Tag Archive for: WPS 2018

Women in the ADF: the operational imperative of participation

The Australian Defence Force has made considerable progress over the past few years in incorporating a gender perspective across its training and operations. To support the WPS (women, peace and security) agenda, the Defence Department has developed a dedicated capability, introduced operational orders directing the inclusion of a gender perspective and deployment of gender advisers, and disseminated a doctrinal note on gender in air operations.

In the context of natural disaster responses, the ADF has effectively integrated a gender perspective in recognition of the contribution that women make to operational effectiveness. However, there’s an aspect of WPS that remains largely unexplored in these operations: the participation of military women and the outcomes they achieve. An analysis of ADF disaster response operations in the Philippines and Fiji shows how critical female representation and participation are and suggests that the ADF needs to focus more on this pillar to enhance its operational outcomes.

In response to Typhoon Haiyan (known locally as Yolanda), which hit the Philippines in November 2013, the ADF deployed a joint task force under Operation Philippines Assist. Although it was conducted before the introduction of formal WPS requirements, the operation achieved significant WPS outcomes due to female participation.

In August 2018, as part of my fieldwork in the City of Ormoc, which was extensively damaged by Yolanda, I revisited 10 schools and interviewed teachers and staff about their experiences of working with the ADF. Many teachers remembered ‘the two girls who worked like the boys’, completing tasks such as debris removal, environmental hazard reduction, and restoration of classrooms. These ADF members who did a ‘man’s job’ demonstrated how women can mobilise in the aftermath of a natural disaster to assume ‘non-traditional roles’ such as rebuilding infrastructure and clearing roads and rubble.

Female representation in post-disaster environments can influence broader social change. Researcher Sarah Shteir notes this includes women challenging their gendered status in society and being seen as ‘strong, resilient and strategic in their ability to think through longer term family and community needs’. Akin to peacekeepers, military women in disaster response teams act as role models to inspire local women and girls, often within male-dominated societies, to participate in the recovery process.

Operation Fiji Assist, conducted in response to Tropical Cyclone Winston in 2016, was the first time ADF operational orders specifically included a gender perspective and required the use of gender advisers. Women and children have specific health needs in the aftermath of natural disasters but ‘may be unable to access assistance safely and/or make their needs known’. In Fiji, this issue was addressed by employing a female gender adviser and ensuring female participation in discussions with local leaders.

Those initiatives enabled tailored assistance to be provided to Fijian communities, including sanitary products, nappies, cooking and eating utensils, stationery and school books. The operation’s success was noted by then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who said that ‘personnel delivered more effective, targeted help because they were able to connect with local women and target their needs’.

This example highlights that ‘in any disaster or conflict, women naturally feel safer and more comfortable talking to other women’. In some societies, women are prohibited or discouraged from speaking with men. Foreign militaries deploying into disaster areas need to be aware of and work within the social and cultural constraints of the communities they are there to assist.

It also underscores the need for the ADF to distinguish between a ‘gender perspective’ and participation. Women’s participation provides a safe environment for vulnerable groups to share gender-specific concerns that aren’t being addressed, including reproductive and sexual health problems and sexual and domestic violence. Integrating a gender perspective into operations entails developing a ‘gendered understanding’ of the disaster or conflict area. It starts in the preplanning phase and involves assessing the differing needs of women and girls as well as of men and boys, and incorporating that information into operational design and actions.

These case studies demonstrate that one of the real powers of WPS lies in participation, because it can change people’s views of what women can do and achieve, both within the ADF and in the local community. One reason for low female participation in the Australian Army is the way in which women in ‘non-traditional’ roles are viewed by society. However, the women deployed during these operations challenged those perceptions by being fully integrated into a breadth of operational tasks, from engineering to key leadership engagement.

The Royal Australian Air Force has recognised the need for occupation-specific efforts to increase the number of women in roles that engage directly with the local population during natural disaster responses. In 2016, the commander of the air mobility group directed an increase in female loadmasters, noting that it would ‘improve interactions with people and communities in those countries most impacted by disaster’.

Equivalent initiatives need to be introduced in the other services—particularly the army, which is predicting that ‘the actual percentage of women in the force in being is likely to decline’. A starting point would be building knowledge of occupations in which female participation would enhance operational effectiveness and conducting targeted initiatives to increase representation. Liaison officers, engineers and linguists are some positions that come to mind.

The message about female participation can become mixed up with ADF cultural reform programs, including the Broderick review, making it a ‘politically laden … issue of women’s rights and participation’ rather than ‘performance on operations’. However, it’s clear that operational outcomes are improved by female military participation and that that’s where the ADF needs to focus its WPS efforts.

WPS 2018: Dispelling myths and identifying future action

This article is the eleventh and last in a series on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ that The Strategist has published in recognition of International Women’s Day 2018. Eds.

Since International Women’s Day this year, ASPI has been running a series of pieces about a range of national and domestic security issues as they relate to women’s participation, engagement, leadership and perspectives on what is commonly known as the ‘women, peace and security (WPS) agenda’.

