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Political Restructuring and Social Transformation (PRST)
DAWN's work on the theme of Political Restructuring and Social Transformation (PRST) began in 1998 and assumed priority within the network in 1999/2000. The work entailed developing a Southern feminist global analysis of the changing character of state system, social movements and multilateralisms in the context of an emerging global governance complex during the era of economic globalization. The resulting book, Marketisation of Governance: Critical Feminist Perspectives from the South, is DAWN's third global analysis. Based on the findings of commissioned regional research and consultations, the analysis strongly critiques global financial and trade liberalization, a process that has resulted in the erosion of the state's capacity to meet national social development needs. The analysis highlights the challenges and dilemmas for social movements pursuing economic and gender justice in the era of globalisation, and lays down a number of fundamentals which cannot be compromised. The increase in conflicts resulting from the fragmentation of states, global power shifts and persistent imbalances have become a focus of DAWN's research effort in this area.
PRST Analysis Team: Kumudini Samuel and PRST-Conflict Asia Research Team
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BPFA & UNSCR 1325, 1820 & 1888 by Kumi Samuel
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The identification of women and armed conflict as a critical area of concern in the Beijing Platform For Action (BPFA) has led to a growing awareness of the gender differentiated experience and impact of armed conflict on women and men. In particular, the BPfA sought to increase the participation of women in conflict resolution at decision-making levels; reduce military expenditures and control availability of armaments; reduce human rights abuses in conflict situations; promote women’s contributions in support of a culture of peace; and provide protection to displaced and refugee women. Five years later, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution on women, peace and security in October 2000. UNSCR 1325 mandates member states, inter alia, to involve women at decision-making level in all aspects of peace building, peace making and security concerns.
Building on the gains of the 1992 UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, women’s advocacy post-Beijing also helped to highlight the atrocities of rape and sexual violence in war time following the brutal conflicts in Rwanda and Bosnia. This led to the establishment of International Criminal Tribunals and paved the way for the creation of the International Criminal Court based on the Rome Statutes. The Statutes inter alia recognized systematic rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity. Subsequently, UN Security Council Resolution 1820 linked sexual violence as a tactic of war with the threat to international peace and security. It also demanded a comprehensive report from the UN Secretary General on implementation. UNSCR 1820 also called for improved information flow to the Security Council and the adoption of concrete protection and prevention measures to end sexual violence.
A further resolution 1888, calls on the Secretary-General to appoint a Special Representative to intensify efforts to end sexual violence against women and children in conflict situations and engage on a high level with military and civilian leaders. It also calls for the increased participation of women in peace-building and other post-conflict processes.
However, the systematic inclusion of gender concerns in Security Council resolutions as well as the inclusion of a gendered analysis in Security Council deliberations falls far short of the spirit of Resolution 1325, with only a third referring in some form to women or gender (Resolution Watch). In addition there is no monitoring mechanism to ensure implementation reinforcing the lack of political will to respect the principles enshrined in the resolution. Furthermore, the Security Council privileges sovereignty and non interference; its resolutions and interventions are politicized and often partisan and the geo political interests of member states are paramount.
The international human rights regime does offer a comprehensive set of norms and a moral authority, despite its procedural weaknesses. It also offers hope and sustains struggles in local, national and international arenas which strive to protect and promote human rights and legitimizes our engagement from local to the global and the global to the local. The challenge remains on how we hold the United Nations accountable as well as how we ‘defend and expand our rights as well as re-claim the UN as our rightful space’ and an arena of struggle, in this fierce new world.
*This article is also available in DAWN Informs June 2010 Issue
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The Hidden Crisis: Gender and Human Rights in Madagascar
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by Zo Randriamaro
The political situation in Madagascar is far from improving, after several unsuccessful attempts from national, regional and international mediators to resolve the political crisis during more than a year. This has overshadowed another worrying trend, which is clearly gendered: the crisis that affects not only political and civil rights, but also economic and social rights in the country.
