AKSHATA SATLURI
Image Courtesy: Iknowpolitics.org
Traditional discourse on the gendered dynamics of war has largely depicted women and children as the primary victims of conflict. The image of a feeble, helpless woman demurely clutching her child has been popularised as a symbol of disaster and urgent need for humanitarian assistance. Women reportedly face the brunt of vulnerabilities in a conflict, including physical abuse, rape, forced impregnation, and other forms of forced sexual servitude. Moreover, women are also at a heightened risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections as well as diseases relating to malnutrition. This violence against women is propagated due to the conservative idea that women are the repositories of culture and are a symbol of the motherland- to this end, brutalising and degrading them is a slight upon the honour of the nation.
Unfortunately, these are brutalities that form the reality of many women in conflict zones. However, women have been homogenised and been presented as insentient by traditional academia and media coverage of the war. This perception is far from the truth: women in conflict zones are complex and responsive actors whose influence is largely undermined by the warring parties. Mainstream literature on women and war implies that these women passively internalise the traumas of war, when in fact, women suffer, grieve, resist their brutalisation, and actively generate identities in response to the wars that engulf their lives. In most conflict-stricken zones, observers on the ground see women multitasking as humanitarian assistants, combatants, and mobilisers, all while still bearing the responsibility of running their households and acting as primary caretakers for children.
Traditional Roles of Women in Peacebuilding Processes
Women in Yemen exemplify such identities. The intersectionality of these women can be understood on socioeconomic as well as regional axes. Women in urban and rural areas participate in political processes to varying degrees owing to variations in cultural standards between regions. Concurrently, feminism in the north and south developed along different tangents that reflected the political and social pressures of their times. These difference in space and circumstance have led to women expressing highly differentiated needs through a multitude of modes of expression. Policymakers’ understanding of women as a monolithic entity has led to the creation of policies that do not commensurately represent these women.
Tribal women outside Yemen's urban areas actively partake in the decision-making processes at the household and community level. They are considered equal to their male counterparts, and their wisdom in matters of mediation is regularly sought. However, even in these areas where female participation in processes is relatively higher, the executive decision-making abilities of a community are vested in men's hands. Men continue to represent their communities in the public sphere, which often overrules insights provided by their female counterparts and further limits the scope for women's participation in formal political procedures.
Urban Yemeni women are the descendants of vastly varying cultures and feminism. Before the unification of the north and south regions of Yemen, northern women largely struggled against conservative perspectives that limited their participation in their own lives. Their feminism largely exhausted itself in trying to establish women's space in the public sphere. Women from the south, on the other hand, were strongly influenced by socialist ideology. They educated themselves to create a legion of active leaders. However, after the south suffered a military defeat at the hands of the north during the civil war of 1994, the voices of southern women who had created a platform for themselves were silenced.
The Politics of Peacebuilding
The political upheaval in 2011 provided a platform for women to unapologetically voice their discontent - whether that discontent was directed towards conservatism in their society or the ineptitude of the ruling elite at the time. Women in Yemen, through the tumult of political revolution and humanitarian crises, created a platform whereby they could amplify their opinions. While these opinions often clashed, they represented a glimmer of hope for other women that heard them. The democratic revolution in Yemen kindled dreams of an equitable society which were promptly quashed by the repression of the Hadi government. The influence of women's participation during the revolution was crucial to the overthrow of the government. Why, then, was it not able to sustain itself for longer?
It is difficult to ignore the role of conservative culture in sidelining women's voices. The invocation of rhetoric such as "culture" and "tradition" is strategically used to marginalise women from meaningful participation in politics in urban and rural areas alike. However, institutional factors are also at play here. Yemen follows a first-past-the-post single-member district electoral system which makes it very difficult for women to be elected to political institutions. Women are rarely nominated because of their inability to mobilise populations towards their party on a large scale.
In the face of institutionalised marginalisation, women took to humanitarian aid, mediation, and preliminary peacebuilding as an effort to successfully participate in the public sphere. As tensions between warring factions rose and state institutions failed, Yemeni women took up the mantle of preserving what little peace remained. Their efforts revolved around the protection of children, provision of medical supplies to the wounded, evacuation of children trapped in the crossfire, and mediation to open avenues for humanitarian aid in major conflict zones.
