The politics of sexual violence in the Kachin conflict in Myanmar

Hedström, Jenny (author): Försvarshögskolan,Strategiavdelningen,Gender, Peace & Security

Olivius, Elisabeth, 1983- (author): Umeå universitet,Statsvetenskapliga institutionen,Freds och konfliktstudier,Umeå Universitet, (SWE)

(creator_code:org_t)

2021-02-02
2021
English.
In: International feminist journal of politics. - : Routledge. - 1461-6742 .- 1468-4470. ; 23:3, s. 374-395

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Abstract Subject headings

Conflict-related sexual violence has been the focus of significant international activism and policy attention. International legal norms and frameworks have evolved to recognize it as a war crime, and a representation of sexual violence as a “weapon of war” is now widely endorsed. This article examines how international norms about conflict-related sexual violence are adopted and utilized in multiple ways in the armed conflict in Kachin state in northern Myanmar. Throughout decades of civil war, international norms on sexual violence have constituted key resources for international advocacy and awareness raising by local women’s rights activists. Further, activists have drawn on international norms to effect changes in gendered relations of power within their own communities. However, international norms on sexual violence in conflict have also been effectively used as tools for ethno-nationalist identity politics, rallying support behind the armed insurgency and mobilizing women’s unpaid labor in the service of war. Thus, international norms on conflict-related sexual violence have simultaneously opened up space for women’s empowerment and political agency and reproduced gendered forms of insecurity and marginalization. Exploring these contradictions and complexities, this analysis generates novel insights into the politics of international norms in contexts of armed conflict.

About the subject

SOCIAL SCIENCES: SOCIAL SCIENCES; and Political Scienc ...; and Political Scienc ...

SOCIAL SCIENCES: SOCIAL SCIENCES; and Other Social Sci ...; and Gender Studies

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