“Converting cultures of impunity into cultures of deterrence”
Analysing discourses of sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence
Master’s thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the MSc Crisis and Security Management at Leiden University
Student: Nina Krijnen LLM Student number: 2161893 Supervisor: Stef Wittendorp MA Second reader: Dr. Eamon Aloyo
Words: 21,788 (excluding bibliography)
June 6, 2019 The Hague
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Abstract
International attention is increasingly directed at the use of sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence as part of the broader Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. The development of the UN sanctions structure indicates that sanctions are a well-established measure. However, practice demonstrates that this understanding is more fluid. This thesis takes a poststructural approach to understand how the Security Council discursively constitutes sanctions as an instrument to deal with conflict-related sexual violence. It looks at language to unpack what is regarded a ‘sanctionable’ crime and how this understanding is constructed. The analysis exposed the political power relations that were produced in a so-called Arria meeting of the Council. By scrutinizing conflict-related sexual violence as a problematization, constructions of Self/Othering, responsibilization, intertextuality, and marginalisation were identified. The tensions and inconsistencies within these constructions were analysed. It appeared that there is evidence of an emerging norm to condemn sexual violence as a weapon of war and as a violation that should be acted upon by the Security Council. The narratives of production resulted in a critique focused on victimization, selectivity, and gender. It was found that these narratives produce, and are productive of, the political power of the Council in seeking to (re)legitimize its authority. The analysis illustrated the Council’s superficiality in pushing for a transformative implementation of the WPS agenda by highlighting that the discussion on sexual violence is not as self-evident as is believed. This thesis underlined the importance of studying language to understand the political incisions that are inherent to it.
KEYWORDS: conflict-related sexual violence, WPS, sanctions, United Nations Security
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Table of contents
1. Introduction 7
1.1 Introduction 7
1.2 Background and statement of the problem 8
1.2.1 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) 8
1.2.2 The UN sanctions architecture 9
1.2.3 Conflict-related sexual violence 11
1.2.4 UN sanctions and conflict-related sexual violence 13
1.3 Significance of the study 14
1.4 Purpose of the study 17
1.5 Research question 18
1.6 Outline of the study 19
2. Theoretical framework 20
2.1 Introduction 20
2.2 Philosophy of science 20
2.3 Discourse 20
2.4 Identity 22
2.5 The UNSC as a discursive practice: Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) 23
2.6 Discursive practices of gender and violence 25
2.7 Conclusion 27 3. Methodology 28 3.1 Introduction 28 3.2 Philosophy of science 28 3.3 Operationalization 28 3.4 Data 31 3.5 Limitations 35 3.6 Conclusion 36 4. Analysis 37 4.1 Introduction 37
5 4.2.1 Conflict-related sexual violence as a problematization 38
4.2.2 Self/Othering 40
4.2.3 Responsibilization 43
4.2.4 Intertextuality 45
4.2.5 Marginalization/silencing 48
4.3 Challenging the narratives 50
4.3.1 Victimization 51 4.3.2 Selectivity 53 4.3.3 Gender 55 4.5 Conclusion 56 5. Conclusion 57 5.1 Conclusion 57 5.2 Discussion 59
5.3 Limitations and recommendations for future research 61
6. Bibliography 62
7. Appendix 72
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List of abbreviations:
CAAC Children and Armed Conflict
DAW Division for the Advancement of Women DPA Department of Political Affairs
EU European Union
ECR European Court Reports
GC Geneva Convention
ICISS International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty IHL International humanitarian law
ISIL Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant NGO Non-governmental organization
NGO WG NGO Working Group
OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
R2P Responsibility to protect
SCAD Security Council Affairs Division
SG Secretary-General
SRSG Special Representative of the Secretary-General
UN United Nations
UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women UNSC United Nations Security Council
UNTS United Nations Treaties Collection
WILPF Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
WPS Women, Peace, and Security
Reader’s guide:
In the interest of the interdisciplinary nature of the sources used in this thesis, two reference styles were combined. In-text citation was used based on Harvard style referencing. In order to accommodate legal sources and UN documents, footnotes were used. The bibliography of this thesis contains an overview of each of these sources including UN documents that were in used in this thesis such as, inter alia, resolutions, reports, meetings, and speeches.
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1. Introduction
1.1 Introduction
“We women do not have a choice. There is no alternative for us. If we go by the main road, we are raped. If we go by the bush, we are raped. I was raped among others in the same area repeatedly on three different occasions. We avoided the road because we heard horrible stories that women and girls are grabbed while passing through and are raped, but the same happened to us. There is no escape - we are all raped.”
-Thirty-year-old survivor from Koch County, South Sudan (OHCHR, 2019: 9).
Violence flares regularly between opposing sides in conflict during time of war. However, incidents and manifestations of violence differ, since violence is not a uniform phenomenon (Freeman et al., 2012: 473). As illustrated in the quote above, conflict-related sexual violence can take gruesome and horrific forms. It has made scholars, policy advisers, and international organizations rethink the elements of violence in war. This begs the question ‘what counts as violence?’
A linkage between sexual violence and the United Nations Security Council1 agenda
commenced when the Council adopted resolution 1820.2 In this resolution, the Council
recognized the use of sexual violence as a deliberate tactic of war and a threat to international peace and security. Consequently, significant attention has culminated in initiatives on the national, regional, and international level to take action against sexual violence in conflict. In November 2018, the Dutch parliament initiated a debate on the possibility to impose a global thematic sanctions regime to tackle sexual violence (Tweede Kamer der Staten Generaal, 2018). At the same time, the European Union was discussing a new EU global human rights sanctions regime that would merit listing for crimes such as human trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence (EU Observer, 2018). This initiative was supported in an open letter by 90 non-governmental organizations (Netherlands Helsinki Committee, 2018). Both proposals for these sanctions regimes dedicate specific attention to tackling sexual violence. Conflict-related sexual violence has therefore been problematized as international actors are currently discussing whether it counts as a ‘sanctionable crime’. This question calls for a method that unpacks the political context of this ongoing discussion.
1Hereafter ‘Council’ or ‘UNSC’. 2 S/RES/1820 (2008).
8 Against this background, I will elaborate on ways for the international community to respond to these mass atrocities. After presenting a statement of the problem, I will discuss the purpose and significance of this thesis. Here, I will justify my decision for focusing specifically on the discussion on targeted UN sanctions in addressing conflict-related sexual violence by mapping the societal and academic relevance. Finally, the central research question will be presented as well as an outline of this thesis.
1.2 Background and statement of the problem
1.2.1 Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
As illustrated in the section above, mass atrocities – understood as war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide – continue to be a frequently recurring phenomenon (Bellamy, 2018: 237). Killing fields in Cambodia, the genocide in Rwanda, and the Yugoslav wars illustrate that the international community has not always been able to respond efficiently and timely to such abhorrent acts. These scars of the 20th century demonstrate that the international community ought to take action.
