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Abstract
This article examines gender mainstreaming processes in successive UN peacebuilding missions in Timor-Leste, with a focus on the relationship between these missions and the national women's organizations who were vehicles for implementation. Apparent frictions occur in this process and the article suggests that the gender rhetoric and practice incorporated into UN peacebuilding since 2000 can have potentially destabilizing effects for women's activism in post-conflict settings. Women's organizations socialize and negotiate around gender norms in order to mitigate this potential and aim to identify the synergies between women's activism before peacebuilding, and gender mainstreaming policies and practice post-conflict. This article provides insight into how national women's organizations socialize gender norms, as well as how women's post-conflict activism can be shaped by the presence of UN peacebuilding.
Acknowledgements
Interviews referenced in this manuscript were conducted with Swinburne University ethics approval. SUHREC Project No. 2012/083. The author is grateful to the anonymous reviewers and Dr Christine Agius for their comments on this paper.
Notes on contributor
Sarah Smith is a PhD student at the Swinburne Institute of Social Research in Melbourne.
Notes
1 A commonly agreed on definition of gender mainstreaming is a ‘process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality'. In: UN Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, Gender Mainstreaming: An Overview (New York: United Nations, 2002), v.
2 In total 33 interviews were conducted across national organizations, different units within UN missions, UN agencies, international organizations and East Timorese government ministries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted as a means to canvass the experience and opinions of those who worked either in the UN missions or with the UN missions as partner organizations. Consequently, this represents a particular viewpoint of these relationships and is unable to capture a more ethnographic understanding of the lived experience of gender relations in the day-to-day lives of individuals in disparate contexts in Timor-Leste.
3 Jarat Chopra, ‘Building State Failure in East Timor’, Development and Change 33, no. 5 (2002): 979–1000; Astri Suhrke, ‘Peacekeepers as Nation-Builders: Dilemmas of the UN in East Timor’, International Peacekeeping 8, no. 4 (2001): 1–20.
4 Ben Moxham and Jovana Caparic, ‘Unravelling Dili: The Crisis and State in Timor-Leste', Urban Studies 50, no. 15 (2013): 3116–33.
5 Cynthia Cockburn, ‘The Continuum of Violence: A Gender Perspective on War and Peace’, in Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones, ed. Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004): 24–44; Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (London: Pandora, 1989); Laura Sjoberg, ‘Introduction to Security Studies: Feminist Contributions', Security Studies 18, no. 2 (2009): 183–213.
6 Sjoberg, ‘Introduction to Security Studies: Feminist Contributions', 198.
7 In evaluating the UN's approach to gender throughout successive missions in Timor-Leste, this article uses the term ‘peacebuilding’ consistent with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations' (DPKO) own guidelines, known as the Capstone Doctrine. The Capstone Doctrine defines peacebuilding as a ‘range of measures targeted to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict'. Peacebuilding is better able to capture the array of tasks undertaken by UN peace operations in Timor-Leste. Consistent with the Capstone Doctrine, peacebuilding encapsulates peacekeeping which incorporates military, police and civilian elements ‘working together to help lay the foundations for sustainable peace'. DPKO, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines (New York: Department of Field Support, 2008).
8 Charlotte Bunch, ‘Women's Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights', Human Rights Quarterly 12, no. 4 (1999): 486–98; Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 165–98. The role of East Timorese women's activists was integral to this commitment as they lobbied UNTAET to ensure their inclusion, especially after the Gender Affairs Unit was initially dropped due to budgetary constraints. See Hilary Charlesworth and Mary Wood, ‘Women and Human Rights in the Rebuilding of East Timor’, Nordic Journal of International Law 71 (2002): 341; Emily Roynestad, ‘Peace Agreements as a Means for Promoting Gender Equality and Ensuring Participation of Women', United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) Expert Group Meeting, Ottawa, November 10–13, 2003; Sarah Smith, ‘The Continuum of Women's Activism in Timor-Leste’, in Understanding Timor-Leste 2013: Proceedings of the 4th Timor-Leste Studies Association Conference, ed. Hannah Loney et al. (Melbourne: Swinburne University Press, 2014), 87–93.
