Laura J. Shepherd

Sex, Security and Superhero(in)es: From 1325 to 1820 and Beyond

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 was adopted in October 2000 with a view to ensuring that all aspects of conflict management, post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding be undertaken with a sensitivity towards gender as an axis of exclusion. In this paper, I do not dwell on the successes and shortcomings of UNSCR 1325 for long, instead using a discussion of the Resolution as a platform for analysis of subsequent Resolutions, including UNSCRs 1820 (2008), 1882 (2009), 1888 (2009) and 1889 (2009). This last relates specifically to the participation of women in peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction and is the most recent pronouncement of the Security Council on the issue of ‘women and peace and security’. Through this analysis, I draw attention to the expectations of and pressures on (some) women in the arena of peace and security, which can only be alleviated through discursive and material change in attitudes towards equality and empowerment. I argue that the Council is beginning to recognize – and simultaneously to constitute – (some/most) women as agential subjects and suggest that the fragmented and mutable representations of women in Council resolutions offer a unique opportunity for critical engagement with what ‘women’ might be, do or want in the field of gender and security.

Visualising violence: legitimacy and authority in the ‘war on terror’

This paper explores the relationship between visual representation and claims to legitimacy in the current George W. Bush administrations ‘war on terror’. Drawing on discourse theoretical works that focus analytical attention on the power of visual representation in communicating authority and legitimacy, this paper argues that crucial to such communicative acts is the rendering of a receptive audience complicit in particular interpretations of the images in question. While various visual representations construct political subjectivity and agency in different ways, common to all interpretations is the centralisation of an authoritative narrative. It is argued that this authorial voice must be challenged in the formulation of a politics resistant to dominant discourses of security/counter-terrorism in the West.

“Stop Rape Now?”: Masculinity, Responsibility, and Conflict-related Sexual Violence

Inspired by the themes of violence, masculinity and responsibility, this article investigates the visibility of male victims/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in war. Despite the passing of UNSCR 1820 in 2008, the formulation of UN ACTION (United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict), and the appointment of a United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General to lead policy and practice in this issue area, we argue here that male survivors/victims remain a marginal concern, which has, among other consequences, profound implications for the facilities that exist to support male victims/survivors during and after periods of active conflict. In the first section of the article, we provide an overview of the contemporary academic literature on rape in war, not only to act as the foundation for the analytical work that follows but also to illustrate the argument that male survivors/victims of sexualised violence in war are near-invisible in the majority of literature on this topic. Second, we turn our analytical lens to the policy environment charged with addressing sexualised violence in conflict. Through a discourse analysis focussed on the website of UN ACTION (www.stoprapenow.org), we demonstrate that this lack of vision in academic work maps directly to a lack of visibility in the policy arena. The third section of the article explores the arrangements in place within extant peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction programmes that aim to facilitate recovery with victims/survivors of sexualised violence in war. We conclude with reflections on the themes of violence, masculinity and responsibility in the context of sexualised violence in war and suggest that in this context all privileged actors have a responsibility to theorise violence with careful attention to gender in order to avoid perpetuating models of masculinity and war-rape that have potentially pernicious effects.

Gender, violence and popular culture : telling stories

1. Telling stories: An essay on gender, violence and popular culture 2. Morality, legality and gender violence in Angel 3. Policing the boundaries of desire in Buffy the Vampire Slayer 4. Gender, ethics and political community in Generation Kill 5. Feminism and political strategy in The West Wing 6. Gender, violence and security in Oz 7. Security and governance after modernity in Firefly 8. Hope and the politics of natality in The Corner 9. Points de capiton: Aesthetics, ethics and critique

trans- bodies in/of war(s): cisprivilege and contemporary security strategy

This article explores a gendered dimension of war and conflict analysis that has up until now received little attention at the intersection of gender studies and studies of global politics: queer bodies in, and genderqueer significations of, war and conflict. In doing so, the article introduces the concept of cisprivilege to International Relations as a discipline and security studies as a core sub-field. Cisprivilege is an important, but under-explored, element of the constitution of gender and conflict. Whether it be in controversial reactions to the suggestion of United Nations Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin that airport screenings for terrorists not discriminate against transgendered people, or in structural violence that is ever-present in the daily lives of many individuals seeking to navigate the heterosexist and cissexist power structures of social and political life, war and conflict is embodied and reifies cissexism. This article makes two inter-related arguments: first, that both the invisibility of genderqueer bodies in historical accounts of warfare and the visibility of genderqueer bodies in contemporary security strategy are forms of discursive violence; and second, that these violences have specific performative functions that can and should be interrogated. After constructing these core arguments, the article explores some of the potential benefits of an interdisciplinary research agenda that moves towards the theorisation of cisprivilege in security theory and practice.