In 1999, Kofi Annan, urged United Nations member states to find a way to respond to these dilemmas.3 The Canadian government answered this call by establishing the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The ICISS released their report, titled The Responsibility to Protect, in 2001 which introduced a response to Annan’s call in the form of the responsibility to protect (R2P). It consists of three elements: the responsibility to prevent, the responsibility to react, and the responsibility to rebuild (ICISS, 2001). Core principles of the ICISS report include the basic principles that “state sovereignty implies responsibility”, and secondly, that the principles of non-intervention yield to R2P in cases where a population suffers serious harm (Evans, 2008: 40).
Four years later at the World Summit, heads of state unanimously committed to adopt this new principle.4 R2P was presented in three non-sequential pillars. First, states are
responsible for the protection of its population against mass atrocities.5 Second, it is the
international community’s responsibility to assist other states in fulfilling the first pillar.6 Third,
when a state fails to protect its own population against any of the four mass atrocity crimes, it
3SG/SM/7136 (1999). 4 A/60/L.1 (2005). 5 Ibid, para 138. 6 Ibid, para 139.
9 is up to the international community to take action under Chapter VI, or if that fails, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.7 Chapter VII enforcement measures include both military and
non-military measures.
1.2.2 The UN sanctions architecture
When doing nothing is not an option, the next question is: what can the international community do instead of turning to the use of force? The collective security mechanism established in the UN Charter created a leading role for the Security Council. Article 39 of the Charter states that the Council can take measures in case of “a threat to peace, breach of peace, or act of aggression.”8 These measures range from provisional measures9 to forcible
measures.10 There are several non-military conflict prevention tools in R2P’s third pillar
available to the international community to combat mass atrocities (Welsh, 2015: 103). Action can be taken through diplomacy, sanctions, criminal prosecution, mediation, arms embargoes, or non-violent resistance (Pattison, 2018: 1).
This thesis will zoom in on one of these tools, namely targeted sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. The legal basis for the implementation of UN sanctions can be found in article 41 of the Charter:
“The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.”11
Sanctions comprise a coercive measure under Chapter VII. Member states are therefore obligated to implement the use of sanctions by the Council. These measures could include arms embargoes, financial sanctions, trade restrictions, or travel bans (Welsh, 2015: 112). Since the end of the Cold War, the Council has moved away from using comprehensive sanctions. The economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s demonstrated the negative effects of comprehensive sanctions as they victimized the entire population rather than specific targets (Huvé, 2018: 1). Since then, the Council restructured its sanctions architecture to focus on 7 Ibid. 8 UN Charter, art. 39. 9 Ibid, art. 40. 10 Ibid, art. 42. 11 Ibid, art. 41.
10 individuals and entities rather than entire populations (Eckert, Biersteker and Tourinho, 2016: 1). These kinds of sanctions are referred to as ‘smart sanctions’ or ‘targeted sanctions’. Legally speaking, targeted sanctions are not addressed to individuals because member states are the main addressee (Klabbers, 2013: 179). However, the aim of targeted sanctions is to limit the freedoms of individuals (ibid).
The Council follows a certain procedure when imposing sanctions. Once a situation is identified under article 41 of the Charter, a sanctions committee can be created to oversee the implementation of sanctions (ibid). The sanctions committee, referred to as a subsidiary organ of the Council,12 is chaired by a non-permanent Council member (UNSC, 2019: 4). The
sanctions committee identifies the individual or entity to whom sanctions could apply (Klabbers, 2013: 179). This occurs through ‘listing’. It comprises a request from one or several member states to list and subsequently sanction an individual or entity (ibid). The Council establishes designation criteria in order to list individuals or entities (UNSC, 2019: 7). These designation criteria consist of, but are not limited to, “threats to peace, security or stability; violations of human rights and international humanitarian law; obstructing humanitarian aid; recruiting or using children in armed conflicts; targeting civilians including killing and maiming, sexual and gender-based violence” (ibid). The work of the sanctions committee is supported by a Panel of Experts. This is a small independent team of investigators who monitor the implementation of sanctions on the ground (Eckert, 2016: 422). These panels report to their sanctions committee and are managed by the Security Council Affairs Division (SCAD) of the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) of the UN Secretariat (UNSC, 2019: 6).
It should be noted that this renewed type of targeted sanctions has received criticism. Within the broader literature on sanctions, scholars have studied the effectiveness and impact of sanctions (Biersteker, Tourhino and Eckert, 2016). Krain (2014; 2017) highlighted the effect of diplomatic and economic sanctions on genocide or politicides. For instance, Krain (2017: 103) found that sanctions did not have a large effect on the reduction of the magnitude of killings. Others have criticised the sanctions architecture for undermining the rule of law and see it as a tool that galvanises opposition for the UN to intervene (Farrall, 2007: 5-10). Alternatively, it has been pointed out that targeted sanctions alone are not sufficient for atrocity crime prevention (Sharma and Welsh, 2015: 12). Within the EU context, sanctions have also been criticized for lacking a proper delisting procedure (Van den Herik, 2007). Moreover, De Goede (2011) demonstrated the wider political implications by scrutinizing the exceptional and
11 pre-emptive nature of blacklisting and its subsequent deployment of human rights violations. This includes, inter alia, significant and unjustified restrictions of property rights and security action taken on the basis of lower standards of evidence, doubt, and suspicion (idem: 509). As discussed by Klabbers (2013: 180), blacklisting does not formally guarantee a fair trial.13
Fairness and clarity of the sanctions structure have thus gained significant attention, although directed mainly at the counter-terrorism context (Cockayne, Brubaker and Jayakody, 2018: 1). The ISIL (Da’esh) & Al-Qaida Sanctions List, pursuant to Council resolution 1267, is currently the only UN sanctions committee where petitioners can directly submit a delisting request.14
This has not been established in regards of other sanctions committees outside the terrorism sphere.
To sum up, sanctions have been used and studied in a variety of ways. They remain seen by international organizations, states, and scholars as an important coercive measure to counter mass atrocities. Eckert (2016: 413) described sanctions as “the instrument of choice in responding to contemporary international security dilemma.” Targeted sanctions have been widely recognized as a tool for the implementation of R2P and the prevention of mass atrocities (Pattison, 2018: 39). The ICISS (2001: 29) report included sanctions as “a measure short of military action” under the “responsibility to react”. Similarly, as R2P evolved, the Secretary-General of the United Nations recognized sanctions as an important tool for the implementation of pillar III of R2P.15 This highlights the significance of the sanctions tool. However, sanctions
can be used against numerous violations. In this thesis, I will focus specifically on sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence. I will explain this choice in the following sections by linking sanctions to conflict-related sexual violence and the Security Council context.
