Hilary Charlesworth

Feminist Approaches to International Law

The development of feminist jurisprudence in recent years has made a rich and fruitful contribution to legal theory. Few areas of domestic law have avoided the scrutiny of feminist writers, who have exposed the gender bias of apparently neutral systems of rules. A central feature of many western theories about law is that the law is an autonomous entity, distinct from the society it regulates. A legal system is regarded as different from a political or economic system, for example, because it operates on the basis of abstract rationality, and is thus universally applicable and capable of achieving neutrality and objectivity. These attributes are held to give the law its special authority. More radical theories have challenged this abstract rationalism, arguing that legal analysis cannot be separated from the political, economic, historical and cultural context in which people live. Some theorists argue that the law functions as a system of beliefs that make social, political and economic inequalities appear natural. Feminist jurisprudence builds on certain aspects of this critical strain in legal thought. It is much more focused and concrete, however, and derives its theoretical force from immediate experience of the role of the legal system in creating and perpetuating the unequal position of women.

The boundaries of international law : a feminist analysis

1. Women and the international legal system 2. Feminist theories and international law 3. Modes of international law-making 4. The law of treaties 5. The idea of the state 6. International institutions 7. Human rights 8. The use of force in international law 9. Peaceful settlement of disputes 10. Redrawing the boundaries of international law

International Law: A Discipline of Crisis

This article examines the way that international lawyers tend to focus on crises for the development of international law. It uses the reactions of international lawyers to NATOs intervention in Kosovo in 1999 as a case study of this tendency and argues that the crisis focus impoverishes the discipline of international law. The article proposes the idea of an international law of everyday life as an alternative.

Protection of Women in Armed Conflict

Women increasingly bear the major burden of armed conflict. In recent years particular attention has been given to the question of violence against women in armed conflict. The significance of these developments is considerable. However the focus on violence—in particular on sexual violence—tends to obscure other important aspects of women’s experience of armed conflict that to date have been largely ignored. The purpose of this comment is to consider a range of ways in which women are affected by armed conflict and to assess the adequacy of international law in protecting them. This issue is in theory on the international agenda. For example the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action calls on “[g]overnments the international community and civil society including non-governmental organisations and the private sector...to take strategic action” in relation to the “[t]he effects of armed or other kinds of conflict on women including those living under foreign occupation.” However the available information is fragmented making “strategic action” difficult to formulate. (excerpt)

Building Women into Peace: the international legal framework

Abstract Peace-building is now a major aspect of the work of international institutions. While once the international community aimed simply to maintain a ceasefire and restore some form of stability in conflict zones, since the early 1990s there has been increasing attention given to creating peaceful and democratic societies through international intervention. A common problem in international peace-building projects over the past decade has been the position of women, particularly their limited involvement in the institutional design of peace-building strategies and the possibility that peace-building may actually reduce local womens agency in society. This article discusses the modern enterprise of peace-building and identifies international legal principles that can serve as a framework for peace-building projects in which womens lives are taken seriously.

Martha Nussbaum's Feminist Internationalism

The term ‘feminist internationalism’ generally means the elaboration of transnational principles and standards to advance the position of women. The move to define international benchmarks to improve women’s globally disadvantaged situation has a long history. For example, international women’s groups were established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to deal with issues such as equal access to education and training and women’s suffrage.1 Women’s groups lobbied the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation to develop standards and practices relating to matters such as the nationality of married women, trafficking in women and girls, women’s suffrage, and the working conditions of women.2 Since the founding of the United Nations in 1945, the international arena has become increasingly attractive for women’s groups, which have worked to persuade states to adopt treaties and resolutions dealing with many aspects of women’s lives. The most significant of these international standards is the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Feminist internationalism has encountered considerable controversy and resistance from various quarters. A major source of antipathy is from states (whether ‘‘liberal’’ or ‘‘religious’’) which regard recourse to international standards with respect to women as illegitimate because they may challenge national culture, traditions, policies, and laws. A different form of resistance to feminist internationalism comes from some feminist activists and scholars who regard it as dependent on essentialist accounts of women, obliterating differences of race, class, wealth, sexuality, and so on. Prompted by her work as a research adviser at the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research, be-

Feminist Reflections on the Responsibility to Protect

This paper offers a feminist analysis of the responsibility to protect principle. It outlines some themes in feminist scholarship in international law and then uses these to explore the idea of a responsibility to protect. The paper argues that, despite some resonance with feminist concerns, the doctrine has been developed in a limited context, effectively privileging male elites and masculine modes of reasoning.

International human rights law: a portmanteau for feminist norms?

