Well-intentioned but missing the point: the Australian Defence Force approach to addressing conflict-based sexual violence

Abstract

issue of military discipline that was usually ignored is relatively recent. 3 It was only with the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda prosecuting CBSV as constitutive elements of either torture, crimes against humanity, or genocide that saw the shift of international jurisprudence considering CBSV a jus cogens crime against the victim's personhood, 4 rather than simply a disciplinary issue to be addressed internally by the military.This condemnation of CBSV that focused upon the victim's personhood rather than questions of military discipline was the key catalyst for the UN's WPS agenda, beginning with UNSCR 1325, and gaining focus on CBSV through UNSCRs 1820UNSCRs , 1882UNSCRs , 1888UNSCRs , 1960UNSCRs , 2106UNSCRs , and 2272. These resolutions form the cornerstone of international efforts to combat CBSV, in particular, ending impunity for perpetrators of these jus cogens crimes. Further, these resolutions have been strongly criticised by feminist and queer scholars as the decisions rely upon archaic gender stereotyping, a lack of inclusive language that renders all but female civilian victims of CBSV invisible, and for addressing gender as a purely binary concept. 5 The question before us is whether Australia has adopted the same approach as the UN through its NAP and following on from that, how this impacts upon the ADF's efforts to combat CBSV in operations.The original research design for this paper was going to involve interviews with ADF personnel (current and former) in relation to this issue. This research design had to be scuttled because the joint Department of Defence and Department of Veterans Affairs Human Research Ethics Committee (DDVA HREC) claimed jurisdiction over the ethics application (even though the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research provides no such authority), 6 and the DDVA HREC ethics approval guidelines provide it with the right to prohibit any and all publications arising from the research. 7 Given this infringement upon the integrity of independent research, we declined to submit an ethics application to pursue an interview-based inquiry and have instead explored this question through two separate analyses. Following a very brief overview of feminist, masculinity theory, and queer theory issues relevant to our discussion, we examine, through a critical discourse analysis, 8 the NAP and other associated governmental macro policy documents relating to Australia's engagement with the WPS agenda. While these policy documents do not articulate the ADF approach to combating CBSV, an examination of them is necessary because they form the foundational framework from which the ADF policies and responses have sprung. Second is a parsing of documents (also using a critical discourse analysis method) obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request to the Department of Defence for relevant documents related to the implementation of 96 Vandenheuvel (2015), p 11. 97 des ...