A Bridge Not Far

Conventional military notions of security position the nation state as the primary protector of society. Within this conceptualisation of security, the nation state is the primary focus of security concerns. The human security framework, on the other hand, foregrounds people-centred dimensions of security, especially in the area of non-traditional security issues. Gender analysis is a significant part of non-traditional security concerns. It is within this context of a gendered perspective of human security that Dr Meenakshi Gopinath discussed the challenges and opportunities in peacebuilding, drawing on the experience of South Asia. She sought to highlight the concerns and experiences of women, who as a group are disproportionately affected by conflict and displacement.

 

Dr Gopinath gave a brief account of Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP) and its activities, noting that many of the insights at the seminar were drawn from research arising out of WISCOMP projects. Its Annual Transformation Workshops bring together participants from India and Pakistan in a programme of critical inquiry and trust building. The WISCOMP initiative in Kashmir reaches out to women at the grassroots level, assisting them to break cycles of violence stemming from the terrorism and militancy which have marred the region for the last two decades. WISCOMP’s outreach, which is focused on rebuilding the relationships compromised by conflict across the fault lines of ethnicity, region, religion, caste and class, has wider relevance for the South Asian region.

 

According to Dr Gopinath, there are conceptual challenges inherent in current security discourses. The example of terrorism was given. While usually considered a traditional security threat, terrorism is non-traditional in terms of the actors involved. To overcome the traditional and non-traditional binary, WISCOMP analyses non-traditional approaches to security concerns, through which both traditional and non-traditional security concerns are brought together via ‘multi-logues’. These allow multiple conversations among different security fields, and could potentially be more effective at filling the interdependence gap, the structure-process gap and the justice gap often experienced by non-traditional security issues.

 

 

International security and policy regimes are engaged in bridging the space between development and security. Dr Gopinath cautioned that the contemporary absence of overt conflict or war does not mean a secure life for communities. To ensure such security for communities, the human security framework needs to be linked with human development. This would necessitate the study of the patterns of power and the structural conditions of conflict, requiring a critical re-evaluation of techno-strategic approaches and of the social constructions of the roles of men and women.

 

Techno-strategic discourses such as the use of ‘collateral damage’ to describe the cost of conflict in terms of human lives (during counterforce attack planning) tends to obfuscate and marginalise individuals. Death, pain and suffering during conflict remain untouched by the moral imperative when those affected are not viewed as individuals but as ‘collateral damage’.

 

Gender analysis, in addition to addressing the relegation of women to the background in relation to security and peacebuilding, extends to the critical study of how the social constructs of masculinity and femininity affect the roles of both men and women. Dr Gopinath iterated the need to expand interpretations such that masculinities, and not just a homogenous masculinity, are recognised. She noted that there exist subordinate, violent and marginalised varieties of masculinities, which could be internalised by women as well as men in situations of conflict or natural disasters.

 

 

The state and its obligations towards the protection and preservation of its people and population needs to be foregrounded in all security discourses. Dr Gopinath mentioned that the primacy of market-led development has at times led to contestations by civil society of the legitimacy of the state as protector. For example, development projects in India have caused the displacement of an estimated 20 million Indians. A WISCOMP study on land acquisitions in Punjab, Pakistan revealed that an estimated 1 million tenant farmers were contesting the military over the issue of access to land. Civil society in South Asia – and in particular women organisations – has been proactive in many instances of such state-citizen contestations, lending their voice to issues such as the right to information, and the protection of the environment in the Himalayas. In Nepal, women organisations brought to the fore the issue of gender rights and access to land and livelihood.

 

Dr Gopinath highlighted the prevalence of techniques of biopolitics in political contestations between the state and women. During the period after the Partition of India in 1947, the Indian government utilised its Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act of 1949 to facilitate the return of women from Pakistan to India, making their repatriation a matter of national honour, or put another way, women’s bodies were inscribed with national honour by the state. The policy ignored the circumstances, needs and concerns of the women who were repatriated following substantial time and adjustment to life in Pakistan.

 

Furthermore, there was a clash between the notion of honour at the state level and that defined by cultural ideologies at the societal level. For most of the women being repatriated, there were difficulties returning to their families because they were considered to have lost familial honour in the course of the abductions and the atrocities, such as sexual violence, they were presumed to be subjected to in Pakistan. As a result, many of these women, made to desert their reconstructed lives in Pakistan, were reduced to living in shelters in India following abandonment by their families in India.

 

The body could, on the other hand, be also used by women as the site of political resistance against the excesses of the state, as seen in the example of Irom Sharmila in Manipur, India. Sharmila has been fasting for 10 years, protesting against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 which has provided impunity to armed personnel for violent acts against persons in Manipur, India.

 

 

Dr Gopinath emphasised that women’s knowledge and participation are critical to the survival of communities, especially in situations of natural and environmental disasters. She mentioned the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in 2007, where Wangari Maathai highlighted the disproportionate harm experienced by women despite having contributed the least to climate change, and the exclusion of women at policy discussions and negotiations on climate change. During the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh, the death rate of women was five times higher due to cultural practices distancing women from public spaces containing information on the cyclone. In the case of the Indonesian tsunami, women comprised 80 per cent of recorded deaths.

 

Dr Gopinath made reference to initiatives in India, including Navdanyaand the work of Dr Vandana Shiva in exposing how women work most directly with the earth’s resources. They are ‘seed-keepers’, leading communities in conserving natural resources and adapting food consumption practices; they have a societal role as peacebuilders holding communities together by ensuring food security through the maintenance of crops and agricultural patterns which resist the repercussions of land use changes.

