Olivera Simic

Does the Presence of Women Really Matter? Towards Combating Male Sexual Violence in Peacekeeping Operations

Women are being encouraged to join peacekeeping operations as sexual violence problem-solving forces while simultaneously undertaking a complex role as ‘protectors’ of local women from local men and male peacekeepers. Since the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325 in 2000, the UN has urged states to deploy more women. Among the implicit assumptions underlying these calls are that an increase in the representation of women in peacekeeping operations (PKOs) will lead to a decrease in the cases of HIV/AIDS, a decline in the number of brothels around peacekeeping bases, and a reduction in the number of babies fathered and abandoned by peacekeepers after their mission comes to an end. Evidence suggests that the presence of women peacekeepers can and does foster a change in male behaviour when women are deployed in PKOs. This article argues, however, that countering abuse should not be a substitute for the more encompassing goal of improving gender balance and equality in PKOs. While there is a need to combat sexual violence in PKOs, the responsibility for prevention should be on troop-contributing countries, which need to exercise accountability and prosecute sexual violence committed by their peacekeepers. Diverting responsibility to women does not address the problem of sexual violence in PKOs, or help eradicate its causes.

‘Peacekeeper Babies’: An Unintended Legacy of United Nations Peace Support Operations

In March 2008 the United Nations General assembly adopted Resolution 62/214, which promulgated the ‘Comprehensive Strategy on Assistance and Support to Victims of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by United Nations Staff and Related Personnel’. Although reports on widespread sexual exploitation and sexual abuse emerged in the early 1990s, until 2008 there was no strategy specifically developed to assist women sexually exploited or abused by, and children fathered by, UN peacekeepers. In this sense, the Comprehensive Strategy is groundbreaking. However, we argue that UN policy fails to distinguish adequately between sexually exploitative and consensual relationships, which can create confusion for personnel as to what sexual conduct is permitted and what is prohibited. This paper will provide a critical analysis of the Comprehensive Strategy, examining its potential and obstacles to its implementation, with specific regard to children born to peacekeeping personnel engaged in consensual relationships with local women. This examination will be conducted within the context of the case study of Marko Šušnja, born to a Bosnian peacekeeper father and East Timorese mother.

Who Should be a Peacekeeper

Recent accounts in the media surrounding the Save the Children UK (SCUK) report about sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of children by peacekeepers in Haiti, Cote d’Ivore, and Southern Sudan suggests that despite all the measures taken by the United Nations (UN) to prevent SEA in the last few years, little or no progress has occurred. Concurrently, another group of headlines appeared in the Australian media about Australian soldiers complaining that they feel ‘‘ashamed’’ of being involved in Iraq and Afghanistan missions, which they describe as ‘‘low risk’’ missions. They also claimed that these missions prevent them from using their full military potential, and that instead of using infantry ‘‘more offensively,’’ their duties were ‘‘predominantly protective,’’ and this is what the Australian Defence Association reports as being ‘‘the problem.’’

Unintended Consequences: Representations of Rwandan Women and their Children Born from Rape

Abstract This article analyses an exhibition of photographs of Rwandan women and their children born from rape, as an occasion for exploring how the racialised and gendered subjects of international law are imagined and how a certain politics of humanitarianism is mobilised around the notions of rescuer and victim. While human rights documentary can make a critical contribution to awareness, policy debate and advocacy efforts, we argue that exhibitions like Intended Consequences can unintentionally perpetuate the politics of victimhood and reinforce the assumptions of patriarchy. Certain modes of framing and staging the suffering of the racialised ‘other’ can easily become a mere opportunity to show compassion, which functions to affirm the humanity of the witness. But within the aesthetic experience of receiving testimony and viewing photographs there are opportunities to re-imagine those subjects and to rethink the politics of humanitarian engagement.

Policing the Peacekeepers: Disrupting UN Responses to 'Crises' Over Sexual Offence Allegations

Over the last two decades, United Nations (UN) peacekeepers have faced a series of sexual offence allegations, largely against women and young girls and boys. The earliest reports emerged from Cambodia in 1992 and the latest in 2016, with a large majority of cases situated in the Central African Republic. This article briefly outlines the history of sexual offence allegations that have followed almost every peacekeeping operation conducted since the early 1990s. It then outlines some measures that the UN has devised to prevent sex crimes. It is argued that the strategies deployed do not reflect the gravity of the crimes which continue to be largely portrayed as disciplinary misconduct.

