SheriLynn Gibbings. International Feminist Journal of Politics. Volume 13, Issue 4. December 2011.
Introduction
Since its passage, United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1325 has generated a noteworthy amount of discussion within academia, political circles and the press. Scholars have begun to document the use of the resolution by grassroots organizations, NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and UN agencies (e.g. Neuwirth 2002; Bahdi 2003; Shah 2006). Resolution 1325 has also served as a reference point for UN Member States in shaping the policies and programmes of a wide range of organizations that are working to integrate gender-sensitive approaches to peace building and human security efforts. As of 2010, twenty-two countries have developed National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security (Bachelet 2010).
My interest in studying the gender advocates at the UN arose from my experience working as an intern and then Program Associate for the WILPFUN (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom UN Office, an NGO with consultative status at the UN) between 2001 and 2002. Resolution 1325 was 1 year old at the time I started working at WILPF-UN, and I became quickly immersed in the efforts to spread the word about the resolution and ensure its implementation at the UN headquarters in New York. My experience working for WILPF-UN and the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security made me interested in reflecting further on the work that gender advocates were doing at the UN. In June 2003 I returned to the UN headquarters in New York to conduct 4 months of anthropological fieldwork for my Master’s thesis.
In particular, during my research I investigated the shifting practices and ideologies of WILPF-UN. I also examined United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security (of which WILPF-UN was a member), a coalition formed in June 2000 to advocate for a discussion on women, peace and security in the Security Council. In focusing on these particular groups, I aimed to gain a deeper understanding of how NGOs and UN agencies working on the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ agenda were engaging and seeking to transform the UN system to be more gender sensitive.
The majority of my fieldwork involved participant observation. I took part in the daily activities of my research consultants, which included writing reports, attending meetings and strategizing for future interventions. From these observations and encounters, I wrote daily field notes. Informal discussions were complemented by semi-structured interviews with twelve individuals from these NGOs and UN agencies. I also obtained archival materials from the offices of Amnesty International (for the period of 2000-2003) and WILPF-UN (for the period of 1990-2004). Through meeting minutes, email archives, drafts of documents and advertisements, I was able to understand the conversations taking place during the build-up, passage and implementation of Resolution 1325. The data I use in this paper are also drawn from the large repository of information at PeaceWomen.org (a website dedicated to collecting information about the implementation of UNSCR 1325).
Resolution 1325 is a product of major changes to the Security Council. Throughout the 1990s, Member States pressured the Security Council to become more democratic (Malone 2004). Interacting with NGOs was considered a move towards this objective. Arria Formula meetings were developed to facilitate informal, off-the-record encounters between Security Council members and non-members such as NGOs. Even though the first Arria Formula meeting took place in 1993, it was only in 2000 that an agreement was reached among Members States that NGOs should be consulted in this manner (Paul 2004: 379). Much of the material used in this paper is drawn from Arria Formula meetings where women from conflict zones were invited to speak with Security Council members.
Anger at the UN
In the spring of 2003, the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security was confronted with a precarious dilemma. On the one hand, they wanted to advocate for Iraqi women’s participation in their country’s ‘post-conflict’ reconstruction efforts. On the other hand, they did not want to grant legitimacy to the invasion by the USA and UK. In May 2003 the NGOs formulated recommendations for the Security Council calling for women’s participation in the reconstruction of Iraq by employing Resolution 1325. In October 2003, two Iraqi women, Amal Al-Khedairy and Nermin Al-Mufti, toured various parts of the USA, including Washington, DC, area universities and civic organizations. One research consultant, a member of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security, described the unexpected response they received from Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti when they visited the UN and met with NGO, Member State and UN representatives at the UNIFEM office:
We assumed that there would be interest in Resolution 1325, but we did not consider how the sanctions had affected [the Iraqi women]. We did not [expect] that they would not even want to consider this Resolution because [they] did not want to associate with the Security Council that has caused them so much pain.
