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14 Geo. J. Gender & L. 83 (2013)
NATO Gender Mainstreaming and the Feminist Critique of the Law of Armed Conflict

handle is hein.journals/grggenl14 and id is 91 raw text is: NATO GENDER MAINSTREAMING AND THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF THE LAW OF ARMED CONFLICT JODY M. PREscoTr* ABSTRACT Beginning with the United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 of October 31, 2000, the international community has recognized the need to mainstream a gender perspective into military operations. In particular, this requires bringing about a fuller implementation of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) in order to protect women and girls from the impacts of armed conflict, and ensuring greater participation by women in pre-conflict prevention and post-conflict resolution. The United States recently published its National Action Plan to accomplish this, joining 33 other nations who had already promulgated their plans. The UN has encouraged other international organizations to develop their own action plans, and in particular NATO has within the last few years developed plans to operationalize a gender perspective in the conduct of its missions. A subset of feminist theoretical thinking in general, the feminist critique of LOAC has identified an inherent discriminatory bias against women in LOAC and its resulting failure to take account of the disproportionate impact of military operations upon women and girls. Although this cogent scholarship has had little discernable impact upon the understanding of application of LOAC in the course of military operations, it is particularly suited as a lens through which to assess NATO's gender mainstreaming process. To establish the proper context within which the feminist critique of LOAC should be understood, this article first sets out the scope and nature of armed conflict's impacts upon women and girls. After noting different general feminist concepts which are applicable to the assessment of NATO's efforts, this article will then detail the feminist critique of LOAC by examining both LOAC treaty law and customary LOAC. Next, the U.S., Swedish, UN and EU programs will be briefly discussed, so that positive and negative trends and practices may be identified. The article then explores in detail NATO's gender mainstreaming efforts in the areas of infrastructure, doctrine, training and education, and plans and operations; and assesses them against the * Senior Fellow, West Point Center for the Rule of Law; adjunct professor, University of Vermont Department of Political Science. The opinions in this article are mine alone, and reflect the official positions of no U.S. government organization. This article is dedicated to the selfless work of the women legal advisors who served in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Legal Office in 2008 and 2009: Commander Gail Axon, Royal Navy; Lieutenant Colonel Pamela Meyers, U.S. Army; Major Julie Deschenes and Major Sonya Vichnevetskaia, Canadian Forces; and Ms. Lone Kjelgaard, NATO. I am particularly grateful for the comments and insights provided by Professor Judith Gardam and Ms. Malory S. Goldstein in their review and critique of this article. @ 2013, Jody M. Prescott. 83

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