Vijeyarasa, Ramona --- "Women at the Margins of International Law: Reconceptualizing Dominant Discourses on Gender and Transitional Justice" [2013] UTSLRS 17; (2013) International Journal of Transitional Justice 1

Last Updated: 12 May 2017

Review Essay

Women at the Margins of International Law: Reconceptualizing Dominant Discourses on Gender and Transitional Justice

On the Frontlines: Gender, War, and the Post-Conflict Process, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Dina Francesca Haynes and Naomi Cahn. Oxford University Press, December 2011, 368pp. ISBN: 9780195396645 – hardcover (£60).

Feminist Perspectives on Contemporary International Law: Between Resistance and Compliance? Eds. Sari Kouvo and Zoe Pearson. Hart Publishing, May 2011, 250pp. ISBN: 9781841134284 – hardcover (£36).

Gender in Transitional Justice, eds. Susanne Buckley-Zistel and Ruth Stanley. Palgrave Macmillan, November 2011, 312pp. ISBN: 9780230246225 – hardcover (£63).

To most women’s rights academics and practitioners, the need to analyse and give weight to the various gender dimensions of any conflict and postconflict context is obvious. Yet, even more recent developments, such as International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutions, have demonstrated an inability to make substantial progress in addressing gender-based crimes. A growing body of literature over the past decade, and particularly the last five years, has analysed this trend in international law and directed staunch criticisms at the failure of transitional justice adequately to take into account gender and violations of women’s rights in all their forms.
As has been witnessed globally, gender-based violence is frequently an element of conflict. Impunity is pervasive and women often lack access to justice to address such crimes. While UN Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888, 1889 and 1960 on women, peace and security and sexual violence in conflict have helped to garner global commitment to ending violence against women and ensuring women’s participation in postconflict processes, criminal courts have had limited success in prosecuting the violations of women’s rights that take place in times of conflict.
Moreover, much of the global discourse on postconflict justice has focused on crimes against women that are of a sexual nature. Even the jurisprudence that emerged from the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, which has been heralded for redefining how sexual violence is categorized and prosecuted under international law, ignores the many distinct gender-based violations that do not fit the sexual violence victim archetype.^[1] Furthermore, interventions are often timebound. They fail to step adequately beyond the immediate postconflict period and to support essential long-term social and cultural change that would help to challenge norms around masculinities (and machismo) and femininities (and the ‘inviolability’ of women’s bodies) and to help create more sustainable and substantive change in women’s lives.
Effectively, the pursuit of ‘gender justice’ in transitional contexts is aimed at ensuring that crimes of sexual violence are given adequate weight. Simultaneously, it is aimed at seeing gender considerations factored into, or mainstreamed throughout, all interventions in conflict and postconflict contexts, recognizing crimes and harms of a nonsexual nature as well.
This task is a mammoth one. We must also acknowledge the political reality that is often present in the immediate aftermath to any conflict. Truth commissions, peace deals and trials come about after hard-fought political negotiations and compromises. Feminist academics and practitioners are effectively fighting for gender to be mainstreamed throughout transitional justice processes that are already at the margins of political processes.^[2] To put it simply, women’s rights and gender justice are at the margins of the margins of international law.
The books under review here attempt to tackle these concerns to varying degrees. All three offer an excellent insight into transitional justice from a feminist perspective, especially when read together. In this respect, the collection edited by Sari Kouvo and Zoe Pearson, Feminist Perspectives, would probably serve better those with a good understanding of gender and transitional justice. This compilation is a worthwhile work by some of the world’s leading feminist theorists, and it offers a challenging and thought-provoking account. The chapters by Hilary Charlesworth, a pioneer feminist international legal scholar, Vasuki Nesiah, whose international legal scholarship specializes in transitional justice, and Alice Edwards, currently a practitioner with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, are must-reads.
Especially when compared to Feminist Perspectives, much of the material presented in On the Frontlines does not feel as provocative. This could be explained by the fact that the positions defended there are not necessarily new and have been stated in earlier writings, including by the three authors.^[3] This is a reflection of the central contribution Dina Francesca Haynes, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Naomi Cahn have made to transitional justice discourse. Their scholarship, much of it authored together, is indeed an impressive and influential collection.^[4] However, some of the gaps identified by these authors in On the Frontlines have been identified elsewhere in earlier sources.^[5] The book nonetheless provides a basic overview of its topic, including of the history of legal sanctions for sexual violence in international humanitarian law, offering readers interested in this issue a consistent and coherent summary.
Finally,Gender in Transitional Justice can only be described as a strong compilation. Susanne Buckley-Zistel and Magdalena Zolkos’ joint introduction to gender justice debates in the literature on postconflict interventions gives the reader a simple but powerful starting point for exploring often untouched or underdiscussed issues. These range from the treatment of sexual minorities, particularly transgender men and women, in Cambodia to sexual violence suffered by women in ‘peacetime’ South Africa. While the chapters by Silke Studzinsky and Angelika von Wahl deserve particular mention for breaking ground on one of the newest subjects in the field – transitional justice and sexuality – several of the volume’s chapters are fresh and valuable contributions to transitional justice debates.