9 Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; Nilüfer Çag˘atay, Caren Grown, and Aida Santiago, ‘The Nairobi Women's Conference: Toward a Global Feminism?’, Feminist Studies 12, no. 2 (1986): 401–12.
10 Tarja Väyrynen, ‘Gender and UN Peace Operations: The Confines of Modernity’, International Peacekeeping 11, no. 1 (2004): 138.
11 See inter alia Sanam Anderlini, ‘Translating Global Agreement into National and Local Commitments', in Women and War: Power and Protection in the 21st Century, ed. Kathleen Kuehnast, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, and Helen Hernes (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2011), 19–36; Christina Binder, Karin Lukas, and Romana Schweiger, ‘Empty Words or Real Achievement? The Impact of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women in Armed Conflicts', Radical History Review 101 (2008): 22–41; Carol Cohn, Helen Kinsella, and Sheri Gibbings, ‘Women, Peace and Security Resolution 1325’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 6, no. 1 (2004): 130–40; Natalie Hudson, ‘UNSCR 1325: The Challenges of Framing Women's Rights as a Security Matter’, NOREF Policy Brief, February (Oslo: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, 2013); Nadine Puechguirbal, ‘Discourses on Gender, Patriarchy and Resolution 1325: A Textual Analysis of UN Documents', International Peacekeeping 17, no. 2 (2010): 172–87; Sandra Whitworth, Men, Militarism and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), 120.
12 Jacqui True, Women, Peace and Security in Post-Conflict and Peacebuilding Contexts, NOREF Policy Brief February 2013 (Oslo: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, 2013).
13 Binder, Lukas, and Schweiger, ‘Empty Words or Real Achievement?’; Rebecca Tiessen, ‘What's New About Gender Mainstreaming: Three Decades of Policy Creation and Development Strategies', Canadian Journal of Development Studies 26, no. S1 (2005): 705–20.
14 See Diane Sainsbury and Christina Bergqvist, ‘The Promise and Pitfalls of Gender Mainstreaming’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 11, no. 2 (2009): 216–34; Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt, ‘The United States, the Iraqi Women's Diaspora and Women's “Empowerment” in Iraq’, in Women and War in the Middle East, ed. Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt (London: Zed Books, 2009), 65–98; Sheri Lynn Gibbings, ‘No Angry Women at the UN’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 13, no. 4 (2011): 522–38; Nadeen El-Kassem, ‘The Pitfalls of a “Democracy Promotion” Project for Women of Iraq', International Journal of Lifelong Education 27, no. 2 (2008): 129–51.
15 Sainsbury and Bergqvist, ‘The Promise and Pitfalls of Gender Mainstreaming’.
16 Jacqui True, ‘Mainstreaming Gender in Global Public Policy', International Feminist Journal of Politics 5, no. 3 (2003): 368–96.
17 See Monica Costa, Marian Sawer, and Rhonda Sharp, ‘Women Acting for Women’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 15, no. 3 (2013): 333–52; Nina Hall and Jacqui True, ‘Gender Mainstreaming in a Post-Conflict State’, in Gender and Global Politics in the Asia Pacific, ed. Bina D'Costa and Katrina Lee-Koo (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 159–74.
18 Roynestad, ‘Peace Agreements as a Means for Promoting Gender Equality’.
19 Rosa Bonaparte, ‘Women in East Timor: Statement by Popular Organisation of Timorese Women’, Direct Action, March 4, 1976, 7.
20 Accounts into the activities of OPMT are available in Maria Domingas Fernandes Alves, Laura Soares Abrantes, and Filomena Reis, Written with Blood (Dili: Office for the Promotion of Equality, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, 2005); Antero Benedito da Silva, ‘FRETILIN Popular Education 1973–1978 and its Relevance to Timor-Leste Today’ (PhD thesis, University of New England, 2012); Irena Cristalis and Catherine Scott, Independent Women: The Story of Women's Activism in Timor-Leste (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 2005).