Many of these pieces focused on some of the steps taken to implement Australia’s current National Action Plan (NAP) on WPS, as well as identifying potential reforms relating to the range of issues covered, civil society consultation mechanisms and parliamentary engagement mechanisms that need to form part of Australia’s next NAP.

There’s a lot Australia can learn from other countries as it starts to revise the NAP. And Australia has lessons it can share with other countries. But there are several key challenges that need to be addressed if Australia is to ensure that it continues to gain ground on WPS and resist some international efforts to roll back progress on women’s equality and progress on peace and security.

First, WPS isn’t just relevant to the external aspects of Australia’s security, but also requires consideration of what’s happening within Australia’s borders. This has been a key finding from civil society report cards on the NAP, which have frequently highlighted the importance of consulting women on their own perceptions of security, as well as developing ‘a domestic program built around addressing inequality’. Yet for now, domestic security considerations aren’t a key consideration in the NAP.

Australia isn’t alone in this externally focused approach. Many Western and European countries that don’t suffer from internal conflict or post-conflict challenges historically do the same. Yet security issues such as violent extremism, terrorism and migration have started to fundamentally shift thinking about this approach.

For Australia, this means that there’s a role not only for DFAT, Defence and AFP in foreign policy, deployments or offshore activities, but also for agencies that have a domestic focus, such as Home Affairs. Those agencies need to step up and engage substantively in committing to WPS.

Second, there’s a need for sustainable funding and accountability across government to implement the agenda. The UN experience has shown that despite the international political commitment to WPS, battles continue to be fought in the budgetary committee about funding key posts in the field in delivering the agenda.

There has been some progress in Australia. Take the example of DFAT’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Strategy, which commits the department to ensuring that 80% of aid investment must address gender issues. While the success of this as a benchmark is yet to be measured, it’s a step in the right direction.

Parliament plays a particularly key role in making sure that there’s accountability across government in delivering on WPS commitments. Recommendations put forward by Gai Brodtmann and Linda Reynolds identify a bipartisan approach to ensuring that WPS receives more priority at the highest levels of government thinking on security, and warrants particular attention.

Third, WPS needs to be included as a core part of international security discussions when formulating foreign and defence policy. WPS is often forgotten during a crisis, or given less priority in discussions around so-called ‘hard security’ issues. It has historically been a ‘nice to have’ item that’s sidelined—left to be discussed by a group of women with an interest in it rather than being considered as a key part of the agenda.

WPS isn’t simply a ‘soft’ security issue, a ‘women’s issue’ or a ‘UN issue’. In the context of a military operation, failure to consider gender perspectives can have dire consequences for overall outcomes and mission success. Gender perspectives need to be considered at the outset of any policy analyses, international engagement programs, mission planning and intelligence assessments.

Defence’s commitment to operationalising the agenda has seen it make considerable strides in addressing some of these deficits, yet there’s still more work to be done to ensure that WPS is a routine consideration, rather than an exception.

Finally, there’s a need to have a diversity of voices at the table. Women aren’t homogeneous, and neither are their views or perspectives on security issues. Indigenous groups,  refugees and veterans are just some of the groups that have previously been overlooked. We have to be careful that the way we frame the women, peace and security agenda isn’t framed by traditional masculine notions of security. That requires that women be represented and take part in the discussion.

The WPS 2018 series—like most analyses on WPS—contained an overwhelming number of female contributors, reversing the usual underrepresentation of women in security debates. This therefore provides a good opportunity to encourage any female analysts, academics, practitioners or experts out there to contact our editorial team to contribute to The Strategist.

More women and greater diversity in those contributing to the debate will only serve to strengthen the nature of our discussions around international security, including Australia’s approach to WPS.

WPS 2018: A ‘new deal’ for Australian female veterans

This article is the tenth in a series on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ that The Strategist will publish over coming weeks in recognition of International Women’s Day 2018. Eds.

In previous discussions on this topic, both the Minister of Defence and her fellow parliamentarians have suggested that Australia’s next National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) should place greater emphasis on improving opportunities and removing barriers for women.

In my view, that requires greater emphasis on robust ‘outcomes’, not just collecting data on ‘outputs’. It should demand the development of new thinking, the provision of new resources and the will to implement new policy if existing culture or tradition is to be challenged.

Australia’s first NAP was centred largely on issues external to Australian society—that is, outcomes to formalise policy and resource support for women in insecure or conflict situations. However, discussions on drafting the next NAP have raised questions about addressing women’s perceptions and notions of security internal to Australia. That discussion should include perspectives from female Australian Defence Force (ADF) veterans, as well as the support provided to them.

Australia’s first NAP on WPS supported gains across key areas, including participation. Although limited in scope, it provided direction and ensured that the WPS agenda has become integral to Australia’s future thinking about what women bring to all areas of Defence’s operational capability. A headline objective of Strategy 2 of the first NAP in 2012 was increasing the participation of women in all aspects of Defence by removing all gender-based employment restrictions.

Defence is enjoying the benefits of this decision as women excel in areas that weren’t only legally closed, but seen by many as physically and mentally unsuited to females. This increase in professional opportunities has given a new generation of women unfettered opportunities to support key NAP strategies in Australia’s security environment.

