Gender and UN peace operations: The confines of modernity

Abstract

The essay seeks to problematize the recent UN discourse on gender, peace and war by demonstrating how modernity sets the limits for the discourse, and therewith confines the discourse to the pre-given binary categories of agency, identity and action. It engages in an analysis of modernity and the mode of thinking that modernity establishes for thinking about war and peace. It is demonstrated in the text that new thinking on post-Westphalian conflicts and human security did open up a discursive space for thinking about gender in peace operations, but this space has not been fully utilized. By remaining within the confines of modernity, the UN discourse on peace operations produces neoliberal modes of masculinity and femininity where the problem-solving epistemology gives priority to the ‘rationalist’ and manageralist masculinity and renders silent the variety of ambivalent and unsecured masculinities and femininities

Notes

An important first step was taken by Louise Olsson and Torunn L. Tryggestad (eds), Women and International Peacekeeping, special issue of International Peacekeeping, Vol.8, No.2, 2001.

UN Security Council Resolution on Women, Peace and Security (S/RES/1325), 31 October 2001.

Michel Foucalt, The Archaeology of Knowledge, London: Tavistock, 1972, pp.48–9.

An Agenda for Peace, Preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peace-keeping (UN Doc A/47/277–S/24111), Report of the Secretary-General, 1992.

Carl von Clausewitz, On War, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968, p.23.

These guiding principles of peacekeeping were set by D. Hammarskjöld in 1956.

Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations (The Brahimi Report) (UN Doc A/55/305–S/2000/809), 21 August 2000, p.1. Emphasis added.

The Brahimi Report (see n.7 above), p.2.

For logocentrism see Richard Ashley, ‘Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War’, in James Der Derrian and Michael Shapiro (eds.), International/Intertextual Relations, Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989, pp.260–64.

Zygmunt Bauman, Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992, p.35.

Ibid. pp.132–3.

Ibid. p.38.

See also Anthony Giddens, ‘Living in a Post-Traditional Society’, in Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization, Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994, pp.56–109.

Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Theory’, Millennium: Journal of International Theory, Vol.10, No.2, 1981, pp.126–55.

Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society I, London: Heinemann, 1984, p.10.

Ibid. pp.10–11.

See more on problematization: Michael Shapiro, Reading the Postmodern Polity, Political Theory as Textual Practice, Minneapolis, Oxford: University of Minnesota Press, 1992, pp.47–8; Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, The History of Sexuality, Vol.II, New York: Vintage Books, 1985, pp.14–25; and on peace operations and liberal market democracy: Roland Paris, ‘International Peacebuilding and the “Mission Civilisatrice”’, Review of International Studies, Vol.28, No.4, 2002, pp.637–58.

An Agenda for Peace (see n.4 above), p.3.

Charter of the United Nations, 26 July 1995.

Kofi Annan, We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21 ^st Century, Executive Summary, p.1.

An Agenda for Peace (see n.4 above), p.4.

The Brahimi Report (see n.7 above), p.1.

An Agenda for Peace (see n.4 above), p.4.

Hannah Arendt, On Violence, San Diego, CA: A Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace, 1970, p.75.

Ibid. p.75.

An Agenda for Peace (see n.4 above), p.12.

Paris (see n.17 above), p.638.

Ibid. p.637.

The Brahimi Report (see n.7 above). See also An Agenda for Peace (see n.4 above), pp.11–12.

On governmentality see Michael Dillon, ‘Sovereignty and Governmentality: From the Problematics of the “New World Order” to the Ethical Problematic of World Order’, Alternatives, Vol.20, No.3, 1995, pp.323–68.

Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, ‘Global Governance, Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency’, Alternatives, Vol.25, No.1, 2000, pp.117–43.

Pertti Joenniemi, ‘Wild Zones, Black Holes and the Struggle Void of Purpose; Has War Lost Its Name’, paper presented at the 17th IPSA World Congress, Seoul, 17–21 August 1997. Mary Kaldor, ‘Introduction’, in Mary Kaldor and Basker Vashee (eds), Restructuring the Global Military Sector, Volume I: New Wars, London and Washington: Pinter, 1997, pp.3–33. Charles Moskos and James Burk, ‘The Postmodern Military’, in James Burk (ed.), The Military in New Times, Adapting Armed Forces to a Turbulent World, Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press, 1994, p.149. Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York: The Free Press, 1991.

Kaldor (see n.32 above), pp.3–7.

Ibid. pp.17–19.

An Agenda for Peace (see n.4 above), pp.2–3. See also We the Peoples (see n.20 above), p.2.

The Brahimi Report (see n.7 above), p.2.

United Nations Millennium Declaration (A/55/L.2), 8 September 2000, p.1.

We the Peoples (see n.20 above), p.1.

Ole Waever, ‘Societal Security: The Concept’, in Ole Waever, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup and Pierre Lamaitre (eds), Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe, London: Pinter, 1993, p.26.

United Nations Millennium Declaration (see n.37 above), p.2.

We the Peoples (see n.20 above), p.1.

Ibid. pp.3–4.

Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993; V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sisson Runyan, Global Gender Issues, Boulder: Westview Press, 1993, pp.79–112; Jan Jindy Pettman, ‘Border Crossing/Shifting Identities: Minorities, Gender, and the State in International Perspective’, in Michael Shapiro and Hayward Alker (eds.), Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp.261–84; J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives in Achieving Global Security, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War, New York: Basic Books, 1987.

On the roles of women in war see for example, Gendering Human Security, From Marginalisation to the Integration of Women in Peace-Building, NUPI-Report No.261, Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, 2001. Women, War and Peace, The Independent Expert's Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women's Role in Peace-building, United Nations Development Fund for Women, 2002.

United Nations Millennium Declaration (see n.37 above), p.5.

A/conf.177/20/rev.1.

Windhoek Declaration and the Namibia Plan of Action on ‘Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peace Support Operations’, On the 10th Anniversary of the United Nations Transitional Assistance Group (UNTAG), 31 May 2000.

UN Security Council Resolution on Women, Peace and Security (see n.2 above).

Ibid.

The Windhoek Declaration (see n.48 above).

Ibid.

UN Security Council Resolution on Women, Peace and Security (see n.2 above).

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid. See also ‘Women 2000: Gender equality, development and peace in the twenty-first century’ (A/S-23/8), 7 June 2000.

Louise Olsson, Gendering UN Peacekeeping, Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective in Multidimensional Peacekeeping Operations, Uppsala: Uppsala University, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, 1999, p.1.

For a discussion on gender and knowledge see for example Linda Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism, New York and London: Routledge, 1990.

Jan Jindy Pettman, ‘Body Politics: International Sex Tourism’, Third World Quarterly, Vol.18, No.1, 1997, p.2.

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York and London: Routledge, 1999, 2nd edn., pp.vii–xxxiii.

R.W. Connell, ‘Masculinities, the Reduction of Violence and the Pursuit of Peace’, in Cynthia Cockburn and Dubravka Zarkov (eds.), The Postwar Moment, Militaries, Masculinities and International Peacekeeping, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2002, p.36.