21 Maria de Fatima, ‘Mobilising Women for the Sustainable Rebuilding of East Timor’ (paper presented at Sustaining Our Communities Conference, Adelaide, March 3–6, 2002).
22 Former national UNDP staff member, interview with author, July 4, 2014, Melbourne.
23 Constâncio Pinto and Matthew Jardine, East Timor's Unfinished Struggle: Inside the East Timorese Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1997), 47.
24 Cristalis and Scott, Independent Women, 27; da Silva, ‘FRETILIN Popular Education’, 148.
25 John Braithwaite, Hilary Charlesworth and Adérito Soares, Networked Governance of Freedom and Tyranny, (Canberra: ANU E-Press, 2012), 170.
26 Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (London: Routledge, 1996), 44.
27 Ibid.
28 Birgitte Sørensen, Women and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Occasional Paper No. 3 (Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1998), 7.
29 Krista Hunt, ‘“Embedded Feminism” and the War on Terror’, in (En)Gendering the War on Terror: War Stories and Camouflaged Politics, ed. Krista Hunt and Kim Rygiel (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 51–72.
30 Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, 167–81.
31 Ibid., 168.
32 Helen Hill, ‘Gender Issues in Timor-Leste and the Pacific Islands: “Practical Needs” and “Strategic Interests” Revisited’, in New Research on Timor-Leste: Proceedings of the Communicating New Research on Timor-Leste Conference, Centro Formação João Paulo II, Comoro, Dili 30 June–1 July 2011, ed. Michael Leach et al. (Melbourne: Swinburne University Press, 2012), 218.
33 Cristalis and Scott, Independent Women, 48.
34 Jude Conway, Step by Step: Women of East Timor, Stories of Resistance and Survival (Darwin: Charles Darwin University Press, 2010), xviii.
35 de Fatima, ‘Mobilising Women for the Sustainable Rebuilding of East Timor’.
36 Ibid.
37 Director, national women's organization, interview with author, September 10, 2013, Dili.
38 Radhika Coomaraswamy, ‘Identity Within: Cultural Relativism and the Empowerment of Women’, George Washington International Law Review 34, no. 3 (2002): 483–513; Anne Orford, ‘Feminism, Imperialism and the Mission of International Law’, Nordic Journal of International Law 71 (2002): 275–96.
39 Chandra Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses', Feminist Review 31 (1988): 61–88.
40 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge 2007), 5.
41 Coomaraswamy, ‘Identity Within’, 484–5.
42 Ibid., 487.
43 Hunt, ‘“Embedded Feminism” and the War on Terror’.
44 Oliver P. Richmond, ‘A Pedagogy of Peacebuilding: Infrapolitics, Resistance and Liberation’, International Political Sociology 6 (2012): 117.
45 Coomaraswamy, ‘Identity Within’, 487.
46 Former UNTAET personnel, interview with author, February 27, 2014, Melbourne.
47 Although they were not successful in this regard. See Milena Pires, ‘Enhancing Women's Participation in Electoral Processes in Post-Conflict Countries: Experiences from East Timor’ (UN Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women Expert Group Meeting on ‘Enhancing Women's Participation in Electoral Processes in Post-Conflict Countries, Glen Cove, New York, January 19–22, 2004); Vijaya Joshi, ‘Creating and Limiting Opportunities: Women's Organising and the UN in East Timor’ (paper presented at Challenges and Possibilities: International Organisations and Women in Timor-Leste, RMIT University, Melbourne, September 9–11, 2001).
48 Former UNTAET personnel, interview with author, February 27, 2014, Melbourne.
49 For an overview of tensions between the Gender Affairs Unit and UNTAET, and between the Gender Affairs Unit and East Timorese women's groups, see Charlesworth and Wood, ‘Women and Human Rights in the Rebuilding of East Timor'.
