UN Special Rapporteur on Promotion & Protection of Human Rights While Countering Terrorism – GA Report – Gender
Author: WUNRN
Date: April 11, 2018
Direct Link to the Full 13-Page 2017 Report:
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Terrorism/A_72_43280_EN.pdf
- Mainstreaming Gender in the Discharge of the Mandate
- The Special Rapporteur is deeply committed to fully integrating a sustained and meaningful gender analysis in all aspects of her mandate. Terrorism typically does not discriminate between women and men. The victims of terrorism and those who are harmed by terrorist acts or counter-terrorism policies and practices are equally gendered.
- Nonetheless, until relatively recently women have been broadly invisible in terrorism and counter-terrorism discourses. The passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2242 has provided some remedy to that imbalance. That resolution explicitly highlights the role of women in countering violent extremism, and addresses communique from the SADC’s 35th session in August 2015 explains that the “Summit approved the SADC Regional Counter Terrorism Strategy” (para. 18). A/71/384 11/13 the impact of the rise of extremism on the lives of women and more broadly on women’s security, mobility, education, economic activity and opportunities. 11 More broadly the Women, Peace and Security Agenda has sought to highlight the role and significance of conflict and security challenges to women, and has been broadly welcomed by states as an important intervention in the peace and security context.
- However, it remains the case that when women come into view in terrorism and counter-terrorism policy, they typically do so as the wives, daughters, sisters and mothers of terrorist actors, or as the archetypal victims of senseless terrorist acts whose effects on the most vulnerable (women) underscores the unacceptability of terrorist targeting. Women have been marginal to the conversations in which definitions of security are agreed and generally peripheral to the institutional settings in which security frameworks are implemented as policy and law. Women perpetrators of terrorist violence have been largely ignored, although acts of terrorist violence perpetrated by women are increasingly visible, including women as suicide bombers and women exercising leadership roles in terrorist organisations. 12 It is also critical to note that definitions of terror remain highly gendered, with deliberate acts of sexual violence when used by terrorist organisations as a method and means of terrorism going unrecognised by domestic legislation. This means in practice that these victims of terrorism are ignored, stigmatised and marginalised excluding them from the redress and support we recognise as vital for victims of terrorism. 13
- While resolution 2242 requested the CTC and the CTED to integrate gender as a cross-cutting issue throughout the activities within their mandate, 14 the integration of women into national security planning, priority, and execution remains highly patchy at national and international levels. However, these exclusions are already being 11 Paragraphs 11, 12, 13 and 15. Specifically paragraph 13, notes the opportunities to engage women: “Urges Member States and the United Nations system to ensure the participation and leadership of women and women’s organizations in developing strategies to counter terrorism and violent extremism which can be conducive to terrorism, including through countering incitement to commit terrorist acts, creating counter narratives and other appropriate interventions, and building their capacity to do so effectively, and further to address, including by the empowerment of women, youth, religious and cultural leaders, the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism and violent extremism which can be conducive to terrorism, consistent with the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (A/RES/60/288)”. 12 E.g. regard to Boko Haram’s use of female suicide bombers, see Combating Terrorism Centre’s Exploding Stereotypes: The Unexpected Operational and Demographic Characteristics of Boko Haram’s Suicide Bombers (2017). According to its findings: from April 11, 2011 to June 30, 2017, Boko Haram deployed 434 bombers to 247 different targets during 238 suicide-bombing attacks. At least 56% of these bombers were women, and at least 81 bombers were specifically identified as children or teenagers. In terms of global numbers recent academic studies e.g. Jessica Davis, Evolution of the Global Jihad: Female Suicide Bombers in Iraq 46 Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 279 (2013) reports that in the 256 records of attacks conducted by women between 1968-2912, 157 involved suicide attacks with detonation. 13 The Security Council has expressly condemned the use of sexual violence, early and forced marriage, rape, sexual slavery and the increased use of girls as suicide bombers by organizations such as Boko Haram. See e.g. United Nations Security Council Resolution 2349 (2017). See also, Report of the Secretary-General on conflict related sexual violence (S/2017/249)(April 15, 2001) 14 Specifically paragraph 11 calls for: “[t]he greater integration by Member States and the United Nations of their agendas on women, peace and security, counter-terrorism and countering-violent extremism which can be conducive to terrorism, requests the Counter-Terrorism Committee and the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate to integrate gender as a cross-cutting issue throughout the activities within their respective mandates, including within country -specific assessments and reports, recommendations made to Member States, facilitating technical assistance to Member States and briefings to the Council, encourages the Counter-Terrorism Committee and Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate to hold further consultations with women and women’s organizations to help inform their work, and further encourages the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force to take the same approach in activities within its mandate”. A/71/38443280 12/13 addressed including by the United Nations Secretary General’s Plan of Action and the Working Group on Radicalization and Extremism which tackle the importance of gender particularly in the context of violent extremism, including women in counterterrorism prevention, building women’s civil society capacity so that they can act as barriers to violent extremism, and set aside funds to empower women as a place holder for broader economic, social, and political reforms in marginal communities that are at risk of producing terrorists.15 Noting that sustained lack of integration, the Special Rapporteur will consistently address such matters during the course of her mandate, including during country visits.
- However, the focus on women is only one aspect of integrating a gender perspective into the work of the mandate holder. In addition to a greater integrating of women’s capacity and experience into the substantive work of counter-terrorism, a sustained focus on men is also needed to ensure that we fully engage with the gender dimensions of terrorism and counter-terrorism. A concentration on male actors has dominated national security conversations and as a result the “causes” of terrorism are often coded male with little reflection on the gendered contexts, practices and intersections that give profound insight into the conditions that produce and sustain terrorism. For example, we are increasingly aware in the CVE context that recruitment to terrorist organizations is premised on ideas of male identity and power, including unfettered access to women based on institutionalized gender inequality and women’s subordination. To prevent violent extremism effectively there is no avoiding the masculinity tropes that attract men on the basis of a certain form of male identity and power.
- The Special Rapporteur notes that men, maleness and masculinities as a category of analysis is missing in the ways terrorist acts, terrorist organizations, and anti-terrorism responses are understood. To fully integrate a gender perspective into the work of the mandate, attention to ender identity, practice and the gender order of terrorism and counter-terrorism will be a necessary part of the work of the Special Rapporteur. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur will build on the good practice already under way within the UN architecture advancing a more holistic understanding of the importance of gender in the CVE and PVE arenas with emphasis on why and how certain kinds of masculinity strongly correlate towards radicalization and the capacity for violent mobilization, and how best to address such understandings into programming and thinking about the prevention of terrorism.
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