On average, an ADF member serves for approximately 10 years. By 2022, most ADF members will have served at least once in direct combat or other high-intensity operational combat roles. Many of them will have served in such environments several times.

A generation of female combat veterans will also make up a larger part of this group than ever before. Successful efforts to increase the participation of women in combat roles, and the benefits to the peace and security environment that these women bring, demands accountability in how we care for these same female veterans.

Women’s perspectives of war and the way Australian society perceives their service is complex. Traditional views of maternal duties, a societal bias towards females being non-violent caregivers, and ingrained expectations of women in the veteran community as widows and carers leave female veterans isolated rather than included.

Women’s experiences of conflict, like men’s, are individual and personal. But just like male warriors, it should be assumed that a common and uniquely female perspective of combat and service will generate different needs in the post-combat and post-service period. A new gender-based perspective needs to be considered when redeveloping veterans’ services and the way we collectively commemorate military service in Australian society.

In 1917 Australian society developed the first of many ‘contracts’ with Australian warriors, with repatriation and then veterans’ policies established. These services were created for the requirements of men, and were provided and approved in large part by men. An ‘outcome’ of the next NAP should include analysis and development of a veterans’ ‘new deal’, one that takes into account that Australia’s warriors are not a gender-specific group.

Although all veteran groups, both government and private, strive to be inclusive, it has been up to a limited number of under-resourced groups like the Women Veterans Network Australia to identify a specific female perspective. A new perspective on veterans’ services and support is needed. Identifying and implementing these services is essential to providing the ‘full circle’ implementation of successful outcomes of women’s full participation in Australia’s security and aid missions.

This challenge isn’t just one for Defence given that it’s based on a social contract between the nation and the warrior. For 100 years, the ‘combat veteran’ has been defined as a male. The NAP should take this opportunity to expand its focus and seek whole-of-nation ‘input’ and allocate responsibilities for ‘outcomes’ related to redefining veteran services in Australia.

The participation of women in combat has been a significant social change. It requires a similar change in our view of veterans, and of the services and support provided by society as a whole.

The redrafting of the NAP provides a unique opportunity for leadership in the development of a national outcome focussing on the reality of female veterans. The Australian government has rightly committed to increasing women’s participation in the ADF as part of its efforts to strengthen WPS. It’s now time to ensure that those efforts are complemented by a gender-responsive approach to our female veterans.

WPS 2018: Common challenges for NAP development—Germany and Australia

This article is the ninth in a series on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ that The Strategist will publish over coming weeks in recognition of International Women’s Day 2018. Eds.

In 2015, the UN Security Council published its global study on Resolution 1325, assessing the implementation of the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda over the past 15 years. The report recognised the importance of countries sharing lessons and best practices in the development and implementation of national action plans (NAPs) to ‘enhance transparency and facilitate exchange of learning’.

There’s over a decade of experience for countries to draw on in the development of NAPs. Following Denmark’s lead as the first country to launch its NAP in 2005, at least 73 UN member states have now launched NAPs. The Australian government developed its first NAP in 2012 and is due to formulate its second NAP by 2019.

There’s an opportunity for Australia to draw on the lessons of other countries in developing its next NAP. Germany provides a particularly interesting case study. Germany shares many of the same values and security interests as Australia when it comes to the role of international organisations and the rule of law. And as the security and defence relationship between the two countries continues to grow, WPS could provide an area for further strategic engagement.

Germany renewed its NAP last year. The revised NAP focuses on five thematic ‘focal points’:

  • Integrating a gender perspective into the prevention of violence
  • Including more female leadership at all levels of conflict prevention, resolution and post-conflict design
  • Including women’s and girls’ perspectives in development, peace and security policies
  • Countering sexual and gender-based violence and strengthening international criminal jurisdiction to punish such violence when it occurs
  • Strengthening the women, peace and security agenda and promoting it at the national, regional and international level. This is a largely new focal area.

To ensure that Australia’s next NAP will be a better product that delivers more efficiently, a sharper focus on three areas might be helpful:

First, the timeframe. The implementation of Australia’s first NAP began in 2012. By mid-2019, it’ll have been in place for six-and-a-half years. Comparatively, Germany’s first NAP was in place for three years, and the current one will be renewed in 2020, also after three years.

Shorter time-frames can allow for the setting of more specific goals and aims; faster adjustments to changes in conflicts and the general WPS agenda; and better learning curves from assessment to new implementation.

Second, in the NAP’s reviewing and assessment phase there’s a need to include sufficient resource commitments from the government, especially to facilitate civil-society involvement during the NAP implementation process.

Learning from a lack of communication between civil society and the federal government, Germany has now established a consultative group with members from civil society and the inter-ministerial working groups on WPS and the NAP. Having previously held only one annual meeting with civil society, Germany’s current NAP calls for the consultative group to meet at least twice a year.