<A>Main Themes
The three books under reviewtackle the treatment of violence and other harms to women in times of conflict and ‘peace.’ On the Frontlines confronts the failure of the‘gender project’ in relation to a broad spectrum of postconflict interventions: postconflict reconstruction, humanitarian missions, transitional justice, field operations, state building, international administration and peacekeeping missions. The authors demand what they consider a fundamental shift, calling for gender to be the central entry point of any conflict-related intervention and for the examination to begin with women. Elaborating this further, the text emphasizes the need to place women and a gender analysis at the centre of any decision to intervene in another state’s affairs, any peace negotiation process, the design and delivery of postconflict reconstruction and, broadly speaking, any development contemplated towards the goal of long-term sustainable peace. The authors define their concept of ‘gender centrality’ as distinct from ‘gender mainstreaming,’ a proposition I analyse below.
Gender in Transitional Justice aims to explore the multifaceted and interrelated roles that both women and men play and how these roles manifest themselves in the context of transitional justice. The compilation is based on moving beyond the ‘singular’ and ‘stereotypical gender categories’ of women as victims of sexual violence and men as perpetrators that occupies a substantial amount of the postconflict literature. The question that governs much of this book is what happens to those stories of victims, perpetrators and bystanders that simply do not fit the mould. This may be because they are out of step with the narratives traditionally told about particular conflicts, like those in Cambodia or South Africa, or because victims refuse to forgive and take the path of justice and reconciliation. In their introductory notes, Buckley-Zistel and Zolkos raise important examples of female victims from South Africa and Peru whose stories are appropriated by truth commissions and reshaped to fit the ‘dominating discourse’ of the institutions (16).^[6] As a result, the compilation tells many rich and enriching stories that are elsewhere left out.
Feminist Perspectives focuses on feminist scholarship’s analysis of why and how women have been marginalized in international law. The chapters explore both theory and practice, and touch on a range of themes central to transitional justice, including a country case study of Afghanistan and of rape as torture. They also discuss issues less central to transitional justice, such as the post-9/11 landscape for nongovernmental organizations and workers’ rights.
The major theme emerging from the three books is the extent to which the feminist project of foregrounding gender has failed to challenge mainstream approaches of international law and transitional justice towards women and women’s rights. Most of the authors suggest that international law cannot merely be pulled and pushed into place and suddenly respond well to women’s concerns. Yet, while the authors critique the failure of mainstream law to address the rights and needs of women, they simultaneously continue to present ways to remould that very framework, within the boundaries of international law, and somehow fix it to better respond to the gender justice project.

<A>Challenging the Status Quo: Women on the Periphery of International Law
In her chapter, Nesiah cites influential feminist philosopher Judith Butler as noting,

It is not enough to inquire into how women might become more fully represented in language and politics. Feminist critique ought also to understand how the category of ‘women’, the subject of feminism, is produced and restrained by the very structure of power through which emancipation is sought. (148)

