Mural entitled "Women for Peace and Environment" by artist Bert Monterona STEPHENZACHARIAS, FLICKR
Following Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s renowned TEDx Talk, she wrote the following: ‘My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.’[1]
Indeed, the ambition of feminism (i.e. gender equality) can only be achieved when both men and women realise the problems that are based on gender. This article would demonstrate how feminism can help us understand and effectively address “Gender-Based Violence and Conflict”. By adopting a feminist lens, this article would focus on ‘gender-based violence (GBV) in terms of militarisation’ and ‘feminist political economy approach on the economies of war’. This article argues that the prevalence of GBV in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) must be understood in relation to both social constructs of masculinity and the political economy of Congo’s ongoing war. At the end of this article, the author would also explore victims’ legal rights & access to justice alongside with global humanitarian response to tackle the pervasive GBV in DRC.
Humanitarian Crisis : Gender-Based Violence in DRC
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is selected for examination here for two reasons. Firstly, it is one of the most contemporary examples of social violence in armed conflict, one in which the gravity and prevalence of GBV is unparalleled. The widespread rape has been referred to as “murderous madness” and a “defining feature” of the conflict which prompted UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, John Holmes, to characterize the sexual violence in the Congo as “worst in the world”.[2] The second reason for examining the DRC concerns the nature of the conflict. The DRC has been selected as an archetypal economic civil war for the number of ways in which its actors, objectives and methods conform to those described as “new wars”. The conflict in DRC is fought between an array of state and non-state armed groups for the seemingly sole purpose of acquiring access to resourceful regions in the country.
Gender-Based Violence in terms of Militarization
Stacy Banwell asserts that GBV in armed conflict is primarily based on, and perpetuated by, patriarchy and heterosexual masculine expectations amplified through militarization and expectations of aggression constructed for men. [3] Thus, radical feminism helps in challenging patriarchal norms and values and dismantling deeply embedded structural forms of male dominance over women. “Hegemonic masculinity” refers to the pervasive norms and institutions that work to maintain men’s domination over women and over subordinate forms of masculinities and represents an idealized image of man as a person who acts aggressively, takes risks, is independent, is sexually virile, is unemotionally rational, and is heterosexual. [4] It is useful here to employ Catherine MacKinnon’s understanding of gender as hierarchical and composed of multiple masculinities and femininities, of which hegemonic masculinity is preeminent and subordinates all other forms of both masculinities and femininities.[5]
Patriarchy also affects men in Congo by defining appropriate gender roles and behaviours that men must exhibit in order to be valued as men. Congolese masculine identity is based on traditional norms of leadership, strength, courage, and the ability to protect one’s family and assets. Congolese family law dictates that a husband’s “duty is the protection of his wife; his wife owes her obedience to her husband”[6]. The social expectations of men as protectors extend beyond the protection of his family to include women within the community, generally[7]. With the outbreak of conflict, military and rebel group leaders began to manipulate notions of masculinity to recruit members, pressuring men to take up arms in order to “protect” their female kin and defend their own honour.
Soldiers in the DRC who have committed acts of GBV against women explained their transgressions by relying on ideals of masculinity and the norm of the “sexually potent male fighter”, which is explicitly contrasted with feminine qualities that are associated with ineptitude.[8] Most soldiers also expressed fears of being perceived as insufficiently masculine as they may be seen as not sufficiently providing for their families.
In Maria Ericksson and Maria Stern’s interview, soldiers expressed feelings of frustration and powerlessness, saying, “We soldiers commit rape, why do we commit rapes? Poverty/suffering. When we are not paid, or not paid at all. We are hungry. And I have a gun. In my house my wife doesn't love me anymore. I also have a wish to have a good life.…You have sex and then you kill her, if the anger is too strong”[9].
The anxiety experienced by the soldiers when faced with the impossibility of fulfilling their position as “men” is largely what motivates individual soldiers, who rape as a means to reconstitute their masculinity.
