Gender Issues

Interview with Professor Mallika Kaur

/ Prerna Tara / Leave a comment

Mallika Kaur is a lawyer and writer who focuses on gender and minority issues in the United States and South Asia including post 9/11 violence, racial discrimination, farmer suicides, and transitional and transformative justice. She is also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.  She writes regularly for online and print media as well as academic publications; her work has been published in Foreign Policy, Washington Post, California Law Review among others. We would also like to take this as an opportunity to thank Mallika for all the work and efforts she has contributed to INTLAWGRRLS over the past several years.

Her book titled “Faith, Gender and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper” was published by Palgrave Publishers a few months ago. I had the honor of interviewing her with regards to her new book. The interview is transcribed below.

Question: What was your motivation behind writing this book? Why did you specifically choose to cover Punjab’s human rights movement?

Answer: I did not in fact set out with the motivation of writing a book. It was not a part of any academic project or research agenda. It was something that came out of my own journeying. I grew up in Chandigarh, Punjab, having been a part of a community of folks who read their news in English, discussed it perhaps in Punjabi, and largely did not talk to their kids about the armed conflict at all. A seminal year in the conflict history was the Indian Army’s attack on Punjab, epicentered at Darbar Sahib (akin to Temple of David or Mecca) in June 1984. This provoked a visceral reaction from Sikhs, indeed even many non-Sikhs. Yet, within months—I was a toddler still—the justified necessity of the June massacres had taken hold in the non-Sikh psyche of India. Since then, any demands for truth-telling–about that June or the decade of mass violence that followed—have been considered suspect by the majority community and the successive governments of India.

As an adult, my legal and international human rights interest was around courts and commissions and possibility of a regional mechanism for South Asia. I was initially interested in those questions but eventually what I landed on in my work was how powerful stories are in unwrapping things that have been largely silenced for a very long time.

Punjab has been a laboratory of several nation-building projects in India: the Partition in 1947, the not so revolutionary Green Revolution in the 60s-70s, and various attempts at stifling dissent in the 80s and 90s. But these multiple upheavals that contextualize Punjab’s present have seldom been woven and written together, much less by a Sikh woman.

Through this book, I have tried to fight against this idea that the Punjab conflict was just about violence against violence with men combating on both sides. I tried to find stories of people who were non-combatants but chose the dangerous work of human rights defence. The book is trying to re-shift focus from “leaders,” combatants and an obsession with violence to a more nuanced and inclusive approach. Instead of just Indira Gandhi and other perpetrators, the book hopes the limelight comes to rest on women leaders like Paramjit Kaur Khalra, Kuldeep Kaur, Amar Kaur, unnamed women like the police officer who secretly helped inmates in one of Punjab’s many torture centers, and Baljit Kaur, who you see on the cover of the book. Within this marginalized conflict, I am looking at further neglected gender issues. For the men’s stories, I highlight the dangerous tendencies that were conveniently ascribed to all turbaned and bearded Sikh men, and then the general prohibition society imposes on men that makes it quite impossible for them to admit many emotions, much less speak about sexualized torture.

Question: How did you approach and research this topic?

Answer: The story-collection, writing, having the subjects of the story read it, all happened over many years, which was fine because this writing did not have any specific deadline of restriction. One of the benefits of doing a project entirely on your own time and dime! People were generous once they understood where the questions were coming from. They shared their personal archives including videos, legal files and other documents. The book eventually combines legal cases, scholarly analysis, community memory and personal narrative. The hybrid approach is necessary to tease the nuances lost in a more straightforward memoir, collective biography or academic examination. Further, memoir snapshots provide the reader the needed history of the author narrating the history of the conflict: exposing my vantage point and influences directly.

The book is all and not at all about Punjab. When generations of violence may have made silence more expedient than excavation, how might we learn about conflicts’ complexities of the past and their manipulated shadows in the present? Most linear, neat, cited and chronological tellings of conflicts overlook essential dynamics such as gender and trauma.

Each chapter centers on a key case from the year (or years) of its focus, starting in descending order from 1995, the supposed end of the conflict. Legal case details are available to varying extents, which is instructive: till the mid-90s, legal remedies were de facto suspended in Punjab. Case descriptions thus also draw from non-legal sources. Each case necessarily invokes additional cases. And then advocating for the need to embrace complexity and reject binary understandings, each chapter also contains an interwoven section that quickly traverses the earlier history of Punjab, starting in ascending order from 1839, the transition from Sikh rule to British colonial rule. The two timelines, descending from 1995 and ascending from 1839, converge in the final chapter, on the pivotal year, 1984.

Question: What kind of audience did you have in mind while writing the book?

Answer: The audience of this book is pretty large and varied. It includes scholars, lawyers, policy makers, activists, students, and general readers. By presenting convergences between different forms of violence–current and historical, interpersonal and mass social violence—I believe this book has already engaged a variety of readers. I have received very different reactions and reflections from people of various walks of life over the last months. Women who read between the lines when the women in the book remained silent about certain things. Men who have expressed they never thought of some basic gendered dynamics in how even the more popular stories from the Punjab conflict are spoken about.

Also, I strongly felt that since the violence was rendered so common in Punjab, I had to figure out a way of telling the story in a way that is not limited to lawyers or one academic discipline. That it could be understood by anybody who cares about human rights defenders who do the work of helping us retain our belief in humanity during the worst of atrocities! And it’s meant for those unnamed activists and defenders who may be feeling alone in the world. Despite the world today feeling ever-growing in its apathy and ever-shrinking in its attention span towards even the worst of crimes, you are not alone. Different points and places in history have felt the same and still there are people, like the protagonists of this book,  who have made choices against the tide. They felt they really got something out of it, out of this unsalaried and uncelebrated work. They regularly gained inspiration from the folks they worked with and defended. They felt a sense of collective as they became part of history. When you consider the tenacity of centennial litigants like Chaman Lal, it’s hard not to be moved!

