The National Action Plan On Women, Peace and Security offers a powerful opportunity to move towards a gender responsive and informed framework of peace and security, but it will require vigilance to insure that it is truly implemented in a way that assures women’s human rights.

Click here to read the entire WMC piece.

(a)  The United States recognizes that promoting women’s participation in conflict prevention, management, and resolution, as well as in post conflict relief and recovery, advances peace, national security, economic and social development, and international cooperation.

(b)  The United States recognizes the responsibility of all nations to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, including when implemented by means of sexual violence.  The United States further recognizes that sexual violence, when used or commissioned as a tactic of war or as a part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilians, can exacerbate and prolong armed conflict and impede the restoration of peace and security.

(c)  It shall be the policy and practice of the executive branch of the United States to have a National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security (National Action Plan).

Sec. 2.  National Action Plan.  A National Action Plan shall be created pursuant to the process outlined in Presidential Policy Directive 1 and shall identify and develop activities and initiatives in the following areas:

(a)  National integration and institutionalization.  Through interagency coordination, policy development, enhanced professional training and education, and evaluation, the United States Government will institutionalize a gender responsive approach to its diplomatic, development, and defense-related work in conflict-affected environments.

(b)  Participation in peace processes and decisionmaking.  The United States Government will improve the prospects for inclusive, just, and sustainable peace by promoting and strengthening women’s rights and effective leadership and substantive participation in peace processes, conflict prevention, peacebuilding, transitional processes, and decisionmaking institutions in conflict-affected environments.

(c)  Protection from violence.  The United States Government will strengthen its efforts to prevent    and protect women and children from    harm, exploitation, discrimination, and abuse, including sexual and gender-based violence and trafficking in persons, and to hold perpetrators accountable in conflict-affected environments.

(d)  Conflict prevention.  The United States Government will promote women’s roles in conflict prevention, improve conflict early warning and response systems through the integration of gender perspectives, and invest in women and girls’ health, education, and economic opportunity to create conditions for stable societies and lasting peace.

(e)  Access to relief and recovery.  The United States Government will respond to the distinct needs of women and children in conflict affected disasters and crises, including by providing safe, equitable access to humanitarian assistance.

The National Action Plan is a significant addition to U.S. policy and long overdue.  The potential impact of this order is huge.  In an address at Georgetown University, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said,

This is not just a woman’s issue. It cannot be relegated to the margins of international affairs. It truly does cut to the heart of our national security and the security of people everywhere, because the sad fact is that the way the international community tries to build peace and security today just isn’t getting the job done. Dozens of active conflicts are raging around the world, undermining regional and global stability, and ravaging entire populations. And more than half of all peace agreements fail within five years. At the same time, women are too often excluded from both the negotiations that make peace and the institutions that maintain it. Now of course, some women wield weapons of war — that’s true — and many more are victims of it. But too few are empowered to be instruments of peace and security.

Clinton went on to cite examples of why the NAP is so crucial, pointing in particular to recent attacks on women in Egypt by security forces in the aftermath of the Egyptian overthrow of the mubarek government,

“This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonours the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform and is not worthy of a great people,” she told an audience at Georgetown University.

She called the events of the past few days “shocking”.

Unfortunately, there is nothing shocking about what happened in Egypt.  Women’s human rights improved somewhat during the decade preceding the overthrow of Mubarek, but this State Department report from 2010 points to the still systemic misogyny in Egypt before the uprising.  Specifics about violence against women include,

The law prohibits rape, prescribing penalties of 15 to 25 years’ imprisonment or life imprisonment for cases involving armed abduction. The number of cases investigated was small because women were reluctant to report rape. Spousal rape is not illegal. According to a 2007 study by the National Center for Criminal and Social Research, there were approximately 20,000 cases of rape annually.

