A Methodology for Gender-Sensitive Research

Presentation
by Agnès Callamard

     The international community has increased its efforts towards the integration of women’s rights in human rights systems. There have been many developments towards a gender-sensitive interpretation of human rights law, including the 1981 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women adopted in December 1993; the appointment of a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences in 1994; and the Platform for Action of the September 1995 Fourth UN World Conference on Women.

     In monitoring the adherence of governments and the international community to these agreements and treaties, it is important to have accurate and consistent documentation of women’s rights violations. In 1999, Amnesty International-London, Amnesty International Canada and Rights & Democracy joined forces to produce a series of publications that address this need for standardized methods of research and analysis.

     Written by Agnès Callamard of Amnesty International–London, this series includes one manual, Gender Sensitive Research Methodology, which was published in 1999, and two case-study booklets: Documenting Human Rights Violations by State Agents: Sexual Violence (1999) and this current booklet Investigating Violations of Women’s Human Rights in Armed Conflicts (2001). There are three other case studies to be published in this series on 1) women’s human rights violations by private actors, 2) women’s human rights violations in the community, and 3) the economic and social causes of human rights violations.

     The manual provides a step-by-step description of a gender-sensitive approach to research and suggests ways of addressing the specific challenges faced by women’s rights workers. The booklets each focus on the monitoring and documenting of specific categories of women’s rights violations. They help the reader prepare for fact-finding missions, provide guidelines for the collection and analysis of evidence, and include a checklist for conducting interviews.

     The series is geared to local activists and non-governmental organizations, as well as governmental and United Nations agencies who work to collect and disseminate information on violence against women. The booklets are published in a practical format for field workers.

     We are very proud to be contributing to the global efforts to recognize women’s rights as human rights. This initiative represents our desire to acknowledge the importance of gender-sensitive research and the standardized methods of documenting violence against women. We hope that this series continues to be a useful tool for our partners and colleagues in the field who help ensure that women’s rights violations do not go unnoticed or unpunished.

     Alex Neve,
     Secretary General Amnesty International-Canada (English Section)

     Warren Allmand,
     President Rights & Democracy

     INTRODUCTION

     It is now common knowledge that the majority of people killed in modern warfare are civilians. Current estimates are that about 75% of those killed in war are civilians, a proportion that has risen steadily from 10% to 15% at the beginning of the century.  ²⁾

     Less commonly known, but just as daunting, is the fact that the majority of the civilian population in conflict situations, and therefore the majority of those targeted for abuses, is composed of women, girls and boys, either inside the region at war or displaced outside. Armed conflicts are not (or not only) about men in battlefields nor are they gender-neutral exercises in destruction. In fact, throughout the duration of a war and thereafter, women and men, and indeed, femininity and masculinity, play very specific roles which are subsumed, described and determined by military and political objectives. Furthermore, common to almost all experiences of warfare is the intersection between gender and nationalism or other identity markers such as ethnicity, race or religion. Women and children are especially likely to be targeted for a whole range of abuses, many of which (such as sexual violence or abduction of children) are based on the military and political use that can be made of the gender or age of the victims, in addition to their race or ethnicity.

     Indeed, recent investigations conducted by human rights activists and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda have clearly demonstrated that the targeting of victims and the forms of the abuse were based on gender as well as being compounded or determined by other identity markers, such as ethnicity or race. Hence, the men and boys of Srebnijca were specifically targeted by Serbian troops because of their gender, ethnicity and religion, then killed and "disappeared," while Rwandan Tutsi women were raped in the thousands, many of them also mutilated, before being killed during the 1994 genocide.

     Violence against women in the context of an armed conflict is not accidental: it is, indeed, a weapon of war, that is, a tool used to achieve military objectives such as ethnic cleansing, spreading political terror, breaking the resistance of a community, rewarding soldiers, intimidation or for extracting information. "The threat and the act of rape is often used as a weapon against community identity, especially where ethnic or religious purity is at stake."  ³⁾

