Gender and Embodied War Knowledge

Abstract

AbstractUN Security Council Resolution 1325 (adopted in 2000) seeks to protect women’s bodily integrity in war and promote women’s rights to participate in decisions affecting them in the realm of peace and security. Its normative framework offers potential to transform how peace and security is framed in the UN Security Council. At the same time, critics charge that the Women, Peace and Security agenda reproduces problematic categories, including women as a static, homogeneous social group, binaries such as peace and war as clearly delineated events, and victims and perpetrators as gendered, oppositional groups. In this article, we strive to think critically about gender and human rights through the rubric of the Women, Peace and Security agenda and problematic categories that underpin its design. We do so by exploring gender and embodied knowledge in war.