Although the law does not prohibit domestic violence or spousal abuse, provisions of law relating to assault may be applied with accompanying penalties. However, the law requires that an assault victim produce multiple eyewitnesses, which is a difficult condition for a domestic abuse victim…

…The law does not specifically address honor crimes, in which a man violently assaults or kills a woman, usually a family member, because of a perceived lack of chastity. There were no reliable statistics regarding the extent of honor killings, but observers believed such killings took place during the year, particularly in rural areas.

Sex tourism existed in Luxor and at beach resorts such as Sharm El-Sheikh. Most sex tourists came from Europe and the Persian Gulf region.

There is no specific law criminalizing sexual harassment, but the government prosecuted sexual harassment under existing law. Sexual harassment remained a serious problem. A 2008 ECWR survey found that 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women in the country had been sexually harassed and that approximately half of women surveyed faced harassment daily.

Also, significantly, while women were actively involved in the uprising, like so many social movements before, women’s human rights were not an integral part of the agenda.  In fact in the aftermath, as Foreign Affairs points out,  the blowback against those rights has been a serious issue,

After the revolution, conservative forces argued that women’s rights laws passed under Mubarak, like all remnants of his regime, were illegitimate and should be repudiated. For example, several thousand Salafis demonstrated outside of al-Azhar University in Cairo in May, demanding the return of educational authority solely to fathers. The general secretary of the High Council of Islamic Affairs, a government body, called for lowering maternal custody ages from the current age of 15 to age six for boys and nine for girls. Challenges came from supposedly liberal forces as well. In April, the Freedoms Committee of the Journalists’ Syndicate held a conference condemning the current women’s rights standards in Egypt. Three months later, Judge Abdallah al Baga, president of the Family Court of Appeal, submitted a draft bill to the prime minister that called for abolishing khula divorce and reinstating, under some conditions, a practice in which husbands can forcibly return “disobedient” wives to their homes – a practice that has been outlawed since the 1960s.

That Clinton finds the recent violence “shocking” is baffling given that her own State Department produced a report pointing to systemic misogynist violence and abuse less than two years ago. Regardless of the overthrow of Mubarek, at no point has there been any indication that an improvement in women’s rights was on the table and as the Foreign Affairs quote about makes clear, there has been a great deal of concern that things may become worse for women.

There are other reasons to be somewhat guarded in being optimistic about the NAP–The U.S. didn’t give a fig about women’s rights in Afghanistan until it was politically useful to the selling of our invasion.  Ditto Iraq.   It is also worth noting that the U.S. does not consider itself subject to the International Criminal Court, which has the power to prosecute rape and sexual assault as a war crime, yet, as I pointed out in November,  it was very supportive of of the ICC’s charges of rape by Libyan forces prior to the overthrow of Qaddafi, despite the fact that neither Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch could substantiate the charges.

If the U.S. is serious about implementing the NAP, one good place to start would be in our own military.  While more sexual assaults and rapes are being reported and more charges being brought, the rate of conviction is still extremely low.  The NAP could also be used to address the severe impact that the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq  have had on women in those countries.  It can also be used to address the ongoing violence against women in countries like Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo where they U.S. has been all but silent regarding these ongoing atrocities.

So while there is cause to celebrate the creation of the National Action Plan On Women, Peace and Security, we should not do so through a rose colored lens.  The NAP has the potential of being a very potent addition to such existing women’s human rights tools as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 which addresses many of these same points.  But as the United States’ selective support of the ICC indicates, we need to be vigilant in insisting that it not be subverted as a tool of U.S. imperialism.

Tawakul Karman

As the award of a Nobel Peace Prize to Yemen’s Tawakkol Karman reminds us, women have played a very prominent role in the Arab Spring.  While we celebrate their activism, we need to be mindful that this in and of itself does not secure women’s rights as part of the change taking place in the Middle East.  In August I was asked to write a piece for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom‘s fall newsletter about rape as a weapon of war in Libya.  In the interim between when I wrote the piece and when it was published, Gaddafi has been ousted.  It is interesting to note that the rumors about Viagra like drugs that made such a splash when they first circulated have dropped from sight.  We may never know if they were true.  But as I point out in the article, reprinted with permission below, the real issue is the use of rape as a weapon of war.

