Women in Black activities and important documents related to the implementation of the Resolution 1325
1. Propositions and suggestions for drafting the National Action Plan on the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1325 in Serbia, from the workshop held in the organisation Women in Black in Belgrade.
UN Security Council Resolution 1325 is one of the most debated resolutions. It deals with women, peace and security. For the first time, those issues are put in a relation of interdependence and in the same order of importance. Decades of activist and theoretical work by women on the questions of peace have led to clarification of the confusion that, from the time of the suffrage movement, has been circulated as a choice between women’s rights and questions of war, peace, national, racial and class interest.
Resolution 1325 was passed on the threshold of the new millennium, in years that offered new confusions: security vs. human rights; security vs. human rights, the liberal interpretation of gender, the bureaucracy of gender mainstreaming, the concept of human security limited by strategic development politics, etc.
As critical communication is accelerated, and experience considerable, a lively analysis of the implementation of the Resolution has developed revision of the plans, debate about its potential of international and global interest for reform and emancipation. It is a pleasure to responsibly participate in it.
The importance of taking into consideration the experiences of civil society is emphasised in the debates. Attention has been drawn to the advantage of linking CEDAW to Resolution 1325, because of the preservation of human rights framework and because of the advantage of using an elaborated and credible system of reporting to the Committee. CEDAW is concerned with global security of women so that it is indeed the appropriate place for inputs about the progress of human security (with which women identify as exceptionally important actors and as a group for progress), about the respect of women’s human rights and about the treatment of the female defenders of human rights. We will mention as well the Recommendations of civil society on the implementation of Resolution 1325 in Europe (September 2009) which also speaks about the practical preconditions for good implementation: policy 1325 must be highly ranked in relation to other policies, care for and commitment to the drafting of the official public report and responsibility for the implementation, with a transparent budget, a precise follow-up and reports on expenditure.
The key precondition is a clear localisation (planning from the context), through the dynamics of various actors that reflect both experiences and limits.
The only available document for the moment, the Recommendations for drafting the NAP (BFPE, February 2010), does not establish standards for a coherent and inclusive plan, but is carried out through uncritical implementation of the liberal, developmental and militaristic approach of security and gender. Viewed from the political procedural angle, the implementer of the drafting process and the proposer of the draft NAP is in most countries the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while in Serbia the Ministry of Defence has been recommended. International cooperation is not in the focus of the Recommendations, although Resolution 1325 deals with the global question of security and opens questions of human security that are holistic and global.
Political analysis of the text and of the process of drafting the Recommendations
Civil society
In the Recommendations for drafting the NAP, civil society has an unspecified influence. The experience of peace activism is completely excluded and it is set aside in the report of the working group which dealt with the participation of women in conflict resolution, post-conflict situations and peacekeeping operations.
The drafting process of the NAP testifies to the absence of civil society from this process, not acknowledging the long-term efforts, initiatives and dedication of civil society organisations in education, promotion, and lobbying for the implementation of Resolution 1325 in Serbia. (In attachment, we have included a short account of the activities of Women in Black and of related organisations in the field of security and Resolution 1325).
The whole process is developing with the full approval and participation of international organisations, in the first place UNIFEM, which gives to the process all kind of help, and ignores the experiences, knowledge, and commitment of NGOs on Resolution 1325 in the last 6 years, ignoring the contribution of female activists to peace-building in the last 20 years, as well as the security risks of not confronting the criminal past, the condemnation of genocide in Srebrenica, etc.
The experience in other countries of the region (e.x. Bosnia and Herzegovina) shows that the drafting process of the NAP has been ‘public and clear,’ that woman’s organisations working for a long period of time on Resolution 1325 were included from the beginning in this process. The short deadline for submitting comments, suggestions and objections (from the end of February to 15 March 2010) is yet further evidence of the non-transparent and non-participative model in Serbia. (In Bosnia and Herzegovina a working group for drafting the NAP worked for a year and a half, meeting every other month.)
The Ministry of Defence as the recommended implementer
The Ministry of Defence has been appointed as necessary implementer, which symbolically shifts the meaning of Resolution 1325.
The Ministry of Defence as the implementer of the drafting process of the NAP testifies to the militaristic approach to security, an approach that is, among others, characterised by: army and police dimension, militarisation of society – the transmission of military values and organisation to all spheres of life; absence of civil society in the creation of the notion and practice of security, marginalisation and victimisation of women, etc. In short, in this traditional militaristic approach to security, the main subject of security is not the citizens but the state, or more exactly, its political and economic elite. Apart from that, the experience of the wars of the 1990s in ex-Yugoslavia and particularly the role of the Armed Forces of Serbia that have inherited the burden of the Yugoslav People’s Army (of the Military of Yugoslavia, of the Military of Serbia and Montenegro) as one of the main executive organs of the regime of Slobodan Milošević, calls into question the credibility of this institution as the implementer of the drafting process of the NAP, and this is particularly unacceptable from the feminist pacifist point of view.
Namely, the Ministry of Defence is required, on the basis of article 11 of Resolution 1325 (“Emphasizes the responsibility of all states to put an end to impunity and to prosecute those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes including those relating to sexual and other violence against women and girls, and in this regard stresses the need to exclude these crimes, where feasible from amnesty provisions”) to take a clear and unequivocal stance towards the genocide in Srebrenica, in line with the decision of the International Court of Justice (February 2007), to support, following the Resolution of the European parliament, the proclamation of July 11 as the Day of Remembrance of the Srebrenica genocide. In this case, the Ministry of Defence would obtain a higher degree of confidence on the part of civil society organisations that continuously advocate the punishability of all crimes, first of all those committed in our names, and then of all the other ones.
We consider that the Ministry of Defence should work for the rehabilitation of General Vlada Trifunović, the amnesty of all deserters of war in the wars from 1991 to 1999, the investigation of the deaths of soldiers in the military barracks of the Armed Forces of Serbia from 2000 on, the revocation of ranks and decorations from all the officers of the Yugoslav People’s Army and Yugoslav Armed Forces who participated in the wars of 1991-1999 and did not distinguish themselves by opposing war crimes. Inasmuch as these conditions are fulfilled, the Ministry would be able to be one of the implementers of the drafting process of the NAP, but never the main implementer of these activities.
Also, the Ministry should recommend the inclusion of women’s experiences from the wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the curricula of military and police schools, in order to heighten the sense of responsibility and recognition of the civil position. With the exclusion of women’s peace experiences, the regional chances are even more substantially impoverished.
Which concept of security?
The formulation that ‘the working groups recommend the Ministry of Defence as the main implementer of the drafting process and the proposer of the draft National Action Plan for implementation of the UN SC Resolution 1325 in Serbia because the greatest part of activities is related to areas under its jurisdiction’ completely neglects changes in theory and practice of security, achievements in the field of human security such as:
