Women, Gender, and Terrorism: Understanding Cultural and Organizational Differences

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By Jeannette Gaudry Haynie and Chantal de Jonge Oudraat

As the idea that women can and should play pivotal roles in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) gains greater traction, decision makers and scholars must keep striving

toward a more nuanced understanding of the historical, cultural, and gendered contexts that enable extremist movements and organizations to grow. Without study, research, discussion, and stronger links with local actors and scholars to gain contextual understanding, U.S. analysts and policymakers risk creating a catalog of programs and policies internationally that include and empower women but fail to stem the tide of extremism and violence. Increasing women’s empowerment and strengthening their roles in community life, peace, and security are important steps, but even these can fail or backfire without deep cultural understanding.

In June 2016, Women In International Security (WIIS) facilitated a round-table event that explored how national gender-based P/CVE policies and programs have developed. Panelists discussed flaws, missteps, and successes in program development and implementation. In October 2016, a subsequent panel built on this earlier discussion by exploring the role of gender and gender considerations among extremist organizations and regions. By developing a stronger understanding of how gender roles and norms can differ between and even within extremist groups over time, scholars and policymakers can build more effective P/CVE programs that are tailored to local cultural and social gender norms. 

As observed in our earlier policy brief, “Women, Gender, and Terrorism: Policies and Programming,” programs that optimistically target gender or women specifically as agents and actors have suffered from four main problems.1

First, prioritizing female roles in P/CVE programs potentially has both risks and benefits, but without an established understanding of historical research and practice, scholars and practitioners might fail to understand the scale and magnitude of either. Focusing on one gender—women or men—creates or reinforces the expectation that all members of a gender share a set of abilities or characteristics while ignoring the possibility that members of the other gender(s) could possess those same characteristics or abilities. If program designers build the expectation that simply including women in P/CVE programs will increase program effectiveness, they risk reinforcing gender stereotypes, recruiting women who are ill suited to the task, and alienating or neglecting men who may be uniquely suited to the work in question.

Second, program responses often do not differentiate between acts of radicalization and terrorism. Without a stronger understanding of what separates these concepts and how to address the overlaps and differences, programs can exacerbate existing tensions, as they have in some U.S. domestic programs designed to address extremism in regions that host higher numbers of Muslim immigrants. If a vulnerable individual (or community) is treated harshly or as a criminal but has not actually committed a terrorist act, treating him or her as a terrorist may harden any budding resolve. Vulnerable or radicalizing individuals and groups require a more nuanced approach than current counterterror capabilities allow.2

Third, programs often fail to recognize that including women is not a one-time silver bullet but a comprehensive policy shift that should be incorporated at every level, potentially alongside efforts to change the normalization of violence and social culture. Simply teaching a woman how to recognize the signs of growing extremism in her family or community does little if the security forces she reaches out to do not recognize her value as a human being or display respect for unconventional or more holistic means of addressing potential radicalization.

Finally, programs should seek out local actors and incorporate local programs for maximum benefit, since local practitioners will have the best contextual understanding and strongest local knowledge. Local community-based programs in Pakistan, for example, are often critically underfunded, and even those that find success are consistently at risk of folding due to lack of funding or management capacity.3

Program developers can alleviate some of these problems by learning more about the very specific contexts in which extremist organizations operate.

First, they must ask how and whether the organization uses the construct of gender to achieve its goals. Does it recruit men and women under different pretexts? Does its vision prioritize specific masculine or feminine roles? Does its vision involve a change in these roles over time or with successes toward its goals? For example, Boko Haram initially grew alongside Al Qaeda, training with Al Qaeda members before splitting from Al Qaeda around 2009. Al Qaeda does not use many female suicide bombers, since doing so would violate its precepts, but Boko Haram actively trains and employs women as suicide bombers.4 The Islamic State offers an example of the way gender roles can shift over time and as priorities and the security situation develops: until recently, Islamic State women were very active but primarily as traditional figures—fighters’ wives, for instance. However, in recent months, IS has employed women as fighters and suicide attackers in Libya, potentially an alteration of policy in the face of mounting losses.5

Second, scholars must ask how the society affected by or radicalized by an extremist organization constructs gender. Are roles traditional in nature? How do these roles differ from the gender norms of extremist organizations? How are women versus men affected similarly and differently by the conflict and violence? When norms already exist to subordinate women, as they did in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it could be easier for extremist groups to capitalize on those norms. However, in countries like Norway, right-wing extremist groups use gender equality as a norm under attack by immigrants who espouse more patriarchal norms. Groups that develop within more equal societies might also use gender norms as a recruitment tool. In sum, such groups will have to be approached differently.

Third, policymakers must assess whether the extremist organization wields influence over the surrounding or affected population, and if so, analyze the degree of that influence so that they can develop policies appropriately positioned to contest extremist influence. Have local gender norms and roles changed significantly with the advent of the extremist group? For example, IS radically changed the gender roles in local areas in a relatively short period, as did the Taliban in Afghanistan. In contrast, as Catholic men in Northern Ireland were incarcerated or otherwise removed from their homes during the Troubles, women stepped into traditionally male roles, and the Irish Republican Army and its offshoots did not specifically challenge the changing gender narrative (although the Catholic Church often did).6 Understanding this kind of influence and the depth of local impacts is critical to effective policy development.

Fourth, program staff must search for and enable local actors for peace and equality. Do such actors observe specific gender norms? What implications for local actors should be considered in any P/CVE programming? How can the international community assist local actors if they exist? If the international community can empower them in useful ways, local citizens who breach stereotypes and push back at extremism can provide deep and broad knowledge and can also be the critical means to fight extremism. These actors are also most likely to regularly face dangers and threats. Organizations like Take Back the Tech and the Ajoka Theatre Company in Pakistan are small endeavors with limited means that work quietly to counter extremist messages, but they often have limited means and operate at great personal risk.7 The need to gain contextual understanding is arguably even greater where no or few local actors exist. The international community must tread carefully to effect change in such a situation.

As the development of P/CVE programming and research about extremist organizations and their manipulation of gender norms moves forward, it will be important for gender to be operationalized and considered systematically and completely. Simply adding a female actor or gender advisor will be insufficient. Instead, successful policies and programs will be built on specific, actionable, and nuanced research on extremism and gender, will support local actors to the greatest extent possible, and will deeply reflect on what gender means in a given context, how it is constructed, and how it is and could be used to counter extremist narratives and actions in widely varied regions and cultures.

WIIS policybrief April 2017       2

References

1          Jeanette Gaudry Haynie and Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, Women, Gender and Terrorism: Policies and Programming, WIIS Policybrief, January 2017.

2          Robert L. Mackenzie, Countering Violent Extremism in America: Policy Recommendations for the Next President, Brookings Report, 2016. https://www.brookings.edu/research/countering-violent-extremism-inamerica-policy-recommendations-for-the-next-president/.

3          Hedieh Mirahmadi, Waleed Ziad, Mehreen Farooq, and Robert Lamb, “Empowering Pakistan’s Civil Society to Counter Violent Extremism,” Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice 8, no. 1 (2016): 192.

4          Andrew Walker, What is Boko Haram? U.S. Institute of Peace, Special Report, 2012.

5          See also Hamoon Khelgast-Doost, Women in Jihadist Movements, WIIS Policybrief, May 2017.

6          Begona Arextaga, Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

7          Karima Bennoune, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2015.

By Katelyn Jones and Julia Whiting

In October 2020, Chicago was headed toward an increase of at least 51 percent in the murder rate and a 52 percent increase in shootings by the end of the year, compared to

2019.1 The city’s advocates and social service providers projected that COVID-19 will also increase domestic violence, which is often referred to as the shadow pandemic.2 Researchers and policymakers are at a loss to explain the spike in homicides and gun violence in Chicago and other cities around the country, and thus cannot come up with clear suggestions on how to reduce these trends.3

Many Chicago nonprofit organizations are actively working to mitigate violence. A cursory review of prominent programs addressing gun violence in Chicago reveals that most focus their efforts on one type of actor: men, specifically cis men of color. The vast majority of these programs ignore how women are affected by and participate in violence.4

We argue that understanding the gendered dynamics of conflict helps us better understand increasing rates of violence and ways to mitigate it. A review of the data reveals that gun violence in the city is highly correlated to domestic violence, including sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Areas with increased rates of domestic There is a distinct lack of research examining the links between SGBV and urban gun violence in the United States generally. This absence of a gender lens for examining violence stands in stark contrast to what we have learned in conflict-affected countries around the world. Applying a women, peace and security lens to US urban violence can produce a better understanding of what factors contribute to spikes in violence in US cities and what could be done to mitigate them. As with any armed conflict, one cannot fully understand it without recognizing women’s and men’s experiences of it.6

violence also experience higher rates of gun violence.5 These trends indicate the need for more careful attention to the role of gender in the rising violence in Chicago: how and why women and men participate in violence, how and why women and men are victims of violence, and how gun violence intersects with other forms of violence—especially intimate-partner violence.

In this brief, we first justify our interpretation of Chicago’s gun violence as a form of armed conflict and explain how the women, peace, and security (WPS) lens can aid in its analysis. Second, we share results of a data analysis in which we map the prevalence and interconnectedness of domestic violence and gun violence across the city. We use domestic violence as a proxy to assess SGBV, as domestic violence measurements are the only available data that capture SGBV in Chicago. Third, we recommend shifts in data collection, research, and policies to take gendered dynamics into account and motivate more effective programming in Chicago and elsewhere.

Gun Violence as Armed Conflict

We maintain that gun violence in Chicago constitutes an armed conflict for two reasons. First, it meets the baseline intensity and organization requirements for armed conflict classification in Common Article 3 and Additional Protocol II (APII) of the Geneva Conventions.7 Responses to gun violence have met the APII intensity requirement because military forces—not just police—have been deployed to mitigate and prosecute the violence.8 It has also met the organization requirement, as 61 percent of Chicago’s homicides are connected to gangs.9 Moreover, long-standing control over distinct territories, specifically neighborhoods on the south and west sides of the city, is maintained by prevalent gun violence.10

Second, Chicago is described as a war zone in popular narratives. In 2009, local rapper King Louie coined the term Chiraq, equating Chicago with armed conflict in Iraq.11 The nickname gained popularity as a commentary on pervasive gun violence experienced by many communities. Chi-raq was also the title of a 2015 film adaptation of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata set on Chicago’s South Side.12 Although thearchetype of women withholding sex from men to achieve peace does not accurately represent women’s experience of gun violence in Chicago, the continued comparison of Chicago to widely acknowledged sites of armed conflict is noteworthy. These narratives elucidate how popular descriptions of Chicago as a war zone produce meaning and justify actions, including the involvement of federal forces to combat Chicago’s gun violence. 13

Recognizing gun violence in Chicago as armed conflict enables us to examine its gendered dynamics through the lens of the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda. Applying a WPS framework in our analysis means that we evaluate gun violence with special attention to the different ways men and women experience armed conflict in the city. Moreover, we examine how different experiences of gun violence are connected to other types of violence, especially SGBV.

Mapping Gun Violence and SGBV

Scholars and policymakers have yet to adequately evaluate connections between SGBV and gun violence in Chicago, despite evidence that they are related. Between 2016 and 2019, shootings in which a woman was the victim increased 13.5 percent each year.14 Police typically described these victims as connected to a “gang lifestyle,” but some were also described as victims of crimes of opportunity, armed robberies, arguments that became violent, or domestic violence. There is also evidence that SGBV is more prevalent in Chicago neighborhoods with significant rates of both crime and poverty. Between 2002 and 2016, four neighborhoods in Chicago with the highest homicide rate also had the highest sexual assault rate. For example, West Englewood reported  50 homicides and 42 sexual assaults in 2016.15

While there is a paucity of research on these dynamics in Chicago, an ever-growing body of literature examines these dynamics internationally in conflict-affected settings. For instance, societies in other parts of the world that have higher levels of gender-based violence within households have been found to be more likely to engage in violent group interactions.16 Thus SGBV can be a useful predictor of violence outside of homes, and it suggests that these dynamics likely exist outside of conventional conflict areas. The 2020 US WPS index examines women’s status along the interconnected dimensions of inclusion, justice, and security at the state level. The report found that states that do well in one of these dimensions also do well in the others and vice versa, suggesting that systems of (dis)empowerment often reinforce each other.17

To analyze the relationship between Chicago’s gun violence and SGBV systematically, we mapped and compared the prevalence of both throughout the city. In particular, we asked: Do the same areas of the city have high levels of gun violence and SGBV? Or would the two variables appeared geographically unrelated?

We used citywide data on gun violence and SGBV over the same period. For data on gun violence, we used the city of Chicago’s Data Portal, which provides data on calls to the police (excluding homicides that include identifiable data for either victim or perpetrator) from 2001 to the present. The best publicly available data source for SGBV (and the only citywide source for domestic violence data) is the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) Domestic Violence Quarterly Statistical Report, which maps average daily calls to the police by police district for domestic disturbance, domestic battery, or violation of orders of protection during January 2014–September 2014.18 This report, therefore, includes domestic violence that might not necessarily be considered SGBV—such as elder abuse—andit is limited to crimes reported to the police. Because SGBV in particular is typically underreported, the report likely undercounts incidents of SGBV.19 While using domestic violence data as a proxy for SGBV’s prevalence in Chicago is not ideal, it is the best option at present.

Using R, we entered these daily averages as a new dataset in order to compare it with CPD crime data from the Data Portal.20 We filtered the raw CPD data by month to include only 1 January–30 September 2014. Within this time frame, we tallied all gun-related calls to the police, excluding possession, sale, or registration offenses, by police district. The remaining crimes are categorized in the database as assault, battery, robbery, sexual assault, and reckless or unlawful use of a

Table 1: Average Daily Domestic Calls and Total Gun-Related Calls to Police per Chicago Police District,  January 2014-September 2014
   Average Daily
Police DistrictTotal Gun CallsDomestic Calls
          7500+40-49
          3401-50030-39
          4401-50030-39
          5401-50020-29
          6401-500 30-39
         11401-50030-39
          2301-40020-29
         15301-40020-29
         25301-40020-29
          8201-30030-39
          9201-30020-29
         10201-30020-29
         12201-30010-19
         22201-30010-19
         14101-20010-19
         24101-20010-19
          1<1001-9
         16<10010-19
         17<10010-19
         18<1001-9
         19<1001-9
         20                    <100                      1-9
Source: Domestic Violence Quarterly Statistical Report,  Chicago Police Crime Data

firearm. This approach was meant to isolate incidents of gun violence, which has some drawbacks. First, some crimes in the CPD database, such as aggravated vehicular hijacking, may have but did not necessarily include a gun. Second, while illegal weapons sales are not directly harming someone, they contribute to an environment of armed conflict. Third, because homicides are not included in the data, a fatal dimension of gun violence is not included. Fourth, some crimes included in our measure of gun violence could also be considered SGBV. In particular, criminal sexual assault with a gun (total count: 50) and aggravated domestic battery using a handgun (total count: 3) are both included. While it is likely that many of these crimes also count as SGBV, we cannot be sure, as we do not have detailed information about these crimes.

We sorted each district’s total gun-related calls by the  hundreds to create a categorical scale similar to the average daily domestic violence calls. Initially, we calculated each district’s daily average calls to the police regarding gun  violence to compare with the daily average calls to the police regarding domestic violence. Those averages were too small  for meaningful analysis—no district averaged more than  3 calls per day. Because of this, we opted to calculate total gun violence calls per police district instead. This suggests that, while gun violence in Chicago gets more publicity, domestic violence occurs much more frequently. Total gun calls to the police and daily average domestic violence calls per district are sorted by number of gun calls in descending order (table 1).

Table 1 and Figure 1 show that the districts with more gunrelated calls generally have more domestic violence calls. A few stand out: District 8 has the 10th highest number of

Figure 1: Police Districts with Higher Numbers of Gun Calls Tend to Have Higher Daily Rates of Domestic Violence Calls

<100                     101-200                201-300                301-400               401-500                  500+

Gun Calls

gun-related calls out of 22 districts but a relatively high average number of domestic violence-related calls. Districts 2, 5, 15, and 25 have lower daily domestic violence call averages but higher numbers of gun-related calls. Police District 7 has the highest number of gun-related calls and the highest daily average domestic violence calls to the police. This district includes West Englewood, one of four neighborhoods with the highest homicide and sexual assault rates from 2002 to 2016.21

We then created maps demarking CPD district boundaries that show ranges of gun-related calls to the police (figure 2) and daily average domestic calls (figure 3). To visualize  the relationship between gun violence and SGBV,22 we overlaid the hexcodes for the corresponding green and  blue for each district to get a combined map (figure 4).  The darker shaded districts have higher instances of both  gun violence and SGBV. These districts are concentrated on the South and West sides of the city, areas shaped by decades of racist housing and economic development policy.23  This analysis illuminates not only the interconnectedness  of gun violence and SGBV but also the critical need to address them concurrently in policies that take the city’s history into account.

Figure 2: Gun-Related Call Events to Chicago Police by District

Year to Date September 2014  

Source: Chicago City Data Portal

Figure 3: Domestic Violence Calls in Chicago by Police District

Year to Date September 2014  

Source: Chicago Police Department Quarterly Domestic Violence 

Statistical Summary

Figure 4: Overlaying the Maps for Gun-Related Calls and Average Daily Domestic Violence Calls Shows that Districts with High


Rates of One Type of Violence Tend to Have High Rates of Both

Source: Chicago City Data Portal and Chicago Police Department Quarterly

Domestic Violence Statistical Summary

Recommendations

In this brief, we have pointed to gun violence’s connections to domestic violence and SGBV. Our analysis underscores gun violence’s existence amid and in relationship to broader systems of violence. It also highlights the need for data disaggregation about violence to better understand the prevalence of SGBV. Much more needs to be done to address violence’s gendered dynamics and the ways that systems of violence intersect in Chicago. As such, we have several recommendations for policymakers, program directors, and researchers:

First, we recommend that policymakers and programs increase funding and support for women-focused efforts in existing gun violence programs. Programs must recognize men and women as differently involved in systems of violence and work to address the interconnectedness of these systems, especially SGBV.