Several NGOs with consultative status at the UN facilitated the expedition of the Iraqi women to the UN. Even though they were denied permission to speak in front of the Security Council in a formal way (it was considered too controversial at the time), the NGOs arranged for Al-Khedairy and Al-Muftito participate in an informal meeting attended by gender officers of the UN agencies, NGOs and several representatives from Member States. At the meeting the two Iraqi women voiced their opposition to the occupation. They spoke in nationalist terms, condemned the invasion by the USA and UK as imperialist and critiqued the UN for its lack of support. There were approximately thirty people at the event and many of the participants were disappointed and embarrassed by Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti’s performance and labelled their comments as ‘angry’.
After the meeting, I spoke with several of its organizers. They were concerned about the impact on their own credibility within the UN, since the Iraqi women they had invited to speak had presented themselves in a way that did not meet the expectations of attendees. Although the UN-based NGOs had known ahead of time that Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti were not familiar with Resolution 1325, they had been told by the tour organizers that the women were ‘leading women’s rights advocates in Iraq’. They had expected their guests to speak positively about women’s efforts in the reconstruction of Iraq and the role the UN could play. The meeting’s organizers discussed the possible damage done (in particular, there was concern that the US ambassador’s wife might have been offended) and how they might rectify the situation. It was concluded that next time more briefing and background research were needed before organizing a meeting with officials. These gender advocates knew that if they did not speak in accordance with UN discourses (which presented women as peacemakers and emphasized that there was an important role for the UN to play in the reconstruction), they risked being dismissed entirely. It was not that they intended to silence the two Iraqi women, but speaking in terms of imperialism was avoided at UN meetings. It was a known fact in meetings with Security Council members that NGOs were not allowed to make reference to specific Security Council members in ways that questioned their tactics or approaches to peace. Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti’s performance illustrated that powerful norms exist around the Women, Peace and Security agenda, and that certain performances could be anticipated and expected, while others were discouraged. Those who did not meet these expectations caused embarrassment and discomfort.
Because of my relatively low status as an intern at UNIFEM, I did not feel at the time it was appropriate for me to approach Al-Khedairy or Al-Mufti after the meeting to inquire further. I therefore do not know why they spoke the way they did. However, I do know that they had just toured the USA speaking to audiences of activists. At a meeting at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in November 2003 one of them said, ‘I see your beautiful universities here, and I ask why did your government have to destroy our universities?’ (Basarudin and Shaikh 2003). At the UN they spoke likewise in bold ways about how it was an ‘unjust war’ and ‘illegal occupation’ that was destroying their country and people. They also critiqued the Security Council’s years of severe sanctions against them. They did not use language, symbols and acronyms that were normal at the UN but rather drew on the idea that the national heritage (monuments, museums and artefacts) of Iraq was being destroyed during the American-led occupation. Perhaps the Iraqi women did not consider peace to be made in the halls of the Security Council. As one of the UN gender advocates explained to me, Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti were not particularly convinced that they wanted to draw upon Resolution 1325 to achieve their rights. Instead, they could have purposely hoped to have their message of criticism heard by the American diplomats who sat in the audience. In any case, their message was not necessarily against Resolution 1325, which defends their right to speak, but it was at odds with the UN’s powerful speech norms.
The necessity of following certain speech norms at the UN was illustrated 2 years later when another Iraqi woman presented herself very differently to Security Council members. In 2005 Basma Fakri spoke on behalf of Hanaa Edwar, Secretary General of the Iraqi Al-Amal Association (Hanaa Edwar would have spoken at the Arria Formula meeting herself had she received a visa). In the speech Fakrisaid:
Iraqi women show a rare courage, challenging all aspects of terrorism and violence. They continue to work to ensure a lasting and just peace and security in Iraq. We are proud to say that Iraqi women won 31 percent of the seats in the National Assembly. This achievement speaks to the aspiration of Iraqi women to participate in political leadership, to the importance of international law and international pressure, as well as to the adherence to the rule of law – particularly CEDAW and Resolution 1325.
[…] After the fall of the dictatorial regime, Iraqi women were on the front lines working for peace, often at great personal sacrifice, and many are paying with their lives. Iraqi women proved their capability in different ministries and in proposing and implementing government policies.