Meeting more frequently, the group has access to technical and operational details to discuss monitoring, strategic and thematic issues, as well as more easily facilitating implementation. This is important because Australian government representatives stated that meeting the outcomes specified in report from the Australia’s WPS Coalition’s fifth civil society dialogue are vital to the next NAP’s formulation.

Third, Germany’s experience suggests that when deciding on the content of the next NAP, Australia needs to consider global developments in its review. For example, Germany’s experience with migrants and refugees at home and abroad has shaped its approach to its second NAP. It now includes specific measures to uphold ‘the protection and reintegration of women and girls who are fleeing their homes’.

This includes measures that refer to domestic implementation measures related to ‘protection in refugee housing throughout Germany’. Therefore, while most of Germany’s NAP remains externally focused on specific regions worldwide (mainly post-conflict and conflict-affected areas), it has also considered the application of WPS within its domestic security sphere.

Similar steps could be taken by the Australian government to consider more broadly domestic aspects of Australia’s next NAP. For example, the WPS Coalition’s report mentioned above argues that a variety of women’s security perspectives need to be included.

For example, indigenous women and women in displaced communities often have different concerns regarding their own security. Australia would benefit from analysing how other countries engage diverse women’s voices to ensure that its next NAP is responsive to domestic security concerns and inequality.

As the Australian government and civil society groups review Australia’s current NAP, there are many lessons that can and should be taken into account from other countries. After all, as the global study acknowledges, NAPs will be strengthened through the sharing of best practices and lessons learned from other countries’ experiences. Germany’s experience provides a particularly useful case study. Australia should learn from it and other countries’ experiences to advance the WPS agenda at home and abroad.

WPS 2018: Towards aligning and integrating the P/CVE and WPS agendas

This article is the seventh in a series on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ that The Strategist will publish over coming weeks in recognition of International Women’s Day 2018. Eds.

Women’s empowerment and equality are vital to achieving international and national security and stability. Empirical research has demonstrated that women’s advancement is key to reducing political violence. It’s therefore crucial that women occupy a seat at the negotiating table when designing and implementing programs or policies concerning security and development, including those related to counterterrorism and preventing/countering violent extremism (P/CVE).

There has been international recognition through various UN Security Council resolutions of the diverse roles that women play relative to political violence (including in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, perpetrating violence, peace-building and reconstruction).

Still, very little progress has been made towards recognising P/CVE as an integral component of the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda. This is predominantly due to long-term concerns about the operational and conceptual challenges to integrating P/CVE within WPS.

There are three clear barriers towards integration. Firstly, the conceptual discussions and operational implementation of P/CVE needs to be separated from those about counterterrorism, which are perceived to be rooted in hard security practices such as military and intelligence operations.

Secondly, as Chantal de Jonge Oudraat astutely points out in A man’s world?, good practices for aligning WPS and P/CVE are made more difficult due to engrained gender roles within the two fields. Women predominantly lead in WPS. In contrast, P/CVE has traditionally been understood as an extension of security and intelligence operations, where men generally lead.

Academics and practitioners internationally have corroborated this view. For example, the LSE’s ‘Key Issues Report on P/CVE and WPS’ and the Global Counterterrorism Forum’s ‘Good Practices on Women and CVE’ papers highlight the inadequate levels of gender training among P/CVE practitioners. They also point to an insufficient understanding of how to situate gender equality sustainably at the heart of P/CVE.

Finally, there exists a fundamental distrust between WPS and P/CVE practitioners to carry out their respective priorities to appropriate standards. For example, WPS practitioners are concerned about the danger of P/CVE policy and practice ‘instrumentalising women’s rights and gender equality for intelligence purposes’. While it’s fair to say that promoting gender equality traditionally hasn’t been integral to the international community’s response to extremism, it’s also necessary to recognise that this isn’t always the case.

P/CVE is still a relatively underdeveloped field, with no single definition, objectives or goal. The WPS agenda must take this into consideration and not unilaterally write off P/CVE agendas due to perceptions about the hard-security focus that most governments initially favoured.

As P/CVE research has developed, far more nuanced policy and practice have been developed. An outcome of this is that there’s much more diversity in interpreting the extent of law enforcement involvement in P/CVE. Especially in prevention, there appears to be an attempt to move away from hard security and intelligence-led approaches towards non-coercive measures rooted in social policy.

P/CVE initiatives can take many forms, but a common thread emphasises the importance of dialogue and education, especially through coordinating government and non-government actors. So P/CVE policy and programs don’t necessarily tackle violent extremism directly. Rather they focus on building resilience, and promoting the values of citizenship and human rights. These objectives don’t differ extraordinarily from those advocated by WPS proponents.

There are a number of grassroots programs internationally that are doing excellent work to engage women in a broad range of P/CVE programs that also address the WPS agenda’s core priorities. These initiatives bridge the gap between P/CVE and WPS.

Examples of best practice and lessons learned in P/CVE initiatives internationally appear in recent papers from The Berghof Foundation and The GSDRC. Reading those programs’ aims and objectives makes it clear that there are links between WPS and P/CVE agendas that could be harnessed, allowing for a deeper and more holistic understanding of women’s roles in political violence.