The militarization of masculinity in the DRC has led to an exacerbation of gender role distinctions and women’s subordination. As the child bearers, nurturers, and caregivers, women in the DRC serve as the symbolic heart and soul of the cultural group. As such, their bodies “have been constructed as the locus or carriers of culture”[10] and are sought out as the natural targets by which combatants can destabilize and destroy a targeted community. Throughout the decade of conflict in eastern Congo, armed groups have attacked women with violent sexual assaults “structured around rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage. Ertürk argues that they aim at the complete physical and psychological destruction of women with implications for the entire society”.[11]
Feminist Perspectives on the Economies of War
While an analysis of patriarchal social structures helps us understand why GBV is a common feature of conflict, it alone doesn’t account for what makes it such a pervasive and popular weapon in DRC. The violation of these norms occurred in more than just military terms; the breach of the state sovereignty was apparent elsewhere, as in the illegal exploitation of the natural resources by foreign armed groups. Significantly, economic interests and the illegal exploitation of Congolese natural resources transformed and perpetuated the conflict.[12] Rape is used as a weapon of war to further political and military aims.
Militarization instigated a power differential because those armed groups receive financial remuneration, differentiating them from community residents who do agricultural work. Power differentials were understood as the intersection of economics with gender, with poverty especially affecting girls and women, an important exemplar of intersectionality[13]. For Patricia Hill Collins, one cannot approach the particular violence experienced by these girls and women without a spatial feminist political economy of global exploitative structures.[14] Jacqui True clarifies that a feminist political economy approach seeks to uncover the political and economic inequalities that fuel conflict-related sexual violence and to use that understanding to inform efforts to end this violence and, indeed, all violence against women.[15]
Postmodernist feminists have argued that Western feminists have often isolated women’s sexuality as the basis of oppression, which serves to reinforce the sexed body as an inevitable target of sexual violence.[16] In this conflict, GBV is not only sexually motivated because many of the attacks are structured around sex torture and forcible displacement. [17] The desire for economic gain has been a primary factor for each of the armed groups involved. In this sense, Jourdan argues that violent practices have a political value because they manifest a will to undermine the social order, promoting at the same time new forms of organization.[18]These new forms of organisation are based on shadow networks of resource exploitation , of which violence has become an intrinsic part because it provides competing fractions with the cover and/or power necessary to access the valuable commodity. Therefore, GBV has proven to be an effective method of maintaining a generalised state of violence and terror, under the cloak of which armed groups are free to pursue their economic agendas.
Sara Meger argues that global competition for scarce resources has created the potential for new sources of friction and instability in the developing world.[19] Critical among these resources are arable land, raw materials, old-growth timber, and certain precious gems and minerals, all of which can be found in DRC. Human consumption of these resources has placed unsustainable pressure on the economy to fulfil the demand. The illegal exploitation of resources has been a primary source of revenue for all the armed groups in the region, including local and regional militias and domestic and regional armed forces. She claims that the resulted shadow economy has grown and institutionalised to the point that the entire country is reliant on the illegal economic activities of these actors. [20] GBV is effective in this context because of the multiple ways in which it constitutes men’s masculinity and serves the interest of structures of capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. Therefore, GBV in conflict is part of the hegemonic international structures of global economy, implicated in contemporary patriarchal and neoliberal ideologies.
Legal Rights & Access to Justice
The United States State Department (USSD) Report on Human Rights Practices for 2017 (DRC) noted: ‘The law on sexual violence criminalizes rape, but the offence was not always reported by victims and the law was not always enforced. Rape was common. The legal definition of rape does not include spousal rape. It also prohibits extrajudicial settlements (for example, a customary fine paid by the perpetrator to the family of the victim) and forced marriage, allows victims of sexual violence to waive appearance in court, and permits closed hearings to protect confidentiality. The minimum penalty prescribed for rape is a prison sentence of five years, and courts regularly imposed such a sentence in rape convictions.’ [21]
The government has put in place legislation to deal with conflict-related sexual violence but the law is not effectively enforced. Although the president has pledged zero tolerance for sexual violence and has launched a campain to improve victims’ access to justice and services, many crimes are not investigated and prosecutions are rare. The situation has deteriorated more recently, due to political instability, large scale displacement of people, and weak state infrastructure.
The Country Gender Profile for the DRC stated, in a report published in March 2017: ‘There are many challenges in bringing sexual violence perpetrators to court owing to long procedures, corruption, high costs for transport to the court, and lawyers. Fear of stigma and reprisals, and distrust of women victims by the police and the court prevents women from reporting. Even if a victim wins the case, compensation may not be paid following the verdict. Domestic violence cases are often judged by community authorities, such as elders and religious leaders but not by official courts. [22]
Global Humanitarian Response
The brutal treatment that many other Congolese women have received and the apparent impunity for the worst offenders has become a serious challenge for the country as it tries to shake off its past and restore peace, security and the rule of law.