Reintroducing women, peace and security

International Affairs 92: 2 (2016) 249–254

Constructing civil society: Gender, power and legitimacy in United Nations peacebuilding discourse

The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission was created in 2005 to have oversight of United Nations peacebuilding operations. In the foundational resolution, adopted simultaneously by the United Nations Security Council (S/RES/1645) and the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/60/180), the Peacebuilding Commission is mandated to encourage meaningful participation in peacebuilding-related activities by civil society actors. This article investigates the construction of ‘civil society’ as a subject of United Nations peacebuilding discourse, drawing on both policy documents and interview data. The inclusion of civil society actors in peacebuilding-related activities is currently considered central to the success of these activities; if it is taken for granted that the meaningful participation of civil society actors ensures that United Nations programmes build better peace, and I argue that it is, then it is important to understand what is meant by ‘civil society’ and to comprehend the kinds of actions that are prescribed and proscribed by the meanings attached to the concept. Specifically, I map out a peacebuilding discourse that (re)produces the United Nations — as representative of ‘the international community’ — as the architect/legitimate knower of peacebuilding practice, and the communities working on building peace as the labourers/known objects. This has significant implications for the ways in which civil society organisations, and the forms of knowledge that these organisations represent, are encountered and engaged in peacebuilding practices; ‘local’ knowledge is at once valued (in the process of extraction) and yet subordinated.

Women, armed conflict and language – Gender, violence and discourse

Facilitating critical reflection on the words and concepts used to write policy enables practitioners to avoid unconsciously reproducing the different forms of oppression and exclusion that their policies seek to overcome. In this article, the author provides an analysis of Chapter 5.10 of the United Nations Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards , arguing that policy makers, scholars, students and practitioners cannot avoid making and/or changing meaning through their well-meaning interventions, but that this need not lead to political or practical inertia.

The futures past of the Women, Peace and Security agenda

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has developed at the United Nations over the course of the past 15 years, and there have been critical engagements with it for nearly as long. In this article, we first take stock of the operationalization of the WPS agenda, reviewing its implementation across a number of sectors. In the second section, we expose the tensions that have marked the WPS agenda from the start. With others, we argue that there has been a narrowing of the agendas original scope, reducing it to the traditional politics of security rather than reimagining what security means. We highlight this reduction primarily through an analysis of the tension between the ‘participation’ and ‘protection’ pillars of the agenda. Further, we argue that the WPS agenda faces a current challenge in terms of the actors entrusted with it. Although in some ways involving civil society, the consolidations and implementation of WPS principles at the national and international levels have become increasingly state-centric. Third, we imagine some possible futures of the agenda, from a trajectory characterized by increasing marginalization or even irrelevance, to new avenues like the emergent, albeit tentative, ‘Men, Peace and Security’ agenda. We close with an argument for a revival of the WPS agenda beyond a fixation on states, beyond a narrow heteronormative or essentialist focus on the ‘Women’ of the WPS resolutions, and moving towards the radical reimagining of security as peace that inspired the original architects of these important resolutions.

Loud Voices Behind the Wall: Gender Violence and the Violent Reproduction of the International

Efforts to criminalise gendered violence in the international domain, through legislation such as the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (1993), can only ever have limited success. Through my analysis of DEVAW, I argue that the Declaration is produced through discourses of gender, violence, security and the international. What is meant by these concepts is reflected and reproduced within the document. Therefore, in order to understand the limited success of such efforts to criminalise gendered violence, it is necessary to investigate how these meanings have been constructed and how they could be constructed differently. I offer alternatives to the dominant conceptualisations of gendered violence and security, considering the ways in which both gender and the international are violently reproduced through efforts to securitise violence. Through my analysis I demonstrate that a reconceptualisation of both gendered violence and international security is desirable and necessary for the construction of research programs that operationalise these concepts in a more coherent and productive manner.