 

Dr Gopinath stressed the strategic role of women organisations in bridging the gap between development and security since they can reach out to and capitalise on women’s community roles for post-conflict rehabilitation and reconstruction. This is increasingly relevant since sites of conflict are no longer exclusive to the battlefield, but have been extended to non-conventional arenas such as village wells or market places. This is attributable to a growth in the culture of militarism.

 

A representative phenomenon is the increased use of private security and military companies in situations of conflict and violence, for example, in Iraq. These agencies remove accountability from the actor and constitute a re-configuration of ethics and morality in militarisation, resulting in women’s voices being completely erased. Dr Gopinath highlighted the importance of further research into: the nature and trends of the empowerment of women at the forefront of struggles, the sustainability and the impacts of this empowerment in post-conflict or disaster situations, and the changing dynamics at the household, community or societal levels.

 

Dr Gopinath indicated that bridging the gap between security and development necessitates the progression of the international development discourse from one focused on rights and entitlement to one emphasising capabilities. The international development discourse is a vital aspect of conventional security and policymaking approaches, as it enables such policies and approaches to be cross-referenced with the contemporary needs of good governance and the fulfilment of the potential of individuals.

 

 

In the ensuing discussion, Dr Gopinath re-asserted that gender analysis facilitates critical inquiry into the approaches and dynamics of societal resilience when faced with non-traditional security threats. Through the examples of dalit (low-caste) women and women embroiled in the Gujerat riots (which were based on religious differences) who have been advocating against their conditions in India, she noted the necessity for women to engage with civil society to bring their protection needs into the public sphere. Their contributions to the public sphere will impact on the way issues are framed for political consideration.

 

The active engagement of women in the public sphere will facilitate a reconstruction of the victimhood often associated with them. Increased advocacy activities by women which are focused on their experiences and concerns will allow investigation into the spaces of agency they can utilise within the larger sociopolitical sphere. In relation to this, Dr Gopinath explained that the essence of protection of civilians in humanitarian interventions is in a people-centric outreach to victims. The lack of involvement of women in peacekeeping and peacebuilding roles leaves significant gaps in the effectiveness of such outreach efforts. The general recognition that women can be agents who can be socialised into traditional security discourses to build constituencies of peace, as seen in the health sector in Afghanistan, needs further traction.

 

Dr Gopinath thought that the consolidation of various women-based divisions within the United Nations (UN) through the newly formed UN Women was a good idea. Nevertheless, Dr Gopinath stressed the more important agenda is not, as tends to be the case, mainstreaming. Whilst the UN offers strategic support by providing the moral and normative mandates, there remains the need for commitment of resources and infrastructure to ensure the implementation of gender-streaming into policy frameworks. Therefore, it is important that women’s views and participation at the societal and national levels is encouraged, to ensure that gender issues are not merely mainstreamed but that the discourse facilitates a better understanding of the dynamics of security and international affairs.

 

As part of the seminar, which included both male and female participants, it was acknowledged that women are to an extent guilty of perpetrating stereotypes. It was Dr Gopinath’s position that a gender framework of analysis is one which illustrates the pressures of stereotypes experienced by both men and women, necessitating the contribution of both men and women to the discourse.

 

Dr Gopinath highlighted that the nature of the political environment in individual countries contributes to the extent and impact of women’s advocacy in the public sphere. For example, India’s participatory democracy and culture of judicial activism support, or at least do not inhibit, the myriad social movements involving women.

About the speaker:

 

Dr Meenakshi Gopinath has held the position of Principal of Lady Shri Ram College since 1988. Ranked among the best institutions of higher learning in India, the centre seeks to educate women to assume positions of leadership in society and strives to fashion best practices in democratic governance while celebrating diversity, inclusivity and gender sensitivity. After graduating with Honours in Political Science from Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi, Dr Gopinath obtained her Master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, USA, and her doctorate from the University of Delhi. She conducted her post-doctoral work as a Fulbright Scholar in Georgetown University, USA. 

Dr Gopinath is also the Founder and Honorary Director of WISCOMP (Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace); an initiative that began in 1999 to promote the leadership of South Asian women in the areas of international politics, peace, security and diplomacy.  WISCOMP provides a unique space for collaborative action research and peacebuilding networks in the South Asian region and works at the interface of theory and practice, i.e., the academia and the NGO sector. 

A member of multi-track peace initiatives such as the longest sustaining Track II Neemrana Initiative between India and Pakistan, Dr Gopinath was the first woman to serve on the National Security Advisory Board of India (2004–2006) where she sought to mainstream gender and human security concerns. She serves on several governing boards. These include: Co-Chair of the International Academic Council, University of Peace, Costa Rica; and Member of the Governing Board of Co-existence International, Brandeis University, USA among others. She also serves on the boards of the Sarvodaya International Trust, the Centre for Policy Research and the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, to name a few. 

In recognition of her contributions to the field of women’s education and empowerment, she was conferred numerous awards including the Padma Shri Award, the Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi Award and the Rajiv Gandhi Award for Excellence in Education. 

Dr Gopinath is the author of Pakistan in Transition (1975); and co-author of Conflict Resolution – Trends and Prospects (2003), Transcending Conflict: A Resource Book on Conflict Transformation (2004) and Dialogic Engagement (2005). She has also contributed chapters to edited volumes and several articles on issues of Gandhian thought, security, gender, peacebuilding and Indian politics.