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Abstract
Due to their widespread availability, mobility and ease of use, small arms are a very important factor in the flaring up and perpetration of many expressions of trauma, both in times of war and in degraded ‘peacetime’ environments characterized by large-scale violence. They have become central to maintaining social dislocation, destabilization, insecurity and crime in the build-up to war, in wartime and in the aftermath of conflict. Small arms are misused within domestic settings as well as in public spaces, and they impact on everyone in the community. One means to counter their effects, therefore, is to increase our understanding of the role played by prolific small arms and light weapons in reinforcing and maintaining genderspecific violence before, during and after conflict.
Notes
1. The Small Arms Survey estimates that nearly 60 per cent of weapons are in private hands. See Small Arms Survey 2002 and Counting the Human Cost (Geneva: Oxford University Press, 2002).
2. For a discussion of the lack of analysis of gender in small-arms-related UN discussions, even up to the 2003 Biennial Meeting of States on the Programme of Action, see Emily Schroeder and Lauren Newhouse, ‘Gender and Small Arms: Moving in to the Mainstream’, ISS Monograph No.104 (2004).
3. Several accounts of violence against women with guns that have gone unpunished are recorded in Control Arms Coalition of Amnesty International, IANSA and OXFAM, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives (Oxford: The Alden Press, 2005). Also see <http://www.controlarms.org>.
4. Available at <http://www.un.org/events/res_1325e.pdf>.
5. For a detailed discussion of international agreements on women and conflict, and small arms, see Vanessa Farr, ‘A Gendered Analysis of International Agreements on Small Arms and Light Weapons’, in Vanessa Farr and Kiflemariam Gebre-Wold (eds) Gender Perspectives on Small Arms and Light Weapons: Regional and International Concerns, BICC Brief 24 (Bonn: BICC, 2002), p.14–24.
6. A global survey is underway in a book on the gendered implications of small arms and light weapons edited by Vanessa Farr and Albrecht Schnabel (UNU: forthcoming).
7. See ‘The impact of armed violence on poverty and development’, Full report of the Armed Violence and Poverty Initiative, Bradford University, March 2005, online at <http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/cics/publications/avpi/AVPI_synthesis_report.pdf>.
8. See, for one example of documentation of this violence, The War Within the War: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Eastern Congo (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2002).
9. See Vanessa Farr, ‘“The New War Zone”: The Ubiquitous Presence of Guns and Light Weapons has Changed the Definitions of “War,” “Victim,” and “Perpetrator”’, The Women's Review of Books. Special Issue on Women, War and Peace (February 2004), p.16, online at <http://www.wellesley.edu/womensreview/backiss.html#feb04>.
10. See, for one account of this problem, Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
11. See Catherine Lutz, ‘Living Room Terrorists: Rates of Domestic Violence Are Three to Five Times Higher Among Military Couples Than Civilian Ones’, The Women's Review of Books, online at <http://www.wellesley.edu/womensreview/backiss.html#feb04>. The National PTSD Centre of the US Veteran's Association also offers a wealth of information on this subject, available at <http://www.ncptsd.va.gov>.
12. Quoted in Vanessa Farr, ‘How do we know we are at Peace? Reflections on the Aftermath Conference’, Agenda, Vol.43 (2000), p.24.
13. For a recent, global survey on the links between armed violence and poverty, which includes some findings of gendered impacts, see the findings of The Armed Violence and Poverty Initiative (AVPI), a research programme conducted by the Centre for International Cooperation and Security (CICS) at Bradford University <http://www.brad.ac.uk/cics/projects/avpi>.
14. See the findings of the Armed Violence and Poverty Initiative (Bradford: Bradford University, 2005).
15. Nick Paton Walsh and Jonathan Steele, ‘Chechens Seize Moscow Theatre’, The Mail & Guardian, 15 October 2001, pp.25–31.
16. Robert Muggah and Martin Griffiths, Reconsidering the Tools of War: Small Arms and Humanitarian Action (Geneva: OUP, 2002), pp.1–2; see also Small Arms Survey, 2002.