A United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project in the Kivus Provinces and Ituri District, funded mainly by the United States and Sweden as part of a broader Access to Justice Programme in DRC, is hoping to change all that by restoring trust in the justice system. The project has helped to provide better access to justice, security, and information for victims of sexual violence; to train police to investigate and the judiciary to prosecute those responsible; and to document the crimes committed.
UNDP also conducted judicial monitoring in the Kivus Provinces and Ituri District, which allowed for gathering of exact data on the judicial response by the military justice, further ensuring that justice was carried out according to the standards of a fair trial. UNDP monitored over 6,500 sexual violence crimes, helping to obtain accurate data to adjust action plans accordingly. Of the cases heard, nearly 70% led to convictions and over half of all cases were related to sexual and gender-based violence.
The FCO Human Rights report for 2017 noted: ‘In 2018… The UK will also continue its work on the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative and deliver a second phase of the girls’ education programme to support 75,000 girls. We will continue to encourage the DRC government, as an elected member of the [Human Rights Council] HRC, to take active steps to improve respect for human rights. This includes encouraging active cooperation with the HRC investigation into the human rights violations and abuses in the Kasais. [23]
Conclusion
The author concludes that feminist perspectives on ‘militarisation of masculinity’ and ‘economies of war’ offer a useful base to fight against both structural and embodied violence. If it were not for unequal gender relations and social constructions of masculinity and femininity that place role expectations and requirements on members of each gender , GBV would not have the effectiveness it has in this conflict. Effectively addressing GBV in DRC would require not only that the economic incentive be addressed through curbing the illegal exploitation of resources, but also addressing the gendered politics that make this taboo violation an effective and meaningful tactic towards the group’s ultimate objectives. As Sara Meger concludes, “until the local and international structures of gender hierarchy are addressed, the culture of GBV may persist long after the conflict ends”. [24]
[1] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘We should all be feminists’ (TEDx Talks , 12 April 2015) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc>assessed 12 July 2020
[2] Stephanie McCrummen, “Prevalence of Rape in E. Congo Described as Worst in World,” The Washington Post, September 9, 2007
[3] Stacy Banwell, ‘Rape and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A case study of gender-based violence’ (2012) Journal of Gender Studies 23:45–58.
[4] R. W. Connell, ‘Masculinity, violence, and war’ in M. Kimmel and M. Messner (eds), Men’s lives (Macmillan 1992) 176-183
[5] C. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard University Press 1989)
[6] J. Csete & J. Kippenberg, The war within the war: Sexual violence against women and girls in Eastern Congo (Human Rights Watch 2002) 84.
[7] Ibid 17.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] L. Kelly, ‘Wars against women: sexual violence, sexual politics and the militarised state’ in S. Jacobs, R. Jacobson, & J. Marchbank (Eds.), States of conflict: Gender, violence and resistance (Palgrave Macmillan 2000) 50.
[11] Y. Ertürk, Report of the special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences (UN General Assembly Human Rights Council 2008) 7.
[12] O. Olsson & H. C. Fors , ‘Congo: The prize of predation. Journal of Peace Research’ (2004) 41(3), 321–336.
[13] Kimberle Crenshaw , ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’ (1991)Stanford Law Review Vol. 43, No. 6, pp. 1241-1299
[14] Patricia Hill Collins, "New Commodities, New Consumers: Selling Blackness in a Global Marketplace"(2006) Ethnicities.
[15] Jacqui True, The Political Economy of Violence Against Women (OUP 2012) 121.
[16] Nicola Henry, ‘The Fixation on Wartime Rape: Feminist Critique and International Criminal Law’ (2014) Social & Legal Studies, Vol. 23(1) 93–111
[17] International Alert, Ending the deadlock: towards a new vision of peace in eastern DRC (September 2012)
[18] L. Jourdan, Mayi-Mayi: Young rebels in Kivu (Democratic Republic of Congo) (The University of Bologna 2005)
[19] Sara Meger, Rape Loot Pillage: The Political Economy of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (OUP 2016) 165.
[20] Ibid.
[21] USSD Country Report – DRC Section 6. Date of Report 20 April 2018
[22] Country Gender Profile DRC Final Report Date of Report March 2017
[23] UK Government, FCO HR report 2017 (DRC), 18 July 2018
[24]Sara Meger, Rape Loot Pillage: The Political Economy of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (OUP 2016) 173.
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