1. Introduction: Feminist Strategies in International Governance: Past Insights, New Visions and Future Prospects Gulay Caglar, Elisabeth Prugl and Susanne Zwingel Part 1: Feminist Strategies 2. Civil Society Strategies: The Weight of Outsider Interventions Mariama Williams 3. Feminist Strategies within International Organizations Carolyn Hannan 4. Gender Mainstreaming Laura Parisi & Jacqui True 5. International Law - A Travel Guide for Gender Justice? Hilary Charlesworth 6. Gender Expertise Elisabeth Prugl Part 2: How do Gender Norms Travel? 7. Translating International Womens Rights: CEDAW in Context Susanne Zwingel 8. Vernacularization in Action: Combining Global and Local Ideas about Womens Rights in Peru Peggy Levitt 9. Translating International Norms: Filters to Combating Violence Against Women in Lebanon Rita Sabat Part 3: Feminist Strategies in Security Governance 10. Gender Mainstreaming of UN Peace Operations Claudia von Braunmuhl 11. Changing Discourses, Changing Practices? Gender Mainstreaming and Security Jutta Joachim and Schneiker 12. Womens Rights in Post-War States: International Peacebuilding Operations and Feminist Policy Change Anne Jenichen Part 4: Economic Governance and Governmentality 13. Governing the Economy for Gender Equality? Challenges of Regulation Shahra Razavi 14. Economic Governance and the Regulation of Intimacy in Gender and Development Planning: Lessons from the World Banks Latin American Programming Kate Bedford 15. Crisis and Economic Knowledge Gulay Caglar 16. Gender and the Technocratic Network Governance in Finance Brigitte Young 17. Global Feminist Movements Ilse Lenz1. Introduction: Feminist Strategies in International Governance: Past Insights, New Visions and Future Prospects Gulay Caglar, Elisabeth Prugl and Susanne Zwingel Part 1: Feminist Strategies 2. Civil Society Strategies: The Weight of Outsider Interventions Mariama Williams 3. Feminist Strategies within International Organizations Carolyn Hannan 4. Gender Mainstreaming Laura Parisi & Jacqui True 5. International Law - A Travel Guide for Gender Justice? Hilary Charlesworth 6. Gender Expertise Elisabeth Prugl Part 2: How do Gender Norms Travel? 7. Translating International Womens Rights: CEDAW in Context Susanne Zwingel 8. Vernacularization in Action: Combining Global and Local Ideas about Womens Rights in Peru Peggy Levitt 9. Translating International Norms: Filters to Combating Violence Against Women in Lebanon Rita Sabat Part 3: Feminist Strategies in Security Governance 10. Gender Mainstreaming of UN Peace Operations Claudia von Braunmuhl 11. Changing Discourses, Changing Practices? Gender Mainstreaming and Security Jutta Joachim and Schneiker 12. Womens Rights in Post-War States: International Peacebuilding Operations and Feminist Policy Change Anne Jenichen Part 4: Economic Governance and Governmentality 13. Governing the Economy for Gender Equality? Challenges of Regulation Shahra Razavi 14. Economic Governance and the Regulation of Intimacy in Gender and Development Planning: Lessons from the World Banks Latin American Programming Kate Bedford 15. Crisis and Economic Knowledge Gulay Caglar 16. Gender and the Technocratic Network Governance in Finance Brigitte Young 17. Global Feminist Movements Ilse Lenz

Law-making and sources

Introduction International law is constantly under challenge as a legal system. Some scholars depict it as weak, mutable, unstable (Morgenthau 1948, 284), some as the mere product of states maximising their interests (Goldsmith and Posner 2005), some point to it as the framework of many mundane activities, for example as the basis of airline travel or international postal services (Henkin 1979, 29–30), while others explain its value as a ‘placemarker for justice’ or as a vehicle for the ‘regulative ideal of the international community’ (Koskenniemi 2007, 30). Perhaps because there is so much anxiety about whether international law can claim to be a branch of law, the topic of the making and sources of international law dominates most introductory works. It is as if pinning down the well-springs of international law will provide certainty and authority for the discipline. Where does international law come from? The sources of international law are a complex tangle of ideas, commitments and aspirations. In national legal systems, law is typically regarded as the product of legislatures or court systems; it is relatively straightforward to identify the legal principle at stake in a dispute, even if there is debate about its application in a particular case. There are also institutions at the national level that enforce the law, such as police forces and civil authorities, reinforcing the significance of legal status. By contrast, modern international law is to some extent the product of the behaviour and agreement of states, and to some extent the product of abstract values such as ‘humanity’ (Peters 2009), ‘fairness’ (Franck 1998), or ‘communitarian values’ (Tasioulas 1996). Jurists debate the proper respective contributions of state consent and moral values to international law, although of course the two may sometimes coincide. However defined, this mixture is a volatile one, which, together with the less-certain enforcement of international law, makes it appear more negotiable and uncertain than domestic law.

The conceptual politics of democracy in international law

European Research Council, Political Economies of Democratisation, ERC grant number 202 596.