Rape as a Weapon of War in Libya:  New Permutations on an Old Theme

Earlier this year, reports began to surface alleging the use of Viagra-like drugs to encourage Libyan troops to rape women as a tactic in their fight with Libyan rebels, leading the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to call for a complete investigation of the charges and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to say that she was, “deeply concerned” about the changes.If indeed the allegations prove true, they would represent a new variation on an old tactic and not only should those who committed these crimes be prosecuted, those who made the drugs available should be prosecuted as well.  While pharmaceutical companies try to sell their little blue pills with advertisements showing couples exchanging knowing looks while they walk through fields of flowers, the potential abuse of these drugs as weapons of war is all too easy to believe.

Neither Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch have been able to verify the reports however, so there is also the disturbing question of whether false rape charges are instead the weapon in question.  Regardless of whether impotency drugs have been used and whether women have been raped or whether allegations of such rapes are being trumped up and used as a political and military tactic, the truth remains that rape is a weapon of war and women’s bodies continue  to be used as the battleground in wars of male supremacy, wars that don’t take place on actual battlegrounds but instead are fought in cities and towns and in refugee camps where women and children, the most vulnerable civilians, become the collateral damage of war.

In Iraq, the number of honor killings rose dramatically after the U.S. invasion and  more recently, in Tehran, women protesting the government have been attacked.  In Congo, women in refugee camps are gang-raped with impunity. In Burma, the army uses rape as a weapon of terror in their fight with Shan forces. In Bosnia, there were mass rapes, in Rwanda too.  In the U.S. military, female soldiers are more likely to be attacked by male soldiers than by any enemy.

These are the dots we need to connect. We are horrified every time we hear such reports.  How could such a thing happen?  And more importantly, how can it keep happening time and time again?  While each and every instance of these abuses is horrific in its own right, we need to understand that they are not one time incidents but rather the systemic and perpetual violation of women and we need to insist that we address the underlying problem and not just its manifestations. Where there is conflict and where there are military forces, there is rape and sexual abuse.

Reports of the use of Viagra (and similar drugs) in Libya are disturbing and the International Criminal Court’s quick investigation into the allegations is significant for several reasons.  A bit of history provides the context for more fully understanding the issues involved.

The ICC came into being in 2002 as an independent body (contrary to popular belief, it is not part of the United Nations) to investigate and prosecute war crimes.  Of particular importance, the ICC recognizes rape and sexual assault as a war crime, allowing for the first time, a global standard for the prosecution of one of the most heinous weapons of war and the one that impacts women and girls the most severely.  Over time, as militant forces come to understand that they will be held accountable for the use of rape as a tool of war, one would hope that understanding will act as a deterrent to such crimes.

The Rome Statute, which established the Court was signed by 148 countries.  Seven countries voted against it, including the U.S. and Libya.

It is therefore supremely ironic that the U.S. pushed for the ICC’s prosecution of Libyan war crimes. But make no mistake, the U.S. does not consider itself bound by the jurisdiction of the ICC which would leave it quite obviously vulnerable to prosecution for such things as what happened at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and also the rape of servicewomen within the ranks of its own military.

If the charges  cannot be substantiated by human rights groups, then the issue that needs to be investigated is the issue of false allegations for political and military gain.

Regardless of whether rape itself has taken place or whether instead false allegations of rape have been made, we must insist that what has occurred not be isolated and treated as a singular event but rather as a part of the pandemic war against women that is a systemic part of the global wars for power and domination.  We also have to insist that the rules apply to all. The arrogant assumption of different standards of human rights based on might speaks directly to the root cause of why these crimes take place and until we are willing to confront that duplicity, they will continue to occur.