17. See accounts in Control Arms Coalition, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives; Farr and Gebre-Wold, Gender Perspectives on Small Arms and Light Weapons; and Farr, ‘“The New War Zone”’.
18. See Control Arms Coalition, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives, chs.7 and 8, pp.50–63.
19. The Secretary-General included this statistic in his foreword to the Panel of Governmental Experts study of 1997 (UN Doc. A/52/298, p.2).
20. World Health Organization, 2001, Small Arms and Global Health and 2002, World Report on Violence and Health: 25, available at <http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/world_report/en/>.
21. Small Arms Survey, Rights at Risk (Geneva: Oxford University Press, 2004), p.180.
22. World Health Organization, 2002, World Report on Violence and Health, pp.274–275.
24. Control Arms Coalition, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives, p.2.
25. Wendy Cukier, ‘Gendered Perspectives on Small Arms Proliferation and Misuse: Effects and Policies’, in Farr and Gebre-Wold, Gender Perspectives on Small Arms and Light Weapons, pp.25–39; David Hemenway, Tomoko Shinoda-Tagawa and Matthew Miller, ‘Firearm Availability and Female Homicide Rates in the United States’, Journal of the American Medical Women's Association, No.57 (2002), pp.100–104; Katharine McKenzie, Domestic Gun Control Policy in Ten SADC Countries (Johannesburg: Gun Free South Africa, 1999).
26. Data were collected on women over 14 years of age who were killed in 1999.
27. S. Mathews, N. Abrahams, L.J. Martin, L. Vetten, L. van de Merwe and R. Jewkes, ‘“Every Six Hours a Woman is Killed by her Intimate Partner”: A National Study of Female Homicide in South Africa’ (Johannesburg: Medical Research Council Policy Brief, 2004), pp.1–4.
28. Adam Blenford, ‘Guatemala's Epidemic of Killing’, BBC News World Edition, 9 June 2005, available at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4074880.stm>.
29. Jacquelyn C. Campbell, Daniel Webster, Jane Koziol-McLain et al., ‘Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a Multisite Case-Control Study’, American Journal of Public Health (July 2003), pp.1089–1097.
30. For more information, see the website of the Coalition for Gun Control, Canada <http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/default-english.htm>, particularly the section on domestic violence.
32. J. Mouzos and C. Rushforth, ‘Firearm Related Deaths in Australia, 1991–2001’, Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, No.269 (Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, November 2003). Cited in Missing Pieces: Directions for Reducing Gun Violence through the UN Process on Small Arms Control (Geneva: Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, 2005).
33. Barbara Frey, ‘Progress Report’, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2004/37 2004; A.L. Kellerman et al., ‘Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership’, New England Journal of Medicine, No.327 (1992), pp.467472; Lisa Vetten, ‘“Man Shoots Wife”: Intimate Femicide in Gauteng South Africa’, Crime and Conflict, Vol.6 (1996), pp.1–4.
34. Vetten, ‘“Man Shoots Wife”’.
35. Many raped women will later die of their injuries or of HIV/AIDS. The rape of men is rarely admitted. For a discussion of the long-term impacts of war rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina, see Duska Andrić-Ružičić, ‘War Rape and the Political Manipulation of Survivors’, in Wenona Giles et al. (eds.), Feminists Under Fire (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2003), ch.8.
36. Jesper Strudsholm, ‘Please Make These People Disappear’, The Sunday Independent (South Africa), 19 September 2004.
37. The Coalition for Gun Control reports that in Canada, ‘on average, a woman is assaulted thirty times before a formal complaint is filed’ <http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/DomesticViolence.html>. Given that Canada has a highly functional police and judiciary service, it is frightening to imagine how much more difficult it is for women to report intimate assault in less developed countries.
38. For some recent discussions, see Sarah Douglas, Vanessa Farr and Felicity Hill, Getting it Right, Doing it Right (New York: UNIFEM, 2004); Control Arms Coalition, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives; Ruth Seifert, War and Rape: Analytical Approaches <http://www.wilpf.int.ch/publications/warrape.htm>.