Second, Chicago’s domestic violence data need to be disaggregated by type of violence—for example, separating elder abuse from spousal abuse—as well as by gender. This disaggregation is necessary to accurately assess the prevalence of SGBV in the city.

Third, data should track citywide experiences of violence per community area rather than police district.24 The  city’s 77 community areas are generally comparable to Chicago neighborhoods and have remained mostly unchanged since the 1920s, whereas police districts may touch multiple neighborhoods and may change in response to funding or other concerns. Tracking SGBV  by community area over time would build a more nuanced understanding of violence in the city than is currently possible.

Fourth, we encourage WPS practitioners to consider more carefully how a WPS framework can be applied to more local contexts, rural and urban. Some work has already been done on this regarding local action plans, especially in post-conflict settings, but we recommend this work be broadened to consider the gendered dynamics of violence in settings like Chicago that do not necessarily fall within WPS practitioners’ conventional understanding of armed conflict.25

The authors are especially grateful to Rashelle Brownfield and Nicole

Mattea for their research assistance. We also thank Mia Diaz and Tria Raimundo for their time spent providing feedback on earlier versions. Additionally, we are most thankful for Olivia Shinner’s help with research, revisions, and imagining what this project would look like. Lastly, we are grateful to Chantal de Jonge Oudraat for her insights and support.

References

  1. Patrick Smith, “20% in 2020: Setting Goals for Reducing Murder in

Chicago,” WBEZ: NPR Chicago (January 28, 2020). See also Chicago Police Department, “CompStat Week 43: Report Covering the Week of 19-October-20 through 25-October-20” (Chicago: Chicago Police Department, October 27, 2020).

  • Kate Thayer, “ ‘Abuse Doesn’t Stop in Times of Pandemic’: Domestic Violence Advocates Trying to Serve Survivors during Coronavirus Pandemic,” Chicago Tribune (March 19, 2020).
  • Matt Ford, “What’s Causing Chicago’s Homicide Spike?” The Atlantic (January 24, 2017); see also Stef W. Knight and Michael Sykes, “The

Deadliest City: Behind Chicago’s Segregated Shooting Sprees,” Axios, August 14, 2018. This year, many cities have seen a summer spike in homicides, which experts are attributing in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Chicago, this is occurring on top of persistently high numbers. See Thomas Fuller and Tim Arango, “Police Pin a Rise in Murders on an Unusual Suspect: Covid,” The New York Times, October 29, 2020.

Up in Chicago’s Violence,” Chicago Tribune (June 28, 2019); Safia Samee Ali, “Sexual Violence Victims in Chicago’s Deadliest Neighborhoods Carrying Trauma on Top of Gun Crime,” NBC News, May 28, 2017.

  • See, for example, Sara E. Davies and Jacqui True, The Oxford

Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2019); Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2014[1989]); Jean Bethke-Elshtain, Women and War (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995[1987]).

  • International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Geneva

Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of

War (Fourth Geneva Convention), August 12, 1949, 75 UNTS 287;

ICRC, Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August

1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), June 8, 1977, 1125 UNTS 609. There is precedence for such an expanded definition of armed conflict. See Anna Applebaum and Briana Mawby, Gang Violence as Armed Conflict: A New Perspective on El Salvador (Washington, DC: Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security, 2018).

  • NPR, “Strike force Is Created to Combat Chicago Gun Violence,” Weekend Edition Saturday, July 1, 2017.
  • ABC News, “Hidden America: Don’t Shoot, I Want to Grow Up,” October 18, 2011.
  • Jen Christensen, “Tackling Chicago’s ‘Crime Gap,’ ” CNN, March 14, 2014.
  • Derek Alderman and Janna Caspersen, “What’s in a Nickname? In the Case of Chiraq, a Whole Lot,” American Association of Geographers Newsletter (Washington, DC: American Association of Geographers, March 4, 2015).
  • Manohla Dargis, “Review: Spike Lee’s ‘Chi-raq’ a Barbed Takedown of Gang Wars, With Sex as the Weapon,” The New York Times, December 3, 2015.
  • Annick T.R. Wibben, Feminist Security Studies: A Narrative Approach (New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 2.
  • Gorner and Lee, “Women Increasingly Caught Up in Chicago’s Violence.”
  • Ali, “Sexual Violence Victims in Chicago’s Deadliest Neighborhoods.”
  • Valerie M. Hudson et al., “The Heart of the Matter: The Security of Women and the Security of States,” International Security 33, no. 3 (2009): 7–45.
  • Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS), The Best and Worst States to Be a Woman: Introducing the U.S. Women, Peace, and Security Index 2020 (Washington, DC: GIWPS 2020).
  • Chicago Police Department, Quarterly Domestic Violence Statistical

Summary—YTD September 2014 (Chicago: Chicago Police Department, 2014). It includes crimes not covered under the Illinois Domestic Violence Act (which is included as a variable in the citywide crime data), making it impossible to replicate the report using what is publicly available. Further reports have not been released.

  1. Based on the 2018 survey, less than half (43 percent) of violent victimizations were reported to police, which was not statistically different from 2017 (45 percent). Criminal Victimization Report, 2018 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, September 2019).
  2. To perform the analysis, we used R packages tidyverse, ggplot2, sf, rgeos, rdgal, RColorBrewer, and readr.
  3. Ali, “Sexual Violence Victims in Chicago’s Deadliest Neighborhoods.”
  4. This was difficult using ggplot, the package used to generate the initial maps. To get around the package’s limitations, we created an index to track the hotline call average and number of gun-related incidents for each district.
  5. Eve L. Ewing, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in

Chicago 1940–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Sylvia Hood Washington, Packing Them In: An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Chicago, 1865–1954 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004).

  • A good example of what this could look like is the Sinai Community Health survey (Chicago: Sinai Health System, 2016), reports available at sinaisurvey.org.
  • See, for example, Roslyn Warren et al., Women’s Peacebuilding Strategies amidst Conflict: Lessons from Myanmar and Ukraine (Washington, DC: GIWPS, 2017).

By Alicia Luedke, Chloe Lewis, and Marisella Rodriguez

Summary

•                Recent attention to sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) on the part of military, police, and civilian personnel associated with UN peacekeeping operations and to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) by state and nonstate armed groups reveals policy silos that obscure similarities between the two and result in ineffective prevention efforts.

•                Instead of being regarded as separate kinds of activities, SEA and CRSV are best seen as occurring on a behavior spectrum that ranges from strategically motivated to opportunistic.

•                Much of this behavior revolves around power and is rooted in structural factors, including gender inequality, displacement, poverty, and economic deprivation.

•                Policy responses need to go beyond an emphasis on accountability for CRSV, on the one hand, and the prevention of SEA through conduct and discipline on the other and address the underlying causes of sexual violence in conflict and postconflict situations, namely, gender inequality and the political, social, and economic vulnerabilities of civilian populations.

•                Efforts to address SEA and CRSV should emphasize both legal accountability and appropriate conduct and discipline, as well as the root causes of such behaviors.

Introduction

Whether on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria or in the remote villages of South Sudan, sexual violence in the context of armed conflict, also known as conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), has drawn increasing attention from researchers, activists, and organizations concerned with protecting vulnerable populations during war. As a result of the efforts of feminist scholars and activists beginning in the 1990s, CRSV now informs an important part of

About the iNstitute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, promote postconflict peacebuilding, and increase conflict management tools, capacity, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct involvement in conflict zones around the globe.

boARd of diRectoRs

Stephen J. Hadley (Chair), Principal, RiceHadleyGates, LLC,

Washington, DC • George E. Moose (Vice Chair), Adjunct

Professor of Practice, The George Washington University, Washington, DC • Judy Ansley, Former Assistant to the President and

Deputy National Security Advisor under George W. Bush, Washington, DC • Eric Edelman, Hertog Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC • Joseph Eldridge, University Chaplain and Senior Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, School of International

Service, American University, Washington, DC • Kerry Kennedy,

President, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human

Rights, Washington, DC • Ikram U. Khan, President, Quality Care

Consultants, LLC., Las Vegas, NV • Stephen D. Krasner, Graham

H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford

University, Palo Alto, CA • John A. Lancaster, Former Executive

Director, International Council on Independent Living, Potsdam,

NY • Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, George Mason

University, Fairfax, VA • J. Robinson West, Chairman, PFC

Energy, Washington, DC • Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice

President, Leadership Conference on Civil and

Human Rights, Washington, DC

MeMbers ex OfficiO

Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State • James Mattis, Secretary of

Defense • Frederick M. Padilla, Major General, Marine Corps;

President, National Defense University • Nancy Lindborg,

President, United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting)

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace, which does not advocate specific policy positions.

To request permission to photocopy or reprint materials, email: [email protected].

international policy agendas. It is criminalized under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and is the subject of a number of significant UN Security Council Resolutions, collectively referred to as the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. UN Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, drew attention to the gendered experiences of armed conflicts and emergencies and called for the protection of vulnerable populations against various forms of sexual and gender-based violence. Eight years later, in 2008, UN Security Council Resolution 1820 recognized CRSV as a “tactic of war” and a threat to “international peace and security,” stressing the significance of “ending impunity for such acts as part of a comprehensive approach to seeking sustainable peace.”1

Similar developments have also taken place in the realm of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by the military, police, and civilian personnel associated with UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) and by humanitarian aid workers operating in conflict and emergency settings around the world. SEA occurring in the course of peace and humanitarian interventions has made headlines for more than a decade. In one of the better-known recent examples from 2016, UN and French peacekeepers found themselves at the center of allegations of child rape and sadistic sexual abuse in the Central African Republic, including reports of a French military commander tying up young girls and forcing them to have sex with a dog.2 In the first half of 2017 alone, there were forty-one allegations of SEA by UN mission personnel. In seven cases the victims were under the age of eighteen.3

In parallel with efforts to recognize and criminalize CSRV, there has been a strong effort to prevent and eliminate SEA, reflecting the wider emphasis on experiences of sexual violence in war since the development of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the early 2000s.4 In March 2016 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2272, aimed at curbing SEA committed by those operating under UN mandates. In 2017 UN Secretary-General António Guterres named SEA a top priority. Corresponding efforts have also occurred in the humanitarian sector. In 2016 the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, the main coordination mechanism for humanitarian operations, reestablished the taskforce to support the implementation of measures to protect vulnerable populations from sexual exploitation and abuse on the part of humanitarian aid workers.

While progress in addressing both CRSV and SEA must be acknowledged, efforts to understand and mitigate sexual violence in conflict and emergency settings have been limited by the separation of the two in policy circles. CRSV has often been regarded as a “tactic of war” perpetrated by state and nonstate armed groups, requiring criminal accountability through prosecution. Conversely, SEA has usually been considered a matter of conduct and discipline to be addressed by and at the discretion of individual troop-contributing countries (TCCs) and humanitarian agencies.

The treatment of CRSV and SEA as separate issues has overlooked the similarities between the two and resulted in partial and ineffective policies for dealing with the problem of sexual violence in conflict and emergency settings. Patterns of CRSV by armed groups, on the one hand, and SEA by the military, police, and civilian personnel associated with UN PKOs and humanitarian organizations on the other have much in common and are best seen as existing on a spectrum ranging from ordered, strategic behavior to unordered, opportunistic behavior. Much of this behavior revolves around power and is rooted in structural factors, including gender inequality, displacement, poverty, and economic deprivation. Thus, policy responses for both CRSV and SEA need to go beyond an emphasis on accountability and prevention and address the underlying causes of gender inequality and the political, social, and economic vulnerability of civilian populations.5

This is critical, as failing to address both CSRV and SEA and the commonalities between them can lead to further insecurity, deepening the culture of impunity, undermining long-term

state stability, and exacerbating the fragility of conflict and disaster-ridden areas. Indeed, CRSV and SEA undermine peace and security and contribute to the breakdown in social and political order.6 Similar to state and nonstate armed groups, when peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers exploit the vulnerability of those they are meant to protect and serve, it undermines their credibility while at the same time signaling to would-be perpetrators that acts of sexual violence are permissible.7 In the same way that CRSV is recognized as a threat to “peace and security,” 8 so also should SEA, which also creates insecurity and undermines long-term stability, even if it is not acknowledged as doing so.

Moving beyond Stereotypes of Sexual Violence

CRSV is often identified based on two predominant patterns. The first is strategic sexual violence, or sexual violence used as a weapon of war. The second is opportunistic sexual violence. The strategic use of sexual violence as a weapon or tactic has frequently been conceptualized as the targeting of individuals, groups, or entire communities with rape and other sexual crimes to advance an armed group’s political or military objectives and to instill fear in the general populace.9 Researchers have long recognized the strategic deployment of systematic sexual violence across conflict and postconflict contexts, including as a strategy of ethnic cleansing10 for sexual humiliation and torture,11 and as a tactic of political repression to thwart women’s political participation.12 Opportunistic wartime sexual violence, by contrast, is often perceived as driven by individual motivations, such as sexual gratification, revenge, and status seeking, in which the chaos of war enables perpetrators to commit sexual crimes with impunity.

Recent research on CRSV, however, has looked beyond this binary interpretation of strategic and opportunistic violence and found that sexual violence in war exists on a spectrum. Elisabeth Wood, for example, has shown that CRSV reflects a mixture of both strategy and opportunity, a “practice” that is condoned but not directly ordered by commanders.13 For instance, commanders may permit certain acts of sexual violence, such as sexual slavery, as a form of compensation for participating in fighting.14 This has been said to be the case in South Sudan, where combatants are paid in the currency of “what they loot and the women they abduct.”15

Research on SEA is similarly moving away from simplistic understandings. Although SEA is regularly viewed as involving transactional and survival sex between peacekeeping and humanitarian interveners and the populations they serve, close to half of allegations of SEA encompass more serious offenses, including rape and sex with minors.16 While the United Nations documents and defines both acts of exploitation and abuse, prevention efforts must recognize and address the full range of behaviors. Instead of viewing SEA simply as sexual misconduct by individuals, Jasmine-Kim Westendorf and Louise Searle differentiate among four patterns of SEA perpetrated by peace interveners: opportunistic sexual abuse; planned, sadistic abuse; transactional sex; and networked abuse and exploitation.17 Viewed in this way, the motivations behind SEA, like those behind CRSV, exist on a spectrum that encompasses “related but distinct types of behavior” that thrive on and reinforce gender and material inequalities.18

As such, although SEA and CRSV are not always ordered by superiors in the chain of command, they have been widely tolerated forms of criminal behavior across conflict and emergency settings.19 Thus those in leadership positions—commanders of armed groups, heads of peacekeeping battalions, managers of humanitarian organizations—need to take responsibility for the actions of those working under them. In particular they need to create and adhere to effective complaint mechanisms, develop and implement codes of conduct, and investigate and hold to account perpetrators of sexual violence.

Root Causes of Sexual Violence in Conflicts and Emergencies

Over the past two decades, researchers have established connections among gender inequality, sexual violence, and armed conflict, which emphasizes that many of the elements that drive sexual violence in peacetime also drive sexual violence in wartime.20 Sexual violence in armed conflict does not occur in a vacuum; it is rooted in preexisting peacetime gender inequalities and violence, such as forced or early marriage, domestic violence, and marital rape.21 In South Sudan, for instance, research has shown that CRSV in the context of the ongoing civil war is rooted in the local political economy of bridewealth that commodifies women and girls and treats them as property.22

Material inequality, itself grounded in gender inequality, also contributes to CRSV by making civilians more vulnerable to attacks by armed groups as they seek to meet their basic needs, such as obtaining food and shelter. In another example from South Sudan, women living in the UN Protection of Civilians camps are sometimes forced to choose between staying inside the camps or leaving the camps in search of food and firewood to support their families, where they risk being raped outside the gates of UN bases by armed actors.23

Many of the root causes of SEA comparably lie in the gender and material inequalities that exist between peace and humanitarian interveners and local populations.24 The settings in which peacekeepers and humanitarians operate are largely unregulated, marked by economic collapse and nonexistent rule of law. These factors create an opportune environment for the exploitation of vulnerable civilians.25 Because of the inherently unequal relationship between interveners and the people they serve, sexual acts can be demanded in exchange for protection and material support, with peacekeepers and aid workers withholding food, shelter, and other services until their sexual demands are met.26

In this regard, it is worth noting that work on SEA has shown that higher levels of gender equality in TCCs for PKOs tend to be associated with lower levels of SEA allegations in the field.27 Such evidence points to the important role of gender inequality in influencing the prevalence of sexual abuse by peacekeepers abroad. Accordingly, in much the same way that gender inequality feeds into the use of CRSV by armed groups, gender inequality in UN TCCs can also influence the likelihood that peace and humanitarian interveners will sexually exploit and abuse communities in host countries. Promoting gender equality at home thus becomes a critical step toward promoting gender equality during mission-based interventions.

Lessons for Preventing and Responding to CRSV and SEA

Although CRSV and SEA share clear similarities, policy responses for the two differ significantly. Policies for combating and ending CRSV strongly underline accountability, focusing especially on promoting justice for survivors and restoring trust in rule of law institutions, with the aim of deterring future crimes. This has led to huge investments to support capacity building in domestic courts and tribunals in conflict settings, including the development of specialized mechanisms for investigating, documenting, and, ultimately, prosecuting CRSV.28 However, initiatives to prevent CRSV from occurring in the first instance, such as better training and rigorous vetting, remain relatively rare.