–Lucinda Marshall, 2011

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Further reading:

Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/rape

About the International Criminal Court
http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/About+the+Court/

US “Hypocrisy” on Libya and International Criminal Court
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/03/01-24

U.S. continues Bush policy of opposing ICC prosecutions
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/28/war_crimes

Rape Reporting During War
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/67936

Last week I had the privilege of sitting in on a Senate hearing held by Sen. Barbara Boxer on Women and the Arab Spring.  The need for U.S. support of UNSCR 1325 as well as the importance of the U.S. finally ratifying CEDAW came up.  Boxer voiced her support for CEDAW and promised to work to get it through the Senate.  This is a huge boost for it’s passage and hopefully the U.S. will soon join the rest of the world in supporting this crucial tool for women’s human rights.

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Note:  If you have not already seen it, I highly recommend Abigail Disney’s amazing film series, Women, War and Peace on PBS, which can also be viewed online.  The series makes a very significant contribution in raising awareness about how war impacts women and how women can and need to be involved in peacemaking.

Now there is a group called Ethical Oil that is using Saudi women’s human rights as a justification for proceeding with the environmentally devastating Tar Sands project.

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While the human rights of Saudi women are unquestionably being seriously violated, that has been true for some time and we have done little to help them because we need Saudi oil.  And we continued to support the Saudi regime even though most of the 911 attackers were Saudi.  But now it is convenient to say that we support Saudi women, regardless of the fact that Tar Sands will do nothing to help Saudi women and is also detrimental to women who live near the project.  Maryam Adrangi explains,

The premise is that supporting “conflict oil” from Saudi Arabia would prop up a regime that is oppressive to women. The underlying motive, however, is not to talk about women’s liberation, but rather to deflect negative attention from the tar sands.

If women’s rights were of genuine concern to EthicalOil.org (and all the individuals that make it possible such as Ezra Levant, Alykhan Velshi, Kathryn Marshall, and their corporate oil buddies) then there would be conversation about the impacts that tar sands extraction has on women.

The tar sands boom has created dangerous jobs with long hours, fostering a culture of alcohol and substance abuse in the off hours. As a result, rates of sexual violence towards women have increased and women working in the industry have reported sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and unequal pay. Gender-based discrimination have also resulted in unequal access to higher paying jobs in communities in the region, and with skyrocketing housing prices and costs of living, there is also unequal access to housing.  Increases in female homelessness exacerbate the challenges faced by women in the area.

Climate Connections has more on this here and Grist covers it here.

The, Feminist Peace Network recently started another website, Occupy Patriarchy, which is focusing on bringing a feminist perspective to the Occupy movement.  One of the things that has quickly become apparent to us is that for women to participate in Occupy events, they need to feel safe.  There have been a number of incidents of sexual assault, harassment and rape and how some of those incidents have been handled has been distressing.  It is clear that is something that needs to be addressed but the right, which is fighting a losing battle to control the message in the face of the Occupy movement  has seized on this as a reason to shut down Occupy camps.

Brandon Darby offers this twisted logic on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website,

The reality is that ideological underpinnings of the Occupy movement–such as collectivism, “consensus” decision making, and antipathy towards law enforcement—often lend themselves to the disorder that predators see as opportunity. Far from “empowering” women, the Occupy movement’s anarchist and socialist principles and policies are exposing female activists to greater danger. They cannot maintain order because they are in the midst of rebelling against it.

Right and capitalism, which allows such things as human trafficking and the porn industry to flourish while funding for domestic violence programs is slashed is perfectly safe for women? And unfortunately, it would appear that there are also those in the Occupy movement that feel that damsel rescuing is the honorable metaphor to use.  Via Feminists Occupy London:

The fallacy of the Damsels in Distress argument is so transparent that it should really be a litmus test–if you have to invoke it in order to win your point, it is a losing idea, so quit acting like you think we should thank you.

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This Sunday, November 6th, Tar Sands activists are planning to encircle the White House to let President Obama know that proceeding with this horribly destructive project is a bad idea.  I plan to be there and my sign will say, “Saudi Women’s Lives Are Not A Call For Tar Sands”.

