We think his hair is also a crime against humanity... On Monday this week one of the world’s “most wanted”, former Bosnia Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, was arrested by Serbian security forces on war crimes charges. After questioning in Belgrade he will be sent to The Hague to stand trial. Karadzic has been accused of genocide by the UN, charges that include the massacre of 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men in Srebrenica in July 1995.
While the conflict in the former Yugoslavia brought the use of mass rape as a tool of genocide to international attention—the racist implications of which are astounding, this had to happen in Europe before anyone started paying attention—there are several issues of international humanitarian law that bear greater feminist scrutiny; particularly this focus in the west on sexual violence against women rather than seeing all of conflict as inherently gendered—and women as a part of the entirety of conflict. This is in no way is intended to imply that sexual violence is not a horrific part of the gendered nature of war, but that it is a part of a large whole.
War, conflict, and violence exist within gendered societies, so it would be impossible for them to exist outside these systems. This does not mean that conflict is gender neutral—on the contrary, the gendered nature of conflict means that its effects are felt differently by men and women and children. For many scholars in the west it has become easier to focus on gender based violence because most people recognize violence against women as having something to do with gender. It is more difficult to explain how legal and educational systems (for example) are gendered. Violent conflict generally exacerbates gender inequity, and so we must address all the ways in which power and social normative are a part of conflict.
OK, mini-lecture over. What this means is that when we look at conflict areas we need to look at why Karadzic ordered the massacre of Bosnian men (many such massacres took place with their families watching) to send a message to those communities, and why violence against women is such an effective tool of war. Also we need to look at the ways in which women rebuild—the need for legal help for women who are unable to own land and who have no male family members left, the ways in which girl children loose advances they had gained in education and healthcare after conflict, and how women can be a part of institutional rebuilding. I don’t claim to have the answers, just more questions.
International law is supposed to provide protections both for those participating and those in the path of conflict, most visibly with the Geneva Convention. Interestingly, international human rights law remains one of the most gendered institutions of the bunch. Of the 42 specific protections for women in the Geneva Conventions, almost half deal not with women, but with the social roles they play. In other words the law is not addressing women as individuals, but as mothers and wives. While this may seem a semantic argument because so many women are mothers and wives, it speaks to the worldview of women not as individuals, but as archetypes.
So, in this year of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we need to look at how we can make women’s rights human rights, and how we can make these concepts not simply the dream of idealists, but truly universal.
A Few More Things:
A Lay Midwife Gains Unexpectedly Vocal Allies
More Trouble for the One Million Signatures Campaign
Only Woman on the Afghan Olympic Team Flees
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