1.2.3 Conflict-related sexual violence
For centuries, sexual violence has been used in instances of war and conflict. Strikingly, there has been a long history of silence around conflict-related sexual violence. Despite widespread knowledge of its occurrence, “international recognition was almost completely stifled”
13 See also joined cases C-402/05 P and C-415/05 P, Kadi and Al Barakaat v. Council and Commission, [2008]
ECR I-6351 following case T-315/01, Kadi v. Council and Commission, [2005] ECR II-3649. This appeal set the famous example for how targeted sanctions may violate human rights principles such as access to justice, fair trial, and the right to property. According to Klabbers (2009: 180), this case demonstrated the “incompleteness of international law” and is regarded a warning to the Security Council to improve respect for human rights in its sanctions architecture.
14 S/RES/2368 (2017), paras 60-80. 15 A/63/677 (2009) and A/66/874 (2012).
12 (Crawford, 2013: 508). Most attention has been drawn to the consequences of sexual violence and possible international (legal) responses (Chinkin, 1994).
Conflict-related sexual violence can be defined in three different forms. First, it can be used for opportunistic purposes based on, for instance, private reasons of combatants unrelated to their military objectives (Huvé, 2018: 4). Second, conflict-related sexual violence is regarded a general practice when it is tolerated, although not ordered, by military commanders (ibid). Finally, conflict-related sexual violence can be defined as a weapon of war. It is then used for objectives such as, inter alia, “genocide (HIV contamination), ethnic cleansing (forced pregnancies), enslavement […], sexual torture of prisoners, spreading terror, punishment, and even forcibly displacing populations in order to redraw ethnic boundaries or control areas rich in natural resources” (ibid).
In 2008, Security Council resolution 1820 was passed in response to the endemic character of the use of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Solhjell, 2009: 5). This resolution was the first to explicitly recognize sexual violence as a deliberate tactic of war and threat to international peace and security (Scully, 2009: 116). The Council noted that:
“rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute a crime, a crime against humanity, or a consecutive act with respect to genocide”.16
Furthermore, the Council affirmed its intention:
“when establishing and renewing state-specific sanctions regimes, to take into consideration the appropriateness of targeted and graduated measures against parties to situations of armed conflict who commit rape and other forms of sexual violence against women and girls in situations of armed conflict.”17
This resolution was adopted unanimously. Its rhetoric had important consequences for the international legal status of sexual violence in post-conflict reconstruction (ibid). Furthermore, it is relevant because it was the first resolution in the context of sexual violence in which the Council noted that sanctions were to be imposed on parties to armed conflict.
16 S/RES/1820 (2008). 17 Ibid.
13 The passage of this resolution demonstrates the development of conflict-related sexual violence as a sanctionable crime as part of the broader Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. However, it has been argued that there has been quite some reluctance by the Council to address conflict-related sexual violence. This is for the reason that it took eight years since resolution 1325, the landmark resolution on WPS was passed in 2000 (Huvé, 2018: 5). By means of comparison, there was far greater progress on the Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) agenda after its first resolution was passed and followed by several resolutions threatening with sanctions (ibid).18 It was therefore concluded that the Council’s condemnation
of conflict-related sexual violence was politically more controversial than the abuse of children in war (ibid).
In conclusion, it seems that there is evidence of an emerging norm to condemn sexual violence as a weapon of war and as a violation that should be acted upon by the Security Council. The question then is, whether such a norm is either clear or ambiguous. So, what can the Council do?
1.2.4 UN sanctions and conflict-related sexual violence
Currently, the UN has 14 sanctions regimes in place. For this thesis, eight regimes are relevant because of their connection to sexual violence in human rights designation criteria or a specific sexual violence designation criterion. These include Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen. Of the other six regimes, two have been terminated (Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire). Four sanctions regimes do not include a reference to human rights criteria, hence sexual violence (Guinea-Bissau, Iraq, Lebanon, and North Korea). Finally, the regimes for Al-Qaida and the Taliban differ in terms of characteristics because of the counter-terrorism context. Of the aforementioned eight regimes with a connection to sexual violence, a total of 105 listings of individuals or entities exist. At the time of writing, only 16 of these listings were included for sexual violence (Huvé, 2018: 6). As argued by Huvé (ibid), it is notable that the Council “has never used women’s rights criteria (or any other human rights issue) as the sole basis for a designation”. This means that designations were always combined with other violations such as the criteria mentioned in section 1.2.2.
14 In 2017, the designation criterion for sexual violence was included for the first time in the sanctions regime against the Central African Republic.19 In 2018, this was applied to the
regimes in South Sudan and Libya.20 It is argued that the inclusion of this designation criterion signals “support for this norm and suggests a stronger will from the Council to deal with the issue of sexual violence, at least in this case” (Huvé, 2018: 6). Nevertheless, it has been argued that instances where sanctions were applied to protect populations from mass atrocity crimes are still relatively rare (Welsh, 2015: 114).
It has been concluded that the Council’s use of sanctions to address conflict-related sexual violence has not been consistent “across regimes, despite similar contexts and substantial expert evidence documenting the extent and nature of violence” (Huvé, 2018: 3). At the same time, the Secretary-General has urged to “include sexual violence as part of the designation criteria for sanctions.”21 There have been calls for the next step to formally and coherently sanction conflict-related sexual violence. It therefore seems that a norm has emerged, although inconsistency in the application of sanctions remains. To understand this paradox, it is necessary to study how the Council constitutes its sanctions tool. In other words, how does the Council make sense of it?
1.3 Significance of the study
Pattison (2018: 225) discussed alternatives to the use of force to prevent mass atrocities. In that regard, R2P should be seen as “mostly being about the alternatives” as opposed to resorting to war (ibid). Subsequently, the emphasis in debates about what action the international community ought to take, is primarily focussed on “sanctions, embargoes, naming and shaming […] rather than humanitarian intervention.” Of the aforementioned non-violent measures, sanctions remain among the most central (idem: 39). They are widely considered as a tool for the implementation of the R2P doctrine (ibid).
In order to link these conceptions of sanctions to the literature on conflict-related sexual violence, I will outline the broader scholarship on sexual violence and gender in the next chapter. Most of this research has looked into the creation of Security Council resolution 1325, a ground-breaking resolution that established the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda.22
It was the first Council resolution to acknowledge the severe impact of conflict on women and
19 S/RES/2339 (2017).
20 S/RES/2428 (2018) regarding the sanctions regime on South Sudan and S/RES/2441 (2018) regarding the
sanctions regime on Libya.