For example, a pilot initiative in Lebanon called Empowering Women Countering Extremism trained and empowered young professionals (men and women) in the area of women’s involvement in CVE online and offline. The goal was to equip individuals with the necessary tools to understand and protect human rights values by promoting ‘peaceful coexistence, interfaith dialogue and reconciliation’.

Research has demonstrated that women’s rights directly affect national and international security and stability. For example, in Bangladesh, poverty is one of the main drivers of radicalisation towards violent extremism. As such, the government has integrated gender perspectives into their long-term CVE strategy, which aims to lift women and girls out of poverty by promoting education, business opportunities and employment initiatives.

The barriers to aligning the WPS and P/CVE agendas should be slowly and cautiously dismantled. As Australia prepares to develop its second national action plan, it’s important to pay attention to the work that is being done by women internationally in the P/CVE space to examine where there are mutual priorities and challenges.

If gender equality is a basic requirement to achieving peace and security, then we cannot ignore terrorism and violent extremism, which are key gendered drivers of insecurity and instability. There are clear opportunities for collaboration between WPS and P/CVE in knowledge sharing and skills development.

By continuing to pursue parallel agendas, as pointed out by Katrina Lee-Koo and Jacqui True, the WPS and P/CVE agendas miss these important opportunities. That stunts meaningful progress and sustainable development on both sides.

WPS 2018: Navigating the operational gender agenda

This article is the sixth in a series on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ that The Strategist will publish over coming weeks in recognition of International Women’s Day 2018. Eds.

One of the key challenges when working in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) field in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is the common misunderstanding about UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 and related resolutions.

WPS is quite separate to the services’ internal diversity and inclusion programs, and human resource activities intended to increase women’s representation in the ADF. However, there’s a nexus in that it’s difficult to increase women’s presence on ADF operations unless there are enough trained ADF women available to deploy.

Within a military context and when viewed through an operational lens, the UNSCRs provide guidance as to how militaries, security forces, humanitarian agencies, peacekeepers and enforcers, policy builders and other key stakeholders factor in, interact with and engage local populations in an area of operations. In simple terms, this is how the population interacts with and influences the operation and how the operation interacts with and influences the local population.

For military forces, the key premise of UNSCR 1325 and related resolutions is that failing to consider the needs, voices and circumstances of half of a population when planning, executing and measuring an operation’s effectiveness will have unintended, negative effects on that population over the short, medium and long terms.

Moreover, those negative effects will extend far beyond the life of an operation. Further, considering the needs of the entire population has proven to increase operational effectiveness and reduce risks to operating forces.

While responsibility for implementing UNSCR 1325 and related resolutions on military operations rests with commanders, the commanders will often be supported by trained gender advisors (GENADs), who may be placed at the operational or tactical level, or both. The GENAD is usually part of a commander’s special advisor staff, although this can vary.

In recent years, the ADF has played a strong regional and international leadership role in incorporating a gender perspective into military operations. That includes multilateral planning activities such as multinational force standing operating procedures for the Asia–Pacific region. This leadership was made possible by the Chief of the Defence Forces’ (CDF) commitment that the ADF would apply dedicated resources to meet our national and international obligations and to ensure that UNSCR 1325 and related resolutions are factored into all ADF operations from the strategic to tactical levels. This strategic commitment is reflected in Defence’s WPS implementation plan.

The CDF’s commitment resulted in the establishment of two key colonel-equivalent positions. One is the Director of the National Action Plan for Women, Peace and Security (DNAP WPS), which addresses WPS implementation at the strategic level. The second is the Senior Gender Advisor at Joint Operational Command (JOC), which focuses on operational implementation.

The positions work together to advance UNSCR 1325’s objectives. The DNAP WPS’ primary role is international and national senior stakeholder coordination and engagement, and the JOC GENAD’s role is to ensure that gender is considered at all stages in ADF and multinational operations and exercises.

The Army, Navy and RAAF also have dedicated positions at the lieutenant colonel–equivalent level to advance WPS within their own services by delivering service-specific doctrine, coordinating internal training and coordinating the assignment of trained GENADs for operations and exercises.

To date, more than 30 GENADs have deployed on operations and exercises.

The ADF’s first rotations of senior GENAD  positions were the colonel-equivalent gender advisor for NATO’s Resolute Support mission and one of the first military GENAD positions in South Sudan.

The ADF also recently delivered the region’s first operational gender advisor course, which focused on training US, ADF and DFAT personnel to fulfil GENAD roles on Exercise Talisman Sabre 2017 (EXTS17). The ADF Operational Gender Advisor course was piloted in June 2017 after an extensive training needs analysis, design and development process.

The course was developed to ensure that sufficient numbers of ADF personnel are trained to incorporate gender considerations into the Joint Military Appreciation Process, and into the execution of operations, which is key to implementing a gender perspective on operations. The ADF course was also designed to meet the growing demand and need for trained GENADs on multinational, bilateral and Australian-led operations and exercises.

Student evaluations of the pilot course were overwhelmingly positive. The greatest test of the training, however, occurred during EXTS17. Newly graduated students were required to fulfil the GENAD role within a complex, high-tempo operational scenario and performed very well.