These efforts were not without their obstacles. Despite the social norm that women and children should be unconditionally protected, Yemeni activist women came under attack from both the rebels and the state. Apart from facing gender-based sexual violence and indiscriminate violence at the hands of militants, women in humanitarian agencies were also politically targeted. Their efforts to disarm, deradicalise, and coexist with combatants led to the Houthis' perception of these groups as a threat to their cause.
The inherently political nature of peacebuilding meant that women - consciously or otherwise - represented communal interests at odds with elite interests represented by the male-dominated formal political system. The macrocosm of the larger civil war, shaped by male perspectives, transposed itself onto women's discourse, but with one key differentiator: the women all shared the fear that any resolution that the formal polity agreed on would exclude their interests.
The Role of the UN
Arguably the most potent instrument to combat these fears voiced by women's movements in Yemen is the United Nations Security Council's Resolution 1325. This landmark resolution highlights the role of women in conflict prevention, post-conflict reconstruction and emphasises the importance of equal participation of men and women in post-conflict political processes. However, over 20 years after its formulation, this Resolution has not materialised significant advancements as there are several roadblocks to its implementation. A gender-sensitive perspective has not been applied to any of the issues that currently require attention. Gender-based issues are either reduced to poor education and sexual violence or are delegated to 'specialists.' The transversal nature of gender, however, requires that there is increased sensitivity to the realities of different groups.
A critical shortcoming of Resolution 1325 is that it construes gender as "women" and not as the dynamic between men and women that give rise to the nuances of war. The differentiation of men and women in the Resolution rather than an emphasis on the need to equalise dynamics to maximise security amongst populations has led to the creation of asymmetric and ineffectual policies. The inadequate conceptualisation of gender in Resolution 1325 has resulted in a lack of national frameworks that embody the need for gender equality.
Urban women - who tend to be more educated on international frameworks such as Resolution 1325 - have created alliances such as the Yemeni Women Pact for Peace and Security to appeal to the international community for representation. However, these organisations do not fairly represent the rural and tribal populations of Yemen.
Many activists have constantly called for designated quotas in organisations within which women should be allowed to safely participate. However, the main issue with arbitrarily imposing quotas is that they rarely account for intersectionality and often result in women only being allowed to 'weigh in' on issues pertaining to women's security. There needs to be a larger appreciation for the nuanced differences between male and female perspectives on matters that extend beyond just women-centric issues. Without such an understanding of the need for equality, quotas are unlikely to lead to sustainable modes for female participation in policymaking.
Future Prospects
Women need to be understood as a multifaceted entity whose "perspectives on tensions in social relations, their awareness of threats to personal, family and community security, their knowledge of the flow of small arms and light weapons through communities and their interpretation of extremism in local discourses need to be amplified on a global scale to formulate policies that do not dismiss specificities in the pursuit of 'blanket' policies. The population of Yemen is largely intersectional and has varying needs - it is only appropriate that any policies created in their name reflect the same diversity.
An effort to restitute the agency of women at the local level could include the introduction of a stratified quota system into electoral politics and the establishment of mechanisms to ensure free and fair elections. Political empowerment is likely to bring a gender-sensitive perspective into formal government, particularly if the international community demands accountability from the polity. Women need to be vested with the power to influence decisions at the national level so that they may generate gender-sensitive policies that trickle down to the community level. These marginalized voices must not be addressed as “women’s issues” but as issues with the gendered dynamics of conflict to prevent further sidelining within politicians and international organisations.
Furthermore, international endeavours to improve the conditions faced by women in Yemen must restructure themselves to funnel greater resources towards local humanitarian assistance groups. It is these groups that gain access to information in 'real time' and so can funnel resources where necessary. The creation and maintenance of information-sharing mechanisms between local aid organisations and international humanitarian aid agencies are paramount to the amplification of the actual needs of women in conflict-stricken zones. Additionally, it is also important to empower community rehabilitation programs that encourage disarmament and deradicalisation amongst youth that are prone to recruitment by either the state military or rebel militias.
The views expressed and suggestions made in the articles are solely of the authors in their personal capacity and the Center for Middle East Studies and O.P. Jindal Global University do not endorse the same.