Butler’s comment captures the issue at the heart of Feminist Perspectives, that is, the shortcomings of the law in addressing gender concerns and yet the reality for feminist practitioners that the law is the primary conduit through which justice and reconciliation operate. The editors of the volume term this the tension ‘between resistance and compliance’ (5). The earlier works of Hilary Charlesworth and Christine Chinkin describe this tension as a two-stage process: first, feminists need to deconstruct the international legal system, challenge the idea that the law is objective, and identify its blind spots vis-à-vis gender and the role it plays in excluding women, and, second, feminists need to reconstruct an international law that does not support men’s oppression of women.^[7]
It is part of this second stage, the solution of ‘gender mainstreaming’ – one that has become common parlance in development discourse – that receives some of the harshest criticism in all three books. Based on the UN definition, gender mainstreaming is understood as ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to the goal of gender equality are central to all activities – policy development, research, advocacy, legislation, dialogues, resource allocation and planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes and projects.
Feminist Perspectives’ primary concern with gender mainstreaming is that it has forced women’s rights activists to seek redress and reform within the law’s existing framework. Yet, the more women ‘work within the mainstream, the more they prop up the structural bias of that same system’ (133). As a result of gender mainstreaming, Charlesworth argues, ‘women’s lives remain on the periphery of international institutions’ (23). In many instances, ‘gender’ has translated into a head count of women, as if numerical equality somehow addresses the injustices suffered by women. Moreover, even here, numerical equality has been out of women’s reach. Charlesworth goes on to outline the reasons for the lack of progress on women’s rights in state building. These include the association of women’s rights with imposed international standards, inevitably in tension with some local cultures, the tendency for the other problems women face to be obscured^[8] and an emphasis on civil and political rights over social, economic and cultural rights, with ‘inadequate attention to the gendered nature of the rules of the game that women are required to play’ (28). These critiques are reiterated in On the Frontlines.
Even where frameworks foster a gender-responsive approach, the books discuss the failure of such efforts to produce a gender-responsive outcome. Louise Chappell, in Gender in Transitional Justice, highlights the manifest failings of the ICC to prosecute the crimes suffered by girl soldiers, despite it being ‘armed with this gender-sensitive Statute’ (46), in the trial of Thomas Lubanga (2009–2012), a former rebel leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the first person to be tried by the Court. While Chappell’s criticism is warranted, the author notes some of the lessons learnt by the ICC in this case and the shift in the prosecutor’s approach in the trials of Jean-Pierre Bemba, concerning the Central African Republic, and Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo, concerning DRC, all charged with sexual violence crimes. It is rightly contended that these could be seen (at least partially) as ‘steps forward’ in terms of gender justice.
The secondary importance given to crimes of sexual violence in prosecutions is also discussed in Gender in Transitional Justice. The chapter, ‘Neglected Crimes: The Challenge of Raising Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia,’ by Silke Studzinsky, is a well-written and fascinating read. It suitably articulates the challenges to gender justice emerging from, first, the widespread perception of the Khmer Rouge regime as highly moralistic and intolerant of crimes of sexual violence, despite substantial evidence of impunity for perpetrators of rape; second, a restrictive understanding of the jurisdiction of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; third, the tendency for crimes of sexual violence to be dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of the deaths that took place at the killing fields, as evidenced by the mass graves identified in Cambodia; and, finally, the lack of specific codification of the crime of forced marriage, which was widespread, in international law.^[9] Most other literature has tended to focus on the mass but not the forced nature of these marriages.
Studzinsky also notes the ‘involuntary’ same-sex relationships that developed in part as a consequence of the forced separation of the sexes, which has been given very little attention in the academic literature.^[10] In addition, Studzinsky discusses the Khmer Rouge’s crimes against sexual minorities considered deviant, including rape, killings and forcible disappearances, and the lack of gender-sensitive mechanisms for obtaining victim testimony. A detailed analysis of state-sponsored crimes against gay men and the extent to which gay men achieve justice in the particular context of Germany is undertaken by Angelika von Wahl in Chapter 7 of the same volume, although the style and content is less compelling.
Ní Aoláin, Haynes and Cahn appear initially more positive about the success of the ‘gender justice’ project, noting that gender analysis figures significantly in transitional justice discourse and has greatly shaped the development and current state of the field. Their critique is directed more at state building for its emphasis on the liberal legal framework, which even within western democratic states, as noted by Charlesworth and Chinkin in their earlier works, often exists contemporaneously with gender discrimination, exclusion and high levels of violence against women.
Despite their positive statements on transitional justice, the authors of On the Frontlines state that none of the models described in the text, including transitional justice, effectively deals with or fully integrates gender. Rather, an enormous institutional gap remains to be filled if we are meaningfully to centralize gender in conversations about state structures and institution building in conflict-affected societies. The authors also express concern with the lack of evidence that women are better protected following UN Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, and the subsequent resolutions noted above – a collection of international efforts aimed at ensuring that women participate in postconflict processes, their voices are heard and taken into consideration and conflict-related sexual violence is addressed.
One of the main concerns I have with the contribution of Ní Aoláin, Hayes and Cahn is, however, their presentation of the concept of ‘gender centrality’ as a more effective and compelling alternative to ‘gender mainstreaming.’ In their view, gender mainstreaming lacks both a clear critique of the gender status quo and a clear articulation of the substance and modalities of gender reform. It is the tendency of gender mainstreaming to be ‘grafted on, rather than being initiated from, an organic assessment of what women want and need’ that concerns the authors (232). They call for a substantial shift in current approaches beyond what appears a tick-box exercise of ‘adding a dash of gender-oriented policy to satisfy mainstreaming requirements’ (233). They particularly challenge the emphasis on civil and political rights at the expense of social and economic conditions that could deliver substantive equality for women, including in the political realm.
In this respect, as mentioned above, On the Frontlines does not quite reach the level of ‘groundbreaking.’ There have been extensive critiques directed towards gender mainstreaming across a range of fields.^[11] The concerns articulated by Ní Aoláin, Hayes and Cahn here are not new. As an alternative to gender mainstreaming, they propose gender centrality, which they define as requiring a commitment to a substantive account of gender equality, embracing not only equality of opportunity for women but also equality of outcomes, as well as a commitment to advancing the quality and capacity of women’s lives in conflict and postconflict societies. It is, however, hard to see a difference between the definition offered of gender centrality and the goals outlined in the many statements, resolutions and guidance notes issued globally since the introduction of the concept of gender mainstreaming or Resolution 1325. While the authors’ concerns are valid, what they appear to be proposing is the ideal scenario if the true intent behind gender mainstreaming were actually fulfilled and if Resolution 1325 (and subsequent resolutions) were effective in practice. The ‘alternative’ model they propose, therefore, fails to compel. This can be contrasted with the well-articulated critiques of the treatment of sexual violence emerging from all three texts, which I discuss below.