This stands in stark contrast to efforts to address SEA, which have emphasized prevention, stressing individual compliance through standards of conduct, recruitment, and training as the main vehicles for policy dissemination and enforcement. This has led to what Westendorf and Searle call the “individualization of responsibility.” 29 The approach along these lines largely foregrounds predeployment training based on the principles of the UN and humanitarian system.30 However, efforts to hold perpetrators of SEA to account have been difficult,

with complaint mechanisms rarely established or well understood among the people they are intended to protect.31 The lack of accountability for SEA is reinforced by the fact that, at least in the case of PKOs, the responsibility to investigate reports of SEA and hold peacekeeping personnel accountable rests in the hands of TCCs. In 2016, UN Security Council Resolution 2272 introduced new punitive measures applicable to TCCs, including the repatriation of troops. If consistently enforced, such a measure has the potential to generate greater levels of collective responsibility, and thus greater collective security, by TCCs in particular.32

Legal accountability needs to be accompanied by prevention in the form of conduct and training. Similarly, prevention in the form of conduct and training needs to be accompanied by legal accountability. What’s more, the disparate emphasis on accountability for CRSV and prevention for SEA, respectively, has in both cases failed to address the underlying causes and consequences of gender inequality and vulnerability, such as resource access for civilian populations.

Recommendations

A policy focus on CRSV as strategic and opportunistic sexual violence and on SEA as a matter of individual misconduct has obscured the root causes these behaviors have in common. Thus, in developing recommendations for reining in, dealing with, and ultimately eliminating sexual violence in conflict and emergency settings, it is necessary to address the sociocultural conditions, as well as leadership, training, and agency focus.

•                The root causes of sexual violence in conflict or postconflict situations are gender inequality, displacement, poverty, and economic deprivation. Many of these are structural factors that facilitate or devolve from unequal power relations. Promoting gender equality in PKOs and humanitarian interventions begins with greater gender equality in TCCs themselves. Once interveners are in the field, gender equality should be aided by increasing the number of women peacekeepers and officials in top-level decision-making positions across PKOs and humanitarian agencies. Supporting vulnerable civilian populations’ access to an adequate livelihood and to resources to help mitigate the causes of vulnerability is the third leg of the stool. Here, access to resources should be understood as including access to redress for sexual violence committed against civilians.

•                The emphasis on strategic and opportunistic sexual violence in the case of CRSV has lent itself to a focus on acts of sexual violence that are ordered by armed groups, ignoring sexual violence that is tolerated or condoned. Similarly, viewing SEA as an issue of individual misconduct primarily involving transactional and survival sex neglects the responsibility of leaders and managers for the range of SEA behaviors perpetrated by peace and humanitarian interveners. People in leadership positions (commanders of armed groups, heads of peacekeeping battalions, managers of humanitarian agencies) need to take responsibility for the actions of those in their charge. In particular, they need to build and adhere to effective complaint mechanisms, develop and implement codes of conduct, and investigate and hold to account those who resort to sexual violence. A zero-tolerance policy will only be effective if clear structures are in place to hold accountable those who perpetrate acts of sexual exploitation and abuse. Leaders and managers also need to make explicit statements in support of these processes to ensure others, especially in middle management, also take them seriously.

•                Speaking across silos should encourage disparate bodies and agencies—such as the UN Special Coordinator for Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, the Inter-Agency Standing Commitee’s Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Task Force, and the UN Office of the Special Representative of the SecretaryGeneral for Sexual Violence in Conflict—to work more closely to find avenues where efforts to prevent and eliminate CRSV and SEA converge.

Conclusion

The similarities between CRSV and SEA should encourage policymakers to look more critically at the common issues and policy implications of these two streams of work. CRSV and SEA exist on a spectrum that encompasses related behaviors rooted in gender and material inequalities.33 Developing a common understanding of CRSV and SEA can help policymakers better respond to and mitigate the factors that make civilians vulnerable to sexual violence in conflict settings, specifically gender inequality, displacement, poverty, and economic deprivation.

Notes

1.              UN Security Council, Resolution 1820 (2008), S/RES/1820 (June 2008), 2–3.

2.              Al Jazeera, “‘Sickening’ Sex Abuse Alleged in CAR by UN Peacekeepers,” Al Jazeera, March 31,

2016, www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/sex-abuse-alleged-car-peacekeepers-160331183645566.html;

Jasmine-Kim Westendorf, “Discussion Paper: Mapping the Impact of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by

Interveners in Peace Operations. Pilot Project Findings, December 2016” (Melbourne: La Trobe University, Transforming Human Societies, Humanitarian Advisory Group, December 2016), http:// humanitarianadvisorygroup.org/wp-content /uploads/2016/06/HAG-La-Trobe__Mapping-the-impact.pdf.

3.              United Nations, “Conduct in UN Field Missions: Professionalism, Efficiency, Integrity, Dignity,” subsection “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse” (2017), https://conduct.unmissions.org/sea-victims.

4.              Jasmine-Kim Westendorf and Louise Searle, “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peace Operations: Trends, Policy Responses and Future Directions,” International Affairs 93, no. 2 (2017): 365–87.

5.              See Westendorf, “Discussion Paper: Mapping the Impacts.”

6.              Nora Dudwick and Kathleen Kuehnast, “Gender and Fragility: Ensuring a Golden Hour,” Fragility Study Group Policy Brief 8 (November 2016): 1–8.

7.              Westendorf, “Discussion Paper: Mapping the Impact.”

8.              UN Security Council, Resolution 1820 (2008), 2–3.

9.              Megan Bastick, Karin Grimm, and Rahel Kunz, “Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict: Global Overview and Implications for the Security Sector“ (Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2007).

10.            Inger Skjelsbaek, “Sexual Violence and War: Mapping out a Complex Relationship,” European Journal of International Relations 7, no. 2 (2001): 211–37.

11.            Michelle Leiby, “Digging in the Archives: The Promise and Perils of Primary Documents,” Politics & Society 37, no. 1 (2009): 75–99; Michelle Leiby, “Wartime Sexual Violence in Guatemala and Peru,” International Studies Quarterly 53 (2009): 445–68.

12.            Roudabeh Kishi, “Gender-Based Violence and Women’s Political Participation,” ACLED Crisis Blog, August 2, 2017, www.crisis.acleddata.com/gender-based-violence-and-womens-political-participation/.

13.            Elisabeth Jean Wood, “Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Policy Implications of Recent Research,” International Review of the Red Cross 96, no. 894 (2014): 457–78.

14.            Ibid., 473.

15.            Hannah McNeish, “South Sudan: Women and Girls Raped as ‘Wages’ for Government-Allied Fighters,” Guardian, September 28, 2015, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/sep/28/southsudan-women

-girls-raped-as-wages-for-government-allied-fighters.

16.            UN, “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: A Summary of the Latest Policy Recommendations,” UN Women Policy Brief (February 2015), 1–6.

17.            Westendorf and Searle, “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peace Operations.”

18.            Westendorf, “Discussion Paper: Mapping the Impact” 2.

19.            Ibid. See also Wood, “Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Policy Implications of Recent Research.”

20.            Cynthia Cockburn, “The Continuum of Violence: A Gender Perspective on War and Peace,” in Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones, ed. Wenona Mary Giles and Jennifer Hyndman (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), 24–44.

21.            See Valerie Hudson, Sex and World Peace (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).

22.            Alicia Luedke and Hannah Logan, “‘That Thing of Human Rights’: Discourse, Emergency Assistance and Sexual Violence in South Sudan’s Current Civil War,” Disasters (forthcoming).

23.            See Alicia Luedke, “Congestion in the Malakal Protection of Civilian Site, South Sudan” (Danish Refugee Council, May 2017), https://drc.dk/media/3339916/malakal-congestion-report-final-pdf-03052017.pdf.

24.            Westendorf and Searle, “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peace Operations.” See also Westendorf, “Discussion Paper: Mapping the Impact.”

25.            Jenna Stern, “Reducing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping: Ten Years after the Zeid Report,” Civilians in Conflict Policy Brief 1 (February 2015), 1–24.

26.            UNHCR, “Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA),” in UNHCR Emergency Handbook, https ://emergency.unhcr.org/entry/93723/protection-from-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-psea.

27.            Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley, “Explaining Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peacekeeping Missions: The Role of Female Peacekeepers and Gender Equality in Contributing Countries,” Journal of Peace Research 53, no. 1 (2016): 100–15.

28.            Ketty Anyeko, Kim Thuy Seelinger, and Julie Freccero, “Improving Accountability for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Africa,” Peace Brief 206 (Washington, DC: USIP, June 14, 2016), www.usip.org /publications/2016/06/improving-accountability-conflict-related-sexual-violence-africa.

29.            Westendorf and Searle,  “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peace Operations,” 383.

30.            Ibid.

31.            Inter-Agency Standing Committee Task Force on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by UN, NGO and INGO Personnel: A Self-Assessment,” June 2012, http://odihpn.org /magazine/sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-by-un-ngo-and-ingo-personnel-a-self-assessment/.

32.            Jeni Whalan, “Dealing with Disgrace: Addressing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping” (New York: International Peace Institute, August 2017), www.ipinst.org/2017/08/addressing-sexual-exploitation -and-abuse-in-un-peacekeeping.

33.            Westendorf, “Discussion Paper: Mapping the Impact” 2.

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Of Related Interest

•                What Works in Facilitated Dialogue Projects by Jack Froude and Michael Zanchelli (Special Report, July 2017)

•                Women in Nonviolent Movements by Marie A. Principe (Special Report, December 2016)

•                Ending Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in War and Peace: Recommendations for the Next US Administration by Amanda H. Blair, Nicole Gerring, and Sabrina Karim (Special Report, September 2016)

•                Atrocity Prevention through Dialogue: Challenges in Dealing with Violent Extremist Organizations by Sofía Sebastián and Jonas Claes (Special Report, August 2016) • UNSCR 1325 in the Middle East and North Africa: Women and Security by Paula M. Rayman, Seth Izen, and Emily Parker (Special Report, May 2016)

By Sarah Kenny

On August 12, 2017, neo-Nazis and white supremacists shocked the United States and the world alike with a deadly display of domestic terrorism. Tiki-torches, firearms, and fists overwhelmed the University of Virginia’s campus and the streets of downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, leaving an activist and two state police officers dead and dozens injured.

Since August 2017, the list of far-right extremist atrocities in the United States and elsewhere has only grown. On October 24, 2018, two black shoppers were shot at a grocery store in Jeffersontown, Kentucky. Three days later, a man opened fire on a service at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pennsylvania, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history.1

The following week, a man who identified as an ‘incel’ (involuntarily celibate) opened fire in a Tallahassee yoga studio.2 On March 15, 2019, an Australian man carried out a shooting rampage at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. August 3rd marks the murder of 22 shoppers at an El Paso, Texas Walmart; the perpetrator of this mass shooting has admitted to targeting Mexicans in a white nationalist manifesto he released in advance of the attack.3

Depictions of the alt-right, like the grisly images from Charlottesville, feature few to no women actors. This lack of representation of women in the alt-right insinuates that women play an insignificant role in this movement, if any at all. But women do in fact make significant contributions to the alt-right movement. Moreover, the systematic mischaracterization of the alt-right movement as a genderless movement weakens governmental, civil society, and community level approaches to preventing and countering far-right extremism.

Research on far-right violent extremism is limited and on the role that women play even more so. This paper’s arguments and recommendations are informed by primary source interviews I conducted with two former neo-Nazi women: Angela King and Shannon Martinez. King was involved in right-wing extremist activity into her mid-20s, when she was sent to federal prison for a hate crime. After her release from prison, King pursued higher education and co-founded Life After Hate, a peace activism organization that supports deradicalization. Martinez likewise turned her back on farright extremism at the age of 20 and has since dedicated her career to counterextremist activism.

What Is the Alt-Right?

In 2008, University of Virginia graduate Richard Spencer coined the term “alternative right” (alt-right) to rebrand an age-old American sociopolitical tradition: white supremacy.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the alt-right “is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that ‘white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’ civilization.”4 Furthermore, the SPLC notes that “alt-righters eschew establishment conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value.” Ethnonationalism can be understood as “advocacy of or support for the political interests of a particular ethnic group, especially its national independence or self-determination.” While the term alt-right is merely a decade old, the ideals that this platform espouses are a rebranding of a rich tradition of far-right activism in America. According to George Michael, a scholar of right-wing extremism at Westfield State University, “The alt-right derives from the same impulses  that have launched other white extremist groups, including  a belief that white civilization, the white race in particular,  is imperiled.”5

The most prominent example of organized white supremacism in the mainstream American conscious is the Ku Klux Klan. African American political thinker Marcus

Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement

Association and the “Back to Africa” movement, called the KKK the “invisible government of America,” a claim that speaks to the project of white supremacy that still lives on in many of nation’s most powerful institutions.6 While white hoods and cross burnings are no longer socially acceptable  to the great majority of Americans, the principles that  KKK-affiliated individuals have espoused over the last century live on in members of today’s alt-right, among others.

A distinguishing factor that differentiates alt-right activity from historical far-right violent extremism is the alt-right’s use of online meetings and community-building efforts. According to the SPLC, the alt-right is “characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes,” although these features of communication are often shielded from the mainstream eye.7 Much of the online activity occurs on the “deep web,” a part of the internet that is inaccessible to most search engines. Furthermore, extremist groups convene on the “dark web,” “a small portion of the deep web that has been intentionally hidden and is inaccessible through standard web browsers.”8

Myths about Women in the Alt-Right

§ Alt-right adherents are a homogenous group of violent,  racist young men.

Images of extremism in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12, 2017, and elsewhere primarily feature violent young men. Sociology scholar Kathleen Blee reflects this archetypal depiction in Understanding Racist Activism, where she describes common preconceptions of the alt-right actor as “a deviant, hate-filled extremist who acts on his own deeply-held hostilities toward the victim’s social group.”9 This definition overlooks the social dynamics and demographic diversity within alt-right membership.

Men-centric definitions are not unique to alt-right archetypes. Women have been excluded from history books, scholarship, and policy analysis of most social and political movements. Such systemic exclusion has effectively gendered these social movements, including the alt-right. Thus “the logic is circular: organized racism is a male province,” Blee deduces.10 To ignore the role and agency of women in political groups perpetuates erasure and subordination. Furthermore, this neglect is an incomplete, inaccurate account of society.

Women join alt-right and extremist movements. Precise participation estimates prove challenging to calculate due  in part to the hidden nature of alt-right organizing. In her 2017 analysis of the alt-right, “The Rise of the Valkyries,” journalist Seyward Darby contended that women make up between 15 and 20 percent of this movement.11 Any demographic that constitutes a fifth of a movement’s base  is worth examination.12 Moreover, a diverse group of women join movements like the alt-right. Instead of transferring stereotypes about alt-right membership from men to women—assuming that all women members are lower-

class, uneducated, apolitical, violent racists—it is critical  to examine how gender influences membership.  An intersectional gender analysis of member demographics is a superior tool to analyze the nature of women in  the alt-right.13

In a November 2017 Newsweek article, “Alt-Right Women Asked to ‘Choose Submission’ to Grow Political Movement,” a popular alt-right personality named Martina Markota speaks to the challenging relationship between her political perspective and experience as a woman. She shared, “I’m a conservative.… I identify as a woman. Being both tends to get you treated unfairly in media.”14 Another woman in the article shared, “I’m from a Northern city, and I’m highly educated, actually.… The reason I won’t give my name to you is because I’ve seen how the media distorts things about women like me.” Stereotypes that all far-right women are “trailer-park trash” can lead scholars to ignore the influence of alt-right ideology on those who hail from diverse walks of life, a dangerous miscalculation.15 Such examples shed light on the relationship between womanhood and whiteness.

§   Radicalization is an individualistic, belief-driven process.

An individualistic model of radicalization maintains that a person, motivated by strong beliefs, goes out of their way to find community within an ideologically consistent group or movement. However, the individualistic framework neglects the gendered motivations of many women who join the altright. For many women, joining extremist movements arises from social interactions and/or pivots on a life incident that acts as a point of conversion.

Understanding membership as a social process that precedes belief formation has broad implications for the myth that the alt-right solely comprises individual racists who seek out a place to be openly racist. In “Becoming a Racist,” Kathleen Blee challenges the theory of belief-driven activism—“the notion that people come into racist movements because they have racist ideas”—as the single motivating factor for far-right membership.16 Her research demonstrates that “racial ‘awareness’ is more often a consequence of association with members of racist groups than a cause motivating participation.”17 Instead, “social camaraderie, a desire for simple answers to complex political problems, or even the opportunity to take action against formidable social forces can co-exist with—even substitute for—hatred as the reason for participation in organized racist activities.”18

While scholars and academics have largely neglected the complex social nature of mobilization, far-right leaders surely understand the dynamics of recruitment. Blee recounts the story of a Southern Klan leader admitting that “in order to bring in men, the men will follow the women…. If the wife is into it, she’ll drag the husband along.”19 Alt-right figure Lana Lokteff illuminates the social nature of conversion: “The alt-right in America … attracted young guys and gals, and guys with girlfriends.… They stopped caring about their old friends because they met new ones. White women in particular are starving for a true sisterhood.”20

The social nature of radicalization also affects women’s ability to acquire leadership roles within the organization. As the Klan leader that Blee quotes said, “We don’t hold women back from promotions or climbing the ladder. We can’t afford to not let them have whatever positions they want to work for.”21 While clearly demonstrating reticence about women’s leadership, the Klan leader at the same time recognizes that he must set aside traditional gender role expectations to increase women’s participation.