     The gender-based nature of armed conflicts is nothing new. Historical accounts of warfare, from antiquity to today are replete with incidents and evidence highlighting the gender-based victimization of women and men and the specific abuses suffered by individuals because of their gender  ⁴⁾. But it has taken many centuries for these accounts to penetrate the hegemonic and ideological construction of warfare (men on a battlefield) and to begin reforming the dominant analysis of war, peacemaking and post-war reconstruction. This progress is recent, far from complete, and owes much to the existence and relentless campaigns of the global women’s movement. Especially concerned with the prevalence of gender-based discrimination and violence, women activists have struggled to bring a gender-based analysis and actions to the male-dominated and masculine world of warfare. Their combined efforts have allowed many formerly ignored women’s voices to be heard and for their calls for justice, redress and reparation to break the wall of silence  ⁵⁾. Such efforts have also revealed the situation of women in the context of peacekeeping operations and post-conflict situations,  ⁶⁾ and highlighted the persistence of gender-specific abuses and the absence of a gender-sensitive perspective in post-conflict reconstructions  ⁷⁾.

     This manual is part of that global effort. It seeks to provide human rights defenders with some of the tools necessary to monitor and document women’s rights abuses in a context of armed conflicts and immediately thereafter, and more generally, to strengthen the capacity of individuals and organizations to monitor and document abuses, and to integrate a gender perspective into their work. It is based on the realization that these objectives constitute essential elements in the global effort of ensuring a gender perspective not only with respect to the prevalent understanding of armed conflicts, but also peacekeeping efforts and operations, post-conflict reconstruction, and more generally victims’ access to justice, redress and remedies.

     This manual is, arguably, incomplete — it does not claim to cover all abuses suffered by women during warfare, and neither does it purport to provide the readers with a critical analysis of the legal framework and jurisprudence pertaining to conflicts. Instead, it aims to present human rights activists with some guidance to monitor and document women’s rights abuses, and to assist them in overcoming some of the problems they will meet in their work. It is a fact that documenting abuses in armed conflict situations is an activity full of risks and challenges.

     In the first place, human rights activists and the survivors they wish to meet and interview face many security risks and practical difficulties because of the war itself. Human rights defenders all over the world face enormous pressures and dangers as a direct consequence of their activities on behalf of human rights. These pressures and dangers are especially heightened in situations of armed conflicts. Activists on the ground and survivors of abuse face the entire gamut of risks associated with remaining in a war zone, such as indiscriminate attacks, as well as those arising directly from the monitoring work, including reprisals against themselves, or their families. Access to regions at war may be dangerous and difficult, even impossible, and gathering testimony and meeting victims or witnesses may be especially complicated and risky both for the monitors and the individuals they seek to meet. The extreme polarization and divisions within the society, along with the propaganda generated by all parties to the conflict, greatly complicate the task of verifying and assessing information, and of identifying the perpetrators. Some violations of international humanitarian law, such as indiscriminate killings, are difficult to document with accuracy in all circumstances but especially so if access to the scene and to witnesses is not possible.

     The second challenge has to do with the nature of the legal framework within which human rights workers must operate. Although there exists an impressive body of law regulating the conduct of armed conflict, documentation and public reporting of and public advocacy on violations to the rules of war have been neglected (especially when compared, for instance, with reporting on violations of human rights law). A key obstacle to an enhanced and effective reporting role is the absence of any framework or methodology for applying abstract legal norms to concrete factual situations, an obstacle further complicated by the fact that many of these rules were drafted by military experts, and therefore may require some military expertise to understand their meaning and implications in real-life situations.

     The third challenge is linked to the nature of the violations being investigated, namely women’s rights abuses. Many victims of gender-based violence in armed conflicts are reluctant to talk about their plight. Reasons for the silence have been well-documented. They include pressure from the parties to the conflict, the government, the family or community; continuing violence or conflict that prevents women from reporting; fear of reprisals; shame and social stigma attached to certain types of violence against women, such as rape; fear of the consequences of reporting, such as facing rejection and alienation, divorce, being declared unfit for marriage as a result of rape, and severe economic and social obstacles to their livelihood.

     The aforementioned challenges have informed the writing of this manual. All of its sections aim to provide the reader with an understanding of the international legal framework, in the first place although not exclusively, international humanitarian law, legal definitions of some types of abuse, and methodological advice for documenting such abuses. This manual also identifies general principles and advice on security and monitoring, documentation, and fact-finding.  ⁸⁾

     The first chapter of this manual seeks to provide activists with an overview of international human rights standards and International Humanitarian Law (IHL), which governs the conduct of warfare. An understanding of both human rights law and IHL is essential to the task of human rights monitors, as they identify what is and what is not permissible in an armed conflict situation, and constitute the norms against which allegations of abuses are assessed.