21 S/2018/250 (2018). 22 S/RES/1325 (2000).
15 girls (Arrousi, 2011: 577). Many studies have researched the implementation of resolution 1325 or have considered the narratives, frames, and representations of the WPS discourse (Gibbings, 2011; Shepherd, 2008). For example, Shepherd (2008) investigated the discursive construction of gender, violence, and security by analysing the WPS agenda. She offered a re-conceptualisation of gendered violence in relation to security by problematizing the relation between the two. I will come back to Shepherd’s work throughout this thesis. The extensive body of research regarding WPS is central to this thesis but cannot be addressed in its entirety. I will therefore focus on the WPS agenda as a broader context out of which attention for conflict-related sexual violence emerged. My focus on sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence is therefore situated within the broader discursive structure of the WPS agenda. I will develop the conjunction between the WPS agenda and targeted sanctions further in the theoretical framework of the next chapter.
In consideration of this background, it should be noted that since the adoption of resolution 1820, the Council has initiated to consider addressing sexual violence more frequently in general debates and in its sanctions regimes specifically. Against the backdrop of widespread use of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this resolution recognized the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and is thus central to the WPS agenda (Solhjell, 2009: 5). With regards to conflict-related sexual violence, it has been argued, in the literature as well as in practice, that sanctions could provide for “a valuable tool to prevent, curb, or end sexual violence in conflict around the world” (Huvé, 2018: 30). Aside from the Georgetown review by Sophie Huvé (2018), there are no other sources that specifically analyse the use of targeted UN sanctions related to conflict-related sexual violence.
As outlined above, this is academically relevant because of the limited amount of literature that explores how sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence are used. Moreover, as advocated by Pattison (2018), more attention needs to be drawn to considering non-military measures in response to atrocities. Sanctions are one of the suggested measures. To be more specific, Charron (2013: 78) even defined the question of greater understanding of the UN sanctions architecture as the “Holy Grail for sanctions scholars.” The significance of this study therefore is to understand how exactly the Council makes sense of its sanctions architecture in relation to sexual violence. This ‘sense-making’ and its theoretical background will be addressed in the next chapter.
At the time of writing, there has been one meeting of the Council, an Arria formula meeting, which specifically addresses UN sanctions for conflict-related sexual violence. This so-called Arria meeting, named after the Venezuelan ambassador Diego Arria, is an informal
16 Council meeting that is organized at the initiative of a Council member. It allows for a greater degree of flexibility in briefings related to peace and security issues (Paul, 2003). Arria formula meetings are used more frequently and are growing in importance because of “the mixture of informality and formality” (ibid). It should be pointed out that Arria meetings do not result in an official outcome. Therefore, as an international actor, the Council does not produce any binding documents in such a meeting.23 However, the topics discussed in Arria meetings do
signify the Council’s symbolic power and the informal development of certain topics (Hurd, 2002: 39). Furthermore, Wenaweser (2016: 177) demonstrated that Arria meetings can also be instrumental in “bringing about changes from within the Council.” It shows that elected Council members are able to bring up more sensitive issues. This is relevant because some of these topics might not (yet) be on the official Council agenda. Arria formula meetings are generally regarded as one of the most important innovations in terms of the Council’s working methods (ibid).
For this thesis, I have chosen to focus on one of these Arria meetings as a vehicle of analysis. This meeting was the first of its kind to directly ask Council members how they would assess the use of sanctions directed at conflict-related sexual violence and to what extent the Council can improve it. As the meeting took place in October 2018, this thesis contributes to the literature by analysing the Council’s understanding of sanctions in a new light by using a new data set. It also significantly adds to the limited amount of literature on sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence. The Arria meeting, in light of the development of the WPS agenda, will provide for the main source of data for this thesis. I will justify this decision in chapter 3.
On a societal level, the relevance of this thesis is two-fold. First, it can be found in the growing number of instances of conflict-related sexual violence as a war crime and crime against humanity. As outlined by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Sexual Violence in Conflict, Ms. Pramila Patten (2018),
“[t]he past decade of enhanced political momentum to combat sexual violence has coincided with a confluence of global crises, including mass migration and displacement, rising violent extremism and terrorism, the resurgence and spread of conflict, and the proliferation of arms. These factors have created the conditions for renewed patterns of violations.”
17 Her statement underlines the urgency of this phenomenon and the growing need for understanding as well as action. Secondly, as outlined above, the use of sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence has gained attention in the broader global context, such as within the European Union and the Netherlands. While being an understudied phenomenon, sexual violence occurs on a large scale. Although labelled as a threat to international peace and security, conflict-related sexual violence is often not recognized as a sanctionable crime (Huvé, 2018: 3). The relevance and necessity for the use of sanctions addressing sexual violence is therefore an important topic on the international agenda of the UN. It is thus relevant to continue furthering the research agenda on the understanding of this tool. I will do so within the context of the Security Council.
1.4 Purpose of the study
While the Council’s use of targeted sanctions has been criticized, it is clear that the Council will not remove this concept from its toolkit to safeguard international peace and security (Farrall, 2007: 5). It is therefore crucial to continue research projects that contribute to understanding the Council’s conception of this tool. As described in the previous section, most scholarship on the use of UN sanctions has focused on questions of legality and impact. This leaves room to examine the political aspect of sanctions.
Targeted UN sanctions can be imposed on individuals and entities to prevent certain behaviour or actions. By tracking the resolutions amending or installing sanctions regimes, it can be identified which phenomena are sanctioned (Huvé, 2018: 32). For instance, the Council imposed a complete arms embargo on Somalia as well an assets freeze, charcoal ban, and travel ban due to, inter alia, “the heavy loss of human life and widespread material damage resulting from the conflict.”24 The designation criteria of the sanctions regime in Somalia include, but
are not limited to,
“Acting in violation of the arms embargo or the arms resale and transfer restrictions; Recruiting or using children in armed conflicts in violation of applicable international law by political or military leaders; Engaging in the export or direct or indirect import of charcoal from Somalia.” (UNSC, 2019: 8).
The designation criteria determine under which circumstances sanctions can be imposed. In other words, whether a phenomenon can be sanctioned, is dependent on when the Council decides for it to be a ‘sanctionable’ action. Conflict-related sexual violence therefore provides
18 for an interesting case as this phenomenon has only been included in some sanctions regimes. The Council’s use of sanctions to address conflict-related sexual violence has been inconsistent across several sanctions regimes (Huvé, 2018: 3; Happold, 2017: 135). This is striking because of the similarity in context and substantial amount of expert evidence that documents the nature of sexual violence in conflict (ibid). The past decade has illustrated developments within the sanctions architecture addressing conflict-related sexual violence (idem: 12). Nevertheless, practice illustrates inconsistencies as well as potential.