[…] The women of Iraq are determined to see peace and justice in our country. Resolution 1325 has been instrumental in giving women a voice in the process, and we thank you and hope we can count on your continued support. (Edwar and Fakri 2005)
This speech, made only a couple of years after the informal meeting with Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti, was very similar to others presented to the Security Council by ‘representatives of women’ from various countries in Arria Formula meetings. From my experience working for WILPF-UN and later during my research, guests speakers were typically briefed and their speeches written in collaboration with the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security and UNIFEM. The specifics of the particular country and its women’s activities were framed into a motivational and inspiring story.
In the meeting with the Iraqi women in 2003, the agency of women was interpreted differently from what might be expected. Rather than celebrating the women’s performance as an act of resistance, which might assume a ‘subversion and re-inscription of norms’ (see Mahmood 2005: 9), the gender advocates actually upheld the discursive tradition of the UN, which does not situate blame on particular Member States but rather places the possibility of hope and change onto women. In the corridors of the UN discourses that are uplifting, positive and present women as peacemakers are the most valued. Those who work at the UN deploy this master narrative, and citizens’ success at being intelligible in this space depends on their capacity to reproduce the master narrative. In other words, a particular way of speaking at the UN shapes the possibility of action and limits a supposed freedom of political participation. I am not arguing that women, through using this discourse, are resisting or subordinate to the UN system; I believe the social relations of power are shifting and cannot be removed from the social and political conditions from which they emerged (see Mahmood 2005). I am arguing that one of the key ways that power is negotiated at the UN is through language (see Bourdieu 1991).
In some ways the gender advocates of WILPF-UN and the NGO Working Group were operating on their own norms and their own assumptions of agency, which were working self-consciously against what they considered the patriarchies of the UN system. Their attempt to speak to the Security Council using the normative speech style of the UN can be understood as a form of agency, established by understanding the structures and discourses of the UN system and using them to their own advantage. These gender advocates imagined themselves as agents, and assumed the two Iraqi women shared similar goals. Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti, however, had little knowledge or experience with UN practices and norms. That being said, whether the gender advocates were constrained by the UN or the Iraqi women were acting freely must be examined rather than assumed. In the next section, I will situate the incident with Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti within a description of the discourses that were produced around Resolution 1325, drawing attention to the supplementary discourses that lie beyond the rights-based arguments present in Resolution 1325.
Utopian Visions
The discourse on Women, Peace and Security must be seen as part of a practice at the UN where narratives are expected to be positive, hopeful and future oriented (see Apthorpe 1997; Barnett 1997: 556) with a use of ‘mobilizing metaphors’ (Shore and Wright 1997: 15). The following statements on Resolution 1325 illustrate this [author’s emphasis]:
Our greatest indicator of success must, however, remain the extent to which our collective energies contribute to building a sustainable, nationally-owned platform from which local women, working with men, can themselves define, shape and influence the course of peace in their countries. (Department of Public Information 2010, statement by Alain Le Roy, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations.
The ultimate goal of the international community, and therefore of the United Nations, is to build a world free of conflict. By adopting this resolution three years ago, the Security Council showed its wisdom by fully recognizing the important roles played by women and girls in the process of building and maintaining peace and security. (Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations 2003).
Therefore, the production of this powerful discourse on Women, Peace and Security must be understood in relation to the discursive practices of the UN, which inspire and empower the listener toward action. Phrases such as ‘active participation’, ‘indispensable agents’ and ‘collective energies’ are vague. Consequently, they mobilize a vision that enrols a number of different interests and masks any ideological differences (Shore and Wright 1997). This is a vision wherein women are no longer abused and their contributions are recognized. It is a ‘world free from conflict’. These statements situate Resolution 1325 in relation to the UN’s historical goal to make the world a better place and are part of the UN’s master narrative, presented in a style of language that often goes unnoticed (see Apthorpe 1997).
Moving Beyond a Rights-Based Discourse
At a very basic level, Resolution 1325 makes three central arguments. The first is for the increased participation of women in various bodies, institutions and processes related broadly to peace and security (such as peacekeeping missions and peace and security decision-making). The second is for the incorporation of a gender perspective into all these processes and institutions (through developing gender-sensitive training materials). ‘Gender perspective’ has a specific meaning: to ‘recognize the special needs of women and girls’ and to protect their human rights during and after a conflict. Central to taking this gender perspective is to also ‘take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, and all other forms of violence in situations of armed conflict’ and to consider their ‘special needs’ as women (in designing refugee camps, for instance). Integrating gender throughout these policies and programmes is referred to as ‘gender mainstreaming’. The third central argument of Resolution 1325 is that there should be a mechanism through which the Security Council can take into account gender and the rights of women. This is accomplished through ‘consultation with local and international women’s groups’ (United Nations Security Council [UNSC] 2000).
These arguments are rights based. The arguments for the increased participation of women and for the incorporation of a gender perspective are based on the premise that women as half of the population have the right to equal participation in all programmes related to peace and security. If the special needs of women and girls are not recognized, it is suggested that the needs of half of the population are being ignored. Yet I observed in my fieldwork that although the gender advocates used the rights argument in reports, speeches and meetings at the UN, it was often supplemented by other arguments, including contributor rights.
Contributor rights are similar to what Muehlebach (2001: 217) noticed with regard to indigenous organizing. The Women, Peace and Security agenda has been influenced by this shift to ‘knowledge as industrial capital’. By this I mean that rights are derived or given worth because of their contribution and value in relation to achieving peace. I am arguing that although not stated explicitly in Resolution 1325 itself, supplementary discourses exist around the resolution, in speeches, reports and talk. These supplementary discourses used by the NGO Working Group and Member States suggest that the rights of women are based on the specific claims that women are local (connected to grassroots movements) and that their stakes are derived from universal principles (peace and justice) rather than loyalty to other interests (i.e. tribal, political or national). In other words, these NGOs present a hybrid discourse of ‘special-treatment rights’ (which argue that women and girls need to be paid attention because conflict affects them differently) and also ‘contributor rights’ (which argue that women can make a difference when it comes to peace) (see Holston 2008: 253-62).
In the lead-up to the passage of Resolution 1325, gender advocates purposely sought to shift perceptions of women away from just ‘victims’ of war to also ‘agents’ of peace building. Consequently, in addition to the rights-based discourse, another discourse was produced and deployed at the UN that closely linked women to practices of peace and argued for their value. A statement by the director of UNIFEM provides an example of this discourse: ‘Women can more readily embrace the collaborative perspective needed to cut through ethnic, religious, tribal and political barriers. They also embrace a more sustainable concept of security’ (Heyzer 2003). In the second Arria Formula meeting on Women, Peace and Security on 30 October 2001, a member from the NGO Working Group said [author’s emphasis],
Your mission visits to East Timor, DRC and Sierra Leone really made a difference to women’s organisations. The deliberate emphasis placed on meeting with women’s organisations and valuing their input through your reports has encouraged the UN missions in the field to tap this under utilised resource. We urge you to routinely meet with women’s organisations on your mission visits. (NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security 2001)
One of the discourses that is not specifically located in Resolution 1325 but appears in many of the documents written on the topic is the idea of women as a resource. References are continually made to women as ‘untapped resources’ (e.g. Anderlini 2003). The Norway Mission to the UN stated in a speech that, ‘women are a resource that should be included at all levels of peace planning and peace-making’ (Permanent Mission of Norway to the UN 2002). In Ms. Magazine, an article title asserts that, ‘In UN Peacekeeping, Women are an Untapped Resource’ (Kirshenbaum 1997). The competition between agendas at the Security Council leads to women being ‘marketed’, and women’s abilities are framed to convince the current decision-makers of the utility of their abilities and knowledge. This idea of women as a resource needs to be situated in the larger transformation of arguments at the UN, linked to the ‘shifting concepts of “value” in the global marketplace, as well as new trends in developmental discourse…’ (Muehlebach 2001: 432). As in the case of the value placed on the local knowledge of indigenous organizations to prevent environmental destruction, the concern over conflict has situated women as repositories of community knowledge.
It was through the reports and documents leading up to and after the passage of the resolution that women were presented as having valuable knowledge. The Women at the Peace Table report produced by Sanam Naraghi Anderlini for UNIFEM in 2001 states, ‘While women clearly need access to the peace table in order to advance toward the goal of gender equality, the peace table also requires women’s participation to truly uphold the principle of democracy and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace’ (Anderlini 2000: 56). The report noted, however, that not all women would necessarily work in the interest of women, but that ‘the question therefore is how to develop effective mechanisms during conflicts to ensure that women leaders are committed to presenting and defending grassroots priorities’ (Anderlini 2000: 57). Although the gender advocates writing these reports were aware that women, as women, had the right to participate, this right was not necessarily enough. It was instead their connection to the grassroots movement and peace movements that made them valuable. For example, during an Arria-style meeting between members of the Security Council and NGOs on the Fifth Anniversary of Resolution 1325 in 2005, Swanee Hunt from Women Waging Peace argued:
Why should we include women in peace processes? Of course, women constitute over half the population, so sidelining them is discriminatory and fundamentally undemocratic. But the rights argument is persuasive only to those who cherish fairness. For those who prioritize efficacy, ignoring them is patently unwise. Worldwide, women make profound contributions to peace building. If we hope to transform instability and violence into prosperity, we must incorporate the expertise of women. (Hunt 2005)
Scholars have noted how the logic of the market has been extended to the operation of state functions (e.g. Rose and Miller 1992). This shift to an enterprise model is also occurring at the UN with the appearance of discourses that focus on the value of women’s knowledge and their contribution to great efficiency (see Muehlebach 2001).
Civil Society: Perspectives from ‘On the Ground’
Anthropologists have increasingly looked at states not just as bureaucratic apparatuses but as the sites of symbolic and cultural production, and as a ‘fiction’ or a unified body and centre of power that conceals the disjointed nature of its practices and discourses (e.g. Abrams 1988; Aretxaga 2003). In this framework, civil society is often imagined as coming ‘from below’ and acting separately from the state (Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Van Klinken and Barker 2009). This imagined separation also exists at the UN, where women from conflict zones are invited to speak to the Security Council because they are viewed as bringing a ‘grounded’ voice that is more authentic or real and thus more valuable. The NGOs that I worked with were also imagined as mediators working to connect the ‘up there’ with the ‘on the ground women’, and they gained their legitimacy by reproducing this image.
An important part of providing legitimacy to Resolution 1325 and convincing leaders of its value has been the statements made by women activists from the field who have spoken in Arria Formula meetings before the Security Council. In 2001 Jamila Akbarzi from Afghan Women’s Welfare Department and a founding member of the Afghan Women’s Network said:
I have often heard that Afghan women are not political. That peace and security is man’s work. I am here to challenge that illusion. For the last 20 years of my life, the leadership of men has only brought war and suffering.
[…] We see larger grants channeled through Afghan men’s organizations and wonder why? Women’s organizations work in the refugee camps and reach out to the refugee communities in Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Quetta, where Afghan refugees do not receive UN assistance. We are the role models for our youth; we are working for security and peace. (Akbarzi 2001: 1)
Central to Resolution 1325 is the imagination that there is a distinction between state and society and that the NGOs working on the subject are able to bring the voices of women to the ‘up there’ (i.e. the UN). At the same time, however, the way that women from these conflict zones, such as Afghanistan, were able to speak to the ‘higher up’ Security Council was by claiming to embody the universal principles of peace and security as opposed to the local (tribal or ethnic) interests of particular communities. Jamila Akbarzi says in her speech, ‘Most women’s organizations do not have political affiliations and are providing humanitarian assistance to all of our people, regardless of ethnic background. We are Pushtun, Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek’ (Akbarzi 2001: 1-2). Resolution 1325 is supplemented by the idea that women work across political and ethnic divisions, and the gender advocates utilize these images to qualify them as rightful participants.
In these speeches the loyalty of women transgressed geographical areas, class and other divisions. As a result, their principles came to mirror the discourse of the ‘higher ups’ at the UN. Men in conflict zones, in contrast, were often silently situated as unable to move across class, ethnic or political divisions of the nation. In practice, however, the connections and boundaries between the ‘up there’ and the ‘grounded’ were more blurred. One way this was demonstrated was by the fact that most of the speeches given by representatives for women at the Arria Formula meetings were drafted and written with the NGOs and UNIFEM working from the UN. It was through their guidance that the speeches were framed in the appropriate language. Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti in 2003 who did not receive this guidance spoke in nationalist and anti-imperialist terms that directly contradicted the UN vision of women (as inhabiting the universal, civil and humanitarian domain), and as a result they were labelled as ‘angry’ and their message dismissed.