     The second chapter, written by Barbara Bedont, concentrates on the International Criminal Court, a major breakthrough in the struggle against impunity.

     The third chapter of this manual focuses on monitoring. It identifies the various subjects that may require monitoring and the key questions guiding the work.

     The fourth chapter presents some advice and steps pertaining to documentation. This work includes systematic reporting, identifying patterns, conducting fact-finding, and assessing the information.

     In the following two chapters, the manual focuses on specific abuses: deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians and sexual violence, and provides the readers with definitions and examples, and advice on how to document these abuses.

     Chapter Seven, written by Madeleine Rees, deals with trafficking in humans, with special reference to the context of peacekeeping operations.

     Chapter Eight of the manual discusses a specific category of victims (displaced women) and the conduct of investigations into the types of abuse they may face in the context of displacement and in camps.

     The final chapter, written by Dyan Mazurana, identifies and defines some of the types of abuse suffered by women in post-conflict situations, and provides guidance for documentation.

     It is the wish and hope of all those who have contributed to this manual that it will facilitate the research and advocacy work of human rights activists who, through the investigation of allegations and public reporting of their findings, seek justice for the victims, and an end to the abuse.

     Through our combined efforts, we can ensure that the voices of women in armed conflicts and post-conflict situations are not silenced, we can gather evidence for the time when justice can be served. We can also shape knowledge and human memory, overturn traditional versions of warfare and history, and fill those gaps left unheard, uncovered, or unspoken, except, often enough, by the victims and the perpetrators themselves.

     Agnès Callamard

     Notes

     1. "The war does not create the conditions whereby women are invisible, whereby gendered-based violations are not recognized as such, whereby rape is a stigma, whereby women are ostracized if they dare report on sexual violence; these are all present "before" and "after" the conflict begins. These are all present in countries that will not necessarily qualify as societies in a state of war. What evidence and testimonies are pointing out to is that women do face extraordinary forms of violence in times of war and armed conflicts but that this violence is also somehow related to their status as women, their situations within the home, the community and the society at large." See Agnès Callamard, "Breaking the Collusion of Silence" in Common Grounds: Violence Against Women in War and Armed Conflict Situations, edited by Indai Lourdes Sajor (Quezon City: Asian Center for Women’s Human Rights, 1998), p.63.  Return

     2. D. Smith, War, Peace and Third World Development, Occasional Paper 16, Human Development Report Office, UNDP, New York, 1994.  Return

     3. Panos Institute, 1995, p.8.  Return

     4. See for instance the various articles in Gender and Catastrophe, Ronit Lentin, ed., London and New York: Zed Books, 1997; What Women Do in Wartime, Meredith Turshen and Clotilde Ywagiramariya, ed., London and New York: Zed Books, 1998 . See also Jeanne Vickers, Women and War, London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1993.  Return

     5. See the articles in Common Grounds: Violence Against Women in War and Armed Conflict Situations, Indai Sajor, ed., ASCENT: Quezon City, Philippines, 1998.  Return

     6. See, for example, the results of the gender audit conducted in Kosovo: Chris Corrin, Gender Audit of Reconstruction Programmes in South Eastern Europe, the Case of Kosova, Montréal and New York: Urgent Action Fund and the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, 2000.  Return

     7. Some of the problems identified include gender and cultural stereotypes; the failure to appoint women to key decision-making positions; the failure to acknowledge women’s roles within the emergent political system; the marginalization of female heads of households; the international community’s lack of interest in mainstreaming issues of gender within their political and policy-making processes; the serious lack of suitable feminist trainers in all areas within the staffs of local and international NGOs and UN agencies; the lack of gender balance in the jobs available with NGOs, UN and OSCE operations; etc.  Return

     8. To be read in conjunction with Agnès Callamard, Ukweli: Monitoring and Documenting Human Rights Violations in Africa, Amsterdam and Oxford: Amnesty International and Codesria, 2000; and Gender-Sensitive Research Methodology, Montréal: Amnesty International and ICHRDD, 1999.  Return