39. Muggah and Griffiths, Reconsidering the Tools of War, p.7. See also the Amnesty International campaign Stop Violence Against Women, which is attempting to bring to global attention the massive scale of such violence <http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/index-eng>.
40. Cynthia Cockburn, The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict (London and New York: Zed Books, 1998); Margaret Randolph Higonnet et al. (eds.), Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1987); Farr, ‘“The New War Zone”’.
41. Jenny Horsman, Too Scared to Learn: Women, Violence and Education (Toronto: McGilligan Books, 1999); Susie Jacobs, Ruth Jacobson et al. (eds.), States of Conflict: Gender, Violence and Resistance (London and New York: Zed Books, 2000); Bernadette Muthien, ‘Human Security Paradigms through a Gendered Lens’, Agenda, Vol.43 (2000), pp.46–56.
42. Jacklyn Cock, Closing the Circle: Towards a Gendered Understanding of War and Peace (The African Gender Institute, 2001), available at <http://www.uct.ac.za/org/agi/newslet/vol8/lead.htm>.
43. Control Arms Coalition, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives; Farr and Gebre-Wold, Gender Perspectives on Small Arms and Light Weapons, p.35; Vetten, ‘“Man Shoots Wife”’.
44. See Ingeborg Breines, Robert Cornell and Ingrid Eide, Male Roles, Masculinities and Violence (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2000).
45. Anthony Altbeker et al., ‘Are South Africans Responsible Firearm Owners? Evidence from 1,000 Dockets’ (Centre for the Study of Violence and Conflict Resolution, 2000); Katharine McKenzie, Domestic Gun Control Policy in Ten SADC Countries (Johannesburg: Gun Free South Africa, 1999).
46. Horsman, Too Scared to Learn, p.292.
47. Cock, Closing the Circle; Heidi Hudson, ‘A Feminist Reading of Security in Africa’, ISS Monograph Series 20 (1998), pp.22–98; Tina Sideris, ‘Rape in War and Peace: Some Thoughts on Social Context and Gender Roles’, Agenda, No.43 (2000), pp.41–45; Meredith Turshen and Twagiramariya Clotilde (eds.), What Women Do in Wartime: Gender and Conflict in Africa (London and New York: Zed Books, 1998).
48. Ruth Ojambo Ochieng, ‘A Gendered Reading of the Problems and Dynamics of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Uganda’, in Farr and Gebre-Wold (eds.), Gender Perspectives on Small Arms and Light Weapons, pp.60–71; Control Arms Coalition, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives; but see Christina Yeung, ‘Disarmament, a Battle of the Sexes: Gender Perspectives on Small Arms Proliferation and Disarmament in Karamoja, Uganda’ (forthcoming) for an analysis of how women's attitudes have changed as gun violence worsens.
49. For South Africa, see Adele Kirsten in Farr and Gebre-Wold, Gender Perspectives on Small Arms and Light Weapons, p.35; for the USA, see Mary Zeiss Stange ‘No more Raping. When some Women are Armed, are all of us Safer?’ The Women's Review of Books, online at <http://www.wellesley.edu/womensreview/backiss.html#feb04>.
50. In the USA, in research conducted by Dr. James Scott of George Washington University Hospital, it was found that guns bought by women for their protection are being turned against them. For every woman who bought a gun for self-defence, 239 more women were murdered, many with their own gun. Jeremy Campbell, ‘Risks to Women who Buy Guns for Defence’, Evening Standard, 16 August 1994. For a pro-women's gun ownership argument, see Zeiss Stange, ‘No more Raping’.
51. Farr, ‘A Gendered Analysis of International Agreements’; Control Arms Coalition, The Impact of Guns on Women's Lives
52. Muggah and Griffiths, Reconsidering the Tools of War, p.25.
53. Gunhild Hoogensen and Svein Vigeland Rottem, ‘Gender Identity and the Subject of Security’, Security Dialogue, Vol.35, No.2 (2004), p.165.