Life-changing or traumatic instances can motivate group membership. Over years of interviews and research on farright extremist groups in America, Blee has documented  a “narrative of conversion pivoted on a single dramatic  life event” driving women’s membership. She describes  this conversion as “an ordeal that clarified perception, sharpened value priorities, and seemed to reveal the racial and ethnic dynamics of history,” thereby serving as a  catalyst for joining.22

My interviews with Martinez and King illustrate the transformative process to which Blee refers. Drawing upon her experience of rape and stories she has encountered in years of deradicalization work with other former skinheads, for anger and rage that the individual is already feeling and grappling with, and also as a release valve.”

To cope with the trauma of her own rape, Martinez “found it a relief to make her anger and rage smaller and more focused” by joining the skinheads who occupied the margins of the countercultural scene she already identified with as a young adolescent, although previously on the left wing of the ideological spectrum. Martinez said she did not join the group specifically to target nonwhite individuals. Rather, her extremism was motivated by a desire to express the rage her trauma had induced. That nonwhite individuals were on the receiving end of this rage was a tragic but not predetermined reality.

King’s childhood and adolescence were characterized by pain similar to that of Martinez. “I never expected to make it past the age of 30,” King told me. “Things had happened to me that could have caused me to end up on any number of selfdestructive paths. I had started associating with local gangs until I was raped, so I found a new way. I didn’t say, ‘Wow, you’re all racists and I want to get involved,’ but it was because they accepted me and because I didn’t have to explain why I was aggressive and angry.” Throughout King’s struggle to deal with her personal pain and trauma, she found a community that accepted her hurt and anger. As in Martinez’s case, King’s new peer group came with the cost of extreme discriminatory principles and activity, a cost that her deep suffering, in part, drove her to accept. Trauma certainly does not send every victim toward extremist organizations. However, this understanding of trauma as a conversion factor for extremist mobilization helps to construct a more complete process of why and how people may join such movements.

§   Women alt-right adherents are irrational and apolitical.

Martinez speaks to trauma’s role as a catalyzing factor for many who join far-right, extremist organizations. “I strongly believe, and there’s just a bit of research going on right now … that trauma is a crucial piece of this puzzle that acts as sort of the tripwire, that the people who are entering into these violent movements of all ideologies are looking for a sense of belonging and idea and some purpose for their life,” Martinez said. “The ideology serves as this megaphone, on one hand

Men’s past and present motivations to join far-right extremist groups are often perceived as somewhat cogent. According to Blee, “White men—who were privileged in economic life, public politics, and the family—had a clear interest in racist appeals to traditionalism, economic stability, and national resurgence.”23 Thereby, men’s involvement “was rational and self-interested. Gender wasn’t peripheral to the Right … indeed, it was paramount.” If men’s motivations are rational, self-interested, and grounded in a gendered order, then what of women’s motivations?

Women of the alt-right do not view the movement as being in opposition to their beliefs. Rather, many women view the movement as “a refuge where [they] can embrace their femininity and their racial heritage without shame.”24 Blee also finds that “women’s entrance into organized racism is not a simple matter of their obliviousness to the political agenda of racist groups, nor of personal gullibility on the part of individual women.” Rather, she notes, most “women work to create a rational connection between themselves and the goals of racist politics.”25

Movement leaders like Lokteff help facilitate this rational connection for adherents. In a speech at a rightist conference in Stockholm titled “How the Left Is Betraying Women,” she spoke to the character of the alt-right women: they “aren’t from the trailer park, and they’re not weak and naive— they’re the kind of women that other women want to be like. They’re smart, beautiful women who realize that mass immigration isn’t working, and it’s changing their lifestyle for the worse.”26 Lokteff strategically manipulates the mainstream label of irrationality and uses it to build community among women who understand their ideologies as rational and thereby seek corresponding political outlets.

Factions of the alt-right accept that women can and should have a political role in the movement, yet this role has a narrow expression within the broader project of ethnonationalism. Women and men have distinct roles in the war to preserve the future of white civilization, a civilization founded upon an immutable understanding of gender. Lokteff equates nationalism to the values of womanhood— beauty, family, and home—and promises that the left is losing women to the right because the nationalist movement will continue to elevate these values. She argues, “We value the beauty of Western civilization and the refined human form. European men … facilitated beauty in all its forms. It’s the ultimate romantic gesture to European women. They built our civilization to enable the home and family and to  protect women.”27

The Nordic symbol of the valkyrie encapsulates the call to political action to which alt-right women are responding. Valkyries describe a group of maiden women sent to war by the ancient god Odin, some of whom were tasked with slaying righteous enemies, others with guarding their loved ones. Associated with “fairness, brightness, and gold, as well as bloodshed,” this mythical figure supports a preeminent narrative in alt-right thought that Western civilization finds itself under an exceptional era of attack.”28 Therefore, alt-right women interested in preserving a white nation must leave behind their natural and preferable roles in the home  to protect the future of white civilization.29 Yet come the  end of battle, women are expected to return home and rely upon the ordinarily sufficient protection they receive from their spouses.

Policy Implications

  • Recognize the role that women play in supporting, countering, and preventing violent extremism.

Far-right violent extremism, including alt-right activity, presents a significant international security threat.30 Thereby, women in the alt-right present a significant international security threat. The systemic exclusion of women from programming and strategies for countering/ preventing violent extremism “may cause us to seriously underestimate the destructive potential of this movement,” Blee writes.31 Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, notes that “when women come into view in terrorism and counterterrorism policy, they typically do so as the wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers of terrorist actors, or as the archetypal victims of senseless terrorist acts whose effects on the most vulnerable (women) underscore the unacceptability of terrorist targeting.”32 Martinez’s description of the alt-right reflects similar themes: women “work in interceptive space and a legal space where it’s not material support but that there is support offered. This is a particularly big area where women are involved, where they’re not breaking the law, but they’re providing support nevertheless.” While women are less likely to break the law, there has been acknowledgment in recent U.S. legislative efforts that some women can and do perpetrate illegal acts of violent extremism.33

In order to recognize and legitimate the role of women in this movement, US actors should draw parallels to global trends in violent extremism. By comparing alt-right radicalization to global radicalization processes, scholars of far-right violent extremism can glean valuable insights from the more extensive body of research that exists on the threat of Islamist extremism.34 Joana Cook and Catherine Zheng are among those contributing to this work.35 Martinez’s experiences have informed her belief that there are fewer differences between flavors of extremism than many believe. When I first met Martinez, she was on her way home from a presentation in the United Arab Emirates about deradicalization. Addressing members of the United Nations, she contended that many of the patterns within the Neo-Nazi skinhead organization to which she belonged closely resemble patterns that have led young women and men to join organizations such as ISIS.

  • Incorporate gender mainstreaming into deradicalization efforts.

Civil society organizations that support deradicalization efforts should conduct gender analyses of their programming. Furthermore, these groups should mainstream a gender perspective in their work to prevent and counter violent extremism.36 I asked King about the role that gender played in her programming at Life After Hate, an organization dedicated to working with people leaving extremist movements. “I don’t differentiate my treatment of the people I work with,” King said. “I use my vulnerability to connect to people. The women and men that I work with have a lot in common that they talk about openly.” After making this initial claim that gender was not a featured framework in her professional methodology, she shared some observations that seemed to demonstrate otherwise. King noted, “Among the women that I’m friends with and have worked with, there’s a lot of criticism about how they were treated and abused. Women are afraid of criticizing the men now that they’re out and changed.” Here, King points to a marked difference in women’s understanding of themselves as former members of the movement and as people that are independent of the movement. Presenting a problem for consideration, King pondered “how to create a best practice around the issue of how to facilitate healthy conversations between men and women who were formally involved regarding issues that women were affected by and men were not.”

In addition to civil society organizations, public schools should incorporate a gendered counterextremism curriculum into general health and wellness education. Martinez has strong convictions about the role that education should play in counter-racist activism and preventing violent extremism. Drawing on her experiences as a mother of seven, she stated, “We teach our kids at home and in school about what to do if there’s a fire or school shooter, preparing our kids for these dangers, but for some reason, we won’t talk about how radicalization happens. We should absolutely develop curriculum around how recruitment happens in spaces like gangs as well, which is all the same.…” Positing that the dynamics of radicalization are foundationally gendered,  such material would equip boys and girls alike with tools  of awareness and resiliency in the face of extremism. §  Invest in the power of personal relationships.

Personal interactions hold great transformative power for countering violent extremism. Relationships between women who harbor extremist ideologies and those who challenge their worldviews offer great potential for deradicalization, as “personal allegiances are as important as ideological commitments to many women activists.”37 If such personal allegiances played a large role in a woman’s radicalization processes, they necessarily fit into the puzzle of deradicalization. Yet forming relationships with those outside of one’s extreme ideological camp proves challenging, Martinez laments, speaking to the deep shame and self-loathing that she knows adherents to extremist ideologies have internalized. Offering advice to those who have thought about engaging with women who hold extremist views, Martinez cautions that “objectifying the person with whom you’re trying to dialogue just exacerbates the problem and there’s just a deepening cycle of disconnect from others.”38 Her point underscores the importance of recognizing the humanity of others in deradicalization and counterextremism efforts.

King’s deradicalization story is a testament to the power of personal relationships. At 23, King was arrested and sent to federal prison for robbery.39 Reflecting on her time in prison, King recalls, “I was treated with kindness by women that I didn’t deserve it from, such as women of color and different nationalities. I was treated the opposite of what I felt that I deserved and started to feel like a human being again with hopes.” Beyond finding friendships, King fell in love with a black woman. She noted, “From the age of 10, I knew that I was gay, but I ran far away from it. In prison, I acknowledged my sexuality for the first time, and I started to see things through a broader lens. Gender roles started to go outside the lines of what I’d been taught.”

Conclusion

The alt-right, an expression of far-right violent extremism, presents a security risk to citizens in the United States and around the world. As globalization, mass immigration, and multiculturalism flourish, various collectives of fearful individuals and populist politicians will continue to embrace ethnonationalist worldviews and employ violent means to enforce them.

To combat this security risk, it is essential to acknowledge that women make significant contributions to the altright and violent extremism. Women can no longer be misrepresented and excluded from efforts to prevent and counter this form of violent extremism. Exclusion has proven both disingenuous and dangerous along the road to realizing a comprehensive threat analysis and strategy.

Martinez is keenly aware of the challenges in adopting such an inclusive strategy. She acknowledges that “there are some growing pains right now” but nevertheless “hold[s] out a lot of hope” and believes that “the culture that is coming up is way more inclusive.” Her optimism is worth investing in.

References

  1. Lois Beckett, “Pittsburgh shooting: Suspect Railed against Jews and Muslims on Site Used by ‘Alt-Right,’ ” The Guardian (October 27, 2018.
  2. Mihir Zaveri, Julia Jacobs, and Sarah Nervosh, “Gunman in Yoga Studio Shooting Recorded Misogynistic Videos and Faced Battery Charges,” New York Times (November 3, 2018).
  3. Rebecca Falconer, “El Paso suspect confessed to targeting Mexicans in mass shooting,” Axios (August 9, 2019).
  4. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Alt-Right,” website, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right
  5. Seyward Darby, “The Rise of the Valkyries,” Harper’s (September 2017),
  6. David Chambers, Hooded Americanism: The First Century of the  Ku Klux Klan (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965).
  7. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Alt-Right.”
  8. Bright Planet, “Clearing Up Confusion—Deep Web vs. Dark Web” (March 27, 2014),.
  9. Kathleen M. Blee, Understanding Racist Activism: Theory, Methods, and Research (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group), 70.
  10. Ibid, p. 125
  11. Darby, “Rise of the Valkyries.”
  12. In an interview with me, former skinhead Angela King cautioned against pinning hard statistics to membership in such organizations, noting that “one person could have 10 social media accounts, so we’ll never get accurate numbers about who’s involved. These kinds of groups are always in transition, always waning and waxing.”
  13. Intersectionality, a concept rooted in feminist theory, provides a helpful theoretical tool to understand the complex beliefs of women in the alt-right. The term intersectionality has been defined as “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.” YW Boston, “What Is Intersectionality, and What Does It Have to Do with Me?” blogpost (March 29, 2017).
  14. Michael Edison Hayden, “Alt-Right Women Asekd to ‘Choose Submission’ to Grow Political Movement,” Newsweek (November 16, 2017).
  15. Lana Lokteff, “How the Left Is Betraying Women,” Youtube  (February 27, 2017).
  16. Kathleen M. Blee “Becoming a Racist: Women in Contemporary  Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazi Groups,” Gender and Society 10,  no. 6: (1996):  127.
  17. Blee, Understanding Racist Activism.
  18. Blee, Understanding Racist Activism.
  19. Blee, “Becoming a Racist.”
  20. Lokteff, “How the Left Is Betraying Women.”
  21. Blee, “Becoming a Racist.
  22. Ibid.
  23. Blee, Understanding Racist Activism.
  24. Darby, “Rise of the Valkyries.”
  25. Blee, “Becoming a Racist.”
  26. Lokteff, “How the Left Is Betraying Women.”
  27. Ibid.
  28. “Valkyrie,” Encyclopedia Britannica.
  29. Ibid. The alt-right and its various incarnations over time have  embraced Celtic and Nordic ideology to brand themselves with  ideological symbolism.
  30. The United States saw a 70 percent increase in “violent attacks perpetrated in the name of far-right ideology” over the course of Trump’s first year in office. Stephen Tankel, “Riding the Tiger: How Trump Enables Right-Wing Extremism,” War on the Rocks blog (November 5, 2018). However, the Trump administration has slashed federal funding and external grant programs to counter violent extremism at home. Julia Edwards Ainsley, “White House Budget Slashes ‘Countering Violent
  31. Extremism’ Grants,” Reuters (May 23, 2017). Daniel Byman writes that “right-wing groups like neo-Nazis are at times lumped in with animal rights organizations as a domestic threat or discussed in the context of their overseas connections.” “Takeaways from the Trump Administration’s New Counterterrorism Strategy,” Order from Chaos blog (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, October 5, 2018), Furthermore, the US government lacks the legal tools to prevent and prosecute much domestic extremist activity and the actors who employ it. Legal advocates like Mary McCord, senior litigator and visiting professor of law at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law School, are encouraging congressional actors to enact a domestic terrorism statute. McCord’s legal advocacy aligns with Martinez’s prescriptions for countering the violent extremist threat: “The government needs to reassess how they define terrorism and include white nationalism. If they are declared terrorist organizations, the government can mobilize resources they currently can’t.”
  32. Blee, Understanding Racist Activism.
  33. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, “Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental
  34. Freedoms While Countering Terrorism” (New York: United Nations, Human Rights Council, 2017).
  35. On March 8, 2019, which was International Women’s Day, Congresswoman Lois Frankel introduced H.R. 1653, the Women and Countering Violence Extremism Act of 2019. This legislation aims “to ensure that the United States recognizes women’s varied roles in all aspects of violent extremism and terrorism and promotes their meaningful participation as full partners in all efforts to prevent and counter violent extremism and terrorism, and for other purposes.” The June 2019 US Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security issued calls to “empower women as partners in preventing terrorism and countering radicalization and recruitment.”
  36. Julia Ebner, senior research associate with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, argues that far-right and Islamist extremists actually reinforce one another’s ideologies, creating an echo chamber that blurs the neat lines of domestic and foreign extremism altogether (Julia Ebner, The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018).
  37. Joana Cook, A Woman’s Place: U.S. Counterterrorism since 9/11 (London: Hurst, 2019); Catherine Zheng, “Women in ISIS: The Rise of Female Jihadists,” Harvard Political Review blog (March 18, 2017).
  38. A gender analysis can be defined as “a critical examination of how differences in gender roles, activities, needs, opportunities, and rights/ entitlements affect men, women, girls, and boys in certain situation or contexts.” UN Women, “Gender Equality Glossary.”
  39. Blee, Understanding Racist Activism.
  40. Celeste Headless and Sean Powers, “A Former Skinhead on Life After Hate,” Georgia Public Broadcasting (August 22, 2017).
  41. Larry Lebowitz, “Woman Pleads Guilty to Role in Robbery and Beating,” South Florida Sun Sentinal (December 4, 1998).

By Shannon Zimmerman, Luisa Ryan and David Duriesmith

 

In April 2018 Alek Minassian drove a van into a crowd of people in Toronto, killing ten people. A few minutes before, he had posted on Facebook, “The Incel rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all Chads and Stacys! All hail the supreme gentleman Elliot Rodger.”

Minassian was referring to Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old male who committed the Isla Vista, Calif., attack which killed six people in 2014. Before his rampage, Rodger had posted a ‘manifesto’ online – a lengthy tirade against the failures of modern society to provide him sexual access to women. Rodger is often portrayed in the media as the godfather of Incel ideology and is referred to as the “Supreme Gentleman” in online spaces such as Reddit and incel.me. He was the first individual to be labeled a terrorist of the alt-right by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks far-right activity. 1

Minassian’s Facebook post indicated that his act was linked to a broader political ideology rooted in a toxic combination of male supremacy and white supremacy. While lone-wolf attackers who invoke anti-feminist ideas- like Minassian- are often framed as mentally ill loners, this attack was terrorist in nature and should be considered as such. Like the response to Elliot Rodger’s earlier attack at Isla Vista, media reporting after the Toronto attack quickly emphasized Minassian’s struggles with mental health and cited claims from friends that he “wasn’t a terrorist.”2 This treatment fails to recognize the corrosive political ideology that underpinned Minassian’s attack and his desire to terrorize the public. These qualities should rightly define his actions as terrorism. 

Who are Incels?

