Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: Exploring Feminist Engagements with Law and Armed Forces

This thesis explores militaries’ efforts to prevent and respond to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). As militaries around the world declare their commitment to gender mainstreaming and implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, CRSV tests the limits of what militaries can and should do. CRSV presents complex legal questions in view of the convergence between international humanitarian law and international human rights law in military operations. For critics of militaries, CRSV also raises dilemmas over whether to resist militarism or urge militaries to change. In examining both these aspects, this thesis opens a new dialogue between feminist approaches to international law and scholarship on gender and militaries. This study examines international law obligations applying to military action to prevent and respond to CRSV committed by third parties, proposing the relevance of a range of human rights standards. It uses NATO and the British Armed Forces as case studies to explore how militaries understand and integrate these obligations. Using interviews, observation of training, and review of policy, doctrine, directives and training materials, this research traces NATO and the British Armed Forces’ commitments and action concerning CSRV since 2006, identifying key progress, shortcomings and constraints. The analysis is guided by feminist methodologies of identifying structural bias within the law. This thesis proposes that, in certain circumstances, armed forces have an obligation of due diligence to prevent CRSV by third parties and to support the investigation of CRSV. What this requires in practice has been inadequately considered. It finds that NATO and the British Armed Forces have made strides in incorporating CRSV into policy, doctrine and training, in particular since 2012. NATO has established institutional structures to support gender mainstreaming and issued a series of operational directives. The British Armed Forces have delivered CRSV training to foreign forces and introduced policy on human security. In both contexts, however, there remain conceptual and cultural obstacles to effectively preventing or responding to CRSV. CRSV is framed with reference to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: in political rather than legal terms. Exploring how militaries understand their possibilities for action concerning CRSV reveals how the primacy of combat in militaries’ strategic culture limits what they consider reasonable, and how this shapes and is shaped by understandings of legal obligation. In demonstrating the difficulties of and resistance to responding to CRSV, this study offers a sobering counterpoint to progressive visions for the transformation of militaries. It questions any expectation that adopting a human rights framework for armed intervention will be enough to orient militaries to human security. In exploring the place of international law in military understandings of CRSV and what militaries see their role in countering CRSV to be, this thesis contributes new insights to scholarship concerning law in armed conflict as well as to critical scholarship on gender, militaries, and security. It urges critical engagement with militaries and military organisations to deepen militaries’ commitment to human security goals

Police Reforms in Peace Agreements, 1975–2011: Introducing the PRPA dataset

This article presents new data on provisions for police reform in peace agreements (PRPA) between 1975 and 2011. The PRPA dataset complements past research on the determinants and effects of specific terms in agreements with detailed data on police reform provisions. The PRPA dataset also adds a quantitative dimension to the thus far largely qualitative literature on post-conflict security sector reform (SSR). It includes information on six subtypes of police reform: capacity, training, human rights standards, accountability, force composition, and international training and monitoring. We show that there is currently a high global demand for the regulation of police reform through peace agreements: police reform provisions are now more regularly included in agreements than settlement terms that call for power-sharing or elections. We observe interesting variations in the inclusion of police reform provisions in relation to past human rights violations, regime type, or the scope of international peacekeeping prior to negotiations, and illustrate the implications of police reform provisions for the duration of post-conflict peace. Finally, we stimulate ideas on how scholars and policymakers can use the PRPA dataset in future to study new questions on post-conflict police reform

International Climate Justice, Conflict and Gender – Scoping study

Climate change, conflict and gender are mutually reinforcing dynamics that interact to destroy lives and livelihoods, especially for the most disadvantaged. From an analysis of Scottish Government work to date, and best practices in international policy and programming, this report suggests strategic policy opportunities through which the Scottish Government could boost its global roles in climate justice and gender equality, and contribute to peace and security

Women and armed conflict in the Philippines: narrative portraits of women on the ground

This article reconstructs the stories of three women who experienced armed conflict in the Philippines. Their narratives were documented through the process of individual storytelling, an exercise that involved reflexive meaning creation on the part of the storyteller. Thus, even as there have been numerous studies reflecting the discourses of women\u27s victimization/vulnerability and agency in the context of armed conflict, this article stands by the importance of each and every story told by each and every woman. In other words, beyond the project of narrative documentation and analysis lies that marginal space where stories told are not just valuable for the hard data they contain; their significance must also be seen from the vantage points of storytellers as co-creators of knowledge that can provide alternative perspectives on the linearity of the discourses of women\u27s victimization/vulnerability and agency

Relationship between Circulating Lipids and Cytokines in Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer

Circulating lipids or cytokines are associated with prognosis in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). This study aimed to understand the interactions between lipid metabolism and immune response in mCRPC by investigating the relationship between the plasma lipidome and cytokines. Plasma samples from two independent cohorts of men with mCRPC (n = 146, 139) having life-prolonging treatments were subjected to lipidomic and cytokine profiling (290, 763 lipids; 40 cytokines). Higher baseline levels of sphingolipids, including ceramides, were consistently associated with shorter overall survival in both cohorts, whereas the associations of cytokines with overall survival were inconsistent. Increasing levels of IL6, IL8, CXCL16, MPIF1, and YKL40 correlated with increasing levels of ceramide in both cohorts. Men with a poor prognostic 3-lipid signature at baseline had a shorter time to radiographic progression (poorer treatment response) if their lipid profile at progression was similar to that at baseline, or their cytokine profile at progression differed to that at baseline. In conclusion, baseline levels of circulating lipids were more consistent as prognostic biomarkers than cytokines. The correlation between circulating ceramides and cytokines suggests the regulation of immune responses by ceramides. The association of treatment response with the change in lipid profiles warrants further research into metabolic interventions