War

Teaching and curricula on gender and women.s studies in Africa have predominantly focused on issues of development and/or policy, as indicated by a recent and ongoing survey carried out by the African Gender Institute. At the same time, scholars, practitioners and policy makers recognise that there is a “gap” between policy and its implementation.

- an approach to embedding gender processes into specific historical, cultural, and economic/political contexts.

Amina Mama’s Notes on Gender stress the historical specificity of the operation of gender, and Oyewumi considers carefully how this operation was, and is, placed within the organization of different societies: where and when is “gendering” a central political and cultural force? How, for example, does “gendering” interact with the dominance of class construction, or the weight of colonial influences?

Peace studies is a growing academic field that has its scholarly roots in international relations (IR), political science, and history. All three academic disciplines consider the nation state as a primary constitutive element of the international system and central to social stability, security, and peace. This has been heavily critiqued by IR feminists (Still, 1998; Stean 1998, among others) who associate the notion of the nation state with an embedded patriarchal system that entrenches hierarchical social relations across race, class, and gender.

Akayesu Judgement, International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR)
Recognizing that serious violations of humanitarian law were committed in Rwanda, and acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) by resolution 955 of 8 November 1994. The purpose of this measure is to contribute to the process of national reconciliation in Rwanda and to the maintenance of peace in the region. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established for the prosecution of persons responsible for genocide and…

This review essay is designed to offer a broad introduction to critical concepts before exploring ‘gender and sexualities”. No section is offered as a full review, but as a profile of areas that can be taken up for integration into teaching in different ways.

Course Rationale

This course should explore key issues of gender, conflict and peacebuilding in the African context. Overall, the course should also aim to investigate how gender, violence and war have a variety of impacts upon development in Africa, and how development concerns are intrinsically linked to peacebuilding. The course would hence seek to analyse how each aspect of conflict, from domestic violence in peacetime to violence in wartime, is influenced by the real and perceived needs and responsibilities of men and women. Why conflict is gendered at critical moments is a key question, as is how men and women develop different strategies of survival. The course ideally invites an exploration of the role gender plays in political development and achieving sustainable peace. Women’s roles as actors as well as victims of conflict should hence be evaluated as will gender specific peace initiatives.

The following pages can only be described as an attempt on providing a glimpse of an insight into the vastness that is – today - defined as Gender-based Violence (GBV) and its impacts on the African landscape. The sheer size of the terrain reflects the fact that GBV seems to be a rather resilient and destructive, yet largely hidden social activity, that is firmly rooted in the existence and prevalence of patriarchal relationships of power at every level of human interaction within the historically often male-dominated societies around the globe.