Incel, shorthand for ‘involuntarily celibate,’ is a violent political ideology based on a new wave of misogyny and white supremacy.3 Incel ideology is predicated on the notion that feminism has ruined society, therefore there is a need for a ‘gender revolt’ in order to reclaim a particular type of manhood based on both male and white superiority.4 Incels believe that by defending women’s bodily autonomy, feminism has upset the natural order which organizes society around monogamous heterosexual couplings. As a result, physically attractive young women (labeled as ‘Stacys’) now choose to sleep with the most physically desirable men (labeled as ‘Chads’).5 Incels often frame this pattern of behavior as a form of theft, whereby their entitled access to women’s bodies is thwarted by women’s preference for more desirable ‘Chads.’ These (mostly) young men are frustrated at a world they see as denying them power and sexual control over women’s bodies. In their eyes, they are victims of oppressive feminism, an ideology which must be overthrown, often through violence.

The diagram on the next page (taken from the subreddit r/ braincell) reflects how this ideology views the world. Incel ideology presents a mythologized view that prior to the sexual revolution in the ‘60s, every man had access to a female partner; subsequent to the women’s empowerment movement, fewer and fewer men have access to a partner. They frame this shift as a profound injustice to men who cannot find a sexual partner, suggesting that society has failed to give men what they are entitled to (access to women’s bodies) and that the only recourse is violent insurrection.

Drawing the link between incels and other forms of violent extremism

There has been some debate as to whether incel attacks count as terrorism. Media reporting has often been reticent to classify these attacks as terror and some officials, including the Canadian police, refused to call the Toronto attack an act of terrorism.6 However, the nature of incel violence meets the requirement of the U.S. State Department’s description, which defines the term ‘terrorism’ as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.”7 While incels have not yet formed organized violent groups or cells, the existing attacks have been premeditated, politically motivated and perpetrated violence against civilians. These factors clearly designate incel attacks as a form of terrorism and require incel ideology to be explored as a form of violent extremism.

At the heart of this ideology are hardened misogynistic notions of traditional gender roles. Rather than focusing on a particular religious or ethnic group, these attacks are motivated by shared beliefs about sexuality, male supremacy and the need to violently reestablish ‘traditional’ gender norms. The substantial online communities, previously congregating on the now defunct subreddit r/incel and more recently on incel.me and r/braincells subreddit, validate this world view and encourage direct action in pursuit of their goals.

Incel ideology is just one of many forms of misogynistic violence. Addressing this misogyny and the violence it produces is the most effective way to prevent some of the conditions which lead to domestic terrorist attacks. Early action will also go a long way towards addressing the core tenets of far-right ideologies, which are increasingly impacting and unsettling the American public at large.

There is an undeniable link between misogyny and violence. Experts say that domestic violence is a way for a male abuser to impose and enforce ‘traditional’ gender roles, which are based on ideas of men having control over women.8 The important factor here is that it is violence or threats of violence that are used to exert that control. This link starts with domestic violence but may extend far beyond the privacy of the home to include mass shootings or terrorist attacks. Recent research shows that more than 50% of the mass shootings executed in the United States between 2009 and 2016 were preceded by the shooter’s murder of a partner, ex-partner or family member.9 For example, James Hodgkinson, who opened fire at a GOP baseball practice, allegedly assaulted his daughter and was accused of abuse by two of his three ex-wives.10

Researchers such as Cynthia Cockburn, Rachel Pain and Sara Meger have shown the deep links between men’s sexual violence and their use of armed violence in public. In the case of incel terrorism, the links to violence are overt.11 Incel discussions often explicitly connect women’s non-provision of sexual access to the need for sexually marginalized men to deploy brutal violence in the public sphere in order to defend this ‘entitlement’. While not all incels are white supremacists or terrorists, affiliates are connected to these more extreme violent expressions by a toxic view of gender relations, which provides the “linking thread, a kind of fuse, along which violence runs.”12 Incel discussions often draw explicitly on white supremacist calls for armed insurrection to overthrow the prevailing order and restore an order based on men’s supremacy over women. The parallels between Minassian’s call for “Incel Rebellion” and white supremacists’ calls for ethno-nationalist insurrection are not coincidental.13 Incels who argue for an armed insurrection often use similar terminology to white supremacists in relation to the need for men to overthrow the prevailing system. Frustration with the current system, and adherence to an ideology that promotes violent solutions, not only makes incels dangerous actors in and of themselves, but also increases the probability that they will be amenable to broader extremist recruitment tactics.

The Islamic State advertises its treatment of women as a recruitment tool, showing men- particularly men from western countries- that the caliphate will allow them to restore ‘traditional’ gender norms of male dominance.14 This ideology appeals to individuals who desire to control the women in their own lives. Omar Mateen, the Pulse nightclub shooter who killed 49 people in the second deadliest mass shooting in recent American history, was loosely affiliated with ISIS. He mentally and physically abused his wife.15 This pattern fits a number of other so-called ‘lone wolf’ attacker profiles, such as Khalid Masood, the Westminster attacker; Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who committed the van attack in Nice; Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers, and Man Haron Monis, who carried out the Sydney Lindt café siege and has been charged with

22 counts of aggravated sexual assault.16 According to Nimmi Gowrinathan, the restrictive gender roles promoted by terrorist organizations often act as a “pull” factor for potential recruits who have pre-existing attitudes or desires in that direction. Addressing misogynistic attitudes is one of the best ways to prevent an escalation to violence.

The risk of misogyny-linked terror groups is particularly pertinent to the United States today. A 2017 survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation found that the United States is now among the top 10 most dangerous nations for women when assessed on healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual violence, non-sexual violence and human trafficking.17 The U.S. ranked third, tying with Syria, in regard to the danger of sexual violence including rape, sexual harassment, coerced sex and lack of justice in rape cases. The U.S. ranked sixth for non-sexual violence against women and was the only Western country to show up on the list. The other countries, in order of danger to women, were listed as India, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen and Nigeria.

It may be easy to believe that incels are an extreme fringe group that do not pose a threat to national or international security. However, Incels represent just one end of a spectrum of extremist groups spanning a vast range of political ideologies, all united by militant misogyny. These groups range from white-supremacists and neo-Nazis to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Incels are just one aspect of a violent ideological masculinity, an ideology that is growing. Misogynist online groups, from men’s rights activists, to ‘pick up artist’ communities and Incels, have increased in number and size over recent years.18 The subreddit r/incels had roughly 40,000 members when it was shut down in 2017 for inciting violence against women.19 But incels are not confined to “one tiny bit of Reddit” rather “it’s a movement that has tens of thousands of people who visit these boards, these subreddits, which are safe places for them.”20

There are arguments both for and against banning websites that promote violence against women, such as the subreddit r/incel. Some argue that these groups should be allowed to remain, as they gather promoters of violent ideology together where they might be monitored rather than forcing them to scatter, only to grow and proliferate. However, if allowed to remain, these online communities permit both violent content and norms to flourish and possibly be enacted in the real world.21 Reddit, the site which hosted then banned the subreddit r/incel, has recently established policies that prohibit content that “encourages, glorifies, incites or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or group of people.” The platform has also been clamping down on pages which are dedicated to far-right groups, banning two such groups for sharing personal information without permission as a form of harassment, also known as ‘doxing.’22 The incel Reddit thread was just one of countless online forums, blogs and networks collectively called the ‘Manosphere,’ which focus on issues of men’s rights and male supremacy where incels, and those with similar ideologies, gather. These forums act as an echo chamber reifying and amplifying extremist beliefs. It should be noted that since the closing of r/incel the community has moved to other subreddits, such as r/braincells, or to dedicated sites like https://incels.me/.

Ideologies based on ideas of domination through fear facilitate violent acts and should be considered as a form of terrorism. Recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center added male supremacy to the list of ideologies it tracks on its ‘hate map’, placing it alongside white nationalist, racist skinhead, neo-Nazi, neo-nationalist and other hate groups.23 Just as white supremacist violence is now well-recognized as a form of terrorism, it is important that male supremacist attacks be similarly acknowledged.

Policy implications

Crafting and supporting policies that provide alternatives to violent white supremacist and misogynistic rhetoric/ actions is an effective method to increase both domestic and international security. Understanding the complex interactions between domestic violence, misogyny, alt-right ideology, and terrorism opens up several new avenues for preventative policy responses.

Address the ideology

  • Address misogynistic ideology with the same seriousness as other forms of violent extremism. There has been a tendency both in media reporting and government responses to treat incel attacks as purely a result of mental illness or random acts of violence. Incel ideology must be treated as the form of violent extremist thought that it is, and relevant existing laws and policies should be applied. The role of incel ideology in promoting ‘lone-wolf’ attacks means that it requires a similar response to the promotion of jihadi or neo-Nazi ideology online.
  • Encourage and support policies that identify and sanction speech that is intended to incite violence or harm against an individual or group of people, including that which is based on gender. Such policies, where they already exist, need to be enforced. Gender-based threats need to be taken as seriously as threats based on religion and ethnicity.

Act on early warning signs

The speed at which people radicalize makes radicalization difficult to track. However, those that engage in terrorist attacks often have long histories of violence, particularly domestic violence. If mass shootings and terrorist attacks are connected to domestic or family violence, there are warning signs that, if acknowledged, can be used to help prevent future violence.

  • Strengthen domestic violence laws to prevent abusers from accessing weapons, including mechanisms to remove guns from individuals who have exhibited dangerous behavior. This would include closing background check loopholes which allow individuals prohibited from buying guns to purchase them.
  • Ensure the application of domestic violence laws and facilitate the creation of laws which prohibit violence based on gender.
  • Craft policies which identify and address violent behaviors rather than profiling individuals based on race or religion, tactics which only further alienate individuals. Policies can acknowledge domestic violence as an important precursor to larger violent acts.
  • Acts of domestic violence need to be understood as a security threat rather than a ‘personal’ matter, and thus treated accordingly. This includes supporting domestic violence survivors and prosecuting perpetrators before they can harm others.

Extremist ideologies advocating violence of any kind are a domestic security concern. Holistically addressing these ideologies and the environments in which they thrive is an effective approach to preventing both large and small scale violence targeted at specific groups, be those groups identified by race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or other.

References

  1. ‘The alternative right (alt-right) is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a right-wing political movement whose members reject mainstream conservative politics and instead promote extremist beliefs and policies based on ideas of white nationalism. While there is no single ideology of the alt-right, it is commonly employed to describe figures such as Richard Spencer who support extremist ideology without adopting the traditional trappings of neo-Nazism or conventional conservatism. The alt-right movement is closely associated with online forums such as 4chan which were integral to the emergence of the incel movement. 
  2. Stewart Bell, “He Wasn’t a Terrorist’: Those Who Knew Alek Minassian Struggle to Explain the Toronto Van Attack,” https:// globalnews.ca/news/4168222/he-wasnt-terrorist-toronto-attack/, [10 Sept. 2018].
  3. The term ‘incel’ was originally coined by a Canadian College student who started a website entitled ‘Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project’ in order to discuss her sexual inactivity with others. The site was intended to foster an inclusive community to help people struggling to form relationship but was co-opted by the current incel movement.
  4. Smaller groups of “Ricels” and “Currycels” representing East and South Asian incels exist, and explicitly tie their celibacy to preference for whiteness in society. 
  5. Debbie Ging, “Alphas, betas, and incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere,” in Men and Masculinities (Dublin City University, Glasnevin, 2017).
  6. Rich Barlow, “Call it What you Want – The ‘Incel rebellion’ Is Terrorism,” http://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/04/30/call-it-whatyou-want-the-incel-rebellion-is-terrorism, [10 Sept. 2018].
  7. United States State Department, “Legislative Requirements and Key Terms,” https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/65464.pdf, [10 Sept. 2018].
  8. Amanda Taub, “Control and Fear: What Mass Killings and Domestic Violence Have in Common,” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/ world/americas/control-and-fear-what-mass-killings-and-domesticviolence-have-in-common.html, [10 Sept. 2018)].
  9. Everytown for Gun Safety, “Mass Shootings in the United States: 2009-2016,” https://everytownresearch.org/reports/mass-shootingsanalysis/ [10 Sept. 2018].
  10. Charlotte Alter, “Why So Many Mass Shooters Have Domestic Violence in Their Past.” http://time.com/4818506/james-hodgkinsonvirginia-shooting-steve-scalise/ [10 Sept. 2018]; Petula Dvorak, “‘Tormented and traumatized’: Rage toward women fuels mass shooters,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/tormented-and-traumatizedrage-toward-women-fuels-mass-shooters/2018/07/02/205263aa-7dea11e8-bb6b-c1cb691f1402_story.html?utm_term=.3ca80bc6ede5 [10 Sept. 2018].
  11. For work on the continuum of violence, see R. Pain, “Intimate War,” in Political Geography, 44, pp.64-73; Sara Meger, Rape Loot Pillage: The Political Economy of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, (Oxford University Press).
  12. C Cockburn, “Gender relations as causal in militarization and war: A feminist standpoint,” in International Feminist Journal of Politics 12(2) (2010).
  13. Aja Romano, “How the alt-right’s sexism lures men into white supremacy,” https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/12/14/13576192/altright-sexism-recruitment [10 Sept. 2018].
  14. Amanda Taub, “Control and Fear: What Mass Killings and Domestic Violence Have in Common,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes. com/2016/06/16/world/americas/control-and-fear-what-mass-killingsand-domestic-violence-have-in-common.html [10 Sept. 2018].
  15. Jack Healy, “Sitora Yusufiy, Ex-Wife of Orlando Suspect, Describes Abusive Marriage,” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/us/sitorayusufiy-omar-mateen-orlando-shooting.html?_r=0 [10 Sept. 2018].
  16. Australia Associated Press, “Sydney siege inquest: Man Haron Monis was a ‘psychopathic lone wolf terrorist,’” https://www.theguardian.com/ australia-news/2016/may/02/sydney-siege-inquest-man-haron-moniswas-a-psychopathic-lone-wolf-terrorist  [10 Sept. 2018].
  17. The Thomson Reuters Foundation, “The World’s most dangerous countries for women 2018,”  http://poll2018.trust.org/country/?id=usa [10 Sept. 2018].
  18. Trends noted most visibly in the Global North, including the United States (Peter Finocchiaro, “Is the men’s rights movement growing?” https://www.salon.com/2011/03/29/scott_adams_mens_rights_ movement/ [10 Sept. 2018]) and Australia (Greg Callaghan, “Cassie Jaye’s film on the men’s rights movement shocked Australia. Why?” https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/cassie-jayes-film-on-the-mensrights-movement-shocked-australia-why-20170726-gxj34p.html [10 Sept. 2018]) However, the trend is a global one, including nations such as India (Suman Naishadham, “Why India’s Men’s Rights Movement is Thriving,” https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/9b8akp/why-indiasmens-rights-movement-is-thriving [10 Sept. 2018].)
  1. Christine Hauser, “Reddit Bans ‘Incel’ Group for Inciting Violence Against Women,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes. com/2017/11/09/technology/incels-reddit-banned.html [25 Sept. 2018]
  2. Zoe Williams, “’Raw hatred’: why the ‘incel’ movement targets and terrorizes women,” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/25/ raw-hatred-why-incel-movement-targets-terrorises-women  [10 Sept. 2018]. 
  3. Perrie Samotin and Lilly Dancyger, “Incels: Breaking Down the Disturbing, Thriving Online Community of Celibate Men,” https://www. glamour.com/story/what-is-incel-breaking-down-online-communitycelibate-men [10 Sept. 2018].
  4. Alex Hern, “Reddit bans far-right groups alt-right and alternative right,” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/02/redditbans-far-right-groups-altright-alternativeright [10 Sept. 2018].
  5. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), “Male Supremacy: Male supremacy is a hateful ideology advocating for the subjugation of women,” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/male-supremacy  [10 Sept. 2018].

By Rachel Clement, Neetu John, and Lyric Thompson

Each year, an estimated 12 million girls are married before their 18th birthdays.1 Child or early marriage is defined as any formal or informal union that occurs when one or both parties are under 18 years

of age. Forced marriage is a marriage or union at any age that occurs without the free and full consent of one or both parties and includes child and early marriage, as people under 18 are not able to give informed consent.2 Although boys are also married before age 18, it is girls who are both more likely to marry early and who bear the greatest burdens on their health and well-being as a result of the practice. According to UNICEF, “Child marriage often compromises a girl’s development by resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation, interrupting her schooling, limiting her opportunities for career and vocational advancement and placing her at increased risk of domestic violence.”3

An internationally recognized human rights violation, child marriage occurs across all regions of the world, and can be exacerbated in times of crisis and conflict.4,5 In fact, nine of the ten countries with the highest rates of child marriage are considered fragile states, demonstrating the impact insecurity has on decisions to induce children to marry.6 Three of the ten countries leading the Fund for Peace’s Failed States Index had child marriage rates well above 50 percent, according to a 2013 analysis.7 While there are many drivers of child marriage, the practice is deeply rooted in gender inequality and poverty, conditions which are also exacerbated by instability.8

Yet the practice has been largely overlooked in United States peace and security efforts. The Women, Peace, and Security Act (WPS) of 2017 is an opportunity to address this gap by including efforts to end child marriage within the mandated strategy to promote women’s protection and full participation in peace and security efforts. As the statement of policy within the Act notes, “It shall be the policy of the United States to promote the meaningful participation of women in all aspects of overseas conflict prevention, management, and resolution, and post-conflict relief and recovery efforts, reinforced through diplomatic efforts and programs that … promote the physical safety, economic security, and dignity  of women and girls.”9

Impact On Girls’ Education and Health

One of the best ways to delay marriage and to promote the physical safety, economic security and dignity of girls is to ensure that girls have access to a safe, quality education.

