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Mainstreaming Gender in European Union Transitional Justice Policy: Towards a Transformative Approach?

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Gender Roles in Peace and Security

Abstract

The European Parliament awarded its prestigious Sakharov Prize in October 2016 to two Iraqi Yazidi women who were held as sex slaves by Islamic State militias. Some months before, the ICC issued its landmark conviction of Jean Pierre Bemba for his responsibility as commander-in-chief for sexual and gender-based violence carried out by his troops in the Central African Republic in May 2016. Both events are evidence of the increasing awareness at the EU, and internationally, of the need to amplify women’s experiences of violence and their claims to justice. In Guatemala, for example, a court recently convicted two former military officers of crimes against humanity for having enslaved, raped and sexually abused 11 indigenous Q’eqchi’ women at the Sepur Zarco military base during the armed conflict in Guatemala.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The women, peace and security agenda comprises a set of eight resolutions that were adopted by the United Nations Security Council after intense advocacy work by transnational feminist networks. The agenda codifies the way in which gender influences all aspects of conflict management, prevention and peacebuilding, including security sector reform, demobilisation and reintegration and transitional justice policies.

  2. 2.

    The Action Plan was created as a response to the commitment made in the Strategic Framework to Human Rights and Democracy, launched by the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, in June 2012.

  3. 3.

    An earlier version of this chapter, which drew on only parts of the data set I curated for this project, was published as a working paper: María Martín de Almagro, “Transitional Justice and Women, Peace and Security: A critical Reading of the EU framework”. LSE Women, Peace and Security Working Paper Series 5, 2017.

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Guerrina (2005), Hoskyns (1996), Kantola (2010), Lombardo and Meier (2006), Prugl (2007), Verloo (2007).

  5. 5.

    Retributive justice involves punishment of the perpetrator. It is generally associated with Court trials. Restorative justice, by contrast, is victim-centred as it seeks to rebuild communities or relationships. It is regarded as an alternative form of justice outside the formal judicial court system, in the form of, for example, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions or Women’s Courts. (Re) distributive or socio-economic justice provides financial and other material compensation for individual victims or the community. The aim is not only to “compensate” the victims of past wrongs but also to promote sustainable peace by changing the structural conditions that rendered violence possible in the first place.

  6. 6.

    Wendy Lambourne explains that the term “transitional justice” was first used in the context of societies transitioning from authoritarian to democratic regimes and that it was former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, who for the first time made a link between the goals of transitional justice, reconciliation and peacebuilding in the Report of the Secretary-General on the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, UN Doc. S/2004/616, 24 August 2016. See Lambourne (2009). Other works on the linkage between transitional justice and peacebuilding are: Boraine and Valentine (2006), Rama Mani (2002), Borer (2006).

  7. 7.

    NVivo is software used for qualitative data analysis.

  8. 8.

    For a similar methodological exercise on EU Development policy, see Debusscher (2011).

  9. 9.

    See, for instance, Meger (2016).

  10. 10.

    See, for example, Duncanson (2013), Baaz and Utas (2012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    María Martín de Almagro

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  1. María Martín de Almagro
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Correspondence to María Martín de Almagro .

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  1. Institute of Political Science and Sociology, Jean Monnet Chair for European Studies and International Relations, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Manuela Scheuermann  & Anja Zürn  & 

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Martín de Almagro, M. (2020). Mainstreaming Gender in European Union Transitional Justice Policy: Towards a Transformative Approach?. In: Scheuermann, M., Zürn, A. (eds) Gender Roles in Peace and Security. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21890-4_8

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