To meet the high demand for this training, HQJOC delivered a second pilot course in October 2017. The ADF’s Peace Operations Training Centre will deliver the course from late 2018.

Thanks to strong leadership by the Chief of Joint Operations, the CDF and the service chiefs, and to the efforts of those working in this important area, Australia is now positioned as a source of expertise in WPS. Other nations are looking to capitalise on the work done by the ADF.

‘Next steps’ include developing joint and service-specific doctrine, guides and tools to continue the ADF’s work and to contribute to the next iteration of Australia’s national action plan.

WPS 2018: Connecting displacement and the WPS agenda

This article is the fifth in a series on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ that The Strategist will publish over coming weeks in recognition of International Women’s Day 2018. Eds.

According to the UNHCR, women and girls make up around 50% of the 65.6 million displaced people worldwide. They experience unique vulnerabilities when displaced by conflict, including increased risk of gender-based violence, trafficking and child marriage. They may also have compelling insights into conflict that could harness largely untapped capacities for peacebuilding. Protecting women and girls from such harms, and including them in peacebuilding efforts, are the foundations of the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda.

Yet very few Western states seek to align their domestic refugee and asylum policies with their WPS policymaking. In fact, there’s a general blind spot in WPS policymaking when it comes to ensuring the rights of displaced women worldwide.

Why is that? Some argue that the Security Council resolutions that constitute the WPS agenda address the experiences of women in conflict-affected zones, rather than the experiences of conflict-affected women who may have been displaced from their country of origin. Once women become stateless, the WPS responsibilities of UN member states to these women becomes opaque.

This is primarily because the WPS resolutions don’t require UN members who aren’t party to a conflict (such as Australia) to protect displaced women as a WPS concern.

Actions in the WPS resolutions relating to displaced women only apply to conflict parties and UN agencies. UN Security Council resolutions (UNSCR) 1325 (2000) and 1889 (2009) call upon parties to armed conflict to respect refugee camps and settlements. UNSCR 1325 also calls upon parties to armed conflict to ‘fully respect international law applicable to the rights and protection of women and girls, especially civilians’. The focus on conflict zones and actors seems to push displaced women to the margins for other member states like Australia.

However, five of the eight resolutions do speak of displacement in their preambles. In those preambles, the unique vulnerabilities of displaced women are acknowledged. Specifically, the preamble of UNSCR 2122 (2013) notes that ‘unequal citizenship rights, gender-biased application of asylum laws, and obstacles to registering and accessing identity documents’ underpin conflict-affected women’s vulnerabilities.

In addition, the preambles acknowledge the negative impact that women’s displacement has on peace and security. These consistent preambulatory references to displaced women clearly identifies them as a core focus of the WPS agenda.

So where does this leave UN member states like Australia in thinking through their WPS obligations to women displaced by conflict?

The actions identified in Australia’s current National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (NAP) are, at best, tokenistic. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection isn’t an implementing agency and the NAP’s implementation plan has only one relevant action—to ‘ensure Australia’s humanitarian assistance and recovery programs in conflict and post-conflict situations respect applicable international human rights and refugee law in regards to women and girls …’. That action is assigned to AusAID (now a part of DFAT).

Moreover, this action has no corresponding reporting measure. Consequently, there’s no monitoring under Australia’s current NAP of its engagement with conflict-affected displaced women. Nor is its domestic asylum or immigration policy required to align with the NAP. This is best evident in the current Rohingya crisis where DFAT acknowledges the unique experiences of women in responding to the crisis but this response doesn’t connect with asylum policy.

This presents an opportunity. The newly established Department of Home Affairs has a broad remit across domestic and foreign policy in a range of WPS-relevant areas. These include asylum policy, violent extremism, counterterrorism, and disaster management and recovery. The department clearly has a part to play in the design and implementation of the next Australian NAP.

Globally, we’re seeing such integration between asylum and WPS policies in a number of countries:

  • The first Irish NAP (2011) includes strong language on the links between displacement and WPS: ‘Ireland’s first NAP advances understanding of the obligations of UNSCR 1325 … to include reference to migrant women and girls, including asylum seekers, affected by conflict’.
  • The second French NAP (2015) commits the country to ‘increase consideration of issues linked to gender and violence against women in asylum procedures’.
  • Canada’s 2017 NAP includes its immigration agency as a supporting NAP partner with its own implementation plan.

These approaches might provide some inspiration for how the Department of Home Affairs might be involved in the second NAP. First, they offer a more generous reading of the UNSCRs by considering the circumstances of conflict-affected women wherever they reside.

Second, they commit to provisions such as prioritising and supporting conflict-affected women through asylum assessment systems, facilitating their settlement and integration, and addressing their unique vulnerabilities after settlement.

Third, they endeavour to align NAPs with both domestic policy (such as asylum and countering violent extremism policies) and other international instruments—in particular the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which has strong WPS reporting that can be leveraged in NAPs.

