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Abstract
From the start, United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1325 was celebrated as an achievement for Member States and activists around the world with the promise that gender would be considered in all peace and security-related decisions and planning. This paper describes how two Iraqi women who spoke at an informal meeting at the UN generated embarrassment for some UN-based gender advocates when their performance did not follow the norms expected by the attending NGOs, Member States and UN officials. The reaction to their performance can be explained by two main factors. First, the cultural norms of the UN require issues to be framed in a positive manner. Second, Resolution 1325 is supplemented by discourses that place value on the knowledge produced by women and situate women as peacemakers. When the two Iraqi women denounced the US- and UK-led invasion of Iraq and used terms like ‘imperialism’, they spoke outside of UN-based norms. The subsequent reaction illustrated how agency among gender advocates at the UN is socially and historically contingent.
Notes
WILPF was founded in 1915 by a group of women who met at The Hague to speak out against World War I (Birchem Citation1998: 44).
I am grateful to the Martin Cohnstaedt Graduate Research Award for Studies in Non Violence, York Centre for International and Security Studies at York University, for financial support during my research.
I have omitted details about the positions and personal histories of my research consultants in order to protect their anonymity.
The New York-based Fellowship of Reconciliation organized the ‘Women of Iraq Tour of the United States.’
Member of NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, email message to author, August 2004.
I documented this discussion in my field notes in October 2003.
This statement was made in a summary report written on the Arria Formula meeting by a member of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security (Member of WILPF-UN, email message to NGO Working Group, October 2001).
See Borneman's (Citation1992: 77) concept of ‘master narrative’ and his discussion of how states produce narratives that provide models ‘that give form to everyday experiences of the citizens’. I thank Andrea Muehlebach for drawing my attention to this work.
They describe how ‘their mobilizing effect lies in their capacity to connect with, and appropriate, the positive meanings and legitimacy derived from other key symbols of government such as “nation”, “country”, “democracy”, “public interest” and “rule of law”’ (Shore and Wright Citation1997: 15).
Member of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, email message to NGO Working Group, October 2000.
In a document produced for the Commission on the Status of Women in 1999 on the follow-up to the Beijing Conference, WILPF wrote, ‘When only one quarter of current military spending is necessary to eradicate all health, social, political, economic and environmental challenges faced by humanity, the complex issues of peace are urgently relevant. Militarism, arms trade and the permanent war economy that in the late 1990s drains 780 billion per year from the global economy, contributes to normalization of violence, the cultural production of gender roles, poverty, environmental degradation – clearly affecting every one of the 12 Critical Areas of Concern of the Platform For Action’ (found by author in WILPF-UN Archives, WILFP-UN office, New York).
WILPF-UN Member, interview with the author, August 2003.