The Challenge of Guarding Against Conflict-Based Sexual Violence

THE CHALLENGE OF GUARDING AGAINST CONFLICT-BASED SEXUAL VIOLENCE

TAMSIN PHILLIPA PAIGE

Tamsin Phillipa Paige is Lecturer in International Law at Deakin Law School.

In international law, it was only in recent decades that conflict-based sexual violence (CBSV) started to be treated by International Humanitarian Law (IHL) as a crime against the personhood of the victim rather than a crime against military discipline. 1 This development has since been reinforced by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR1325) on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), which sets out an agenda that focuses, in part, on preventing CBSV as a crime that disproportionally impacts women. Australia, like most states, has drawn on the WPS Agenda to inform what it should be doing at the national policy level on this issue, resulting in the publication of a National Action Plan on WPS in 2012. Given its central role in combatting CBSV in situ, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) was tasked with incorporating the Australian government’s interpretation of UNSCR1325 into its operational framework, with Exercise Talisman Sabre 2015 (TS15) – a biennial military exercise with the United States – marking its first attempt at doing so. 2

Although there have been two Talisman Sabres since, this reflection piece focuses on TS15 as it constitutes the very first instance of the UNSCR1325’s operationalisation within a military operational context. What follows is a discussion of the key policy developments and challenges that characterised UNSCR1325’s implementation in TS15.

Particularly with respect to preventing and combatting CBSV, the integration of UNSCR1325 into the ADF’s operational framework resulted in the introduction of three new policies which, as discussed below, can arguably be ranked as being of decent to excellent in quality. The first policy to be incorporated into TS15 was the inclusion of a ‘gender adviser’ in the command team. The role of the gender adviser was modelled on the Female Engagement Teams (FETs) that had been used to build goodwill and gather intelligence in Afghanistan. A gender adviser was included in all command meetings and was charged with ensuring that all decisions had considered the differentiated impact of armed conflict on different parts of society.

The gender adviser was thus responsible for keeping commanders mindful of the complexity of the human terrain of the area of operations. However, there remained the issue of the gender adviser’s role being misunderstood and misrepresented as being more about ‘getting women to talk to other women about women things’, which risked undermining the full positive potential of such a role, particularly in the context of preventing CBSV. 3

Figure 1: Soldier’s SMARTCARD

The second policy concerned the development of the Commander’s Guide to Implementing UNSCR1325 into Military Planning, 4 which was designed to provide commanders with a checklist for different aspects of an operation to ensure that they adequately take into account a ‘gendered perspective’ in operational planning and decisions. Items in the checklist include such activities as: making sure that FETs and gender advisers are available for deployment; ensuring that civilian medical aid packages include supplies needed for childbirth, menstrual hygiene and other female ‘conditions’; ensuring that human intelligence gatherers speak to women as well as men; and identifying the family, religious, and social relationships within the area of operation. All of these inclusions are practical and reasonable; however, the fact that they need to be included in a checklist does underscore the deep-seated nature of the various challenges posed by gender discrimination and heteronormativity in the ADF. Moreover, the fact that LGBTIQA status receives scant attention in the document points to the heteronormative issue as well as the need for greater intersectionality awareness. Here, the reminder that some people may be queer was limited to only a passing clause in the checklist.

The final policy that was implemented related to the provision to frontline troops of a ‘Soldier’s Smartcard’ (see Figure 1), which gives detailed, yet easy to understand and implement, guidance on how they are to conduct themselves when encountering CBSV victims. The document provides troops on the ground with eight points that they need to be aware of and/ or undertake when documenting and reporting incidences of CBSV. It also provides step-by-step advice, in a notable concise manner, on how to gather information about CBSV and document it, as well as the sensitivities surrounding issues of CBSV. Despite the adherence to a strict gender binary, which is in turn apparently based on a cisgendered

heterosexual understanding of CBSV, the Card does demonstrate solid optics: it clearly communicates to soldiers the gravity of the traumas associated with CBSV, and places the well-being of victims at the centre of its concerns and those of the soldiers who have to deal with the aftermath. Although many issues (e.g. queer blindness and misogynistic institutional culture) remain with the WPS’ implementation in the ADF and across the Australian government, the Soldier’s Smartcard is an excellent tool that has emerged from the integration of UNSCR1325 into TS15.

ADF operational documents obtained by the author have since revealed how these policies were, at times, undermined by institutional and cultural challenges – in particular, those related to gender discrimination, heteronormativity and a lack of intersectionality. What this, in effect, highlights are gaps between rhetoric and reality. For example, while greater sensitivity has been brought to bear on intersectionality issues in the Australian Military Gender Advisers Course, this has not automatically resulted in compliance or changes to the broader institutional culture. Indeed, looking through whole-ofgovernment and ADF documents, it would appear that the term ‘gender’ is still often used as a euphemism for women, with inadequate consideration given to LGBTIQA individuals and communities in these policy and operational publications.

Even so, the ADF should not be viewed as being wholly responsible for these ongoing challenges, as similar problems exist in other parts of the Australian government 5 and even within the WPS framework itself. 6 The fact that the ADF is aware of these issues, at the very least, is a cause for cautious optimism. 7

1. The Prosecutor v Jean-Paul Akayesu (Trial Judgement) [1998] International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ICTR-96-4-T.

2. Details of the FOI request and documents released can be found on the Australian Department of Defence’s FOI Disclosure log under the title ‘The implementation of “Women, Peace and Security” principles into Exercise Talisman Sabre 2015’ (FOI No: 226/17/18): Department of Defence, ‘Disclosure Log’ <http://www.defence.gov.au/FOI/Decisions/DisclosureLog.asp>.

3. J. Wittwer, Integration of Women, Peace and Security into Military Strategic Guidance and Planning: A Case Study - Exercise Talisman Sabre 2015 (Freedom of Information Act Disclosure No Item 1 Serial 2, Department of Defence).

4. L. Jardins and Author Redacted, Commander’s Guide to Implementing UNSCR 1325 in Military Planning and Operations (Freedom of Information Act Disclosure No Item 3 Serial 1, Department of Defence).

5. For example, see Australian National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2012-2018 (Federal Government of Australia, 8 March 2012) <https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/05_2012/aus_nap_on_women_2012_2018.pdf>.

6. For a detailed examination of these issues in the WPS Agenda, see T. Paige, ‘The Maintenance of Heteronormativity’, in D. Otto (ed), Queering International Law: Possibilities, Alliances, Complicities, Risk (Routledge, 2017).

7. This article features additional contributions from Pichamon Yeophantong.