Towards Inclusive Gender in Transitional Justice: Gaps, Blind-Spots and Opportunities

ABSTRACT

While gender perspectives have become a burgeoning focus of analysis in transitional justice, the dominant conceptualization of 'gender' in such processes is effectively an exclusive one. As a result, careful consideration for the roles of masculinities and for the experiences of sexual and gender minorities remains strikingly absent. To engage with these blind-spots, in this article I initiate a move towards a more inclusive understanding of gender in transitional justice, which includes masculinities and queer perspectives. I also indicate how a move from the macro- to the micro-level of TJ implies opportunities and challenges for more inclusive understandings of gender.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• masculinities
• transitional justice
• LGBTQI
• sexual violence

Acknowledgments

This article is an elaboration of discussion remarks given at the occasion of the keynote address (by Shuvai Busuman) at the 8th Institute for African Transitional Justice (IATJ), organized by the Refugee Law Project (RLP), School of Law, Makerere University in September 2018 in Arua in North-Western Uganda, on the theme of ‘doing inclusive gender in transitional justice: what might this look like in post-conflict African Societies?’ The author wishes to thank all IATJ participants for the stimulating discussions and debates. An earlier version of this article has been presented at the IR colloquium at the University of Bremen, and the author wishes to thank all participants, and in particular Roy Karadag and Caterina Bonora, for their insightful comments and suggestions. The author also appreciates the comments made by the anonymous reviewers, which greatly strengthened the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Philipp Schulz is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS) at the University of Bremen. His research focuses on wartime sexual violence against men and the gender dynamics of post-conflict transitional justice processes. [email protected]

Notes

1 In theory and praxis, TJ includes a combination of different mechanisms, most prominently including criminal justice processes, truth commissions, reparations and/or memorialization initiatives.

2 Hamber shows that only about 6.3 per cent of all articles in the International Journal of Transitional Justice between 2007 and 2016 make mention of ‘masculinities’ (Hamber 2016, 10). In the journal Men and Masculinities – one of the leading journals in masculinities studies – the term ‘transitional justice’ is not used once since 1998, while the related concept of ‘peacebuilding’ appears only five times (ibid.). While only providing an illustrative snapshot into the marginality of these intersections, these numbers highlight that the relationships between masculinities and TJ is only of minor concern to scholars across disciplines.

3 When discussing or referring to other authors’ work, in some instances I include their language of the LGBT(Q)I acronym, where relevant.