Publication

Seeking Gender Justice in Post-Conflict Transitions: Towards a Transformative Women's Human Rights Approach

Reilly, Niamh
Citation
Reilly, Niamh Seeking gender justice in post-conflict transitions: towards a transformative women's human rights approach, International Journal of Law in Context (2007), 3: 155-172 Copyright Cambridge University Press 2007
Abstract
This article critically examines the prospects for achieving a comprehensive vision of gender justice in post-conflict transitional contexts. It is divided into three main sections. The first reviews the gendered limits of mainstream approaches to transitional justice and highlights gender biases in related dominant discourses, which shape how conflict, and transitions from conflict, are understood and enacted to the detriment of women. The second focuses on the benefits and limitations of engendering wartime criminal justice with particular reference to the International Criminal Court. The third considers the prospects for a more comprehensive approach to gender justice that shifts the emphasis from 'women as victims' of conflict to women as agents of transformation, through an examination of the significance of Security Council Resolution 1325. Ultimately, the author argues that achieving gender justice in transitions is inextricably tied to wider bottom-up efforts by women's movements to realise a comprehensive vision of women's human rights within a framework of critically-interpreted, universal, indivisible human rights.
Funder
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publisher DOI
10.1017/S1744552307002054
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland