Women in the Post-Conflict Process: Reviewing the Impact of Recent U.N. Actions in Achieving Gender Centrality

The post-conflict terrain provides multiple opportunities for transformation on many different levels: protecting civilians, providing accountability for human rights violations committed during hostilities, reforming local and national laws, reintegrating soldiers, rehabilitating and providing redress for victims, establishing or re-establishing the rule of law, creating human rights institutions and new governance structures, altering cultural attitudes, improving socioeconomic conditions, and transforming gender roles and women’s status. This Article explores the effort to make gender central in the various legal and political regimes and processes in operation post-conflict, and specifically reviews SCR 1325 and its successor resolutions to assess their real contributions towards achieving gender centrality. Section I introduces the significance of gender in the conflict and post-conflict context, while Section II turns to the U.N.’s efforts to address gender in a series of Security Council resolutions, beginning with SCR 1325 in 2000, and evaluates the relationship of these efforts to concepts of gender security applied in the aftermath of conflict. Section III explores how the resolutions have been implemented, reviewing both country specific resolutions developed in an attempt to foster compliance with SCR’s, as well as the approach of various nations in preparing their national action plans (NAPs) that establish goals for putting the resolutions into practice. Section III then provides examples of post-conflict, field-based activities undertaken in the years after passage of SCR 1325 and some of its successors to illustrate the impact (or lack thereof) of the resolutions on peacekeeping, and humanitarian and post-conflict operations in the field. Section IV sets out recommendations for moving forward and concludes that while the resolutions may offer some major momentum in creating a normative framework for building gender concerns into most aspects of peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding plans and processes, they have done little, as yet, to centralize women in these same processes

Women in Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Dilemmas and Directions

A critical issue for post conflict reconstruction is moving beyond criminal prosecutions that ensure accountability of perpetrators toward a system that also serves the needs of victims. When reconstruction includes disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) and development services, these programs cannot be separated from perpetrator responsibility. The traditional criminal justice is perpetrator-centric. Alternative forms of justice have broadened this focus, recognizing that the legal system must respond to both victims and perpetrators. Transitional justice, which focuses on responding to past human rights violations, is critical to holding violators accountable for their acts. In addition to criminal and civil accountability (rights-based justice), perhaps the most significant form of justice for women is assistance traditionally associated with development, as it provides critical social services and facilitates all aspects of post conflict reconstruction. This article seeks to expand conceptions of international justice in the post conflict setting to include social, economic, and development-based rights. It examines two aspects of gender that are integral to post conflict reconstruction and involve women\u27s differing roles during conflict: the significance of integrating gender into DDR and the necessity of domestic responses to the crimes of sexual violence

Digital Planning: The Future of Elder Law

More than half of individuals over the age of 65 use the Internet or e-mail — and they are a fast-growing population on the Internet. Like most people, however, they have probably not considered how to dispose of their digital life if they become incapacitated or when they die, even though they are in the most likely age group to have drafted a will. Indeed, even if they do engage in planning, they cannot be confident that their wishes will be carried out: only a few states have laws covering probate and digital assets, there is no generally accepted method for using wills or trusts to dispose of digital assets, and the policies of Internet providers often preclude the exercise of individual autonomy. As Internet usage becomes even more pervasive and as online assets and accounts have the potential to become even more valuable (emotionally and financially), issues involving control of digital property are rapidly becoming even more important.This article first explains digital assets as a new species of property and discusses the importance of planning for these assets. The article next analyzes the legal context for digital asset disposition, including the few existing state laws, and then turns its attention to the future, including suggestions for planning and commentary on where the law might be headed. Notwithstanding the legal uncertainties surrounding digital asset disposition, individuals should make plans for the management, ownership, or destruction of these assets based on the foundational principles of deference to the individual’s intent. Acknowledging the difficulty of predicting the future, the authors feel quite confident that, as Elder Law moves forward, planning for a client’s digital assets will assume an increasingly important role

Beyond Retribution and Impunity: Responding to War Crimes of Sexual Violence

Beyond Retribution and Impunity: Responding to War Crimes of Sexual Violence articulates principles for an approach to gender-based violence during conflict and post-conflict that operates within three different meanings of justice: criminal/civil justice, restorative justice, and what I define as social services justice. The article argues that responses to sexual violence must integrate legal and nonlegal, national, international, and local approaches, and must respond to both short and longer-term needs. It focuses on victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during what has been called the First World War in Africa, which occurred from 1996-2003. Joseph Conrad famously wrote about The Heart of Darkness more than a century ago. Today, the Congo is emerging from a devastating war which involved neighboring countries, including Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Angola. As the Congo undergoes a transition to a democracy, it must grapple with its response to the hundreds of thousands of victims of sexual violence who are still wounded - in so many ways - as a result of the conflict. By focusing on the actual victims of violence, this article articulates a new vision of social services justice. Social services justice adds another dimension to the criminal/civil justice system and to restorative justice (remedies such as reparations and mediation) by focusing on the social, economical, medical, and psychological components of providing justice to victims and moving beyond the two-dimension focus on perpetrator/victim. This new vision of justice is applicable to countries beyond the Congo and to victims of any type of conflict-based violence. This article discusses the contemporary Congolese conflict, providing the context for the sexual violence that has occurred during the war. Next, the article provides a fuller development of the principles that should guide any response to the sexual violence, surveying the possible approaches. Finally, the article provides specific recommendations for a victim-centered approach that reflects and respects community concerns and interests and that also ensures responsibility for perpetrators

