100 years of peace activism: linking the International Labour Organisation with the WPS agenda

In this blog Professor Christine Chinkin reflects on a century of women’s activism at the International Labour Organisation and looks at what lessons can be gained for the current Women, Peace and Security agenda. This blog is an adapted version of a chapter that appears in ILO 100: Law for social justice titled ‘Enhancing the impact of international norms with special reference to women’s labour rights and the Women, Peace and Security agenda’

Discontinuance and Withdrawal: Article 62

Article 62 provides the major procedural device by which the interests of States not party to proceedings before the ICJ are protected by the Court. The procedure is termed intervention. Intervention: is based, inter alia, on the need for the avoidance of repetitive litigation as well as the need for harmony of principle, for a multiplicity of cases involving the same subject-matter could result in contradictory determinations which obscure rather than clarify the applicable law

Groundhog day at the UN Security Council: the 2021 WPS Open Debate

Christine Chinkin reflects on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda today and the continued promises followed by failed implementation as we see the persistent set back of women’s human rights globally

Giving voice and visibility to victims of sexual violence has the potential to drive cultural change in Colombia

Professor Christine Chinkin reflects on the power of grassroots initiatives and the potential for PSVI to contribute to transformative justice for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence against women

The ‘Comfort Women’ of World War II must be honoured in the UNESCO Memory of the World

The ‘Comfort Women’ of World War II introduced many to the existence of conflict-related sexual violence. Christine Chinkin, whose work in the field began with the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal in Tokyo, argues that the UNESCO ‘Memory of the World’ provides an essential opportunity to preserve the women’s testimony and acknowledge the crimes committed

Gender, Human Rights, and Peace Agreements

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Human trafficking and the women, peace and security agenda

Recognition of trafficking of women and girls as a form of violence against women and of its incidence in conflict brings the issue implicitly into the WPS agenda. Christine Chinkin introduces her working paper, which explores this latest disruption of the traditional boundaries in the international legal regime

Gender and Armed Conflict

The construction of social sex and gender roles means that armed conflict is sexed and gendered. Men still make up the majority of the fighting forces, while women\u27s generally unequal and subordinate social and economic position makes them vulnerable in particular ways during conflict. Women and men, girls and boys all suffer gender-based violence. Such violence is directed at a person because of his or her gender. For instance men sustain specific harms such as disappearances and deliberate killings in greater numbers than women, while women disproportionately experience sexual violence. The detention of Bosnian Muslims at Potocari on 12 July 1995 and subsequent separation of women and men is illustrative of gender-based crimes. The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found that after separation, the Bosnian Muslim men had suffered \u27severe beatings and other cruel treatments\u27. In the compound \u27rapes and killings were reported by credible witnesses and some committed suicide out of terror. The entire situation in Potocari has been depicted as a campaign of terror. As an ultimate suffering, some women about to board the buses had their young sons dragged away from them, never to be seen again