Bridging the gap: Early warning, gender and the responsibility to protect

Abstract

Women, Peace and Security (WPS) scholars and practitioners have expressed reservations about the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle because of its popular use as a synonym for armed humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, R2P's early failure to engage with and advance WPS efforts such as United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1325 (2000) has seen the perpetuation of limited roles ascribed to women in implementing the R2P principle. As a result, there has been a knowledge and practice gap between the R2P and WPS agendas, despite the fact that their advocates share common goals in relation to the prevention of atrocities and protection of populations. In this article we propose to examine just one of the potential avenues for aligning the WPS agenda and R2P principle in a way that is beneficial to both and strengthens the pursuit of a shared goal -prevention. We argue that the development of gender-specific indicators.-particularly economic, social and political discriminatory practices against women -has the potential to improve the capacity of early warning frameworks to forecast future mass atrocities.

New Directions in Women, Peace and Security

“…Of the ten most-cited pieces on WPS in our survey, it is not surprising that most focus primarily on the politics of the United Nations Security Council (Shepherd, 2008;Tryggestad, 2009;Bell and O'Rourke, 2010;Puechguirbal, 2010;Willett, 2010;Gibbings, 2011;Pratt and Richter-Devroe, 2011;Shepherd, 2011) with only two emphasizing the circulation of UNSCR 1325 beyond the UN (El-Bushra, 2007;McLeod, 2011). Significant fractions of the literature address issues of wartime sexual violence (for example, Simic, 2010;Aroussi, 2017;Reilly, 2018); women's inclusion in peacekeeping (for example, Henry, 2012;Karim, 2017;Deiana and McDonagh, 2018) or WPS as grounds for humanitarian intervention (for example, Dharmapuri, 2013;Davies et al, 2015), with contestations within the UN system fundamental in each instance. Following the growth in national strategies, scholars put questions of implementation -and suggestions for improvements -to the fore (for example, Diop, 2011;Lee-Koo, 2014;True, 2016;Swaine, 2017).…”

New Directions in Women, Peace and Security

“…Of the ten most-cited pieces on WPS in our survey, it is not surprising that most focus primarily on the politics of the United Nations Security Council (Shepherd, 2008;Tryggestad, 2009;Bell and O'Rourke, 2010;Puechguirbal, 2010;Willett, 2010;Gibbings, 2011;Pratt and Richter-Devroe, 2011;Shepherd, 2011) with only two emphasizing the circulation of UNSCR 1325 beyond the UN (El-Bushra, 2007;McLeod, 2011). Significant fractions of the literature address issues of wartime sexual violence (for example, Simic, 2010; Aroussi, 2017; Reilly, 2018); women's inclusion in peacekeeping (for example, Henry, 2012;Karim, 2017;Deiana and McDonagh, 2018) or WPS as grounds for humanitarian intervention (for example, Dharmapuri, 2013;Davies et al, 2015), with contestations within the UN system fundamental in each instance. Following the growth in national strategies, scholars put questions of implementation -and suggestions for improvements -to the fore (for example, Diop, 2011;Lee-Koo, 2014;True, 2016;Swaine, 2017).…”

New Directions in Women, Peace and Security

“…Of the ten most-cited pieces on WPS in our survey, it is not surprising that most focus primarily on the politics of the United Nations Security Council (Shepherd, 2008;Tryggestad, 2009;Bell and O'Rourke, 2010;Puechguirbal, 2010;Willett, 2010;Gibbings, 2011;Pratt and Richter-Devroe, 2011;Shepherd, 2011) with only two emphasizing the circulation of UNSCR 1325 beyond the UN (El-Bushra, 2007;McLeod, 2011). Significant fractions of the literature address issues of wartime sexual violence (for example, Simic, 2010; Aroussi, 2017; Reilly, 2018); women's inclusion in peacekeeping (for example, Henry, 2012;Karim, 2017;Deiana and McDonagh, 2018) or WPS as grounds for humanitarian intervention (for example, Dharmapuri, 2013;Davies et al, 2015), with contestations within the UN system fundamental in each instance. Following the growth in national strategies, scholars put questions of implementation -and suggestions for improvements -to the fore (for example, Diop, 2011;Lee-Koo, 2014;True, 2016;Swaine, 2017).…”