There are several ways to analyze developments within the international debate about conflict-related sexual violence and the use of sanctions to counter this abhorrent act. In this thesis, I will employ a poststructuralist approach to address the issue by studying discourse. The development of the UN sanctions structure indicates that sanctions are a well-established measure. However, practice demonstrates that this understanding is more fluid. A discourse-theoretical analysis provides for an appropriate analytical strategy to understand what the Council considers a sanctionable crime. Interpretation and meaning-making are at the heart of the notion of discourse. This study thus aims to understand the discursive practices in discussions on sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence. Its significance therefore stems from the use of a different approach to map the positioning of sanctions. To achieve this understanding, a qualitative approach will be taken to inductively identify how the Council makes sense of what counts as a sanctionable crime. And, more importantly, what the effects of this conception are in terms of the debate about conflict-related sexual violence. As argued by Gibbings (2011: 527), language is one of the key ways in which power is negotiated at the United Nations. Understanding this language and the effects that it has, opens up a new way of researching UN sanctions. It is particularly relevant since the topic is gaining attention within, as well as outside the UN sphere.
1.5 Research question
In order to analyse how the United Nations Security Council understands the sanctions tool in this particular context, the following research question was established:
How does the United Nations Security Council discursively constitute sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence?
19 - How do Council members define the problem of conflict-related sexual violence on
which sanctions can be imposed?
- Which categorizations are present in this discourse? - Who is (dis)empowered within this discourse? - What are the effects of this understanding?
A few remarks about the formulation of the research question are in order. This question assumes that language matters as a shaping force of how we look at the world. Hence, it calls for a specific theoretical and methodological approach which I will turn to in the next two chapters. This means that I am leaving aside several other relevant questions that could have been posed in light of the societal and academic relevance of this topic. I am, for instance, not looking at how sanctions have been imposed on certain actors, for which reasons, or on what legal grounds. Some of these questions have been addressed in other studies as mentioned in section 1.3. Rather, my aim is to problematize the way in which Council members position the sanctions tool addressing conflict-related sexual violence.
1.6 Outline of the study
This thesis is outlined as follows: the next chapter maps existing literature on discourse. I will discuss identity, power, and knowledge in greater detail before connecting these concepts to the topic of this thesis. I will then link discourse to conflict-related sexual violence as part of the WPS agenda. In chapter 3, the methodology of this thesis will be presented. It explores the ontological and epistemological implications for the construction of this methodology and explains the procedure for ‘doing discourse’. In chapter 4, I provide a discourse-theoretical reading of the Security Council’s positioning of sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence. After establishing a problematization, I analyse the discourses in this debate and challenge their narratives. The concluding chapter draws together the strands of my critique by answering the central research question. I will reflect on the findings by contextualizing them in a discussion on the implications and limitations of this thesis.
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2. Theoretical framework
2.1 Introduction
The previous chapter set the scene for this thesis. In order to study how the Security Council positions targeted sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence, it is necessary to look at the language that is used regarding this topic. In this chapter, I will therefore outline the key literature that comprises the theoretical framework of discourse analysis. First, the philosophy of science that is used in this thesis will be considered. Second, I will discuss relevant literature on discourse analysis. Finally, I will zoom in on the discursive practices of the Security Council, gender, and violence.
2.2 Philosophy of science
At the outset, it should be emphasized that the underlying philosophy of science that is at the heart of this thesis, is inherently different from rationalism’s positivist accounts. Positivists aim to identify causality by the detection of “regular patterns of observable behavior” (Kurki and Wight, 2013: 22). Rather, I employ a poststructural approach that rejects the idea that science produces true knowledge. This philosophy of science regards knowledge as claims that “can never be formulated outside the influence of a social and political context” (ibid). Therefore, knowledge is politically consequential. This implies that reality is always produced through discursive practices implicated by the power relations of a social system (ibid). It requires to look at ‘how’ we speak. In other words, how we use language to represent the world. This “particular way of talking about and understanding the world (or an aspect of the world)” is referred to as discourse (Jorgensen and Philips, 2002: 1).
2.3 Discourse
Poststructuralism engages the politics of identity, the knowledge/power nexus, and the importance of representation (Campbell, 2013: 223). Poststructural research addresses these issues directly by exploring “the assumptions that make certain ways of being, acting, and knowing possible” (ibid). The social world in which these identities exist, is construed by discourses (Dowding, 2016: 76). A focus on discourse is present in a variety of academic disciplines such as, sociology, philosophy, critical theory, and psychology (Mills, 1997: 1). In IR, a growing body of scholarship applying discourse analysis can be identified (Vromen, 2018: 251). Several assumptions are essential for the reasoning behind discourse. First, it is assumed that shared meanings are established through practice. This is referred to as
21 intersubjectivity. Second, reproduction is necessary for discourses to continue to exist. Third, inclusion and exclusion can be identified in the power relations within discourse. I will introduce these key principles in the following paragraphs.
Shepherd (2008: 20) described discourses as “systems of meaning-production rather than simply statements or language, systems that ‘fix’ meaning, however temporarily, and enable us to make sense of the world.” The word ‘fix’ in this definition demonstrates the poststructural conceptualization that discourses are fluid and open (ibid). This shared meaning through practice is referred to as intersubjectivity. This theoretical conceptualization has consequences for the strategy of analysing discourse. Foucault (1972: 49) argued that discourse analysis “consists of not – of no longer – treating discourses as groups of signs […] but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak”. As highlighted by Foucault, it is therefore closely linked to identity, subjectivity, and power (Campbell, 2013: 223).
Discourse is regarded a power practice because it is not simply a description of objects. Rather, discourses ‘do’ something by fixing meaning (Ahall, 2018: 90). To that end, discourses, (re)produce meaning.25 This reproduction forms the second assumption of the reasoning behind
discourse. By analysing discourse, one can ‘see’ how meaning and knowledge of a certain concept are created through language (idem: 89). Consequently, it is possible to uncover the constructions that enable certain practices while at the same time excluding others (ibid).
The inclusion and exclusion that is enabled through power comprises the third assumption of discourse. It helps to identify how power relations are reflected or reinforced through language. In order to unpack how meaning is produced, rather than focusing on why it has been produced, power is problematized in poststructural scholarship (ibid). Power in this sense does not refer to military power that destructs. Rather, it involves political power that is engrained in language and meaning-making (ibid). This means that power is productive as it creates and shapes social relations. This renders every aspect of the social world, be it decisions or representations, as political (Shepherd, 2008: 22). Therefore, discourse analysis consists of “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972: 49). This demonstrates the performative power of discourses.
