Sam Cook, Security Council Resolution 1820: on Militarism, Flashlights, Raincoats, and Rooms With Doors (a Political Perspective on Where it Came from and What it Adds)

• Citation: Vol. 23 No. 1
• Publication year: 2009

SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1820: ON MILITARISM, FLASHLIGHTS, RAINCOATS, AND ROOMS WITH DOORS-A POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE ON WHERE IT CAME FROM AND WHAT IT ADDS

Sam Cook^*

For this panel, we were asked to focus on ending impunity for sexual violence. I think that to make the call for ending impunity meaningful, we simultaneously have to think more broadly and more narrowly. Ending impunity is for me only an intermediate goal, which can be disheartening, given how impossible it seems to achieve. And without engaging in a philosophical or theoretical discussion on the justifications or purposes of punishment, I think that for most of us, looking to end impunity is a strategic move to end violations of human rights and to end violence against women.¹

For me, and for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) for which I work, none of this can be looked at independently from working to end war, to further peace and freedom, and end militarism-and I do not hear nearly enough discussion about ending militarism.

Ending violence against women also requires addressing economic justice and linking it with militarism. It involves looking at military spending and its opportunity costs. These opportunity costs are not merely abstract or theoretical. Every single dollar spent on a nuclear weapon is a dollar not spent on flashlights and raincoats. Every single dollar spent on a bomber or a submarine is a dollar not spent on a room with a door or on a lock for that door. I will return to the relevance of flashlights, raincoats, rooms, doors, and locks. Essentially, though, we cannot speak about human rights or about ending impunity for sexual violence without also speaking about the practical details of protecting and promoting human rights. We also cannot enter such discussions without speaking about disarmament, ending militarism, and establishing alternative notions of security-that is, true human security.

The position from which I address this topic comes from my work monitoring and advocating for the full and effective implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions on women, peace, and security, namely Resolution 1325²and Resolution 1820.³These resolutions are part of our

"ending impunity" toolbox; and certainly each of these resolutions contains explicit language on ending impunity and on sexual violence and human rights protection more broadly. In fact, Resolution 1820 has an almost exclusive focus on sexual violence from a protection standpoint.

To evaluate these resolutions or, indeed, to use them as tools to end impunity, it is important to take a historical perspective. The intention with which advocates argued for the adoption of these resolutions and some of their practical implications are very relevant in understanding and being sensitive to certain critical challenges. These are not simply challenges to implementation of the resolutions themselves-such as getting governments to demonstrate political will to bring about change. These are challenges to us as advocates working on ending violence against women and on advancing the women, peace, and security agenda. These are the challenges that we must face and address in order to ensure that the work we do in one part of the broad human rights arena does not damage or hinder efforts in another part. We do not talk enough about this hazard. We all think that if we are doing so-called good work, that it all adds up collectively to one massive amount of good work. We need to be more careful and more self-critical.

When non-governmental organizations, including WILPF, originally advocated for a Security Council resolution on women, peace, and security they did so as part of a move to ensure that international thinking about women and conflict was not simply about women as victims.⁴This was certainly part of the larger and earlier feminist project to proclaim, and have recognized, women's agency.⁵But for peace organizations on the forefront of advocacy efforts, Resolution 1325 was affirmatively not about "making war safe for women." It was about achieving recognition within the world's paramount security forum that war has a differential and disproportionate impact on women.⁶But perhaps more importantly, it was about acknowledging women's role in conflict prevention⁷and in conflict resolution and peacebuilding.⁸

Resolution 1325 was about ensuring women's full and effective participation in decision-making, including in the arenas of so-called hard security.⁹

The focus on women's participation, which I see as a core human rights principle, was critical for women, peace, and security advocates when the resolution was adopted in October 2000, and it remains so almost a decade later. This fact presented challenges when, in early 2006, advocacy groups began to lobby the Security Council in earnest to address sexual violence in the context of conflict in a more focused way.¹⁰These efforts ultimately culminated in the United States-during its presidency of the Security Council in June 2008-putting forward a resolution on sexual violence in conflict.¹¹

This was not, however, a process free of controversy, and many concerns were raised.

One important question raised by advocates was: why focus on sexual violence?¹²Critics of such an approach argued that Resolution 1325 provided a broad and fairly comprehensive framework for a range of issues and singling out one issue was both arbitrary and perhaps even dangerous. Some believed that this focus would take away from the powerful breadth and depth of Resolution 1325.¹³They argued that it would diminish the importance of Resolution 1325 by reducing the women, peace, and security agenda to issues of sexual violence and victimhood again. This was seen as an approach that tried to make war safe for women-reducing the central tenants of participation and agency and ignoring the key goal of conflict prevention.

The importance of the larger goal of ensuring women's effective and full participation in peace and security issues is undeniable. But the reality is (and this is where we have to respect our foremothers in the women's movement but also say "we've moved on") that women are not either victims or agents. Saying that a woman is a victim of sexual violence does not deny her agency. It is a false dichotomy. Many women who are powerful agents of change have also been affected by sexual violence or have lived under the threat of violence, which can constrain their lives sometimes more than being a physical victim does. But this does not define them as mere victims. Furthermore, we need to challenge the insistence of focusing on women as agents in ways that somehow ignore that sexual violence and war are very bad things. We should not focus so much on treating war as an opportunity for agency to the extent that we forget how horrific and unacceptable it is because of what it does to human beings.

The victim-agent dichotomy also obscures the fact that the issues of participation and violence are inextricably linked. We must recognize that sexual violence is both a cause and consequence of low levels of women's participation in all decision-making and, in fact, participation in day-to-day life. Participation is not just about access to government or the right to vote but also about participation in the fullness of life and in very basic activities. As has been heard time and again from women's rights activists in conflict areas like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), sexual violence does more than discourage political engagement. This violence, and more particularly the fear thereof, holds communities hostage and prevents access to markets, water-points, and schools. Of course, unless women and gender equality concerns are present at the highest levels of decision-making, it is unlikely that attempts to eliminate this violence will be successful. However, addressing the problems posed by the interconnected issues of sexual violence and participation is not an easy sequential or separable exercise. First, women's participation is not just a high level concept. Women must be included in discussions and decisions about their security needs and concerns; men with guns walking around deciding how to protect women without actually asking them what their needs are is bound to fail. Women also need to be involved in the design of strategies and programs for their protection. At the same time, it is also necessary to act to provide physical...