GENDER EQUALITY AND CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL LAW APPLLICABLE IN ARMED CONFLICTS
GENDER EQUALITY AND CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL LAW APPLLICABLE IN ARMED CONFLICTS

Author(s): Dragan Knežević
Subject(s): Gender Studies, International Law, Security and defense, Military policy
Published by: Institut za strategijska istraživanja
Keywords: gender equality; women; international humanitarian law; Geneva Conventions; United Nations (UN); combatants; civilians; detainees/prisoners of war
Summary/Abstract: The implementation of norms of international law applicable in armed conflicts, namely international humanitarian law, is based on explicit and non-controversial distinctions between the two sides/parties or dichotomies of all kinds – permissible and impermissible objects of hostilities, combatants and civilians, neutrals and belligerents. Under these circumstances, international law has a place reserved for women (as well as for children and the elderly) in the category of civilians protected by the IV Geneva Convention of 1949, which guarantees them the status of victims of war. The Additional Protocols of 1977 follow the same pattern. However, the armed conflicts at the end of the 20thand the beginning of the 21st centuriesshow increased female presence within fighting units and groups, without exception (in international and non-international armed conflicts). Therefore, women, as combatants have quite regularly been in a position to be taken prisoner or detained and the III Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War regulates the treatment of women in a handful of articles. Women are not covered by the rules of maritime warfare or by the I Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces. Gender equality has not been mainstreamed within international humanitarian law so far. Reasons for that probably lie in the mentioned dogmatically promoted dichotomy,according to which extracting the ‘female factor’ from one category (civilians) to another (combatants) with the possibility of it still being found widely in the first group (victims of war) – complicatesthe traditional matrix. Are the recent activities of the UN and the adoption of binding legal instruments applicable in armed conflicts a way to mainstream gender issues in international humanitarian law? To what extent does the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction of 1997 (Ottawa Treaty) make a difference in terms of gender equality and international law in armed conflicts?

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