The Women, Peace and Security agenda thus assigns supplementary legitimacy for women through two moves. They assign authority to women first as local agents (who understand and are connected to the local) and second as upholders of universal interests that represent the greater good. Through these ‘scaled’ assignments, the NGOs were able to give the gender perspective and women’s participation greater authority. Arguably this is another example of where the UN encourages activists and grassroots organizations to take up a greater role and responsibility in an emerging system of transnational governmentality (see Dean 1999; Li 2007). In the process, the UN promotes a particular idea of what it means be a woman or what is considered appropriate feminine behaviour, which can be used as a rationale to privilege certain voices and exclude others.
Compromising Anti-militarism
My attempt in this article has been to de-naturalize the Women, Peace and Security agenda and discourse. I do not doubt that female peace activists have something to contribute to peace and my intention is not to undermine their important work. I am suggesting, however, that there is movement to supplement the rights-based approach with one based on possible contributions. I also want to highlight that this discourse could have been different in another institutional setting. Indeed, the powerful discourse that emerged with the Women, Peace and Security agenda was not without its critics. Prior to the passage of Resolution 1325, the WILPF-UN office was including recommendations such as the ‘reduction of military expenditures’ and the alteration of ‘military priorities’ in their documents. After reviewing WILPF-UN’s documents for 10 years prior to the passage of Resolution 1325, I noticed that they continuously proposed a reduction in military spending, the cessation of nuclear testing and the prevention of the arms trade. Yet, the arguments presented to the Security Council immediately prior to and after Resolution 1325 included little, if any, reference to these points.
These critiques of militarism, military budgets and military priorities were curtailed and reformulated into positive calls for women’s participation and a gender perspective in peace and security. This illustrates how the Women, Peace and Security agenda was shaped by the practices and expectations within the Security Council and the UN, where positive and uplifting speech is valued. If language is power, then to use the same speech forms as the Security Council members allowed the NGO Working Group and UNIFEM to situate themselves on a similar playing field as Member States. Adopting the UN language norms situated these groups as worth listening to, which allowed them to push their agenda forward. The UN thus imposes certain practices onto speakers, and power operates in this symbolic domain.
After reviewing the WILPF-UN office and Amnesty International archives, I asked one of my research consultants, who worked for WILPF during the passage of Resolution 1325, whether she believed that the aims of WILPF-UN had been altered. She had worked for the WILPF-UN Office for several years prior to, and for 1 year after, the passage of Resolution 1325. She responded,
WILPF’s work on 1325 has not maintained this political message [anti-militarism], which has saddened and enraged me. The strategy was to provide a platform for multiple views and information in order to locate the facts and analysis WILPF brings to the table, not to let that fade while working to facilitate NGO information.
Prior to the passage of Resolution 1325, WILPF-UN often portrayed women as agents of peace but also provided an explicit critique of militarism and masculinity. This WILPF member’s response reinforced my observation that WILPF-UN was encouraged to formulate its arguments using the positive and uplifting language of the UN, with a focus towards gender equality and gender mainstreaming and away from militarism, in their collaborative work with the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. The route to peace and ending war in this approach was no longer a reduction in military spending but the integration of women and a gender perspective; women were viewed and constructed as peacemakers, fitting with the more utopian visions circulating at the UN.
Conclusion
In this article I have illustrated how the UN and its speech norms around gender are a space of inclusion but also exclusion. Certain narratives are sanctioned while others are discouraged, as seen in the example of the Arria Formula responses to Al-Khedairy and Al-Mufti in 2003. The story of the Iraqi women is particularly powerful in helping to make visible the norms of acceptable speech at the UN. It illustrates that operating at the UN is akin to acquiring a second language. Women’s participation within the Security Council is thus structured by, and upholds, certain UN performance and speech practices that I have described. In particular, I have illustrated that the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security and UNIFEM acted as mediators, instructing most of the activists who visited the UN on how to speak and perform at Security Council and other informal meetings, in ways that accord with the UN’s speech styles and master narratives.