25 I am using brackets around (re)presentation to show that the construction or (re)legitimization of these practices
is an ever-ongoing process. Similarly, Shepherd (2008: 175) argued that this bracketing is necessary to demonstrate that “these practices do not conjure fully formed objects, subjects, and the relationships between them within a given discursive terrain but draw on existing knowledge.”
22 2.4 Identity
Within the broader context of discourse, several concepts should be discussed in greater detail. In this section, I will first address the notion of identity in relation to discourse. Inspired by Derridian accounts of language and the process of meaning-making, Campbell (1992: 8) argued that the constitution of identity is not fixed by social practices based on differentiation. He maintained that identity is constituted by the demarcation of “an ‘inside’ from an ‘outside’, a ‘self’ from an ‘other’, a ‘domestic’ from a foreign’” (ibid). Identity is thus ordered in relation to something else. Following this construction, Campbell (ibid) argued that the identity of a state is not given but performed in relation to others. Similarly, in Security as Practice, Lene Hansen (2006) presented a poststructuralist account of a methodology of discourse analysis. By building on earlier work by Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, and Laclau and Mouffe, she presented a theoretical framework of the relationship between identity and foreign policy. Here, it was argued that “the assumption that foreign policies draw upon representations of identity is linked to a conceptualization of identity as discursive, political, relational, and social” (idem: 5). This means that the nature of identity is placed within an interpretative optic. In other words, identity is constructed through discourse (ibid).
Following this stream of thought, a relational conception of identity is employed (idem: 6). Hence, meaning-making depends on the process of identification and differentiation at the same time. Consequently, identity is understood in relation to something else. For example, one can only speak of ‘European’ by constituting a ‘non-European’. This conceptualization as social, discursive, political, and relational implies that a Self and an Other or series of Others, are articulated (ibid). Therefore, identity is contained in the meaning provided by discourse (Dowding, 2016: 76). This means that discourses are performative supposing that practices of othering forge power relations through inclusion and exclusion. While some identities are reinforced, others are excluded. Representations of identity are therefore “never merely descriptive, but always normative, and, as such, exclusionary” (Butler, 1994: 166).
In short, in poststructuralist research, formulations of identity rely on the concept of performativity. By arguing that discourses are performative, it follows that they produce a series of effects (Campbell, 2013: 235). Judith Butler’s notion of performativity has gained significant attention in this regard. Butler’s work is said to have transformed the way we think about sex, gender, and language because of the way she traced the processes of constructing “sexed, gendered and raced identities” (Salih, 2002: 2). Butler linked the notion of performativity to gender. Gender is performative as it is “always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed” (Butler, 1990: 25). According to Butlers
23 (ibid), we act as if being a man or a woman is an internal reality, a fact about us. Rather, it is a phenomenon that is (re)produced through interactions all the time.
2.5 The UNSC as a discursive practice: Women, Peace, and Security (WPS)
The conceptualizations outlined above do not only apply to people, they also play an important role in understanding organizations. Barnett and Finnemore (1999: 703) concluded that international organizations are to be treated as social facts. They are formed by, and respond to, normative and cultural forces that “shape how organizations see the world and conceptualize their own missions” (ibid). The naming or labelling of a social context is argued to establish parameters of acceptable action (Hansen, 2006: 11). Taking this action into account, it is argued that policies within such an international organization depend upon representations of a security problem (idem: 5).
The aim of this thesis is to understand the constitutive relationship between identity and policies of the United Nations Security Council. Hansen (2006: preface) argued that “foreign policies need an account, or a story, of the problems and issues they are trying to address.” For example, in order for an actor to take action, a rationale or description of a situation is required (ibid). In other words, a theoretical account of foreign policy as discourse is “to argue that identity and policy are constituted through a process of narrative adjustment” (ibid). In this thesis, I will focus on one of the issues that has gained attention of the Council in the past decade, namely sexual violence. This issue is part of the broader Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. It is necessary to map the context preceding the discussion on sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence. I will therefore elaborate on WPS below.
As briefly discussed in the previous chapter, the WPS agenda comprises a policy architecture established in Security Council resolution 1325.26 This Council resolution
recognized that:
“an understanding of the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, effective institutional arrangements to guarantee their protection and full participation in the peace process can significantly contribute to the maintenance and promotion of international peace and security.”27
The foundation of the WPS agenda consists of four priority areas, so-called pillars, related to peace and security: equal and full participation of women in promoting peace and security at
26 S/RES/1325 (2000). 27 Idem, preamble.
24 all decision-making levels; the role of women in the prevention of conflict; protection of the rights, needs, and bodies of women; and relief and recovery for women to provide access to livelihoods.28 Together with seven subsequent Council resolutions, these documents comprise
the “cross-cutting WPS agenda” (Davies and True, 2019: 3).29 The resolutions are closely
linked to the protection of civilians in armed conflict and the children in armed conflict framework (Shepherd, 2008: 108).
The WPS architecture came about because of the efforts of a wide network of activists, scholars, policymakers, and political leaders (Davies and True, 2019: 4). On October 23, 2000, NGOs with female representatives from Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Guatemala addressed the Security Council in an Arria formula meeting to discuss the role of women in peace and security (Hill et al., 2003: 1255). This was the first time that civil society had the opportunity to engage directly with the Council on this topic. The Arria meeting was the result of cooperation between grassroots civil society activists, the Namibian permanent mission – Namibia was Council president at the time – the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), UNIFEM, and NGOs (idem: 1256). One day after the Arria meeting, the Council held an open session after which it unanimously passed resolution 1325 (ibid). It was applauded by the NGO Working Group (NGO WG as cited in Shepherd, 2008: 140) as “a historic event and a significant opportunity to move the agenda forward.” The Council had previously discussed issues related to gender-specific conditions and had condemned women’s suffering in conflict (ibid). However, this was never integrated in a resolution, nor in the Council’s activities (ibid).
The Security Council is considered the primary place to examine the meaning of WPS discourse (Davies and True, 2019: 9). The discursive practices of the Council that are inherent to the WPS agenda have been outlined by academics as well as civil society organizations (ibid). For instance, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF, 2019) has pointed to the production of critical narratives related to patriarchy, inequalities, violent masculinities, and polarisation. The WPS agenda can be considered in this light as it challenges particular dominant identities at the Security Council level. Moreover, it is argued that Council resolutions are productive of a certain identity and content of the WPS agenda (Ní Aoláin and Valji, 2019: 53). Furthermore, the Council has drastically increased its awareness of WPS as “diplomacy has been strong on both sides” (Davies and True, 2019: 7). WPS is still a relatively young framework of norms and practices in comparison to fixed bodies of rules such as
28 S/2010/498 (2010).
29 S/RES/1820 (2009), S/RES/1888 (2009), S/RES/1889 (2010), S/RES/1960 (2011), S/RES/2106 (2013),
25 international humanitarian law or the human rights framework (Chinkin as cited in Ní Aoláin and Valji, 2019: 54). However, narratives of the production of WPS are important for the analysis that I will undertake regarding sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence.