When major conflicts and crises arise, children often do  not go to school or even have a school to attend. At present, 62 million children and youth are out of school in 32 crisisaffected countries.10,11 and girls are 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys.12 For children who are further marginalized, such as those with disabilities, the numbers are worse: in developing countries, more than 90 percent of children with disabilities do not attend school.13 These challenges are exacerbated as girls hit puberty.

Yet even in peacetime, girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are 23 times more likely than boys to be kept out of school.14 There are 15 million girls of primary-school age who will never even enter a classroom, half of whom live in subSaharan Africa.15 Not coincidentally, nearly 40 percent of girls in sub-Saharan Africa are married before the age of 18.16

Similarly, early marriage compounds girls’ challenges: Girls who marry early are more likely than unmarried peers to drop out of school and to have increased health risks and lower socioeconomic outcomes. In fact, child marriage reduces girls’ lifetime earnings by 9 percent.17 The longer that girls can stay in school and receive a quality education, the more likely they are to delay marriage. And the longer girls are able to stay in school, the more likely they are to contribute to their own futures, those of their families and  to their communities, too.

In addition, early marriage has long-lasting health consequences: A child bride’s children are more likely  to die before they turn five and to experience stunted  growth than those born to mothers above 18. This impacts familial health but also health systems. If all child marriage had ended by 2015, countries would have seen tens of billions of dollars in benefits by 2030 due to a reduction in stunting and child mortality alone.18 Thus, investment in girls’ education is an investment in the health of a country’s workforce, economic growth and lasting peace.

According to USAID, “During major conflicts and crises, children do not go to school—and the longer they’re out, the less likely they are to ever go back. Not only is school necessary for their continued education, but it also provides them with emotional and physical protection while their worlds are in chaos.”19 Lack of access to quality education in such settings undermines the social and economic development that is necessary to promote gender equality, peace and prosperity—the intended outcomes of the  WPS agenda.

Adolescent Girls in Conflict and  Post-Conflict Settings

Adolescent girls face unique challenges in any crisis setting, as they are marginalized both as females and as youth. They are often responsible for greater degrees of unpaid family care work, such as fetching firewood or water or attending older and/or younger relatives. Consequently, they have less time to pursue education or income-generating activities, with longterm impact on their futures.20 The threat and/or experience of violence in conflict, post-conflict, or displacement settings is exacerbated both inside and outside of the home. In times of crisis, families marry off girls to make them less vulnerable to gender-based violence by combatants. However, evidence does not support the belief that husbands protect girls they marry. In fact, girls who are married early are more likely to experience intimate partner violence, contract HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and remain poorer relative to their unmarried peers.

For example, since the start of the Syrian civil war, rates of child and forced marriage among Syrian refugees tripled  in Jordan.21 A 2014 Council on Foreign Relations paper found that nine of the eleven least developed countries on UNDP’s Human Development Index have child marriage rates above 40 percent and most of the countries with a high prevalence of the practice have also experienced natural disasters, which compound the perils the girls face.22 Girls in conflict settings are at risk for early, child and forced marriage, whether with good intentions by their family or through nefarious ones at the hands of the militants. The horrifying accounts of abduction, sexual enslavement and forced marriage of girls by the so-called Islamic State in  Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Taliban  in Pakistan attest to the urgent need for interventions  tailored to the needs of girls in these settings.

Policies and Strategies to Protect Girls

Given the direct links between girls’ experience of conflict and crisis — including but not limited to child, early and forced marriage — and the women, peace and security agenda, U.S. policy on peace and security should not exclude girls. An immediate opportunity to address this comes in the form of the forthcoming strategy mandated by the Women, Peace and Security Act, which was passed and signed into law by President Trump in October 2017. The Act commits the United States to “promote meaningful participation of women in all aspects of conflict prevention, management and resolution, and post-conflict relief and recovery efforts.”23 While the legislation does mention girls twice, these references are cursory and do not include specific objectives relevant to girls’ experience of conflict and crisis—nor does it explicitly mention child marriage or girls’ education. Its focus, rightfully, is on women’s participation in preventing and resolving conflict. Yet girls also have a powerful role to play in preventing and responding to conflict, and are too often the victim of targeted violence.

Therefore, the forthcoming Strategy can and should address the unique needs of girls as well as women, with a specific focus on child marriage given its prevalence in conflict and crisis. Building on the 2016 National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security, the Strategy should include a specific objective to protect and empower girls in conflict and crisis settings, with an explicit commitment to prevent child, early and forced marriage.24

The United States does not have to start from scratch when integrating the WPS Strategy into issues like child marriage and girls’ education. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State and USAID’s implementation plans for other legislative efforts already focus on these very topics. Furthermore, the recently passed Reinforcing Education Accountability in Development Act of 2017, or READ Act, promotes education and includes language on overcoming barriers to girls’ education. The corresponding U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls is forthcoming and requires reports to Congress.25 The strategy includes implementation plans from USAID, the U.S. Department of State, Peace Corps and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, including coordination with one another in crisis and conflict settings. Through this strategy, the United States has pledged to work toward ending child marriage, keeping girls in school and eliminating violence against girls around the world.26 The WPS Strategy presents a new opportunity to unify the two agendas and address the common problem of child marriage and violence against girls.

The recently updated U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence Globally also makes explicit linkages between education, violence prevention and response broadly and child marriage specifically.27 USAID has a Vision for Action on Child Marriage28 and a related Child, Early and Forced Marriage Resource Guide.29 Both contain relevant guidance and sector-specific recommendations, indicators and programmatic recommendations for conflict, postconflict and other work closely aligned with the WPS agenda.

Recommendations for Action

As the United States develops its WPS Strategy, it must intentionally include girls — particularly efforts to prevent child, early and forced marriage and to keep girls in school. Specifically, the U.S. government should do the following:

  • increase peacebuilding efforts that take into account the needs and voices of girls at risk for child marriage;
  • ensure that new and increasing efforts to provide girls with education in conflict and crisis settings includes efforts to prevent child, early and forced marriage;
  • link increasing attention to girls’ education in conflict and crisis settings and ending child marriage to the WPS agenda by including a specific objective to end child marriage and empower adolescent girls in the forthcoming strategy on WPS, building on the limited provision in the National Action Plan on Women,  Peace and Security;
  • fully implement the U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls;
  • train relevant personnel in the Department of Defense, Department of State, USAID and elsewhere on the issue of child marriage and support regular consultation with civil society organizations and women experts on this issue in areas most affected by conflict and instability, as well as in Washington, DC; and
  • increase funding for the WPS agenda, linking with efforts to end gender-based violence, child marriage and other relevant funded priorities. Current U.S. funding and programming have failed to address the barriers that are keeping girls out of school. The forthcoming READ Act strategy from USAID should include robust guidance on how to overcome these barriers and measure efforts to  do so, particularly in conflict and crisis settings. It should also include these metrics in the required annual report  to Congress.

About the Authors

Rachel Clement, Policy Advocate, International Center for

Research on Women

Neetu John, Social and Health Scientist, International Center for Research on Women

Lyric Thompson, Director, Policy & Advocacy, International

Center for Research on Women

References

  1. UNICEF, “Child Marriage Is a Violation of Human Rights but Is All Too Common” (March 2018), https://data.unicef.org/topic/ child-protection/child-marriage/.
  2. Allison M. Glinski et al., “The Child, Early and Forced Marriage Resource Guide” (Washington, DC: Banyan Global, 2015).
  3. UNICEF, “Child Marriage Is a Violation of Human Rights.”
  4. UNICEF, “A Study on Early Marriage in Jordan”

(2014), https://www.unicef.org/jordan/UNICEFJordan_ EarlyMarriageStudy2014-E_COPY_.pdf; 

  • Human Rights Watch, “Marry before Your House Gets Swept Away: Child Marriage in Bangladesh” (2015), https://www.hrw.org/ report/2015/06/09/marry-your-house-swept-away/child-marriagebangladesh.
  • “Child Marriage in the Middle East and North Africa: Executive

Summary” (New York and Washington, DC: UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Office and the International Center forResearch on Women, 2017).

  • J. J. Messner & Kendall Lawrence, “The Failed States Index 2013: The Troubled Ten” (Washington, DC: Fund for Peace, 2013).
  • World Bank, “Conflict and Fragility: What We Know” webpage

(2018), http://ida.worldbank.org/theme/conflict-and-fragility; Girls Not Brides, “Human Rights and Justice,” webpage (2017), https:// www.girlsnotbrides.org/themes/human-rights-and-justice/.

  • Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017, S.1141, Cong. 115th, https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1141.
  1. UNESCO, “Leaving No One Behind.”
  2. Education Cannot Wait, website, http://www.educationcannotwait.org/the-situation/ (accessed December 2017).
  3. Ibid., p. 10.
  4. Susan Nicolai et al., “Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crises” (London: Overseas Development Institute, July 2015).
  5. UNESCO, “One in Five Children, Adolescents and Youth Is Out of School,” Fact Sheet No. 48 (February 2018), http://uis.unesco.org/ sites/default/files/documents/fs48-one-five-children-adolescentsyouth-out-school-2018-en.pdf.
  6. UNESCO, “Leaving No One Behind: How Far on the

Way to Universal Primary and Secondary Education?” Policy Paper 27/Fact Sheet 37 (July 2016), http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0024/002452/245238E.pdf

  1. Girls Not Brides, “Child Marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa” (2017), https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/region/sub-saharan-africa/.
  2. Quentin T. Wodon et al., “Economic Impacts of Child Marriage: Global Synthesis Report” (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017).
  3. Ibid.
  4. USAID, “What We Do: Education in Crisis and Conflict” webpage (April 18, 2018), https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/ education/crisis-conflict.
  5. Gaëlle Ferrant et al., “Unpaid Care Work: The Missing Link in the Analysis of Gender Gaps in Labor Outcomes” Issues Paper (Geneva: OECD Development Centre, December 2014).
  6. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, “Fragile States, Fragile Lives: Child Marriage amid Disaster and Conflict” report (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 2014).
  7. Women, Peace, and Security Act.
  8. USAID, National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (August 5, 2016), https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/genderequality-and-womens-empowerment/national-action-plan-womenpeace-security.
  9. Reinforcing Education Accountability in Development Act, H.R. 601, 115th Cong., https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/ senate-bill/623.
  10. U.S. Department of State, “United States Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls” (March 2016), https://www.state.gov/ documents/organization/254904.pdf.
  11. USAID, “United States Strategy to Prevent and Respond to

Gender-Based Violence Globally,” updated 2016, https://pdf.usaid. gov/pdf_docs/PDACT888.pdf.

  • USAID, “Ending Child Marriage and Meeting the Needs of Married Children: The USAID Vision for Action” (October 2012), https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACU300.pdf .
  • Glinski et al., “The Child, Early and Forced Marriage 

Resource Guide.”

21.  UNICEF, “Early Marriage in Jordan.”                                                    

  

By Pearl Karuhanga Atuhaire and Grace Ndirangu

The international community has taken a strong stance against conflict-related sexual violence, deeming it a war crime. However, international actors are paying scant attention to sexual- and

gender-based violence (SGBV) in refugee settings. Urban refugee women and girls and those in refugee camps often grapple with SGBV in their countries of asylum, long after they have fled their homes and communities. Our research among refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo currently in Kenya and Uganda has unearthed a high incidence of SGBV against refugee women and girls. Research by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) indicates that one in five refugee and displaced women experience sexual violence.1 Many of the survivors often have no one to turn to for protection and resort to sex work and other risky means to survive.

In this policy brief, we examine the extent of the problem, identify obstacles to progress, and recommend actions governments and humanitarian organizations can take to better protect refugees. In short, we argue that refugee settlements are not safe spaces for refugee women. Humanitarian officials, governments, and the international community must do more to address this problem.

Extent of the Problem

In Kenya, refugees are mainly settled in camps, while in Uganda, refugees are placed in settlements where they live temporarily as they await integration, resettlement, or settled in the southwest in Kyaka I and II, Rwamwanja, and Nakivale settlements.  As of 2016, Kyaka II had 28,364 refugees, with Congolese accounting for 88 percent and Rwandese 12 percent of the population.5

Most of these refugees, both urban and rural, experienced SGBV at the hands of rebel and militia groups in their country of origin and they continue to be at risk after flight. Female refugees are particularly vulnerable when they are separated from their husbands. The extra burden they carry as single mothers and family heads taking care of children and elderly relatives often leads them into dangerous, exploitative situations as they struggle to earn a living. Their children assume adult responsibilities. Many children are forced into dangerous means of survival, such as transactional sex work, early marriages, and trading sex for favors. Others may have temporary jobs, such as washing clothes, performing domestic chores, working in shops and construction sites, and selling produce and other wares in the market. However, these jobs earn them meager wages and still expose them to frequent abuse.

Among urban refugees in Kenya, some of the young women told us stories, such as this one:

repatriation.2 Kenya has about 24,063 Congolese refugees who have settled in urban areas around Nairobi.3 Most of these urban refugees have temporary or part-time jobs to support their families.4 Congolese refugees in Uganda are mainly

[H]e would pass by my work station when I was cooking and he could rub himself against my body or even touch my breasts. When I told him to stop, he would laugh and say that there is nothing I can do to him. If I left the job, it would be difficult for me to get another one and then my kids would suffer.      

Another young woman reported:

I worked in a beauty parlor as a masseuse. Some of the clients were male. Some of them would request a massage, and when it was over they would then ask me to perform sexual favors. If I refused, they would threaten to tell my boss that I was being rude. I refused to give in, and after being reported so many times, my boss was threatening to fire me, so I quit. I now do casual jobs.  

Most women and girls who work as domestic help have reported being sexually abused by their male employers or by male members of the households where they work. If these women and girls are in the country illegally, they are vulnerable to blackmail, with people threatening to report them to the authorities. Often, these women and girls work without pay, and most do not report these incidents for fear of reprisal and ostracism by other community members.

Women in refugee camps and settlements are also often abused by their husbands or other male family members or providers. These men often control the family resources and are the sole decision makers in their families. In Kyaka II in 2016, most perpetrators of SGBV were known to their victims. They were uncles, fathers, foster fathers, or even perpetrators from their country of origin who ended up in the same settlement.

One refugee woman told us this in an interview: When I first came to this settlement as a young orphan refugee girl, I was assigned a foster father, but this foster father took advantage of me and defiled me.… [B]y then, I was fourteen years old. He came from the bar late one night when I was already asleep, and he forced himself on me and defiled me. I could not tell anyone about it because he told me the next morning not to report this, otherwise he would throw me out of his house. Since I had no other place to go, I just kept silent about the whole issue.

Adolescent girls are married off by their parents, who negotiate the price with prospective husbands.6 High levels of poverty and the practice of bride prices contribute to high child marriage rates among the Congolese, as does family debt, which encourages families to include girls as part of financial settlements.7 In Kyaka II, most girls are married off when they are as young as 14 years old. During a focus group discussion with refugee women, some women from the Hema

Clan in Congo argued,

Among us, the Hema, most families marry off their daughters when they are as young as 14 years. It is a cultural norm that we cannot change. If a woman opposed the practice, the community would reject her, and she could even be killed…. So much as the settlement officials say it is wrong, in our culture it is done silently, and as mothers of these children, we don’t have much say about it because we fear rejection from our husbands and families.

SGBV survivors may have been mutilated during the abuse, suffered other physical injuries, or contracted sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. In some instances, women develop incontinence and uncontrolled bleeding, which affect relationships with their immediate family and the community. The women suffer psychologically as well, from post-traumatic stress disorder, stress, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, inability to form healthy relationships, insomnia, and somatic symptoms of headaches. SGBV thus often leaves women incapacitated and unable to care for themselves and their families.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), local authorities, and international actors are aware of these problems, and they have attempted to put mechanisms and measures in place to address SGBV among refugee women. But they cannot do it alone. Without the commitment of local authorities, host governments, and host-country organizations little progress will be made. Refugee women face high levels of discrimination in the host community, difficulties in getting jobs that pay a sufficient wage, and an inability to actively participate in leadership positions. These obstacles lead refugee women to distrust the system and lack confidence in efforts to help them. Host-country authorities, local agencies, and policymakers need to develop and implement policies that address the needs of refugee women and enhance their integration into the host community.

Obstacles to Progress

Governments and humanitarian organizations face seven main obstacles to protecting women from SGBV:insufficient legal frameworks, lack of political will, inept law enforcement and court processes, limited awareness among women that they have rights, economic barriers, cultural norms, and inadequate data.

Insufficient legal framework

Existing legal frameworks in Kenya and Uganda can be said to cover SGBV. The Penal Code Act of Kenya (revised edition 2014) and Uganda (Amendment Act of 2007) prohibit all acts of violence. However, they do not directly address SGBV, despite its prevalence. In Kenya, for example, SGBV can only be inferred to be an assault under sections 250 and 251 of the code. There is no specific offense such as wife or husband battery, nor are their provisions for marital rape or domestic violence. The inadequacies of the law make it difficult to address SGBV, whether experienced by Kenyan citizens or refugees in Kenya.

In Kenya, the Sexual Offences Act was enacted in 2006 to curb SGBV. It defines sexual offenses and makes provisions for prevention and protection from harm arising from unlawful sexual acts. However, enactment has not been accompanied by training and dissemination of information on its provisions to police and agents of the justice system. Civil society organizations undertook most of the awareness raising that has occurred. Consequently, most Kenyans are unaware of the law’s existence. Poor investigation of cases means that convictions are rare and survivors of violence are thus denied justice.8

While Uganda’s penal code addresses rape and defilement (rape of a minor below 18 years old), it falls short when it comes to addressing issues of marital rape which is common during conflict. Ugandan law criminalizes SGBV, but the relevant laws are rarely applied. Relevant laws include the Domestic Violence Act of 2010, the Prevention of Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2009, the Prevention of Trafficking of Persons Act of 2009, the National Action Plan on UN Security Council Resolution 1325, and the Penal Code Act of 2007, among others. Ugandan communities are not familiar with these laws, which puts refugee women and girls at greater risk from SGBV while in Uganda. While humanitarian agencies have been redoubling their efforts to raise awareness on SGBV and women’s rights, these efforts are likely to yield little in the absence of robust enforcement of the law.

