Addressing the Gendered Interests of Victims/Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Their Children Through National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security
| Date | 01 August 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2347797020938963 |
| Published date | 01 August 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Research Article
1 School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, University College Dublin, Ireland.
Corresponding author:
Aisling Swaine, School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, University College Dublin,
Sheehy-Skeffington Building, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
E-mail: aisling.swaine@ucd.ie
Journal of Asian Security
and International Affairs
7(2) 145–176, 2020
The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/2347797020938963
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Addressing the
Gendered Interests
of Victims/Survivors
of Conflict-Related
Sexual Violence and
Their Children Through
National Action Plans
on Women, Peace and
Security
Aisling Swaine1
Abstract
There is growing acknowledgement of the need to address the impacts of con-
flict-related sexual violence (CRSV), with less recognition of conflict-related
reproductive and maternal harms and children born of war (CBW). An intricate
set of common as well as distinctive interests arise for both victims/survivors and
their children that remain unfulfilled. National Action Plans on Women, Peace and
Security (NAPs-WPS) present an opportunity to redress these gaps. This article
examines to what extent are NAPs-WPS responsive to the specific rights and gendered
interests of victims/survivors of CRSV and their children? It advances thinking on gen-
der planning for peace and security and makes three significant analytical con-
tributions: a ‘Typology of Impacts and Losses’ advancing understanding of CRSV;
a ‘Gender Interests Analysis’ framework, identifying the practical and strategic
gender interests of victims/survivors and their children; and application of these
frameworks to produce a critical analysis of the NAPs-WPS of Indonesia, Nepal,
Philippines and Timor-Leste. It finds that planning under WPS is failing to ensure
that multi-sectoral services are available, while reproductive and maternity issues
and CBW are completely neglected in the selected NAPs-WPS. The article dis-
cusses the implications of these findings for gender planning through NAPs-WPS
going forward.
146 Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 7(2)
Keywords
Conflict-related sexual violence, gender planning, national action plans, women,
peace and security
Introduction
There is a nascent, if growing, acknowledgement of the need to address the health,
psychological, economic and social impacts of conflict-related sexual violence
(CRSV),1 with sustained critical gaps in addressing its reproductive and maternal
repercussions. Further, little recognition has been given to the needs of the
children of victims/survivors2 of CRSV, including those born of wartime rape.3
Children Born of War (CBW) experience harms that are common with their birth
mothers, family and extended community, as well as specific to them as children.
An intricate set of rights impediments and specific, separate and interrelated needs
arise for both victims/survivors and their children that remain unaddressed in
scholarship and policy.
The United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) women, peace and security
(WPS) agenda has come to play a significant, if troubling and over-accentuated, role
in influencing whether and how states and international organisations engage with
women’s rights in conflict. Gaps have characterised the normative development of
the agenda. These include reductive interpretations of CRSV tied to the idea of
‘sexual violence, when used or commissioned as a tactic of war’ (UNSC, 2008,
2009, 2010, 2013a), drawing the agenda away from gendered understanding of
violence and of women’s experience of war (Engle, 2014). Relatedly, distinctive as
well as associated reproductive and maternal harms have been excluded from the
agenda even though they are part of the spectrum of gendered and sexualised harms
occurring in warfare and include unexpected, unwanted and forced pregnancies,
forced maternity, forced contraception, sterilisation and loss of pregnancies and
maternity, conception as a result of rape and resulting forced motherhood. A
reference ‘noting the need for access to the full range of sexual and reproductive
health services, including pregnancies resulting from rape’ included in the relative
safety of the preambular section of Resolution 2122 (UNSC, 2013b) failed to
prompt subsequent operational provisions in Resolution 2467 (UNSC, 2019a) that
followed, and were omitted completely from the most recent Resolution 2493
(UNSC, 2019b). There has been a complete lack of attention to CBW, with
Resolution 2467 (UNSC, 2019a) being the first to specifically mention them.
Whether and how these normative gaps influence implementation of the
agenda and whether implementation can strive to fill those gaps are important to
assess at this 20-year point in the agenda. Does implementation of the WPS
agenda have the potential to respond to the reality of women’s rights concerns that
lie beyond the UNSC’s framing? Implementation of WPS has come to rely on
planning strategies, namely the development of ‘National Action Plans on women,
peace and security’ (NAPs-WPS), which have been adopted by over 47 per cent
of UN member states to date (to early 2020). As the intermittent strategy between
Swaine 147
policy (the resolutions) and implementation (context-specific fulfilment of
women’s rights), the planning that underpins WPS implementation requires more
scrutiny. Critique of these plans points to the inconsistent, reductive and selective
ways that governments have conceived, devised and implemented NAPs-WPS
(Shepherd, 2016; Trojanowska, 2018). A critical analysis of nine Asia-Pacific
NAPs-WPS, which the author conducted in 2016 found that the majority of
actions in those plans were tailored towards state actors themselves, and that the
adaptation of gender planning theory to WPS could be useful in reorienting plans
back towards the intended focus of the WPS agenda, the practical and strategic
interests of women and girls (Swaine, 2016, 2018b). Motivated by these critiques
and findings, this article examines whether, despite prevailing normative gaps
specific to victims/survivors of CRSV and their children in the WPS agenda,
NAPs-WPS have the potential to address a broad range of gendered harms in
conflict, including reproductive and maternal harms and the specific rights and
interests of CBW beyond the resolutions.
This article thereby aims to advance debate, concerning the effectiveness of the
planning that underpins NAPs-WPS. It addresses the following central question:
to what extent are NAPs-WPS responsive to the specific rights and interests of
victims/survivors of CRSV and their children? The article first sets out feminist
theoretical critique of, and the conundrums characterising normative capture of,
conflict-related gendered harms. It then establishes the case for addressing those
harms through the planning underpinning NAPs-WPS. Through analysis of the
contexts of Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines and Timor-Leste, the article then makes
three significant analytical contributions: first, a new ‘Typology of Impacts and
Losses’ is presented to advance scholarly and empirical knowledge of the impacts
of CRSV that could be used to inform planning; second, drawing on that typology,
a ‘Gender Interests Analysis’ (GIA) framework is presented as a means to advance
planning methods towards addressing the practical and strategic gender interests
of victims/survivors and their children; third, both frameworks are tested and used
to generate an original critical analysis of the four NAPs-WPS adopted by
Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines and Timor-Leste. The analysis finds that NAPs-WPS
are failing to advance multi-sectoral comprehensive responses to CRSV, while the
reproductive and maternity interests of victims/survivors and CBW are completely
absent from these plans. The article is structured around these contributions.
The Gendered Harms of Warfare: ‘Prickly’ Conundrums
Confronting Global Policy Responses
Securing scholarly, legal and political recognition of women’s own articulation of
the harms in their lives, above and beyond predetermined legal categorisations of
violence, crime and violation, is an ongoing feminist endeavour (O’Rourke,
2013). As is garnering response to the aspects of those harms that women
themselves will estimate as the most impactful or indeed ‘damaging’ (Ní Aoláin,
2000). As noted earlier, while narrow definitions of CRSV have characterised the
WPS agenda, broader harms linked to but that deepen, multiply and extend the
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