The human rights crisis
The cases of human rights violations have been much less publicized than the power struggles among the proponents of the political crisis, not only because such information is not of the kind that the authorities would like to publicize, but also because it has not attracted the attention of the international mediators involved in the protracted process for the resolution of the political crisis, nor that of the mainstream media. Thus, very few local newspapers have reported on the on-going campaign by human rights defenders for the immediate release of the so-called ‘political detainees’ who had been arrested by the police during the street demonstrations of September 2009 and had been waiting in vain for 8 months for their cases to be addressed. Among these are 13 women, who have started a hunger strike together with male political detainees about one week ago to call for attention to their cases. Three of these women have reached a very critical stage (Madagascar Laza, 14 April 2010). While the human rights defenders are mobilizing locally and among the Malagasy diaspora to send as many letters as possible to the Minister of Justice of the transitional government led by Andry Rajoelina to demand for the immediate release of these women, they also know from experience that the authorities are listening more to the voices of powerful outsiders than those of their own people.
This was clearly evidenced in the violence perpetrated by the armed forces against the workers of the COSMOS factory, which was closed down following the exclusion of Madagascar from the preferences under the Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) as a result of the decision by the transitional government to ignore the threats of international sanctions. 2,000 workers were laid off when the COSMOS factory could no longer export its products to the US market, like hundreds of other factories in the export processing zones of the country. Instead of the support that it had promised to these workers, the transitional government instructed the armed forces to throw tear gases at the hundreds of workers who came to the factory to get their severance pay to no avail (Midi Madagasikara, 21 April 2010). Most of these workers are women, who constitute more than 70% of the labour force in the export processing zones.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?
Meanwhile, the internal tensions within the High Transitional Authority (Haute Autorité de Transition: HAT) are increasingly visible, along with the weakening of its alliance with the military - some of whom have recently been accused of a coup d’Etat. As happened with the thousands of retrenched workers who have been abandoned to a future of poverty and destitution, an increasing number of ordinary people who supported Andry Rajoelina have come to realize that all these internal struggles are not about their well-being and rights as citizens, nor about the Nation’s interests. In this regard, civil society organizations have underscored that some members of the HAT have been able to buy brand new cars and build big houses; those civil society organizations have also demanded for accountability from the transitional authorities for their governance of public resources (Madagascar Tribune, 7 April 2010). Thus, a small elite has greatly benefited from the political crisis, and the control of the state as a site of enrichment appears to be at the heart of current struggles among the proponents.
The latest development in relation to the political crisis is the leading role played by the Presidents of France and South Africa in the design of an agreement between the current President of the HAT, Andry Rajoelina, and the former President, Marc Ravalomanana. While the content of this agreement is not yet known, there is every reason to believe that the control of the State’s resources will implicitly remain the key item on the agenda of the discussions. Once again, human rights are likely to be sidelined, given the poor record of Andry Rajoelina and Marc Ravalomanana in terms of human rights. President Jacob Zuma is well known among feminist and women’s rights activists for the controversial issues around his election, and President Nicolas Sarkozy clearly demonstrated during his visit to China that he gives priority to economic interests over human rights. With respect to the political crisis in Madagascar, it comes as no surprise that he is getting involved in its resolution at a time when the TOTAL company is in competition with Chinese companies for oil exploitation in the country.
In an earlier article, I have expressed hope as a Malagasy citizen and women’s rights activist that the political crisis in Madagascar could be an opportunity to transform unjust political, social and economic structures, and to build a new social contract based on human rights for all. Now, I am more convinced than ever that the sine qua non condition for this to happen is that we, the women of Madagascar, must fight for our rights and those of future generations.
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DAWN Development Debates: Presentations on Political Restructuring and Social Transformation
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- Militarization and Internationalization of Conflict by Rubina Saigol
- Religious Fundamentalism and Secular Governance by Amrita Chhachhi
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Engendering Peace Building for Political Re-structuring and Social Transformation by Kumudini Samuel
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Conflict often arises in situations of marginalisation, whether from political structures and equitable power sharing or discrimination based on religious, ethnic, caste, class and other social memberships. It also denotes the failure of nation states to accommodate the exercise of inclusive citizenship and accept plurality within their polity. Therefore in terms of ‘Political Restructuring and Social Transformation’, conflict and post-conflict phases probably offer the most opportune moment to renegotiate structures of power and whole paradigms governing nation-states. It is even more so if this phase also involves a change of political regime, which signifies a new balance of power and is often accompanied by constitution making processes.
The challenge is that this phase is often fast-paced and opportunities to influence political decision-making arise unexpectedly. In many cases, the post-conflict phase is also fertile ground for the rise of religious fundamentalisms and identity politics. Post conflict situations may negate the agency and gains women made in times of conflict when they are expected to return to a former status quo. Protracted conflict and equally protracted peace building and peace making also place heavy demands on women and women’s organizations that engage in these processes. New, innovative and strategic initiatives at the local, national, regional and international spheres on women in armed conflict and post-conflict situations need to take account of these multiple complex and often contradictory, circumstances.
The project is focused at the collection of case studies on women’s engagement in conflict resolution and peace building work in the South and Southeast Asian regions. The team decided to document and to analyze the actual work that they were doing as activist-feminist researchers involved in peace building initiatives. This generated a strong interest on inter-generational learning among participants that came from groups and institutions that constituted the research team. These are as follows: Women and Media Collective/Suriya Women’s Development Centre (Sri Lanka); North East Network (India); Institute of Human Rights Communication (Nepal); and National Commission on Violence against Women (Indonesia). Together they gathered a total of 18 case studies on women’s initiatives in peace building that covered a diverse range of conflict situations, periods, actors, and forms of women’s engagements.
At the South and South East Asian Regional Consultation on Feminist Engagement with Conflict, Impunity and Peace, held in Katmandu, Nepal on 27-28 March 2009, the case studies were presented and discussed. Also shared was a case study on the long-running Kashmiri conflict. The Consultation was followed by a meeting between the participants and activist from the Women’s Movement in Nepal. Also present were two women Constituent Assembly (CA) members who were part of the Women’s Movement, Sapana Pradhan (Women’s Rights) and Malla Pandey (Trade Unionist). The CA members gave an overview of their post-conflict work including their involvement in the constitution making process; engagement with diverse issues of citizenship, affirmative action, fundamental rights; and the difficulty of setting up a women’s caucus in the CA. The DAWN Team that facilitated the Nepal consultation are Kumudini Samuel (Sri Lanka), Gita Sen (India), and Cecilia Ng (Malaysia). They will be joined by Kamla Chandrakirana (Indonesia) in guiding the finalization of the case studies and consolidating the overall analysis.
During the Conflict Consultation in Nepal, participants grappled with the problem of protracted armed conflict and the lack of UN special procedures or gaps in the special procedures to deal with some of the gendered concerns of such types of conflict. Thus, in terms of advocacy, the research team is looking at a possible two-prong engagement, i.e. pursue the idea of a CEDAW General Resolution on Women in Conflict, as well as, take the opportunity of the anniversary of UNSCR 1325 to open up advocacy at the level of the Security Council. UNSCR 1325 is especially significant in that it clearly mandates to look at issues of conflict transformation and political restructuring.
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About Women's Powers and Wisdom: Debates on Political Restructuring and Social Transformation
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The revision of feminists’ and women movements’ debates on State and politics in Latin America had to be carried out through thousands of articles published in a vast range of magazines, declarations, proposals in different contexts such as electoral times and times of political openness, and also through a few books.
No debates have been found on the State’s nature, such as the ones which are taking place in Germany, for example, where relatively recent critical works have started to appear on State’s feminist theory , which transcend clichés such as “Staat als Mannerbund” (the State as a men’s league or federation).
What does repeatedly appear is the notion of Patriarchal State, as a political way of domination in patriarchal societies. Although there seems to be wide-spread agreement on this idea, no critical approach can be found, that demonstrates that it is mainly patriarchal and not only class bourgeois, white ad half-caste racist, in short, that it is the institution which, par excellence, produces and reproduces several kinds of domination and discrimination in Latin American societies. Moreover, the use of different epithets regarding the State is frequently found in the same context. (Read more by downloading document)
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