The latest UN Security Council resolution on women and peace and security – resolution 2242 - passed on October 13, introduces a theme new to the Council’s deliberations in this area: gender and terrorism. It notes that terrorism has a specific impact on women and girls’ human rights, it expresses deep concern about the use of sexual violence as part of the strategy and ideology of some violent extremists, it calls for greater integration of gender throughout activities to counter terrorism and violent extremism and it urges Member States and the UN to address the conditions conducive to the rise of violent extremism, including by supporting the empowerment of women. For many feminist peace activists this new thematic focus of the Security Council triggers an ambivalent reaction. On the one hand, the military tactics of some extremists have fundamentally and explicitly attacked women’s security and freedoms and require concerted international responses in defense of women’s rights. On the other hand, the notion of engaging women in efforts to counter violent extremism (CVE) sounds dangerously as if women will be ‘weaponized’ in this fight, and in ways that surely can put them – and perhaps also the project of gender equality – at deadly risk.
Where does this idea come from? Counter-terrorism efforts have tended to perpetuate standard gender stereotypes of men as fighters and women as victims. This of course misses the nuances of insurgents’ social and political tactics, which have seen extremist groups reaching out to women in conflict-affected and fragile states, sometimes more effectively than moderates. Extremists have been portrayed as relying primarily on violent indoctrination, recruiting women and girls to their ranks though kidnapping and sexual and other forms of torture and coercion. But as increasingly recognized, they have also developed positive strategies to appeal to women, recruiting far beyond directly affected communities using social media, offering women a range of combat-related roles (for instance logistics, procurement, recruitment) as well as invoking women’s important roles in families and communities.
While there is absolutely no question that certain religious extremists specifically and directly target women of other faiths for sexual torture and humiliation, and seek explicitly to end social and political arrangements for gender equality and women’s rights, there is not much to be gained as seeing women mainly as victims. This is because there are no “frontlines” as in past wars. As evident from the great difficulty in locating and rescuing women and girls kidnapped by Boko Haram or ISIS, violent extremists infiltrate communities and households, or fade into lawless unmapped territories, greatly increasing the difficulties of identifying targets and the risks that civilians will be disproportionately harmed in counter-terrorism efforts. In these contexts, new types of tactics are needed.
