Portraits Of Women In International Law

Current histories seem to suggest that men alone have been capable of the development of ideas, analysis, and practice of international law until the 1990s. Is this the case? Or have others been erased from the collective images of this history, including the portrait gallery of notables in international law? Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces? investigates the slow and late inclusion of women in the spheres of knowledge and power in international law. The forty-two textual and visual representations by a diverse team of passionate portraitists represent women and gender non-conforming people in international law from the fourteenth century onwards around the world: individuals and groups who imagined, developed, or contested international law; who earned their living in its institutions; or who, even indirectly, may have changed its course. This rich volume calls for a critical identification of the formal and informal institutional practices, norms, and rituals of (white) masculinities, both in the past and in the research of international law today. By abandoning reductive histories, their biased frames, and tacit assumptions, this work brings previously unseen glimpses of international law and its agents, ideas, causes, behaviour, norms, and social practices into the spotlight.

Current histories seem to suggest that men alone have been capable of the development of ideas, analysis, and practice of international law until the 1990s. Is this the case? Or have others been erased from the collective images of this history, including the portrait gallery of notables in international law? Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces? investigates the slow and late inclusion of women in the spheres of knowledge and power in international law. The forty-two textual and visual representations by a diverse team of passionate portraitists represent women and gender non-conforming people in international law from the fourteenth century onwards around the world: individuals and groups who imagined, developed, or contested international law; who earned their living in its institutions; or who, even indirectly, may have changed its course. This rich volume calls for a critical identification of the formal and informal institutional practices, norms, and rituals of (white) masculinities, both in the past and in the research of international law today. By abandoning reductive histories, their biased frames, and tacit assumptions, this work brings previously unseen glimpses of international law and its agents, ideas, causes, behaviour, norms, and social practices into the spotlight.

Examines the history of the rise and fall of the twentieth century's last major attempt to decolonize international law.

In the past decade, a sense of feminist 'success' has developed within the United Nations and international law, recognized in the Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, the increased jurisprudence on gender based crimes in armed conflict from the ICTR/Y and the ICC, the creation of UN Women, and Security Council sanctions against perpetrators of sexual violence in armed conflict. Contributing to the development of feminist and gender scholarship on international law, Gina Heathcote provides a feminist analysis of the central pillars of international law, noting the advances and limitations of feminist approaches. Through incorporating into mainstream international legal studies specific critical and feminist narratives, this book considers the manner in which feminist thinking has changed international law, and the manner in which international law has remained impervious to key feminist dialogues. It argues for a return to structural bias feminism that engages the foundations of international law and uses gender as a method for challenging post-millennium narratives on fragmentation, the role of international institutions, the nature of legal authority, sovereignty, and the role of international legal experts.

Since 1945 more than 20 international legal instruments dealing specifically with women have been modified or consummated, reflecting a growing international consensus on issues concerning women's role in society. This book is the first complete collection and examination of this group of documents. Dr. Hevener analyzes each of the agreements and assesses its likely impact on the legal status of women. Categorizing the documents according to their goals, she demonstrates the broad range of economic, social, and political concerns they cover and evaluates contemporary patterns and future needs they reveal. The book includes a table of ratifications organized by country and region.

This Handbook brings together 40 of the world’s leading scholars and rising stars who study international law from disciplines in the humanities – from history to literature, philosophy to the visual arts – to showcase the distinctive contributions that this field has made to the study of international law over the past two decades. Including authors from Australia, Canada, Europe, India, South Africa, the UK and the USA, all the contributors engage the question of what is distinctive, and critical, about the work that has been done and that continues to be done in the field of ‘international law and the humanities’. For many of these authors, answering this question involves reflecting on the work they themselves have been contributing to this path-breaking field since its inception at the end of the twentieth century. For others, it involves offering models of the new work they are carrying out, or else reflecting on the future directions of a field that has now taken its place as one of the most important sites for the study of international legal practice and theory. Each of the book’s six parts foregrounds a different element, or cluster of elements, of international law and the humanities, from an attention to the office, conduct and training of the jurist and jurisprudent (Part 1); to scholarly craft and technique (Part 2); to questions of authority and responsibility (Part 3); history and historiography (Part 4); plurality and community (Part 5); as well as the challenge of thinking, and rethinking, international legal concepts for our times (Part 6). Outlining new ways of imagining, and doing, international law at a moment in time when original, critical thought and practice is more necessary than ever, this Handbook will be essential for scholars, students and practitioners in international law, international relations, as well as in law and the humanities more generally.

The role that gender plays in determining the experience of those caught up in armed conflict has long been overlooked. Moreover, the extent to which gender influences the international legal regime designed to address the humanitarian problems arising from armed conflict has similarly been ignored. In the early 1990s, prompted by extensive media coverage of the rape of women during the conflict in Bosnia Herzegovina, the international community was forced to critically examine the capacity of international law to respond to such crimes. The prevalence of sexual violence, is, however, merely one aspect of the distinctive impact of conflict on women. Although a range of factors influence the way individual women experience armed conflict, the endemic gender discrimination that exists in all societies is a common theme: from Cambodia, where women land-mine victims are less likely to receive treatment for their injuries than are men; to South Africa, where women widowed during the Apartheid years have become outcasts in their own society. To date, the extent to which international law addresses the myriad of ways in which women are affected by armed conflict has received little attention. This work takes the experience of women of armed conflict, matches it with existing provisions of international law, and investigates reasons for the silence of the latter in relation to these events for women. It is the first broad-based critique of international humanitarian law from a gender perspective. The contribution of the United Nations, through its focus on human rights, to improving the protection of women in armed conflict is also considered. The authors underscore the need for new approaches to the issue of women and armed conflict, and canvass a range of options for moving forward.

In 2000, the UN Security Council adopted the ground-breaking Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) placing women at the centre of the agenda, thanks to years of campaigning. The Resolution recognises the differential impact of armed conflict on women and men, draws attention to the 'inextricable links between gender equality and international peace and security' and stresses the 'important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace-building'. But what exactly is the WPS agenda and what is its content? What are its implications for peace and for security? And what does it mean for international lawyers? Through the narratives of women's activism and of international law this book seeks to make the WPS agenda better known to international lawyers and to ask whether it is, or could become, an international legal regime that conforms and responds to the realities of women's lives.