Poor law enforcement and slow court systems

In most refugee settlements as well as outside them, police are slow to respond to reports of SGBV and in other areas, there is inadequate police. Most police stations are reluctant to send officers to settlements to arrest perpetrators, primarily because SGBV is still widely considered a private matter. In a few cases where they are willing, police tend to lack investigative skill and capacity for handling these cases. Police stations lack examination rooms and kits to collect evidence from survivors. Moreover, in cases where evidence is collected, stations lack storage space, and in most cases evidence goes missing or is tampered with, becoming inadmissible in court. Court processes are lengthy, and refugee victims are often subject to perpetrator intimidation and prosecutorial bias.

Especially at risk are asylum seekers who hold Refugee Status Determination (RSD) appointment slips, which they get when they register for asylum and which serve as a form of identification. Most law enforcement officers are not aware that the slips confirm the legal status of these refugees as they await the outcome of the RSD process. Survivors who bear the slips are hesitant to approach police stations for fear of police harassment and sometimes extortion or illegal detention. Survivors have also reported that their abusers taunt them and threaten to report that they are in the country illegally.

Aggravated by gaps in law and policy, the reluctant enforcement and implementation of existing policies and laws on SGBV conspire to keep survivors’ needs from being adequately addressed. In most cases, police officers accuse survivors of bringing their problems upon themselves. In cases of sexual violence, the police accuse women and girls of dressing inappropriately and thereby inviting violence. When women are beaten, police accuse them of disrespecting their husbands, which they imply deserves ‘a slap or two.’ The gender-insensitive handling of such cases increases the trauma to women and girls.

Lack of political will

Lack of political will and poor or nonexistent accountability mechanisms keep perpetrators from being held accountable for SGBV crimes. There is a paradoxical relationship between national law and cultural belief, which international law does not touch. Where cultural beliefs do not take the national legal framework into account, corrupt leaders are free to advance and justify abuses in their communities. Consequently, law becomes silent and does not protect victims.

Without political will, all efforts to fight SGBV are constrained. With inadequate operational and logistical support, survivors’ immediate needs go unmet, and there is no capacity to prevent SGBV. Refugee women who report SGBV return to communities where perpetrators are living, since there are no safe housing facilities where they can stay while investigations and legal processes are ongoing. In addition, survivors are only offered counselling and some small financial stipend. There is no sustainable support to enable them to be self-reliant, so they return to the same jobs where they were abused.

Limited awareness of rights

Refugee women’s rights are human rights. Women’s rights have received greater recognition today, as evidenced by the various international tools relating to women: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) and subsequent resolutions, the International Criminal Court, and the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993). Yet refugee women’s rights are still negated, despite significant steps to address the challenges they face.9 Most refugee women themselves do not understand these rights, which serves as a further obstacle to redress of SGBV.

Economic barriers

Refugee women and girls often take on roles as heads of households in their host countries, usually because they became separated from spouses or traditional male support during flight. As heads of households with a responsibility for children, they are more enmeshed in family networks than are male refugees. Because they may not be self-reliant, their vulnerability to male providers increases. Refugee women’s needs for economic resources make them vulnerable to SGBV, and these economic needs are often underestimated. Consequently, some refugee women continue working in abusive environments because leaving these jobs threatens their ability to care for their families.

While the 1951 Refugee Convention recognizes the right to freedom of movement and to seek paid employment, among others, refugees do not see these rights fully recognized in protracted exile.10 Freedom of movement is a precondition for the enjoyment of other rights; denying it undermines refugees’ socioeconomic well-being and increases their vulnerability. Women are particularly vulnerable, as they become reliant on scant humanitarian assistance.

In Kenya, refugees cannot get formal employment without Class M work permits. Although the Ministry of Immigration issues them freely, the process for acquiring them is lengthy and slow—as long as two years. Refugees thus resort to odd jobs and informal sector work.

Uganda requires refugees to get exit permits before leaving their settlements. This impinges on refugee women’s selfreliance and economic well-being. Families of SGBV survivors cannot relocate or hire lawyers, and they often rely on legal aid services, where service is slow, the case backlog large, and staffing inadequate. Due to restrictions on movement from within the settlement system and from husbands, most women end up compromising their bodies through transactional sex, which makes them vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases.

Cultural norms

Predominant cultural and social norms perpetuate unequal power relations between women and men, exposing women and girls to vulnerable situations that often lead to SGBV. Unmarried women are often ostracized by both men and women, particularly if they have been violated sexually. Married women risk their spouses divorcing them when they report they have been a victim of SGBV.

Some of the Congolese refugee women become pregnant as a result of rape in the country of asylum. Such women (in most cases who end up being single mothers) are often treated as pariahs, and many opt to live away from members of their communities. This is because they fear the ridicule that women who have conceived out of wedlock or out of rape often encounter in the community once the information is out. Others who have given birth to children conceived out of rape by rebels or men in host countries are expelled from their communities. One Congolese community member stated “once the men in the community know that a certain was woman was raped, they label her as damaged. Such a woman is unlikely to get married as no man wants her.” Gender stereotypes also foster discrimination against women in public spheres. Such stereotypes emerge from socially constructed roles of men and women in society. Stereotypes such as “women are weak, men are strong” make physical and sexual violence against women more likely. A social worker in Kyaka II, for example, noted the cultural normalization of male violence among the Hema tribe living there, saying, “Beating a woman is normal.”

Inadequate data

Data collection on SGBV among women and girls remains a challenge since it primarily relies on self-reporting by survivors. In refugee settings and among the Congolese, the stigma and ostracism survivors face after coming forward impede such reporting. Most data is collected from health facilities, but not all victims of SGBV report to health facilities for medical assistance. Fear of ostracism leads many women refugees to avoid reporting abuses when the perpetrators are also refugees. In some instances, the community resolves SGBV cases itself. Indeed, community leaders fear that if SGBV cases are brought to the authorities’ attention, perpetrators’ resettlement process and status determination will be compromised. Given these obstacles, creation of gender-based violence information management systems cannot adequately address the data collection problem.

Recommendations

Governments, UNHCR, and other humanitarian organizations do provide invaluable humanitarian support to refugees. However, a shift at all levels is required if pervasive SGBV is to be relegated to the past in refugee settings.

  • Law enforcement. Humanitarian actors and host governments should work together to implement reforms in the host countries’ justice systems. The law must be tougher on perpetrators of SGBV—for example, by denying refugee registration to asylum seekers with records of committing SGBV offenses. There ought to be screening during RSD interviews to deregister refugees who are found to have committed SGBV offenses. Denial of RSD status to past perpetrators will help deter would-be perpetrators. This will also help ensure that perpetrators do not continue to live in the same community as their victims and continue threatening them, especially as their cases go to court. Increased funding and partnerships with local legal partners could help refugee survivors access legal services. Police officers need to be trained on how to screen and record cases of SGBV. Better training and equipping of police will also enable them to collect and store evidence. Host governments and local partners can together strengthen witness protection systems and set up safe houses to host survivors of SGBV. Taking such steps to better protect women who have undergone SGBV will restore the confidence of other survivors and encourage them to report their own cases.
  • Political will. Host-country governments and local authorities should together formulate and implement reforms in all parts of the legal system. The police must be trained to handle SGBV cases in a gender-sensitive manner and be given logistical support to follow up on cases. Corrupt leaders and officials should be prosecuted for failure to enforce the law, whether from reticence or ignorance. Although police stations in Kenya and Uganda are required to have a gender desk, they often do not. Where there is one, it often has no female officer assigned to it.
  • Refugee women’s rights. Host countries, humanitarian agencies, and local organizations need to educate refugee women (and community leaders) on their rights. Women and girls should be fully aware of what constitutes SGBV, where to report cases, and how to protect evidence so law enforcement officers can collect it. Refugee women and girls also need to know their rights as refugees and what protection their legal documentation affords them. Knowledge is power. If women are made to believe their asylum certificates do not entitle them to protection, they will be less likely to report crimes perpetrated against them. Local and nationwide awareness raising and advocacy can also help prevent sexual violence, abuse, and exploitation of refugee women.
  • Economic barriers. The government, UNHCR, and other humanitarian agencies working in refugee settings need to help survivors find long-term solutions to secure their livelihoods. This could include providing market information, access to loans from financial institutions and grants to start businesses. The government should remove restrictions on refugees’ movement so they can more readily find much-needed employment and earn supplementary income. The prime minister’s office should review laws regarding refugees’ permission to exit their settlements to seek work. They should speed the issuance of exit permits and let refugees move freely within and outside settlements without questioning.
  • Cultural norms. The host government and other humanitarian actors should engage with local community leaders so they understand the national laws that protect refugee women. These leaders should learn of the adverse effects of early marriages on girls, the need for educating girls as well as boys, and the need for women to be represented at all levels of leadership. Refugee communities should hear how gender stereotypes promote SGBV. All humanitarian actors and leaders in local communities should be trained in use of gender-sensitive language. Male engagement is fundamental. Because the ethos of patriarchy has permitted men to perpetrate SGBV, men must be involved in preventing further violence. International and local agencies serving refugees should incorporate men in programming on raising awareness, becoming peer educators in the fight against SGBV, and engaging them in resolving family conflicts. Such programs go hand in hand with the need for programs for empowering women and girls to find safe means of sustaining themselves.
  • Data collection. All humanitarian actors and host governments should stress the urgency of reporting SGBV. They should urge refugee communities to end stigmatization of survivors and to encourage women to report their cases to the police, crime scene investigators, and health officials. When SGBV occurs, survivors should know where to go first.

Finally, the governments of Uganda and Kenya should consider local integration as a more permanent solution for long-term refugees. Both should review previous research work on the benefits of such integration for the host countries and educate host communities of these benefits and encourage refugee communities to embrace resettlement solutions.

Conclusion

The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women affirms that violence against women constitutes a violation of women’s rights and fundamental freedoms. Further, Article 4 of the African Union’s Maputo Protocol is devoted entirely to the topic of violence against women, calling for a range of state measures: punishment of perpetrators, identification of causes of violence against women, and provision of services for survivors.

Yet, SGBV in refugee settings continues. Host governments must take seriously the mandate to protect all women within their boundaries. Failure to protect refugee women and girls seeking asylum constitutes a failure on the part of the host government. International actors, local actors, and the African Union must work closely with host governments to help them meet the obligations to which they committed when they ratified these protocols and other conventions that seek to end SGBV.

References

  1. IRC, Clinical care for survivors of gender-based violence, (New York: International Rescue Committee, 2016).
  2. A refugee settlement is a type of refugee encampment encompassing a certain geographical area allocated by the government or community in the country of asylum.
  3. The urban areas around Nairobi include Kasarani, Kayole, Kitengela, and Rongai, with a few living in the Kabiria area of Kawangware. See also UNHCR, Figures at a Glance, (UNHCR Kenya, December 31,
  • Sara Pavanello, Hidden and exposed: Urban Refugees in Nairobi, Kenya, (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2010).
  • UNHCR, Kyaka II Fact Sheet, (Kampala: UNHCR Uganda, 2016).
  • United Nations Population Fund, Marrying Too Young; End Child Marriage, (New York: UNFPA, 2012).
  • Free the Slaves, Wives in Slavery; Forced Marriage in the Congo, (Washington: Free the Slaves, 2013).
  • Dr. Ruth Aura, Situational Analysis and the Legal Framework on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Kenya: Challenges and Opportunities, (Nairobi: National Council for Law Reporting, 2012).
  • Mulki Al-Sharmani, “Navigating Refugee Life,” UN Chronicle XLVII, no.1 (February 2010).
  • J. Milner and G. Loescher, Responding to Protracted Refugee Situations: Lessons from a Decade of Discussion, (Oxford, UK: Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 2011).

By Gabrielle Bardall, Ph.D. and Emily Myers

Although the American policy community views the Women, Peace, and Security Act and the  International Violence against Women Act of 2017 as addressing all the myriad problems women face in conflict, these laws do not adequately deal with the particular and pervasive problem of violence against women in politics, nor has the legislation been interpreted as covering it.

T

hose who commit violence against women in politics (VAWP) seek to control and restrict women’s participation in political processes and institutions on the basis of their gender through emotional,

social, or economic force; coercion; pressure; or physical and sexual harm.1 This violence exists worldwide and is a significant barrier to women’s political participation.

During the 2017 Kenyan elections, Human Rights Watch found that dozens of women were raped by police officers and men in uniform, and still others experienced sexual violence at the hands of civilians.2 Female protesters have been raped or subjected to sexual aggression in Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, and other places.3 Zimbabwean women have reported being forced into genital mutilation in response to their political involvement.4

In 2015, women in some provinces of Pakistan were barred from voting by traditional councils and “baton-wielding men” at polling stations.5 In Afghanistan in 2004, a busload of female poll workers was blown up.6 From Kosovo to Canada to Rwanda and the United Kingdom, women report receiving direct threats of physical harm via social media.7 Social media is used to attack women around the world, causing fear and deep shame. In Haiti, Tunisia, Canada, and elsewhere, female parliamentarians and staffers report that other elected MPs and their staff have sexually assaulted them.

Violence against women in politics is integrally connected to the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda because it inhibits women from participating in democratic transitions and consolidation, and lack of women’s participation undermines electoral integrity, sustainable democracy, and peace. Women’s leadership in conflict prevention, management, and resolution and in postconflict relief and recovery efforts does not end with the signing of a peace treaty. Democratization processes are equally vital for achieving WPS objectives.

While international actors, including the United States, increasingly recognize VAWP as a serious impediment to women’s political participation, US lawmakers have yet to formally recognize the issue or respond with policy commensurate with the scope of the issue. Preventing and responding to VAWP will require resources, policies, legislation, and training that address the factors that underpin this violence and prioritize it as a threat to human rights, peace, and security.

Barriers to Women’s Participation

Systematic, persistent gender-based violence in politics precludes peace. VAWP impedes women’s full participation in civic life, undercuts the credibility of political systems, and cements and aggravates existing gender inequities. As such, it threatens the security of the state by contributing to a less democratic, less equal, less peaceful society.

VAWP does not occur in a vacuum; it reflects existing gender inequalities and power dynamics in a society. Where women fear or experience violent retribution for exercising their political agency, there is no equal access to rights and opportunities. Disparity between the treatment of men and women is a marker of a political climate ripe for further conflict. Conversely, inter- and intrastate conflict is likely to fall as gender equality rises.8 Furthermore, the likelihood of civil war decreases when a greater proportion of a country’s politicians are female, as does use of violence in the face of an international crisis and state-perpetrated human rights abuses. Inclusive political institutions are foundational to peace and security.

In the aftermath of conflict, elections can play a critical role in building such institutions.9 Elections often mark the transition from war to peace and a step toward demilitarizing politics and fostering participatory governance.10  Yet they also can aggravate divides and trigger political violence in fragile postconflict societies.

In fundamentally patriarchal political systems threatened with change, women become targets of violence because of their commitment to vote, their position as electoral officials, or their ambitions for political office. Women running for office, or otherwise exercising their political rights, question established power norms and claim influence men believe to be theirs.

Such violence poses an immense barrier to women’s involvement: Over 60 percent of women in India, Nepal, and Pakistan reported that fear of violence precludes them from participating in politics.11 Across 29 countries, women indicated “cultural beliefs/social attitudes/patriarchal mentality” as the chief impediment to their political participation.12

In their legislative and policy responses to gender-based violence in conflict, international bodies and national governments have so far focused on women’s participation in peace negotiations and political processes during conflict and in the immediate aftermath of conflict. Ignoring the reality of ongoing violence in the political sphere is a dangerous oversight. As the memory and international scrutiny of conflict fades, men often reassert control over democratic institutions, reinstituting the policies and practices that triggered conflict and frequently achieving and maintaining dominance through VAWP.

Long-term peace encompassing postconflict transformation necessitates an inclusive, participatory political space. Such a space cannot exist without women’s ability to enter, contribute to, and help shape it.

Violence against women in political and public life (including electoral violence) exists around the world, although it varies significantly in severity and form across and within regions. It may take place in the public sphere or in private, including within the family and the general community, it may occur online or through the media, and it government actors may perpetrate or condone it.13

Women are often singled out for political violence and systematic harassment when they seek to vote independent of male influence. 14 Likewise, data show that elected female civic leaders and other women in public life face severe and varied forms of violent repression that may be ignored or viewed as “politics as usual” instead of as gender-specific violence.15 Such violence impedes the ability of women to exercise their rights as voters, candidates, and citizens.

Victims and Forms of Violence

The victims of gender-based violence in elections and politics include the following:16

  • political actors such as candidates, elected officials, political aspirants (i.e., those seeking nomination), party members, supporters, and staffers;
  • electoral management body staff and poll workers, police and security forces, state administrators, and civil servants;
  • professionals such as journalists, civic educators, civil and labor activists, and community leaders; and
  • private citizens and voters, including minors.

