Gendering the Geneva Conventions

Abstract

What role did gender and sexuality play in the making of the 1949 Geneva Conventions? And how did the drafters of the most important document ever formulated for armed conflict envision men and women’s rights in wartime? Until now, most scholars have treated these questions only marginally. Drawing on multi-archival materials and critical and feminist approaches to international law, this article demonstrates how the Conventions’ drafters tried to recover prewar sex differences as part of a much larger sexual restoration after 1945. Instrumentalizing the sexes proved integral to humanitarian law’s construction in the fragile geopolitical landscape of the early Cold War and decolonization. Gendering the Geneva Conventions has a special significance for practitioners and scholars tracing the origins of international law. It exposes how gender has shaped the very nature of international law in wartime and offers new perspectives on questions relating to international law, global legal politics, and sexual violence.