In creating a system for conflict-affected women that treats them with respect throughout their journey from their homeland to resettlement, these states also create coherence between their domestic and foreign policy. As Australia begins to design its next NAP, this should provide food for thought.

WPS 2018: Feminist foreign policy in Australia

 

This article is the second in a series on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ that The Strategist will publish over coming weeks in recognition of International Women’s Day 2018. Eds.

Sweden was the first country in the world to boldly stake out a feminist foreign policy in 2015, claiming that the pursuit of gender equality is ‘not only a goal in itself but also a means of achieving other goals—such as peace, security and sustainable development’. The country’s foreign minister Margot Wallstrom, argues that ‘a feminist approach is a self-evident and necessary part of a modern view of today’s global challenges’.

Justin Trudeau’s government in Canada followed suit in 2017, announcing that it was also embracing a feminist foreign policy, particularly focused on providing international assistance to women’s rights organisations and sending more women soldiers on international peacekeeping operations.

Australia has also pursued a gender strategy since 2016, making gender equality and women’s empowerment part of its core foreign policy objectives. However the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper was widely seen as a missed opportunity to advance a more feminist foreign policy.

Effective foreign policy must always begin at home. This year we have already seen  some major opportunities and constraints for promoting feminist principles in Australian foreign policy. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s reference to the #Me Too challenge to conventional gender power relations as he announced the sex ban on ministerial relationships with staffers has implications for international politics as well.

With our prime minister apparently attuned to these developments—which affect domestic and international politics equally—2018 may be an opportune time to push further for commitments to gender equality and women’s rights in Australian foreign policy.

But the announcement in January that Australia plans to become one of the top ten arms exporters in the world within a decade could be a setback for the full implementation of WPS given the disproportionate impact of arms on civilians and their use to perpetrate sexual and gender-based violence.

While the Turnbull government says it will primarily focus on boosting exports to the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand, it will also target markets in Asia and the Middle East.

Currently 29% of all weapons produced in the world go to the Middle East (to Saudi Arabia and UAE), where they are then known to be distributed to conflict parties perpetrating human rights abuses against civilians, for example in Yemen.

Of course, Sweden is also an arms exporter, the 11th largest in the world and the third largest per capita. This while purporting to have a feminist foreign policy with human rights at its centre. To address that apparent contradiction, Sweden passed a law in 2017 to limit exports to non-democratic countries.

Similarly, Australia’s commitment to grow its defence budget to 2% of GDP by 2020–21 has implications not only for Australia’s foreign aid and development budgets (defence spending is already 10 times that of aid spending). The push to increase defence and military expenditure also has implications for women’s security, particularly in countries engaged in peace processes that Australia is currently supporting.

In our Australian Research Council Linkage Project ‘Toward Inclusive Peace: Analysing Gender-Sensitive Peace Agreements 2000–2016’, my colleagues and I found that an increase of just 1% in a country’s military expenditure as a percentage of GDP makes it less likely that peace agreements will have provisions to ensure gender equality and women’s rights after conflict.

What this means is that resources used to build up the military (purchased from Australia, the US, the UK, Sweden, Canada, etc.) may lead to reductions in other expenditures such as in education, health services and industry investment. These directly support post-conflict recovery..

I suggest four actions that the government should adopt to ensure such trade does not aid and abet human rights violations.

First, Australia should seriously consider following Sweden’s lead and pass a domestic law to prohibit arms exports to countries where they could be used to harm civilians. Such an approach would ensure that Australia upholds the UN Arms Trade Treaty, especially the clauses that prohibit the export of weapons used to perpetrate human rights abuses, including gender-based violence, which Australia as a UN Security Council member in 2013 strongly advocated.

Second, Australia should make its foreign aid conditional on governments ending impunity for sexual and gender-based violence and adopting transitional justice mechanisms for victims. In the short term this may affect Australia’s economic investments. But Australia’s seat on the UN Human Rights Council involves leading on the protection of human rights and pushing back on egregious incursions to women’s rights around the world.

Third, Australia should prioritise support for women’s peacebuilding in Myanmar, where Australia is a major bilateral donor to the peace process, and in Iraq and Syria. If we are ready to fund military deployments and military training, we should be ready to support women’s peacebuilding.

Finally, Australia should adopt a government-wide, gender-based approach to preventing and countering violent extremism and terrorism, recognising the connection between violent extremist acts and acts of gender-based violence, and involving women’s leadership and participations in communities within Australia and our region.

A feminist foreign policy may be the smart option for Australia, grasping the growing sentiment among citizens of both great and small powers that respect for their human rights is not negotiable.

WPS 2018: Defence’s commitment to women, peace and security

This article is the first in a series on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ that The Strategist will publish over coming weeks in recognition of International Women’s Day 2018. Eds.

Women and children suffer disproportionately in wars and during civil instability before and after conflicts. A conscious effort to create and enforce clear and specific protective and preventative measures is needed to secure them from harm.

But women are vastly under-represented in peace negotiations, the formulation of security initiatives, and in programs of peace and security enhancement, enforcement, compliance and verification. This fundamentally lessens the likelihood of the long-term success of peace and stability operations. Significant work is required to promote female participation in operations and peace negotiations, and to include in our planning and calculations a perspective that accounts for the needs of women and children.