2.6 Discursive practices of gender and violence
In order to understand the trajectory and development of discourses of sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence, it is necessary to look at the frames that actors use to describe sexual violence (Crawford, 2013: 507). As briefly touched upon in the previous chapter, conflict related-sexual violence has been included in a broad range of scholarship related to violence and gender (Ní Aoláin and Valji, 2019: 53). It is premised that “gender matters in/to both the WPS agenda and R2P discourse” (Hall and Shepherd, 2013: 53). Analytically, gender is understood as being more than a given. It demonstrates “a logic that organizes text and speech” (ibid). Accordingly, it is seen as a social construct. In Gender, violence and security: Discourse as practice, Laura Shepherd (2008) studied the politicisation of gender structures and their discursive effects in policy and practice. Shepherd (ibid) demonstrated how gender in international security is made meaningful in terms of social, cultural, and political interaction. She set out to illustrate what it means to look at gender, violence, and security from a discursive perspective. This work was inspired by Judith Butler’s (1990: 33) conceptualization of gender:
“[g]ender is always a doing, though not by a subject who might be said to pre-exist the deed. […] There is no gender identity behind the expression of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results”.
This ‘doing’, as described above, refers to the way in which gender is “produced and maintained” in cultural interactions (Butler, 1999: 6). Gender is therefore only considered real “to the extent that it is performed” (Butler, 1988: 527). The performativity of gender shows that this approach is much broader than a mere focus on women.
The performativity of gender is strongly related to violence. First, it is necessary to discuss what violence means. As opposed to defining violence as “an instrument for power-political, strategic manoeuvres in the distribution or hierarchy of power”, poststructuralist approaches highlight the constitutive role of violence. Traditional accounts in IR consider violence a normal occurrence that explains the inclinations of states to go to war. Here, violence is configurative or positional (Ruggie as cited in Devetak, 2012: 200). However,
26 poststructuralism exposes that violence is constitutive and is therefore “fundamental to the ontological structuring of states” (idem: 201). Accordingly, violence is understood in a broader sense referring to more than physical violence. It is constitutive of subjectivity by means of creating social relationships (D’Cruze and Rao as cited in Shepherd, 2007: 240).
This understanding of violence is inherently linked to gender. Feminist scholars have illustrated the fundamentally gendered process that is ingrained in categorizing violence (Ní Aoláin and Valji, 2019: 56). Shepherd (2008: 37) argued that a “violent reproduction of gender” exists in thinking about power, gender, and violence. Specifically, she conceptualized gender violence as “violence that is both gendered and gendering” (idem: 57). This means that power is involved in the meaning-making of violence. It produces and is productive of gender (ibid). To illustrate, Shepherd (idem: 52) argued how rape inhabits the violent reproduction of gender. In this example, rape is regarded as “a question of language, interpretation and subjectivity” (Marcus as cited in Shepherd, 2008: 52). Generally, rape is presented as something that is done by men to women (idem: 51). This invokes a linkage with gender because rape is socially constructed as masculine behaviour with femininity being linked to victimhood. This consequently reinforces the stereotypical conception of gender (ibid). The discursive construction of rape is therefore inherently political.
To conclude, Shepherd (idem: 80) mapped how resolution 1325, as well as the Secretary-General reports on WPS, demonstrate discursive practices. Hence, recognizing these documents as a power practice (ibid). Shepherd (ibid) presented a new poststructuralist conceptualization to think about security and violence in policy documents referring to gender and conflict in the context of the Security Council, and the failure of fully implementing resolution 1325 in particular. This failure is attributed to the highly selective implementation by the Council (Ní Aoláin and Valji, 2019: 57). I pick up where Shepherd left off by analysing a specific issue in terms of violence and security within the context of the Council. This thesis takes Shepherd’s (ibid) work one step further by employing a discourse-theoretical perspective in a new context, namely the preliminary culmination of attempts to institutionalize targeted sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence. Neither gender and violence, nor conflict-related sexual violence in particular, are fixed. I approach conflict-related sexual violence within the sanctions debate therefore as a fluid category and a social construct. By building on this theoretical framework, I argue that it is necessary to use a discourse-theoretical perspective to understand how this category is defined and is currently being institutionalized within the context of the Council.
27 2.7 Conclusion
To sum up, this chapter mapped the existing literature on discourse. I outlined why discourse is relevant for our understanding of the social world and how it enables transparency by analysing how elements interact through representation. These representations are important because they constitute what is communicated. By linking this to the topic of conflict-related sexual violence, this thesis is premised on the suggestion that there are relevant issues underlying the discursive construction of the Council’s debate on sanctions addressing conflict-related sexual violence. Moreover, I have demonstrated how discourse analysis provides a relevant and new way to unpack this language. A discourse analysis could therefore enable a different understanding of how the Council positions this type of sanctions. In order to justify this discourse-theoretical approach, I have set out a methodological framework in the next chapter.
28
3. Methodology
3.1 Introduction
This chapter maps the research design of this thesis. It builds on the theoretical framework and provides methodological justifications for the procedures that were followed. In the previous chapter, I already discussed discursive elements to view reality. Because of these elements, a discourse-theoretical analysis not only provides a theoretical framework but also a methodology. This implies a particular philosophy of science as accounted for in chapter 2.
Discourse analysis makes the ontological assumption that representation is “mutually constitutive and discursively linked” (Hansen, 2006: 25). In terms of methodology, this philosophy of science implied that I did not define dependent and independent variables. This meant that I did not define an epistemology that documented the causal relationships between variables. From the viewpoint of rationalism, this would have been problematic. However, as outlined in the previous chapter, discourse-analytic approaches break with causality and adopt a non-causal discursive approach that relies on language as a shaping force (ibid). Instead of employing a research design based on causality, the present research design focused on the iterative process of performativity. Furthermore, concepts were not operationalized a priori because discourse analysis studies the conceptualizations of actors and how they are different from each other due to power relations.
In this chapter, I will outline the operationalization for doing discourse analysis by delineating the concepts as discussed in the previous chapter. Then, the decisions for data gathering will be justified. Finally, the caveats to this approach will be discussed.
3.2 Operationalization
This thesis took a qualitative approach to inductively study how the Security Council discursively constitutes sanctions in addressing conflict-related sexual violence. The previous chapter accounted for the theoretical framework that was used to answer the central research question. The research methodology that allows for an answer to this question is discourse analysis. Through discourse analysis, I explored and unpacked the tensions and inconsistencies that are produced in discourses.
