Grounding the International Norm on Women, Peace and Security: The Role of Domestic Norm Entrepreneurs and the Challenges Ahead

One of the gaps in the study of international norms is the process by which they are institutionalized and accepted at the national level. As the international norm negotiates its way through various national (and even grassroots) levels, a point of inquiry would be how domestic norm entrepreneurs have enabled its localization. This study looks at the narrative of a loose network of peace and women’s human rights groups that worked together to localize United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security in the Philippines. Specifically, it reviews how the network evolved to become a domestic norm entrepreneur within the context of the creation of the Philippine National Action Plan on the implementation of UNSCR 1325 and the initiatives it took to localize the norm in the national arena. Within this frame, this study argues that the network continues to evolve as it responds to current and unfolding realities of peace and women’s human rights in armed conflict situations. Particularly, as domestic norm entrepreneur, the network is trying to transcend the usual top-down strategy of grounding an international norm and is now shifting gears toward the value of bottom-up approaches in order to achieve desired results at the grassroots level

From Vertical to Horizontal Empowerment of Women (in) Peace and Security: Toward a Feminist Perspective of Human Security

Human security, a people-centered approach to security, typically seeks to examine vulnerabilities and identify ways of protecting people from threats. However, people are not perennial victims—they also have agency and are capable of acting on their own. This study looks at how the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda has created both the discursive and actual spaces for women\u27s agency, particularly in the case of women\u27s civil society organizations (CSOs), as illustrated by their work on the ground. This chapter investigates how the Gaston Z. Ortigas Peace Institute (GZOPI), Sulong Peace, and Women Engaged in Action on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (WE Act 1325) have been able to shift their strategies from vertical empowerment to horizontal empowerment based on their experiences of assisting grassroots women\u27s groups in peacebuilding work during the COVID-19 pandemic

The ‘ASEAN Way’ of Women, Peace and Security: Norm Rhetoric or Implementation?

Women, peace and security (WPS) is a global normative agenda that seeks to address the vulnerability and victimization of women in armed conflict situation and recognize their agency to transform post-conflict societies. In over two decades, various international institutions, states, and transnational and domestic civil society groups have taken on various initiatives to advance WPS through international policy frames, regional commitments, and national operationalization. In Southeast Asia, even though women’s human rights have gained traction in the region through cross-cutting issues on gender equality and violence against women, not much has been said in the context of these in armed conflict and peacebuilding situations. In fact, to date, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was the latest regional body to have adopted a framework for action on WPS. This study uses the norm life cycle model to explain the emergence and cascade of WPS in the ASEAN and explains the challenges to the internalization of the norm in the region

Symbolic Politics in Transnational Spaces: The Normative Impact of the International Women\u27s Tribunal on Japan\u27s Military Sexual Slavery

Discussion on (1) how an Asian transnational feminist network (TFN) organized and convened the Women\\u27s International War Crimes Tribunal 2000 For the Trial of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery (hereinafter referred to as Women\u27s Tribunal); (2) how they made use of a strategy of symbolic politics, namely, the mechanism of an unofficial tribunal, to dramatize atrocities committed against many Asian women by the Japanese imperial army during World War II (WWII); and (3) how the resulting Judgement of the Women\u27s International War Crimes Tribunal 2000 for the Trial of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery (hereafter, Judgement) contributed to the construction of an international norm against wartime rape

Women and the ‘Post-Sovereign’ State: A Feminist Analytic of the State in the Age of Globalization

The importance and impact of current globalization processes on relationships between peoples, institutions and structures—particularly, the (initial) retreat of the sovereign state and its return to power in its post sovereign form—are urgent issues for feminists. To depict this emerging reality, this article revisits the male-framed discourse and praxis of IR by focusing on the construction of sovereignty from the idea of the ‘sovereign man.’ From this vantage point, I will then demonstrate how globalization processes have undermined the integrity of state sovereignty through the weakening of the supremacy of state territoriality and its power to define identities and rules. At this historical juncture, the women’s movement is faced with a dual challenge. At one level, the women’s human rights project has gained ground with the codification of women’s rights as well as the continuous participation of women’s organizations at various levels of global governance structures like the United Nations. At another level, this achievement is being diluted by a clash of interests with other global governance regimes such as the trade and financial regimes advanced by international institutions like the World Trade Organization. The emerging trend is that of the post-sovereign state reasserting its monolithic status on the world stage and working with non-state entities so long as they serve the interests of the state. The women’s movement must continue to engage with the state, while critically contesting it simultaneously

Reconstructing the Narrative of Transnational Feminist Agency: The Women\u27s Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court

This chapter discusses the transnational agency of the Women\u27s Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court (ICC). As a Transnational Feminist Networks (TFN), the Women\u27s Caucus is depicted as a global network of individuals and organizations committed to the establishment of a gender-sensitive ICC. According to the Women\u27s Caucus, members of the Sixth Committee were used to negotiating in seclusion because much of what they do does not really draw civil society into it . As norm entrepreneurs, the Women\u27s Caucus operated on the basic premise that an international court that does not include \u27gender justice\u27 or formal justice for women is not a universal justice mechanism for criminal justice. The creation of ad hoc tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity gave the contextual push to further work on the creation of the world\u27s first permanent court

Building the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the asean through Multi-Focal Norm Entrepreneurship

Women, Peace and Security (wps) as a global agenda has gained traction since it was institutionalized in the United Nations Security Council (UNSCR) fifteen years ago. By December 2014, 46 out of 193 Member States of the United Nations have adopted their National Action Plans to systematically implement their respective country commitments to wps. To date, 24 of the countries with National Action Plans (NAP) are in Europe while 13 are in Africa; the Asia Pacific Region has 6 and the Americas have 3. In Southeast Asia, only the Philippines has developed a NAP within the framework of the wps while other countries integrated it in the existing broad policy and programmatic frames such as addressing violence against women. At the level of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (asean), taking on the agenda of WPS has yet to move beyond communicative rhetoric. This paper is an attempt to explore how wps can be made part of the regional agenda on human protection and mass atrocities prevention, by mapping out discursive and institutional entry points within several asean Member States and within asean itself through the idea of multi-focal norm entrepreneurship

WPS and the Association of South East Asian Nations

All ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have their own structures and mechanisms to advance women’s human rights. Further, all ASEAN member states are parties to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Collectively, they have likewise enshrined and sought to guarantee the rights outlined in CEDAW through regional declarations and mechanisms. When it comes to acknowledging women’s human rights in conflict situations, however, with the exception of the Philippines, ASEAN member states have largely failed to uphold their obligations under these mechanisms. Accordingly, both as individuals and as a regional collective, these states have proven unable to design and implement appropriate institutional responses to violence and instability. This chapter critically examines the institutional and political causes of these failures and assesses the challenges and benefits of invoking CEDAW General Recommendation 30 to advance the WPS agenda in the region