<A>The Emancipation of Women from Sexual Violence
Three main issues are worth noting with regard to the treatment of women’s bodies and crimes of sexual violence in transitional justice. The first concerns transitional justice’s and international law’s fixation with women as victims of sexual violence, a critique that is increasingly coming from feminist academics. The second, which is not discussed in the books under review but which I consider fundamental, is more recent research that questions oft-cited data on sexual violence in conflict, discussed below.^[12] Finally, we must also accept the reality that for many women violence is experienced in a continuum between the home and the public sphere. What weight is accorded, therefore, to crimes of domestic or intimate partner violence that are equally suffered by women (or perhaps even aggravated) during times of conflict?
What results from the fixation on women as victims of sexual violence is the tendency to shape women’s identity during and after conflict as passive, vulnerable and in need of (male) protection. Nesiah rightly suggests that bodily integrity injuries such as sexual violence have in fact become the privileged frame for narratives on women. The critiques offered by the three books about this emphasis on sexual violence differ in nature and are most strong in Feminist Perspectives, particularly from authors like Charlesworth and Nesiah. This is addressed to a degree by Ní Aoláin, Hayes and Cahn, although their analysis is directed more at the failure to give weight to sexual violence during conflict as well as postconflict, as opposed to the inexplicable emphasis placed on sexual violence over other violations and the form in which these discussions occur.
Moreover, these crimes of sexual violence have been pressed into preexisting legal categories regarding torture or crimes against humanity as part of transitional justice’s attempt to achieve fuller representation and inclusion of women and the violations they have suffered. The focus on bodily injury has led to the exclusion of other important dimensions of women’s experiences of conflict and the long-term socioeconomic impacts of war – impacts not captured in a focus on sexual violation alone. Not only does this focus risk slippage into sensationalist and salacious aspects of sexual violence, but it also suggests a hierarchy of rights, as if women’s sexual integrity is the foremost or only thing to be valued.
The problematic bias in this focus is even starker given recent research questioning data usually cited on sexual violence in conflict. Unfortunately, the three books predate the publication of this newer analysis and, while it may be unfashionable to raise this issue, an important element missing from these discussions is that sexual violence may simply be less relevant than usually suggested relative to other harms and rights violations suffered by women. A 2012 report released by the Human Security Report Project describes the picture of wartime sexual violence as ‘both partial and often deeply misrepresentative.’^[13]
Some of the concerns raised in this new and challenging study include that the very high levels of sexual violence reported in war-affected Bosnia, Rwanda, DRC, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Sudan are treated as being characteristic of all war-affected countries when they are not; that there is inadequate evidence of the claimed increase in sexual violence in wartime; that commentators fail to draw attention to male victims of sexual violence and female perpetrators; and that most discussion on wartime sexual violence focuses on the worst-affected countries.^[14]
Turning to the continuum of violence suffered between the home and the public sphere, the distinction between conflict and nonconflict sexual violence is raised by all three books, as it has been noted elsewhere.^[15] As stated in the books under review, when truth commissions and other transitional efforts do not widen their examination of the narrative of conflict to violations that take place in ‘private’ spaces, they limit a deeper telling of the gendered nature of conflict and its differential impact on men and women.
While all of the above critiques are entirely legitimate, it should be conceded that feminist academic engagement itself has focused on bodily injury.^[16] Moreover, little guidance has emerged, from feminist scholarship or elsewhere, as to what the continuum of violence suffered between the home and the public sphere between times of conflict and ‘peace’ actually means for our interventions.