In this chapter, I mostly relied on Hansen’s (2006) work in which she presented a methodology of discourse analysis. This was done because her work is among the few to address methodological issues of discourse analysis by demonstrating it in a “well-written and accessible” manner (Čarapić, 2007: 676). Hansen (2006: 65) described step-by-step how
29 discourse analysis is “put to work.” Where necessary, I drew on Shepherd’s (2008) methodology that was used to analyse how international security and gender violence have been discursively constituted. This was done because of the topical relation between Shepherd’s work and this thesis.
A discourse analysis was conducted in order to answer the research question. Discourse comprises language that employs “a distinct arrangement of vocabularies, rules, symbols, labels, assumptions, narratives and forms of social construction” (Jackson, 2007: 234). The procedure for analysing the aforementioned sought to reveal how language works and with what effects (ibid). In order to analyse discourse, it was necessary to look at how a problem is defined. The first analytical task, as defined by Dean (1999: 38) was therefore to call into question “the ‘conduct of conduct’”, which is referred to as a problematization. This denotes the identification of “characteristic forms of visibility, relying on definite vocabularies, specific ways of acting, and characteristic ways of forming subjects” (idem: 33). This is inherent to Foucault’s work that implied forms of exercised power (idem: 29). As outlined by Fairclough (2013: 186), problematization in politics can include a critique that is directed at changing social life. This is linked to grievances and demands by political actors (ibid). In other words, it is an examination of how contemporary problems are thought of by examining how discourse emerged and framed “an understanding of problems and solutions” (Campbell, 2013: 243).
In the analysis, this concerned the identification of a problem and a differentiation between how broad or small the scope of the issue is. It addressed the questions: who puts an issue on the agenda? How is it defined? And, what should be done about it? This analytical process was formalized by the following four discourse-methodological principles. In my analysis, I therefore read the texts and specifically looked for these classifications relating to conflict-related sexual violence in the data collection.
Identity is at the ontological and epistemological heart of discourse analysis (Hansen, 2006: 33). The first methodological concept that was therefore inherent to a discourse-theoretical analysis of texts is Self/Othering. By identifying degrees of Otherness, differences allowed for an explanation of the identity construction of the Self (ibid). By articulating the radical differences of the Other, the identity of the Self is constructed. In the analysis, explicit articulations that referred to, or demonstrated, a construction of the Other were identified (idem: 37). Because this methodological concept is at the heart of discourse analysis, it was expected to recur in various sections in the analytical chapter.
Secondly, it was necessary to identify to whom responsibility is assigned. This responsibilization is derived from Garland’s (1996) analysis of crime control. In criminology,
30 it was argued that a new form of governing crime included indirect action by non-state actors (idem: 452). This could comprise, but is not limited to, partnerships with agencies or inter-organizational strategies (ibid). Responsibilization does not automatically imply the “off-loading” of functions but rather represents a “new form of governing-at-a-distance” as a way to exercise power (idem: 453). This was relevant to the discourse-theoretical reading because it helped identify certain predications, id est positive or negative traits that were attributed to actors in terms of what they ought to do against conflict-related sexual violence. Moreover, by identifying these shifting alliances or oppositions between actors, political power relations were uncovered (Rose and Miller, 1992: 174).
The third methodological principle concerned intertextuality. Representations of identities can be seen as “instances of discursive practices” (Shepherd, 2008: 24). These representations take the form of texts, which are referred to as “the fabric in which discourse is manifested” (Talbot as cited in Sunderland, 2004: 7). Through language, texts are “simultaneously unique and united” (Hansen, 2006: 49). Kristeva (as cited in Shepherd, 2008: 24) argued that “a text is a permutation of texts, an intertextuality in the space of a given text.” This means that a text can refer to another text as well as establish social reality (ibid). In order to recognize a discourse, it has to be traceable and related, however marginally, in other texts (Sunderland, 2004: 30). Accordingly, any text can bring to mind other texts in a similar or oppositional way (ibid). When analysing texts, a researcher must therefore look at how a text positions itself. This begs the questions: are there implicit or explicit references to other texts? And, what is the social context established by a text (Shepherd, 2008: 24)? This meant that intertextual linkages such as quotes, references, secondary sources, articulation of concepts, and catchphrases were identified in the analysis (idem: 51). The effect of intertextual linkages can be found in the production of legitimacy and exchange created at the level of meaning (ibid). I therefore relied on secondary sources where necessary in the analytical chapter to identify linkages and contextualize the material.
The final methodological concept involved marginalization (also referred to as silencing). This illustrates the way in which discourses succeed in marginalizing or silencing representations (Foucault as cited in Hansen, 2006: 47). Marginalization or silencing is an exercise of power as it functions to reproduce hegemonic relationships (Mumby and Stohl, 1991: 326). Derrida explained this by focusing on ‘what is not’, or “that which is left out or excluded in order for meaning to be secured” (Ahall, 2018: 88). The power of marginalization or silencing is to communicate new information (Huckin, 2002: 349). In other words, in the discourse-theoretical analysis attention was focused on what is present in a text, and what is
31 not present in a text to study discursive practices. This required a contextual understanding and awareness of “the social, political and cultural trends” related to a topic (Gill, 2000: 180).
3.3 Data
In this section, I will elaborate on the data, or texts – as usually referred to in discourse analysis – that was used in this thesis. Hansen identified a research design for discourse analysis along four dimensions for data selection: the intertextual model, the number and types of Selves, the temporal perspective, and the number and types of events (see figure 1). This research design defines the focus of a study and helps determine which texts should be analysed (Hansen, 2006: 73). I applied Hansen’s (ibid) outline to justify the data selection used in this thesis. As mentioned before, Hansen (2006) is among the few to present a clear methodological account of discourse analysis. I will address the four dimensions individually below to justify my data selection.
First, the intertextual models determine how broad or narrow an analysis will be. According to Hansen (idem: 76), texts should be selected on the basis of three criteria: first, a clear articulation of identities and policies should be present; second, the text(s) should be widely read and attended to by a large audience in order to ensure that they have a central role in dominant discourses; finally, the text(s) should have the formal authority in order to define a political position. Hansen (idem: 57) identified three intertextual models that specify the scope of analysis. The first model builds on official discourse by heads of states or senior civil servants and has an analytical focus on intertextual links. The second model extends this scope by addressing the wider political debate such as political opposition and the media. The third model broadens this by including cultural representations and marginal discourses. In this thesis, I focused on official discourse by United Nations Security Council members. Here, the object of analysis included single-authored statements (speeches) by Council members. The Arria meeting is available from the United Nations Security Council website (see image 2 on