While occupying Wall Street is important, taking a step back, we are reminded that Wall Street is a manifestation and tool of the much larger problem of patriarchal control and power which has been plaguing us for thousands of years and which depends in large part on the exploitation, subjugation and control of women.  Put bluntly, the harms experienced by women as a result of global economic policies are, in aggregate, different and often far worse than those experienced by men.

The majority of people living in poverty are female, in this country women are lucky to make 77 cents on the male dollar (women of color often earn far less than that).  Women are forced to do the overwhelming majority of unpaid work such as child and elder care and housework.  In times of economic instability, women are more vulnerable to intimate violence while at the same time social services that could help them are cut.  We are still paying more for health care and our access to reproductive health services is under siege. And throughout the world women are more likely to go hungry and poverty forces women into sexual slavery.

If we truly want to change the economic paradigm, these issues must be integral to the agenda, yet they are being marginalized and all but invisible in the Occupy movement.  When women dare to bring them up, we are met with the very tired and patriarchy preserving saws about looking at the whole and not being divisive. In a blog post that is sadly reminiscent of Robin Morgan’s description in her book, Demon Lover of the same problem in the early days of second wave feminism,  Angie Becker Stevens writes about the phenomenon for Ms Magazine,

On the other side of the coin, though, the ‘Occupy’ movement needs to embrace feminism as part of its cause. The folks I know personally who have been working tirelessly for the movement in New York are committed to a platform opposing all forms of oppression. But those views are not necessarily a reflection of all who are “occupying” New York and elsewhere. In the short time I’ve been involved with the developing Occupy Detroit movement, I have already met with resistance from some people when trying to bring gender—as well as race and sexual orientation—into the dialogue. The arguments given are probably familiar to any feminist activist who has engaged in broader-based movements: that we will only dilute our message if we start talking about all these different issues at once; that we need to focus on this one big issue that affects all of us; that we’ll deal with all these “social issues” later.

Many—typically straight white men—claim that talking about gender and race will only divide us, when what we need is to be standing together and focusing on how we’re all the same. But the reality is that we do not all experience oppression in the same ways. There is value in uniting–the ‘Occupy’ movement’s slogan that “we are the 99%” is a powerful one–but our experiences still differ based on race, class, gender and sexual orientation. It is perhaps a well-intentioned notion to imagine that we can unite in a way that transcends these categories, but it’s a notion that has no basis in the reality of our society. Because these categories, however artificially constructed they might be, still play a huge role in how and to what degree we are exploited, it is impossible to fight oppressive forces without acknowledging the reality of how they function. We can stand in solidarity with one another without pretending that our experiences are identical. In fact, I would argue that the only true solidarity is one in which we fully recognize and respect both how our struggles are alike and how they differ.

Not surprisingly, there have also been blatant episodes of sexist, misogynistic objectivity such as Steven Greenstreet’s Hot Chicks of Wall Street video and blog which purports to attract guys to Occupy because there are “smart hot chicks” there.  Then there is this horrific tidbit from Peter J. Reilly at Forbes,

What better way is there to “neutralize” a dissenter than by having her and especially him sexually assaulted or even merely threatened.  The humiliation is unbearable.

“Especially him”?  The implication would seem to be that women are used to sexual assault so it is no big deal.

It is critical that we not let such statements pass unnoticed for the supposed greater good of the cause and it is also crucial that we insist that the needs of the 99% not be reduced to a homogenous white male centric vision of what is needed. Real change on Wall Street will only come from addressing the root problem of patriarchy.

Towards this end, the Feminist Peace Network has started a new project called Occupy Patriarchy which will work towards bringing together those of us who are confronting and addressing the issue of patriarchy within the Occupy movement.  The project was conceived of in partnership with feminist scholar and activist Kathy Miriam who was one of first people to begin to articulate what has been happening and whose work has been a catalyst in my own thinking.  We have set up both a website and a Facebook page where we will be posting links to work being done throughout the country and the world as well as commentary and guest posts from other activists.  We invite you to become part of this effort.