<A>Incorporating Feminist Methods in International Law: Pluralistic, Home-Grown Change
Feminist perspectives in transitional justice discourse have tended to challenge the idea that a court is the forum best suited to advancing justice goals. Truth commissions tend to adopt judicial techniques, devoted to a case-by-case determination of who is a victim and who is a perpetrator. Truth commissions have large investigative units, and their public hearings are used to consolidate evidence and clarify witnesses’ stories. From a feminist perspective, courts and even truth commissions are particularly inhospitable fora for women’s testimonies, focusing on perpetrators and not the dignity of victims or their priorities for justice.^[17]
Several of the authors attempt to offer methodologies that may help to achieve more gender-sensitive and responsive outcomes. As Charlesworth argues in Feminist Perspectives, ‘Feminist messages without feminist methods are unlikely to bring change’ (24). It is in the other two texts that we really get to see what some of these methods may look like.The challenge, however, is significant. As Nesiah notes, also in Feminist Perspectives, ‘Like an Ikea furniture piece, the selling point of transitional justice institutions is that they come in flat packages that are easily shipped, unpacked and set up in new terrain’ (155). As a result, what works in one postconflict setting may have very limited effect elsewhere.
Kouvo’s chapter on Afghanistan, which seeks to show how the overall failure to bring stability and a functioning government framework to Afghanistan has affected efforts to promote women’s rights generally, offers some practical suggestions. As Kouvo notes, Afghanistan remains an inherently patriarchal society, and continued efforts are needed to end harmful cultural practices and to enable women to contribute to their own and their family’s economic well-being. The steps taken in the state-building process have fallen short of delivering sustainable results. The chapter attempts to pinpoint the results of well-meaning but naive engagement of Afghan women. This includes inadequate attention to ensuring that women’s rights and gender discourses are Afghan-owned and recognition of the differences among Afghan women, the shortcomings of women-centred schemes in a family- and community-based system and a failure to understand how, and in what context, politically active Afghan women operate. Kouvo does not, however, give adequate attention to the fact that Afghanistan remains a conflict-affected country with a significant foreign military presence, and that the situation of women over the last few decades in Afghanistan has been among the worst in the world.
Kuovo’s concerns about the lack of a context-specific response, nonetheless, reflect the problem noted by Nesiah of the ‘Ikea’ imported solution. Kouvo rightly calls for ‘strategies that are based on cultural and local knowledge, and consultations with different constituencies, and that take women – and their many different agendas – seriously’ (176). This lays open a challenging question for all women activists in the field. Beyond global debates, how do we support and push for an alternative vision and the implementation of a gender-responsive framework and culturally and contextually specific methodologies? On the other hand, what if the cultural norms and values of the context do not adequately advance and protect the rights of women? The critiques of the authors across all three books are largely theoretically and globally driven, yet they hint at the need for stronger gender-responsive interventions on the ground.
Nonetheless, Elisabeth Porter’s chapter on Timor-Leste in Gender in Transitional Justice demonstrates the limitations of feminist-oriented methodologies. Not only was there proactive outreach to encourage women’s participation in the processes of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR), but there was also significant value placed on Timorese grassroots women’s organizations. Support was given to women witnesses and women-only workshops were held to discuss issues of blame for women victims of sexual violence. Eleven of the specific recommendations that emerged in the CAVR report (entitled Chega!, meaning ‘enough’) are directed towards ‘developing a culture of equality’ for women. Yet, as Porter notes, indicators on violence, nutrition, maternal health and education today reflect grave inequality for Timorese women. Porter argues that the limitations of the successes of these gender-responsive efforts may be due to the overwhelming task of state building involved in the case of Timor-Leste. However, it may also be that the gendered methodologies we currently know and practice are limited in their effect and more efforts are needed on the ground to broaden the feminist methodologies at hand.