This violence takes many forms, including physical, sexual, social-psychological, and economic. Physical attacks and rape against politically and civically engaged women are recorded on all continents. Yet the vast majority of documented incidents are nonphysical threats such as intimidation and sexual harassment that can sometimes leading to physical assault and death. Repeated online expression targeted at a woman because of her political or public role that causes her substantial emotional distress or fear of bodily harm is also a form of VAWP, and it can include mobilizing social media to terrorize, disseminate defamatory or pornographic images or videos, impersonate, invade privacy, or engage in distributeddenial-of-service attacks.17


Locations and Prevalence

VAWP occurs in the street, at political party headquarters, and churches, as well as in homes and offices. It occurs in between intimate partners and family members as well as in public virtual spaces such as television, blogs, internet media, chatrooms, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.18 It may appear in private virtual spaces such as personal email, messaging, texting, WhatsApp, Viber, and in cellular and landline connections. Violence occurring online includes aggressive, abusive and harassing psychological violence as well as incitation to commit physical or sexual violence. A 2016 survey of 55 women parliamentarians from 39 countries found that 81.8 percent of respondents had been subjected to one or more acts of psychological violence, 21.8 percent had been subjected to one or more acts of sexual violence, 25.5 percent had experienced one or more acts of physical violence, and 32.7 percent had experienced one or more acts of economic violence (e.g., being denied funds that an individual is entitled to during their term of office or political campaign; being denied other resources an individual is entitled to in connection with their political office or campaign (offices, computers, staff, salary); harm or threats to harm a business, termination, or threat of termination of employment; or other threats or theft related to one’s livelihood).19

Perpetrators and Motivations

Perpetrators of this violence include both men and women from various groups:20

  • institutional actors (state security, police, armed forces), government institutions (executive, judicial and legislative actors), electoral agents (poll workers, electoral management staff, electoral security agents), and state proxies (militia, gangs, insurgents, mercenaries, private security) who may employ gendered forms of violence (rape, virginity tests, sexual assault) in cases where they engage in repressive tactics in the course of an electoral process or in a political scope;
  • nonstate political actors (candidates, party leaders, interparty and intraparty members, paramilitary, party militia, nonstate armed actors) who frequently target politically active women in order to gain electoral advantage, reduce competition, or simply punish women for venturing into a male-dominated space; and
  • societal actors (journalists/media, voters, community members or groups, religious leaders, traditional leaders, employers, criminal actors, intimate partners or spouses, family members, electoral observers, youth groups) who commit both physical attacks and severe psychological censure, humiliation, and affronts against all classes of women who seek to exert independent, free will in the exercise of their civic and political rights.

International Efforts to Protect Women in Politics

Many international donors, nongovernmental organizations, and international organizations have worked specifically on VAWP in recent years: UN Women, UNDP, International

IDEA, ParlAmericas, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the Organization of American States, the InterParliamentary Union, and the Commonwealth.

At the international level, the rights of women to participate in political and public office, as well as live a life free from violence, are established in comprehensive normative frameworks established by UN Security Council, General Assembly, and Human Rights Council resolutions. The adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda in 2015 (A/RES/70/1) provides further impetus for states to address and combat gender discrimination and violence against women and to ensure women can fully realize their political rights. In 2018, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and Consequences, will prepare and submit a thematic report to the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly in September 2018 on VAWP.

Women’s activism has spurred global awareness of the problem. Civil society women’s groups have proposed and helped implement four key actions: targeted legislation, policy responses such as training for electoral security providers, service provision, and awareness raising.

  1. Legislation. Some countries have passed or drafted legislation to address violence against women in political and public life, including Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. With the backing of the Union of Parliamentary Women of Bolivia (UMPABOL) and women’s nongovernmental advocacy groups, Bolivia’s Legislative Assembly approved the groundbreaking Law against

Harassment and Political Violence against Women on 14 May 2012 to protect women and their political participation. The law seeks to “defend and guarantee the enjoyment of political rights by female candidates—incumbent and elected—and to guarantee a legal framework and set penalties for individual and collective harassment and political violence.”21 The Bolivian law establishes penalties for perpetrators of acts of political harassment and violence against women candidates and elected and acting officials, including administrative, civil, and criminal measures, and may temporarily or permanently bar offenders from public office.

  • Policy Responses. Civic activism and awareness has, for example, contributed to specific training for electoral security providers on VAWP in Sri Lanka and the creation of women’s situation rooms in multiple African countries.

These situation rooms bring together women, youths, media, political and governmental stakeholders, professionals, and religious and traditional personalities to ensure transparent, peaceful electoral processes through peace advocacy, intervention, coordination, political analysis, observation, and documentation.

  • Service Provision. Shelters and emergency hospital support have been offered in some extreme cases, as in Kenya.22 However, the needs of female targets of political violence typically differ from those that are common to survivors of domestic violence. Programs to support access to justice, including overcoming the challenges of documenting evidence and bringing perpetrators to justice, are under way in Zimbabwe.23 Other forms of service include direct assistance and bystander intervention for cases of VAWP (including online threats).
  • Awareness Raising. Women have made long strides toward awareness of the issue worldwide, including through national and global campaigns driven by domestic civil society groups on every continent and international nonprofits and organizations. The issue has been raised through decentralized, organic movements as well, most notably the #MeToo movement, which stimulated discussion in national and subnational legislatures in the US, France, and Canada. Some awareness-raising activities focus on men and boys.24

US Engagement

The United States has highlighted VAWP in policy spaces and dialogues and has supported programs to provide services and technical support, but it has failed to implement policy or legislative responses that recognize, mitigate, and prevent this violence.

Members of Congress have addressed the issue explicitly in a bipartisan briefing by the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in 2017 and in remarks at international fora. 25

The State Department’s Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations’ Election Violence Assessment Framework situates gendered analysis of electoral violence into their actor analysis of potential perpetrators and victims. The State Department’s Future Leaders Exchange Program hosted a dialogue with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Global Women’s Leadership Initiative on the topic. 26

The Carter Center’s USAID-funded international observation mission to Kenya in 2017 collected relevant data. USAID has also funded  research by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) to produce “Violence against Women in Elections: A Framework for Assessment, Monitoring, and Response” and research on the effects of electoral violence on women, including a case study of Bangladesh.27 USAID’s Best Practices in Electoral Security recognizes the special vulnerabilities to violence faced by women in elections, acknowledges women’s protection and equality legislation as a best practice for preventing electoral conflict, and encourages gendered monitoring of elections.28 The National Democratic Institute has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy to work on VAWP.

Since 2011, USAID has funded research and activities to prevent and mitigate violence against women in politics and specifically in elections through country-level democracy and governance programs. Such projects included work in Haiti, Kenya, Nepal, Sri  Lanka and Zimbabwe as well as global research.29 In 2017, USAID allocated a global technical leadership award to explore violence against women in elections online in social media.

Despite this US government engagement, violence against women in political and public life has not been formally recognized or defined in US policy. To ensure US foreign policy is best equipped to promote peace and security, the government must implement VAWP-specific policy and interpret existing legislation to cover women’s engagement in politics.

Links to Existing US Legislation

The United States has long championed the notion that peace requires the full engagement, participation, and equality of women. In 2017, Congress affirmed US leadership on this issue by passing the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017, a piece of bipartisan legislation requiring the US government to increase and strengthen women’s participation in peace negotiations and conflict prevention. The act builds on the principles of the US National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security (US NAP), put forth in 2011 and revised in 2016.

Prevention of and response to VAWP is integral to continued US leadership on women, peace, and security, to the resolutions made under the NAP, and to the current administration’s legal obligations under the 2017 legislation.

The NAP enshrines the US government’s firm commitment to undertake the following actions:

  • promote and strengthen women’s rights, leadership, and meaningful participation in all aspects of conflict prevention and peacebuilding, including transitional processes and decision-making institutions;
  • protect women from all forms of violence, in recognition that gender-based violence not only violates the rights of its victims, but also jeopardizes the security and prosperity of nations by subverting women’s participation in civic

and political life; and

  • promote women’s roles in preventing conflict, mass atrocities, and violent extremism.

The WPS Act reaffirms, deepens, and legally requires action on the principles expressed in the NAP. It states that “the political participation and leadership of women in fragile environments, particularly during democratic transitions, is critical to sustaining lasting democratic institutions.” Furthermore, the act sets out concrete policy objectives for the realization of the WPS agenda, obligating the US government to do the following:

  • encourage partner governments to adopt strategies for ensuring the meaningful participation of women in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and decision-making institutions;
  • promote the physical safety, economic security, and dignity of women and girls;
  • adapt policies and programs to achieve better outcomes in gender equality and women’s empowerment; and
  • undertake gendered data collection and analysis to improve early warning systems of conflict and violence.

Recommendations

The WPS Act calls for a national strategy on WPS and legally obligates the current administration to satisfy the policy objectives outlined within it. The United States should establish itself as a global leader in promoting the meaningful participation of women in all aspects of democratic participation, including by seeking the elimination of VAWP. In view of WPS Act obligations and to ensure that VAWP is fully addressed, we recommend five key actions:

  1. Prioritize the prevention of and response to VAWP in US foreign policy by integrating it into key policies:
    1. recognize and develop a strategy to mitigate the distinct impact of postconflict/peacetime political violence on women and the harmful consequences of such violence for democracy and development in key documents informing US foreign policy, including the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy;
    1. outline specific provisions on prevention and response to VAWP in the national strategy on WPS required by the WPS Act of 2017;
    1. integrate VAWP into any existing, relevant strategic plans of the Department of State or USAID;
    1. institute a policy to support monitoring all aspects of women’s participation in public and political life, including rates of VAWP;
    1. encourage all US-funded programs in the areas of democracy and governance, peace and security, and women’s empowerment to establish guidelines for addressing VAWP, identify country-specific risks, and adopt effective measures to prevent and mitigate it; and
    1. ensure that appropriate personnel of the Department of State and USAID receive training and awareness of VAWP that encompasses the nature and impact of VAWP and policy responses to it.
  2. Introduce targeted legislation that would do the following:
    1. guarantee the ability of women to participate on equal terms in public functions and at all levels of government and public decision-making processes in order to ensure the full realization of women’s political rights;
    1. recognize and define VAWP as a violation of human rights, and establish as a policy of the United States the promotion of women’s meaningful participation in all aspects of democratic life by taking effective action to prevent and mitigate VAWP, including through diplomatic efforts and programs;
    1. ensure that Department of State and USAID adopt coordinated global and mission-level plans of action to prevent and mitigate VAWP, and establish guidelines and reporting requirements for relevant contractors and aid recipients;
    1. implement a government action plan through technical assistance, training, or data support for relevant actors;
    1. report to Congress on progress against program-specific objectives of the national strategy in electoral management, political party support, good governance, associative life, and the media.
  3. Dedicate adequate resources to preventing VAWP and protecting women against it:
    1. Fully fund actions to prevent and mitigate VAWP across US government activity areas and under targeted legislation, as described above;
    1. allocate additional funding to monitor and collect data on women’s participation in public and political life, including data on VAWP;
    1. adopt the UN target of committing 15 percent of peacekeeping and security assistance to promoting women’s participation and protection. Protect existing funds for gender-focused foreign assistance and seek opportunities to fund programs that address the causes underpinning VAWP, including legal provisions that limit women’s political participation and access to justice, societal norms that create hostility toward women’s voices, structural barriers that make it more difficult for women to exercise their political rights, and the lack of women’s inclusion in designing and negotiating postconflict transformation processes, including elections.
  4. Systematically integrate and coordinate VAWP prevention and mitigation efforts into foreign assistance programs, including diplomatic efforts and development programs that do the following:
    1. recognize the distinct impact of postconflict/peacetime political violence on women and the harmful consequences of such violence for democracy and development;
    1. address the causes underpinning VAWP through multisectoral, country-specific, culturally adapted approaches, including legal provisions that limit women’s political participation and access to justice, societal norms that create hostility to women, structural barriers that hinder women from exercising their political rights, and the lack of women’s inclusion in designing and negotiating postconflict transformation processes, including elections;
    1. promote the safety of women in political and public life and end impunity for criminal forms of VAWP, including systematic harassment, discrimination, and online abuse;
    1. encourage governments to enhance gender equality through measures to prevent and mitigate VAWP, including national legislation with clear designations of responsibility for implementation and compliance;
    1. consult and collaborate with a wide variety of local nongovernmental partners with experience in promoting inclusive democracy and in preventing or mitigating violence against women, including women-led organizations and faith-based organizations;
    1. engage with men and boys as partners in the effort to reduce VAWP on a sustainable basis; and
    1. exert sustained international leadership to prevent or mitigate VAWP, including in bilateral and multilateral fora.
  5. Ensure gendered monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of US foreign policy and legislation:
    1. outline and define gender-disaggregated M&E indicators on prevention and response to VAWP in the national strategy on WPS, in targeted legislation, and in foreign assistance programs;
    1. collect and analyze gender-disaggregated data on the prevalence and impacts of VAWP for the purpose of developing and enhancing responses to prevent or mitigate it;
    1. provide and advocate for adequate resources for monitoring all aspects of women’s electoral and political participation, including VAWP, in US-funded international and domestic election observation missions;
    1. monitor, analyze, and evaluate social institutions that will actualize these programs—governments, social sectors, education, labor—for gender bias;

About the Authors

Dr. Gabrielle Bardall is the Senior Gender Specialist at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and a Research Fellow with the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS). She holds degrees from McGill University (B.A), the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (M.A.) and the Université de Montréal (Ph.D.).

Emily Myers is a Research Associate and former Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow at the Alliance for Peacebuilding. She holds a BA in Political Science from Union College.

References

  1. Gabrielle Bardall, “Violence, Politics, and Gender,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
  2. “ ‘They Were Men in Uniform’: Sexual Violence against Women and Girls in Kenya’s 2017 Elections,” (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2017).
  3. “Guinea: September 28 Massacre Was Premeditated,” (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009); “Côte d’Ivoire: Crimes against Humanity by Gbagbo Forces” (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2011); Zimbabwe Research and Advocacy Unit, “Politically Motivated Violence against Women in Zimbabwe,” blog, May 18, 2017; Amnesty International, “ ‘Virginity Tests’ for Egyptian Women Protesters,” webpage, https://www.amnestyusa.org/virginity-tests-for-egyptian-women-protesters/.
  4. Research and Advocacy Unit. Zimbabwe. http://researchandadvocacyunit.org/
  5. Jon Boone, “Women Barred from Voting in Parts of Pakistan,” The Guardian (May 29, 2015).
  6. Carlotta Gall, “Blast Kills 2 Afghan Women on Election Workers’ Bus,” New York Times (June 27, 2004).
  7. Gabrielle Bardall, “The Role of Information and Communication Technologies in Facilitating and Resisting Gendered Forms of Political Violence,” in Marie Segrave and Laura Vitis, eds., Gender, Technology and Violence 31 (Milton Park, UK: Taylor & Francis, 2017); Gabrielle Bardall, “Gender Specific Election Violence: The Role of Information and Communication Technologies,” Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 2, no. 3 (2013): 1–11.
  8. Marie O’Reilly, “Why Women? Inclusive Security and Peaceful Societies” (Washington, DC: Institute for Inclusive Security, 2015).
  9. Kristine Hoglund, “Electoral Violence in Conflict-Ridden Societies: Concepts, Causes, and Consequences,” Uppsala University, 2010.
  10. Annette M. Fath-Lihic and Dawn Brancati, “Elections & Peacebuilding,” Electoral Integrity Initiative (Geneva: Kofi Annan Foundation, 2017).
  11. “Violence against Women in Politics: A Study Conducted in India, Nepal, and Pakistan” (New York: UN Women, 2014).
  1. “Global Survey of Women’s Organizations” (Arlington, VA: International Foundation for Electoral Systems, 2012).
  2. Ibid., and Gabrielle Bardall, “Breaking the Mold: Understanding Gender and Electoral Violence,” IFES White Paper (Arlington, VA: International Foundation for Electoral Systems, 2011).
  3. Bardall, “Breaking the Mold”; Bardall, “Violence, Politics, and

Gender”; Mona Lena Krook, “Violence against Women in Politics,” Journal of Democracy 28, no. 1 (2017): 74–88; “Sexism, Harassment, and Violence against Women Parliamentarians,” IPU Issues Brief (Geneva: Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2016); “#NottheCost: Stopping

Violence against Women in Politics,” webpage (Washington, DC: Na-

  1. IPU, “Sexism, Harassment, and Violence.” Bardall 2011.
  2. Ibid IPU.
  3. Elizabeth Salguero Carrillo, “Political Violence Against Women.” The World of Parliaments.
  4. “Kenyans Say ‘We Are #BetterThanThis’: Aiming to Support Women’s Participation in Elections” (Arlington, VA : International Foundation for Electoral Systems, July 19, 2017).
  5. Contact the authors for further information on these programs.
tional Democratic Institute, 2016); Violence against Women in Election
  • Tazreen Hussain, “Male Allies for Leadership Equality: Learning from Nigeria’s Experience,” (Arlington, VA: IFES , March 15, 2016).

Framework (Arlington, VA: International Foundation for Electoral Systems, 2017); “Preventing Violence against Women in Elections: A Programming Guide” (New York: UN Women, UNDP,  2017).

  1. IPU, “Sexism, Harassment, and Violence”; NDI, “#NottheCost; UN Women, “Violence against Women in Politics.”
  2. Bardall, “Breaking the Mold”; Bardall, “Violence, Politics, and Gender”; Krook, “Violence against Women in Politics,”; NDI, “#NottheCost; IFES, “Framework.”
  3. Bardall, “Information and Communication Technologies”; Bardall, “Gender-Specific Election Violence.” 18. Bardall, “Gender-Specific Election Violence.”
  4. Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, Ending Violence against Women in Politics, March 21, 2017, in Washington, DC.
  5. Woodrow Wilson Center, “The Role of Women in Political Leadership and the Violence That Hinders Progress,” YouTube video, May 30, 2014.
  6. IFES, “Framework.”
  7. Creative Associates and USAID, “Best Practices in Electoral Security: A Guide for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Programming” (Washington, DC: 2013).
  8. Bardall, “Breaking the Mold.” 2011.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this policy brief are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. CSWG as a whole or its individual members.