50 For an overview of whether national machineries are effective mechanisms for advancing the needs and interests of disparate women's groups and organizations, see Shirin M. Rai, ‘Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women: Mainstreaming Gender, Democratizing the State?’, in Mainstreaming Gender, Democratizing the State? Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women, ed. Shirin M. Rai (Manchester: Manchester University Press for and behalf of the United Nations, 2003), 15–39; see also Jacqui True and Michael Mintrom, ‘Transnational Networks and Policy Diffusion: The Case of Gender Mainstreaming’, International Studies Quarterly 45, no. 1 (2001): 27–57.
51 Sofi Ospina, A Review and Evaluation of Gender-Related Activities of UN Peacekeeping Operations and their Impact on Gender Relations in Timor-Leste. Prepared for UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (New York: United Nations, 2006).
52 This mission was the UN Office of Support in Timor-Leste, UNOTIL. The rationale behind removing the gender unit was that as UNOTIL was a political mission the UN was not mandated to include a gender unit, falling as it did under the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) rather than the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. Louise Olsson, Gender Equality and United Nations Peace Operations in Timor-Leste (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2009), 82–83.
53 Chopra, ‘Building State Failure in East Timor’.
54 Moxham and Caparic, ‘Unravelling Dili’, 3124.
55 Director, national women's organization, interview with author, September 7, 2012.
56 UNFPA staff member, interview with author, September 14, 2012, Dili.
57 Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes, ‘The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics. A Case Study of Gender and Politics in Lospalos, Timor-Leste', Conflict, Security and Development 9, no. 2 (2009): 165–87.
58 Ibid., 169.
59 Anna Trembath, Damian Grenfell, and Carmenesa Moniz Noronha, Impacts of National NGO Gender Programming in Local Communities in Timor-Leste, The Globalism Research Centre (Melbourne: RMIT University, 2010), 11.
60 Director, national women's organization, interview with author, September 10, 2013, Dili.
61 Pires, ‘Enhancing Women's Participation in Electoral Processes’; Roynestad, ‘Peace Agreements as a Means for Promoting Gender Equality’.
62 Nina Hall, ‘East Timorese Women Challenge Domestic Violence’, Australian Journal of Political Science 44, no. 2 (2009): 309–25.
63 Interview with author, September 10, 2013, Dili.
64 This also means that women's role in the resistance can be – and is – easily denigrated, as though integral women were less often armed when compared to men. UN political affairs analyst, interview with author, September 6, 2012, Dili.
65 Director, national women's NGO, interview with author, September 3, 2013.
66 El-Kassem, ‘The Pitfalls of a ‘Democracy Promotion’ Project for Women of Iraq'.
67 Cristalis and Scott, Independent Women, 163.
68 Director, national women's organization, interview with author, September 10, 2013, Dili.
69 Hall, ‘East Timorese Women Challenge Domestic Violence’, 324.
70 UN News Centre, ‘Not All Timorese Benefiting from Economic Gains, UN Human Rights Expert Says', UN News Centre, November 18, 2011, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40437andCr=timorandCr1#.U09KgvmSx8E (accessed April 17, 2014).
71 Moxham and Caparic, ‘Unravelling Dili’.
72 Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes'.
73 Interview with author, July 31, 2012, Dili.
74 Oliver P. Richmond, ‘The Romanticisation of the Local: Welfare, Culture and Peacebuilding', The International Spectator 44, no. 1 (2009): 150.
75 Director, national women's organization, interview with author, September 10, 2013, Dili.
76 El-Kassem, ‘The Pitfalls of a “Democracy Promotion” Project for Women of Iraq'.
77 See Anna Trembath and Damian Grenfell, Mapping the Pursuit of Gender Equality: Non-Government and International Agency Activity in Timor-Leste, The Globalism Research Centre (Melbourne: RMIT University, 2007).
78 Whitworth, Men, Militarism and UN Peacekeeping.