<A>Concluding Remarks
Gender in Transitional Justice, Feminist Perspectives and On the Frontlines all offer strong, evidence-based critiques of the failure of the gender project in regard to transitional justice, peacebuilding and postconflict reform. Persistent shortcomings include a clear bias towards civil and political rights, a conceptualization of women as primarily victims of violations of bodily integrity (and predominantly at the hands of men) and an inadequate understanding of the full scope of violations suffered by women.
Ultimately, as we have seen in writing on gender and transitional justice over the past decade, all three volumes argue for the substantive incorporation of gender into a reformed approach to postconflict justice and reconstruction, positing that women must be placed at the centre of all interventions, with the specific experiences of women deliberately taken into account. As we have witnessed in international political spheres, and particularly within the development community, gender mainstreaming must sit alongside standalone interventions that specifically focus on women.
So why have these well-articulated arguments not been translated into practice? For one, there is frequent cross-referencing among the authors of the three books. This reveals the extent to which there is a relatively small body of authors raising concerns regarding gender and transitional justice. It also raises questions around the extent to which academics and practitioners in this field are operating in a bubble, preaching to the converted and bouncing ideas off academics who have already adopted the same line of thinking.
However, the very fact that these debates are taking place reveals the power of feminist discourse in influencing and challenging international law. The narratives outlined in Gender in Transitional Justice show the capacity of feminist academics to tell truths elsewhere untold. We find ourselves in a situation where many of the feminists in this field debate among themselves ideas that are, to a large degree, already agreed upon in feminist scholarship. Rather than an ongoing need to challenge the broader mainstream international legal framework, the three texts suggest the need for greater investment on the ground. The real gap primarily lies in giving life to new jurisprudence, ensuring accountability for the value that is increasingly being placed on gender-responsive interventions, recognizing the importance of challenging gender norms at the community level and moving beyond neat categories of analysis and understanding.
Clearly, there is a gap between theory and practice, and more practitioners in the field need to adopt some of the practical and theoretical suggestions that emerge from all three books. As Charlesworth concludes, the next step for the feminist project, and what would make a valuable sequel to all three texts, is to ‘devise practical and responsive feminist methods to support feminist political projects’ (32).

By Ramona Vijeyarasa, PhD, University of New South Wales, Australia. Email: [e-mail]; [e-mail]

