosemary Bechler

 

For many of you, Senator Mobina Jaffer, Chair of the Canadian Committee on Women, Peace and Security will need no introduction. Others may like to read my profile of her in today’s article. She was one of many people I went to see to try and understand how to assess the success of Resolution 1325 to date. I met someone who was always looking forward to the next day’s opportunities, whatever had happened yesterday. So I asked her for a message for the Women Making a Difference bloggers, and I think she was just the person to ask. This was her message to you all:

“I have spent some time reading the posts in this blog and I am energised by the passion and in many cases, frustration shared about the international results to date of resolution 1325.
 
I too am frustrated.  I want to see change happen now.  I don’t want to have to travel back to places like Darfur and witness the scars, both physical and emotional. I know that as impatient as I am to see change, my sisters in Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, the DRC and Iraq are even more impatient. They know what the cost of war and the value of real peace are where they are actively involved in decision-making.
 
Don’t give up. Don’t be overwhelmed by the obstacles that are faced as we move this important issue forward. It is only through the collaboration and partnership of our sisters around the globe that the commitments in 1325 will be fully realised. Change is taking place, we are moving forward. Our efforts are paying off so please stay strong. The work of one woman is like a stone dropped into the water. The ripples cast go on and on.”

Rosemary Bechler

Yesterday, one of our readers sent us the following message and link:

“Dear friends
please read this when you have the time. Its about terrorism and the politics of violence, and (I think)  has something to do with your interests. If you agree, please put the link on your website, or pass it on... “

http://www.himalmag.com/2005/september/cover_story.html

Well, I for one, do agree. It’s great to to be offered something to read on our last official day of blogging on UN Resolution 1325 that opens up an even wider historical debate on violence that could keep us going for months!

Rosemary Bechler

Today, I received a hasty message from Dyab Abou Jahjah, head of the Arab European League, a movement which started in Belgium and spread to the Netherlands and France. I interviewed him for openDemocracy and occasionally after that, he came into our discussion forums. I remember him telling us about his most recent book, which has some themes that might interest Women Making a Difference bloggers. He wrote:

“Honestly, I am disgusted by extremists on both sides. More and more I am aware of the necessity of a democratic alternative, a radical democratic alternative. This society as it is today, locally and globally, is going nowhere.

I am writing a book now that is focused on the Arab world and Islam. I will be looking at history, and advocating a new Arab nationalist left project for the future. I will consider Islam and call for reformism, a protestant Islam, an Islam that gives religion back to the people - taking religion away from the multitude of churches and popes.

I will be defending the right of religious practice like the hijab out of a democratic analysis, but I will be attacking the hijab itself and proving that it is no Islamic obligation but rather a social-stratification tradition that turned theological. I recently said in an interview that the veil is not an Islamic obligation, that I will educate my daughter not to wear one, but that if one woman “believed” that it is part of “her” religion in her own interpretation of that religion that that woman has the democratic right to practice “her” religion as “she” understands it and not as I do. Now that I am expressing these views, fundamentalists and extremists on both sides attack me. But I think that this is the price to pay and it is one I am happy to pay.

I am glad to exchange ideas and views, in openDemocracy and elsewhere. Please let me know what you think of all this.”

Today he wrote to say that events in France are hectic at the moment, but that we might like to have a look at a recent comment piece by him on that subject.