Gender and accountability is important – but don’t mention the war

UNIFEM have put out two reports in the last few weeks. The first is ‘Voicing the needs of Women and Men in Gaza’, the gender needs survey for the Gaza strip, and the second is ‘Who Answers to Women?: Gender and Accountability’. These two reports highlight the problems that a UN agency has in dealing with contentious issues which involve member governments: that is, they cannot be criticised even obliquely.

UN Agency for Women – Bargaining with Patriarchy

The idea of a multi-tasking UN women’s agency that is long in teeth (being able to push for women’s rights and gender equality effectively) and well-sourced to deliver programs has been much discussed under the rubric of UN reform. The UN Reform itself came into being after years of the UN system being charged by critics as overly bureaucratic and inefficient. Listed along with sustainable development and human rights, gender was identified as one of those cross-cutting issues which must be an integral part of the UN system.

‘Zero Tolerance’ with exceptions?: The UN and NGO response to peacekeeping

The ANU Gender, Sexuality and Culture Seminar Series. Gabrielle Simm (PhD Candidate) on “‘Zero Tolerance’ with exceptions?: The UN and NGO response to peacekeeping“. 1.00 – 2.30pm, Monday 6 April 2009, Seminar Room C, Top Floor, RSPAS Coombs Building.

Continued crisis in Darfur alongside ICC action against Sudanese president

On March 4, 2009, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Hassan Al-Bashir on charges alleging genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s western Darfur region, where an ethnic conflict has raged since 2003. This is the first time that the ICC has issued such a warrant for a sitting head of state. Almost immediately the Sudanese Government responded by expelling 13 international humanitarian organisations and NGOs from Sudan including Oxfam, CARE and MSF and closed down three local relief agencies.

On the 24 March Ayman Al-Zawahri, the notorious second-in-command of Al-Qaeda, entered the fray saying that this would not help to solve the problems of Darfur, and called for all Muslim countries to arm themselves against further such interventions and intrusions into their affairs on the part of foreign countries.

Gender and Security Sector Reform

Without a feminist understanding of what is gender and why promoting gender equality is important in development, a risk with these manuals and guides is the danger of assuming gender is a “fix it” tool, something one whips out of the development kit to solve operational issues, streamline programmatic responses, or donor compliance. The integration of gender into security sector reform may also risk taking certain things for granted, such as the assumption that by reforming the security sector, women will benefit from the trickle-down effect, as opposed to asking the harder questions which feminists have been raising: whether an institution (i.e. the military) which legitimises the use of violence can be made user-friendly? [...]