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Gender, disarmament and arms control

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wilpf, critical will, women and explosive weaponry, report,Report looks at the specific impact that explosive weapons have on women.

Over the last few years, concern over the use of explosive weapons in populated areas has increased because of the severe harm caused to civilians and the wider community.

However, the debate has so far not sufficiently highlighted the specific impact that explosive weapons have on women.

A new report by Reaching Critical Will (RCW), ‘Women and Explosive Weapons’, aims to draw attention to some of the unique impacts on women that explosive weapons have when used in populated areas.

We are talking here about bombs, cluster munitions, grenades, improvised explosive devices (IED), mines, missiles, mortars, and rockets, which use explosive force to affect an area around the point of detonation, usually through the effects of blast and fragmentation.

And according to data gathered by NGOs, between 80 and 90 per cent of the people injured or killed in incidents where explosive weapons are used in populated areas are civilians.

The report is part of Reaching Critical Will’s attempt to highlight the impact of weapons on women and the importance of strengthening a gender perspective in disarmament and arms control in order to ensure inclusive security – and prevent human suffering.

How is gender relevant for disarmament and arms control?

Ideas about gender affect the way people and societies view weapons, war and militarism.

Considering gender can help in developing deeper understandings of “gun cultures,” armament policies, or obstacles to disarmament.

It can also help determine appropriate policy or budgetary responses to particular challenges.

For example, there is a strong correlation between carrying guns and notions of masculinity.

Inside and outside of armed conflict, so-called “gun culture” is overwhelmingly associated with cultural norms of masculinity, including men as protectors and as warriors.

Armed conflict tends to exacerbate views about what qualifies as masculine behaviour: group pressure usually amplifies men’s aggressiveness and inclination to treat women as inferior.

Armed men perpetrate sexual violence at gunpoint against women and girls with impunity, most famously in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but also in a number of countries that are not necessarily at conflict.

Nuclear weapons likewise afford a sense of masculine strength.

Possessing and brandishing an extraordinarily destructive capacity is a form of dominance associated with masculine warriors (nuclear weapons possessors are sometimes referred to as the “big boys”).

After India’s 1998 nuclear weapon tests, for example, a Hindu nationalist leader explained, “We had to prove that we are not eunuchs.”

When governments act as though their power and security can only be guaranteed by a nuclear arsenal, they create a context in which nuclear weapons become the ultimate necessity for, and symbol of, state security.

And when nuclear-armed states then work hard to ensure that other countries do not obtain nuclear weapons, they are perceived as subordinating and emasculating others.

Gender analysis can also help us understand how weapons are used – and against whom and why. This in turn can help inform policies and programmes that specifically address these challenges.

Irresponsible transfers of weaponry, munitions, armaments, and related equipment across borders have resulted in acts of gender-based violence (GBV) perpetrated by both state and non-state actors.

Thus in the recent negotiations of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), civil society organisations and like-minded governments worked together to ensure that the treaty included a legally-binding provision on preventing armed gender-based violence.

‘Women and Explosive Weapons’ also argues that it is important to ensure that women affected by the use of explosive weapons receive the same assistance and legal protection as men, and that they are seen as active agents of change rather than only as victims.

The report also briefly describes explosive weapons and the legal tools available to assess their use, focusing in particular on legal documents that support greater inclusion of gender analysis and women’s participation.

The second part gives an overview on how explosive weapons specifically affect women and why a gendered analysis of the impact of explosive weapons use in populated areas is needed.

The report calls on governments to recognise that the use of explosive weapons in populated areas causes severe humanitarian problems, requiring the development of stronger and more explicit international standards, restrictions, and prohibitions.

For a full list of the report’s recommendations, please click here.

For more information on explosive weapons, click here.

Reaching Critical Will is the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s disarmament programme.

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was founded in April 1915, in The Hague, Netherlands, by some 1300 women from Europe and North America.

Women from countries at war against each other and from neutral ones, who came together at a Congress of Women to protest the killing and destruction of the war raging in Europe at the time.

The widespread availability of weapons has been a main concern for WILPF since its founding.

WILPF has actively been working towards a strong international Arms Trade Treaty with an extra focus on prohibiting a weapons transfer when there is a risk of them being used  to conduct gender based violence since 2006.

On 2 April 2013 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) which prohibits the sale of arms if there is a risk that the weapons could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.

The treaty was adopted with the yes-no-abstain vote 154-3-23.

It was the first treaty that recognised the link between gender-based violence and the international arms trade.

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