These gender advocates are thus at the forefront of producing a discursive space for ‘women’ and ‘gender’ in the peace and security agenda of the UN. Exploring the discourses of the Women, Peace and Security agenda, I have argued that Resolution 1325 is supplemented by a scalar logic where representatives of women who come to speak to the Security Council are situated as local and connected to grassroots organizations, while also being allied to the transcendental goals of the UN, which is imagined as ‘above’. This connection made between the local and the global is through the idea that women share a sense of good, and uphold global goals rather than being tied to local political, ethnic or class divisions. Therefore, in this supplementary discourse women are positioned as overcoming conflict as agents of the local, but simultaneously as having interests in universal good. Their claim to know the local, to be part of the ‘grassroots’, is also what provides them with greater authority, because they are imagined as separate and distinct from the ‘higher ups’ at the UN headquarters.
The possible identities women embody are influenced by multiple sources. There are many different forms of desire and discipline at work beyond Resolution 1325 and the UN. However, at the space of the UN a certain kind of performance is demanded of women; one that asks women to be loyal to the global while also showing their connection to the local, and one that encourages them to speak in positive ways. Women who represent this agenda are expected to embody and reproduce this image as upholders of peace in their communities. Whether these women enact similar performances outside the corridors of the UN remains to be seen, but in the rituals and representations of the Women, Peace and Security agenda at the UN headquarters, women are expected to justify their right to participate by drawing on these supplementary discourses. I have also argued that these supplementary discourses are part of a larger trend at the UN that privileges ‘value-based knowledge’ within a larger context of neoliberal logics.
Consequently, claims that women may make in support of particular groups like a local Islamic movement, or groups that critique the UN as imperialist, are not well received. The UN speech styles encourage positive visions and utopian dreams; little space exists for more critical interventions in public forums beyond these essentialized visions of gender. The efforts of the gender advocates I studied to transform the UN were also structured by, and upheld, some of the discursive traditions of the UN system. More attention needs to be paid to the possibilities and closures that exist with these linguistic practices; how certain speech styles become more valued and carry more authority than others at the UN. The case of the Iraqi women is important because it illustrates the contradictions inherent in Resolution 1325 between the idea of the ‘free acting subject’ and the constraints of the UN system, which sets frameworks for action and intervention. If the ability to effect change is historically and culturally contingent, then the meaning and sense of agency that gender advocates assume with relation to Resolution 1325 must be studied. We must examine how agency is embedded in the realities, desires and norms of the UN system that shape and produce assumptions about the capacity for action.
‘It is time for action, not words’, said Ms. Awori from the Civil Society Advisory Group to the United Nations on Women, Peace and Security at the Security Council Meeting in October 2010. Later in the same speech, she stated, ‘We cannot wait another ten years for action’ (Department of Public Information 2010). In the press release from the meeting, the word ‘action’ was used over eighty-three times. Even scholars such as Binder et al. (2008) ask, ‘[…] have the commitments of Resolution 1325 remained empty words without further impact?’ During my fieldwork, almost everyone I met working within the UN claimed that the UN was all talk and that there was not enough action. The main problem was converting these speeches into willpower and action by Member States and UN bodies. At the same time as the NGO network and gender advocates complained that the UN was just words, however, they afforded importance to its speeches and language. The UN expects sincerity, but there is also recognition that what is said there might not become a reality; that it is a mere vision for a future that might not come. This followed the general concerns that gender advocates expressed to me, that Member States might be making public statements that express their commitment to gender equality, but in reality they would act differently. There thus remains opacity behind the claims made by Member States and UN bodies, and questions of sincerity arise. The gender advocates I spoke with knew that the decisions to pass a resolution and to hold talks on the Women, Peace and Security agenda were part of larger political exchanges where favours were granted and debts were repaid. Although the commitment to discuss gender in the Security Council was seen as important, the NGO network and gender advocates also treated it with suspicion, and hence academics and advocates call continuously to put this language into action. As I have suggested, many of the gender advocates make metalinguistic claims about the limits of speech at the UN, pointing out that there is something inherently unbelievable about it. The language is based on utopian visions, generating a hope for radical change that is always deferred to a future date, and thus it is always haunted by an impossibility.