Women in Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Dilemmas and Directions

A critical issue for post conflict reconstruction is moving beyond criminal prosecutions that ensure accountability of perpetrators toward a system that also serves the needs of victims. When reconstruction includes disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) and development services, these programs cannot be separated from perpetrator responsibility. The traditional criminal justice is perpetrator-centric. Alternative forms of justice have broadened this focus, recognizing that the legal system must respond to both victims and perpetrators. Transitional justice, which focuses on responding to past human rights violations, is critical to holding violators accountable for their acts. In addition to criminal and civil accountability (rights-based justice), perhaps the most significant form of justice for women is assistance traditionally associated with development, as it provides critical social services and facilitates all aspects of post conflict reconstruction. This article seeks to expand conceptions of international justice in the post conflict setting to include social, economic, and development-based rights. It examines two aspects of gender that are integral to post conflict reconstruction and involve women\u27s differing roles during conflict: the significance of integrating gender into DDR and the necessity of domestic responses to the crimes of sexual violence

Parenthood, Genes, and Gametes: The Family Law and Trusts and Estates Perspectives

This Article proposes a solution to resolve the legal issues that arise from the disposition of eggs, zygotes, and sperm upon divorce or death. I address two overlapping issues in family law and trusts and estates law: (1) whether the partner seeking procreation may use gametic material over the objections of the other partner and (2) how should the use of donated, willed, or marital gametic material affect the legal determination of parenthood? In family law cases, courts generally rule in favor of the person seeking to avoid procreation, regardless of any evidence as to the intent of the parties. In trusts and estates cases, however, courts typically attempt to ascertain the testator’s intent. In both contexts, courts, as well as legislatures and scholarly commentary, emphasize biology and genetic connection. This Article proposes a solution that respects both biology and intent by addressing the competing rights of avoiding and allowing procreation. Specifically, I argue that courts must “break the link” between biological and social parenthood when deciding cases that involve issues of family law and trusts and estates law

Necessary Subjects: The Need for a Mandatory National Donor Gamete Registry

This brief article calls for a mandatory national donor gamete registry. It first discusses the history of secrecy in the adoption context before turning to issues involving confidentiality in the donor context. After analyzing the issues involved in maintaining the secrecy of donor gametes, the article ultimately recommends the establishment of a national information registry, similar to that in place in numerous other countries, to keep track of children both through donor egg, embryo, and sperm, as well as the identities of the gamete providers. Participation in the registry would be mandatory for anyone involved in supplying donor gametes. Once donor-conceived offspring reach the age of 18, they should be able to receive identifying information about their donor, although the donor could file a statement indicating his/her lack of interest in being contacted. While mandatory limits on donor anonymity constitute a radical change in existing practices, there are multiple reasons supporting this change

Women in the Post-Conflict Process: Reviewing the Impact of Recent U.N. Actions in Achieving Gender Centrality

The post-conflict terrain provides multiple opportunities for transformation on many different levels: protecting civilians, providing accountability for human rights violations committed during hostilities, reforming local and national laws, reintegrating soldiers, rehabilitating and providing redress for victims, establishing or re-establishing the rule of law, creating human rights institutions and new governance structures, altering cultural attitudes, improving socioeconomic conditions, and transforming gender roles and women’s status. This Article explores the effort to make gender central in the various legal and political regimes and processes in operation post-conflict, and specifically reviews SCR 1325 and its successor resolutions to assess their real contributions towards achieving gender centrality. Section I introduces the significance of gender in the conflict and post-conflict context, while Section II turns to the U.N.’s efforts to address gender in a series of Security Council resolutions, beginning with SCR 1325 in 2000, and evaluates the relationship of these efforts to concepts of gender security applied in the aftermath of conflict. Section III explores how the resolutions have been implemented, reviewing both country specific resolutions developed in an attempt to foster compliance with SCR’s, as well as the approach of various nations in preparing their national action plans (NAPs) that establish goals for putting the resolutions into practice. Section III then provides examples of post-conflict, field-based activities undertaken in the years after passage of SCR 1325 and some of its successors to illustrate the impact (or lack thereof) of the resolutions on peacekeeping, and humanitarian and post-conflict operations in the field. Section IV sets out recommendations for moving forward and concludes that while the resolutions may offer some major momentum in creating a normative framework for building gender concerns into most aspects of peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding plans and processes, they have done little, as yet, to centralize women in these same processes