We need only look as far as the mass kidnappings of girls from schools in Africa to be used as sex slaves and hostages by the Boko Haram terrorist group. We know the horror stories of mass rape during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the Rwanda genocide and at the hands of Daesh in Iraq.

The ‘forces of good’ also have cause to hang their heads, as we recall known cases of UN and military forces, as well as of charitable aid organisations, exploiting women and children for sexual purposes. The genuine success of our peace, security and humanitarian intervention operations goes beyond simply dealing with the ‘enemy holding the guns’. We must do more than that, and we must do better.

The value of women’s participation was clear in the Northern Ireland peace process, particularly in the Good Friday Agreement. Much closer to home was the role of women’s groups in Bougainville before, during and after the Lincoln and Burnham Accords, and in other peace negotiations since.

Clear-eyed peace and stability operations have as an objective the restoration of the whole of society’s fabric, and that relies on formal and informal peace and restorative justice processes. Women, being half of the population, are central to that and have a strong focus on the survival of their families, their husbands, sons, fathers and brothers.

Studies of micro-finance and micro-credit consistently tell us that the small-community economic activity of women injects stability and assurance into the life of the broader society. Ensuring the formal involvement of women and their perspectives simply makes sense if we want viable and durable peace and security.

Australia’s military approach to implementing the WPS agenda includes all four components: prevention, protection, perspective and participation.

In Afghanistan, an Australia senior gender adviser embedded at the NATO-led Resolute Support Mission headquarters currently leads a team of advisers from coalition partners to ensure that women have meaningful participation in their defence and security forces.

This includes developing recruitment and career progression plans and providing a gender perspective on all planning and activities in the mission. It’s a fact of life in Afghanistan that men cannot enter a woman’s home if her husband isn’t present. If women aren’t serving in Afghan military and security forces, then Afghanistan’s government can’t ensure the security of the population and neither can it safely carry out counter-terrorism operations.

Engaging women in peace and reconciliation efforts is well understood by the leadership in Afghanistan, and President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and I discussed the progress being made during our meeting in Kabul in February. The First Lady of Afghanistan, Mrs Rula Ghani, is empowering Afghan women—urban and rural—including through her leadership of an annual symposium on women and peace. Afghanistan has used international support in its efforts to restore the fabric of society after the brutalisation of the Taliban.

An example is the dramatic increase in female school enrolments, from around one million in 2001, none of whom were girls, to over nine million today, of whom around 40% are girls. This is a truly remarkable achievement, and one that Australia is proud to have supported through our aid program. To sustain female participation in the Afghan security forces, Australia has supported female-centric facilities at the Afghan National Army Officer Academy, and female-specific facilities for the Afghan Air Force in Kabul.

In Iraq, Australia provided the first gender adviser to the counter-Daesh coalition in October 2017 to help return female participation in its security forces to pre-2003 norms of around 8%, or 100,000 women. Increasing female participation will increase operational effectiveness and build trust with civil communities.

The ravages of Daesh control of Iraqi territory have been devastating for women. Daesh murdered men and boys they saw as threats, and sold women and girls to fund their campaign and to exert control over communities. The security environment in many Iraqi provinces remains challenging. Families, many now headed by women, face a return to homes without basic services, the risk of bombs hidden by Daesh, communal tensions and reprisal attacks. Any durable restoration of social cohesion and peace must take into account the perspectives of women, especially those who now head their households, and must actively foster the participation of women in formal and informal peace processes.

The recruitment of female police officers has already made a difference. In Diyala province, the Daughters of Iraq supplement security forces at both government buildings and check points. This program gives women who’ve lost family members to violence the opportunity to make a living while increasing security. These female security officers are trained alongside female soldiers and learn search techniques to find contraband and to detect improvised bombs. This increases female participation in community self-protection security programs while contributing to peace and security measures.

Closer to home, the Women in Pacific Defence Forces Seminar was held late last year as part of a program to integrate a gender perspective into the region’s peace and security efforts, and to strengthen female military participation in conflict prevention and resolution. The seminar included defence force officers and senior non-commissioned officers from Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Chile, New Zealand and Australia, and was a direct outcome of the South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting, of which Australia is an active member.

Indonesia and Australia co-chair the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting—Plus experts’ working group on peacekeeping operations. At its most recent conference in Canberra in October 2017, I emphasised that women are critical to improving the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping missions, and the experts group continues to draw up practical ways to include women in peace operations decision-making, conflict prevention and resolution.

I am committed to ensuring that the Defence portion of Australia’s National WPS Action Plan generates practical, realistic and attainable objectives for the ADF. This will ensure our contributions to humanitarian operations, regional stability and security operations, and combat operations demonstrate world’s best practice for the protection of women and children; the prevention of harm; the inclusion of women’s perspectives on operational, peace, and security plans and activities; and the participation of women in peace processes, negotiations and agreements.

In this way, fragile and tentative steps towards stability and recovery will have a durable and dependable impact on whole societies.