But I Want to Speak Out: Making Art from Women's Testimonies

Abstract In order to preserve womens testimonies, and make them visible and heard, a new wave of documentary theatre has emerged in the Balkans that uses archival authentic testimonies collected in private hearings and public legal spaces such as courtrooms. In this article, I focus on theatrical plays that were created by female theatre directors from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Serbia. To produce these plays, all three directors used authentic womens testimonies of violence and war endured as conflict beset the region in the 1990s. The testimonies were collected and published by Women in Black, Belgrade.2 Through these plays, the three theatre directors have created a space for womens voices about the daily injustices suffered during the war to be made available to the public. These directors use performance as a strategy for intervention and truth-seeking, while actively promoting social and symbolic reparation. Margaret Urban Walker calls such reparations ‘the expressive dimension that constitutes … the communicative act of expressing acknowledgment, responsibility, and intent to do justice’.3 The plays bring on stage unique and universal womens testimonies about war and violence that cross regional and ethnic lines. By bearing witness to these experiences, which are relived on stage, the audience takes part in the public acknowledgment of crimes committed towards women and, thereby, actively engages in an act of symbolic reparation.

Enacting Justice: The Role of Dah Theatre Company in Transitional Justice Processes in Serbia and Beyond

For a long time, theatre has served as a platform for promoting human rights. Drawing on a case study of Dah Theatre Company from Belgrade, this chapter analyses the use of performance in the transitional justice processes, which followed the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The chapter argues that in post-conflict and post-transitional Serbia, survivors of wars are often ignored or marginalized by the government in their struggle to restore peace and achieve justice for the past wrongdoings. By creating and enacting narratives of war crimes and collective responsibility, Dah Theatre gives public voice to survivors of mass human rights violations—in particular to women. The theatre and its members employ performance as a strategy for truth-seeking, resistance and intervention, while actively promoting social and symbolic reparation—a process that is much needed but overlooked by the Serbian state.

Peace Psychology in the Balkans: In Times Past, Present, and Future

This chapter provides an overview of the contributions that Peace Psychologists have made to the understanding of conflict and peace in the Balkan region. The recent history of physical violence in Balkan nations, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia and Romania, make this an important area of analysis given its potential to broaden our understanding of peace and conflict processes world-wide. The analysis provided in this chapter is multi-directional in its consideration of past, present and future realities. Explanations for the history of conflict in the region are identified, the present realities of peace and conflict explored and pathways to a more peaceful future proposed. The analysis is also multi-faceted considering both micro-level and macro-level factors relevant to the history and future of peace in the region. Micro-level factors, such as social norms, individual attitudes and relations to other ethnic groups, are shown to have complex interactions with macro-level factors, such as politics and economics, in predicting both peace and violence in the Balkan region. The analysis is relevant to academic disciplines as diverse as peace studies, politics and sociology, but remains firmly embedded within a peace psychological framework.

Silenced Victims of Wartime Sexual Violence

The condemnation of wartime sexual violence as a gross violation of human rights has received widespread support. While rape and other forms of sexual violence have attracted considerable local and international attention, this often excludes wartime sexual violence among women belonging to so-called ‘perpetrator’ war-torn nations. This book explores the silence surrounding women’s experiences of wartime sexual violence within academic, legal and public discourses. Olivera Simic argues that the international criminal law and feminist legal discourse on wartime sexual violence can construct a problematic victim hierarchy that excludes and misrecognises certain women’s experiences of sexual violence during and after armed conflict. 　The book focuses on the experiences of Bosnian Serb women, where the collapse of the former Yugoslavia led to brutal war and gross human rights violations throughout the 1990s. Two decades after the war, women in Bosnia and Herzegovina are still facing the legacies of the violence in the 1990s. Through this case Simic argues that while all women survivors of rape face problems of stigma, shame and lack of political visibility, their legal and symbolic status differ according to their ethno-national identity. 　Drawing on interviews with Bosnian Serb women survivors of rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina, feminist activists, local media, documentary and archival sources, the book examines ‘post-conflict justice’ as it is seen, lived and interpreted by women who belong to ‘perpetrator’ nations and will be of great interest and use to researchers, students and practitioners within post-conflict law and justice, international criminal law, security studies and gender studies.

ICTY Celebrities: War Criminals Coming Home

Almost 25 years ago, the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed the Resolution 827 establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the first ad hoc international criminal court set up by the UN since the post–World War II Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. The Tribunal was created to prosecute persons responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed at the territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991. Over its life span, the Tribunal indicted 161 individuals for their involvement in atrocities committed during the wars of Yugoslav secession. It held trials against 113 individuals over the course of 10.500 trial days hearing testimonies over 4,600 witnesses. Ninety defendants were convicted, 19 acquitted, 2 are currently being retried at the Mechanism for the International Criminal Tribunals, and 2 died before they could hear their final judgment. All this judicial activity indisputably left behind a significant judicial and forensic legacy. The ICTY contributed to the revival and consolidation of international criminal law and its doctrine and gathered a large repository of documents and testimonies about the past.