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^[1] Laura C. Turano, ‘The Gender Dimensions of Transitional Justice Mechanisms,’ International Law and Politics 43 (2011): 1045-1086.
^[2] Susan Harris Rimmer, ‘Sexing the Subject of Transitional Justice,’ Australian Feminist Law Journal 32 (2010): 123-147. See also, Gender and Transitional Justice, special issue of International Journal of Transitional Justice 1(3) (2007).
^[3] See, for example, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, ‘Advancing Feminist Positioning in the Field of Transitional Justice,’ International Journal of Transitional Justice 6(2) (2012): 205-228; Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, ‘Women, Security, and the Patriarchy of Internationalized Transitional Justice,’ Human Rights Quarterly 31(4) (2009): 1055-1085; Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, ‘Political Violence and Gender During Times of Transition,’ Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 14 (2006): 829-849; Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Naomi Cahn, ‘Hirsch Lecture: Gender, Masculinities and Transition in Conflicted Societies,’ New England Law Review 44 (2009): 1-23; Dina Francesca Haynes, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Naomi Cahn, ‘Gendering Constitutional Design in Post-Conflict Societies,’ William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law 17 (2011): 509-545; Naomi Cahn, ‘Beyond Retribution and Impunity: Responding to War Crimes of Sexual Violence,’ Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties 1 (2005): 217-270.
^[4] Dina Francesca Haynes, Naomi Cahn and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, ‘Women in the Post Conflict Process: Reviewing the Impact of Recent UN Actions in Achieving Gender Centrality,’ Santa Clara Journal of International Law (forthcoming); Dina Francesca Haynes, Naomi Cahn and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, ‘Criminal Justice for Gendered Violence and Beyond,’ International Criminal Law Review 11 (2011): 425-443; Dina Francesca Haynes, Naomi Cahn and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, ‘Masculinities and Child Soldiers in Post-Conflict Societies,’ in Masculinities and the Law: A Multidimensional Approach, ed. Frank Rudy Cooper, Ann C. McGinley and Michael Kimmel (New York: New York University Press, 2011); Dina Francesca Haynes, ‘Neoliberalism and Women’s Rights,’ in Feminist Perspectives in Transitional Justice, ed. Martha Fineman (Amsterdam: Intersentia, 2011); Dina Francesca Haynes, ‘Lessons from Arizona Market: How Neoliberalism Gives Rise to Human Trafficking and Harms Women in the Post Conflict Reconstruction Context,’ University of Pennsylvania Law Review 158 (2010): 1779-1829; Naomi Cahn, Dina Francesca Haynes and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, ‘Returning Home: Women in Post-Conflict Societies,’ Baltimore Law Review 39 (2010): 339-369.
^[5] See, Ramona Vijeyarasa, ‘Putting Reproductive Rights on the Transitional Justice Agenda: The Need to Redress Violations and Incorporate Reproductive Health Reforms in Post Conflict Development,’ New England Journal of International and Comparative Law 15 (2009): 41-62.
^[6] See, for example, Emily Rosser, ‘Depoliticised Speech and Sexed Visibility: Women, Gender and Sexual Violence in the 1999 Guatemalan Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico Report,’ International Journal of Transitional Justice 1(3) (2007): 391-410; Alison Crosby and M. Brinton Lykes, ‘Mayan Women Survivors Speak: The Gendered Relations of Truth Telling in Postwar Guatemala,’ International Journal of Transitional Justice 5(3) (2011): 456-476.
^[7] See, Hilary Charlesworth and Christine Chinkin, The Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Analysis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
^[8] Charlesworth gives the example of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, where women who had married across ethnic lines faced both race and sex discrimination.
^[9] Forced marriage is not specifically codified in international law, although there is the prospect of including it among ‘other inhumane acts’ (Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, art. 7[k]).
^[10] See, Trudy Jacobsen, Lost Goddesses: The Denial of Female Power in Cambodian History (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2008), although covering Cambodia’s premodern history from as early as c. 230 CE, with chap. 9 focused on the Khmer Rouge period.
^[11] See, for example, Anne-Marie McGauran, ‘Gender Mainstreaming and the Public Policy Implementation Process: Round Pegs in Square Holes?’ Policy and Politics 37(2) (2009): 215-233; Seung-Kyung Kim and Kyounghee Kim, ‘Gender Mainstreaming and the Institutionalization of the Women’s Movement in South Korea,’ Women Studies International Forum 34(5) (2011): 390-400; Sarah Payne, ‘Beijing Fifteen Years On: The Persistence of Barriers to Gender Mainstreaming in Health Policy,’ Social Politics 18(4) (2011): 515-542; Gehan Adam, Macline Laku and Esther Baya, ‘Perspective of Gender Mainstreaming Development within the Interim Period in Sudan,’ Ahfad Journal 23(1) (2006): 82-83; Maxine David and Roberta Guerrina, ‘Gender and European External Relations: Dominant Discourses and Unintended Consequences of Gender Mainstreaming,’ Women Studies International Forum (forthcoming); Petra Meier and Karen Celis, ‘Sowing the Seeds of Its Own Failure: Implementing the Concept of Gender Mainstreaming,’ Social Politics 18(4) (2011): 469- 489.
^[12] See, Human Security Report Project, Sexual Violence, Education, and War: Beyond the Mainstream Narrative (2012).
^[13] Ibid.
^[14] Ibid.
^[15] Human Security Report Project, supra n 12, raises the lack of attention given to noncombatant sexual violence, including that perpetrated in the household or by extended family, questioning the invisibilization of domestic sexual violence in wartime. See also, Vasuki Nesiah et al., Truth Commissions and Gender: Principles, Policies and Procedures (New York: International Center for Transitional Justice, 2006).
^[16] A point noted by Nesiah in Feminist Perspectives.
^[17] Also discussed by Nesiah.