Women’s Rights After War on Paper: An Analysis of Legal Discourse
In 2003, Rwanda instituted a new constitution and brought in a spate of laws to advance the rights of women. More than forty laws were introduced between 2003 and 2019. These laws covered areas ranging from electoral representation to land reform to bolster the economic and social standing of women in Rwandan society. The government hailed gender parity as a path to enduring democratic peace. Since then, many scholars have studied the implementation of these laws and whether they have led to real gains for women. In the wake of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and the institution of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda, many countries rushed to show that they support women’s rights and equality, especially countries rebuilding during or after conflict. A number of other countries of focus in our Women’s Rights After War project, like Rwanda, are lauded (to different degrees) as international examples for their gender-progressive legislation instituted as an antidote to future conflict. While the other contributions in this forum focus on substantive issues around the implementation of women’s rights reforms, this article examines the reforms themselves. I question the framing of the laws– the words, their meaning, and the underlying logic behind them– and consider whether they are as progressive as claimed. I argue that in the process of packaging a specific version of rights, the language used in the laws entrench existing inequalities, codify, and structure harm in a way that then becomes reinforced through their implementation. By focusing not only on what the laws say, but also on what they do not, I argue that most only provide a veneer of progressive politics, circumscribing possibilities of transformative change at the outset. While my paper covers only a fraction of the larger discourse on women’s rights, it provides an analysis of the laws at face value, as well as how they can create exclusionary and harmful circumstances for the women they are designed to help, even as they simultaneously act as important starting points for women’s rights. To build this analysis, I first outline literature that touches on how legal language is imbued with power and therefore not only reflects the social world it is embedded in but also acts upontheworld inrealterms. Extending this outline, I use the writings of feminist and critical legal scholars to point out how legal language marks and reiterates the subordinate position of marginalized people in society, even when it is seemingly progressive. Using this literature as my starting point, I turn to my analysis of original datasets developed by the Women’s Rights After War project which account for all national-level laws instituted to bolster gender equality in war-affected countries such as Colombia, Nepal, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, and Sri Lanka. Instead of analysing the laws one-by-one, I compare laws across the countries and provide thematic evidence to bolster my argument that the language of women’s rights actually structures harm in these societies and entrenches existing inequalities. If the words of the laws reveal the reiteration of harm to some communities, the words that do not exist at all reveal the intentions of the state that instituted the laws. Because the laws are unable to provide concrete measures for healing, justice, and societal transformation, they allow a hegemonic status quo to continue. I conclude by pointing out how the discourse produced by the laws then promotes their irregular implementation in our project countries.
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Women's Rights After War
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