Question: What was your approach while selecting the three human rights defenders for the book?

Answer: These three were in fact my windows on many other human rights defenders, some I named earlier, who were always at much more risk and suffered much more. The life stories of the three people you see on the cover of the book, Baljit Kaur, Justice Ajit Singh Bains and Inderjit Singh Jaijee, became trusted vehicles for traveling through Punjab’s recent history. Each of them is credited with saving countless lives.

Speaking of the approach while selecting these three, I’m reminded of a video I watched, which Baljit Kaur took in the late 80s. A Sikh man, a former Army officer is narrating how he was himself picked up, tortured and almost killed. He was speaking in perfect English so this was somebody with enough higher education. He had been treated this way as he had spoken against a young boy being killed. He mentioned that these folks fighting for justice, Baljit Kaur and her colleagues, were in fact the ones preserving the nation’s unity and integrity. Contrary to being seditious or dangerous as the politicians would have folks believe, it was human rights defenders who were providing ordinary people some hope that the legal and justice system could be the answer rather than further violence.

Unfortunately, people fighting for justice often fight very lonely battles. These protagonists had one another. And they had faith in a higher power that kept them going. And they had a lot of pride in Sikh history that they had heard of or witnessed when younger, through anti-British struggles, for example. Still, it was not like they were joined by a large number of other folks living in Chandigarh, Punjab who were enjoying the same relative privilege of upper class these three protagonists had during the 80s and 90s. So it was very fascinating to hear their stories as to how they surrounded police stations, how they compiled reports, how they visited Amnesty International and learnt how to make video footage to appropriately document what was happening at a time international human rights groups were not allowed in Punjab by the Indian government.

Question: How was your experience while interviewing people on this difficult past?

Answer: What I find fascinating especially about my three protagonists is that they are buoyant spirits, so young-at-heart in their 80s, 90s, even though they have seen such horrific things in their lifetimes. These protagonists have made more change than most of us will be able to make in our lifetime. I found this very uplifting despite the subject matter being very difficult.

Since I allowed myself a hybrid approach, and use memoir in the book as well, I put myself very explicitly into the discussions around the legal cases and this too helped me make sense of people’s trauma experiences. Some of the irrational reactions of these people started making more sense because they had gone through very unnatural set of circumstances. The whole Sikh community had been demonized for several decades. And now in India of 2020, the issues of creating an ‘enemy within,’ and what that does to social fabric, is again playing out. Where for example students, including pregnant women, who are protesting new discriminatory laws are picked up and booked indefinitely under draconian laws, themselves iterations of laws previously used in Punjab and then finally repealed on the books. How can we say the unlearnt lessons of past conflicts are not relevant to India today? I am not didactic about the parallels in the book. There is space for the reader to draw lessons for themselves.

Question: What do you think of the post-conflict scenario of Punjab in terms of violence against women and gender-based violence?

Answer: So, the first thing is that I don’t describe Punjab as post-conflict anywhere in the book because there has been no catharsis, no reconciliation, no period of transition, or justice, towards sustainable and inclusive peace. The estimates of those killed vary from police estimates of 25,000 to civil society estimates of 250,000. Even this variance speaks volumes about how the conflict has lived on; there is no closure, no semblance of transparency. Nobody was able to document the dead. Those who attempted to document it, like Jaswant Singh Khalra, whose amazing story I detail in Chapter 2, were killed. We went from this period of heightened killing and mayhem to an abrupt and strident “normalcy” in Punjab.

Coming to your question about gender and violence against women, I think the situation for women remains really bad through these subsequent decades, if not worse. Of course, across India we are dealing with shameful realities like marital rape being still legal. Dowry, being a ubiquitous feature of almost all weddings, despite being illegal. Ideas of honor and purity instead of autonomy and rights being tied to women’s bodies. And then some women’s bodies being deemed as not worthy of honor even: the Dalits of India disenfranchised by caste, or the women in conflict zones, who were blatantly immediately excluded from the changes that were proposed after the much publicized and horrific Delhi rape of 2012. Women who suffered in Punjab in the 80s and 90s at the hand of State forces have seen no reparations, not even in the form of recognition, much less apologies or restitution.

Question: What is next on your research agenda? Would you like to interview more female reformists of Punjab or write about some other aspect of Punjab region or the conflict?

Answer: I remain interested broadly in how we can make connections between different forms of violence that our communities negotiate – current and historical, in the U.S. and in home countries, interpersonal and mass social violence. I have also been writing and teaching on how lawyers specifically manage trauma, their clients’ and their own. Though most importantly right now, through COVID, I am focusing on the work that I have been doing since 2002, advocacy and crisis response for victims of gender-based violence. Working on gender-based violence as a practicing lawyer in the U.S., I am also really fascinated by comparatives. Right now in the U.S. there are a lot of discussions about alternatives to how domestic violence/ intimate partner violence response has been closely tied to increased policing, especially since the 70s. This is a complicated discussion here. Then add other contexts where feminists are fighting for the police to take domestic violence seriously. Or, even more complicated, cases in India where domestic violence laws are not protecting those they were meant to but are regularly manipulated by the upper-class litigants looking for an end-run. This is a part of my broader interest and possible future writing. And I dream of the time and headspace to write fiction someday! But really, I am presently quite consumed with working on the increased challenges faced by domestic violence survivors where I currently live. This too is a lesson from the protagonists of the book: make a difference where you can, don’t overlook the obvious local needs.

The Quest For Gender Based Asylum: Exploring ‘Women’ as a Particular Social Group

/ Shebani Bhargava & Shreenandini Mukhopadhyay / 1 Comment

The United Nations Convention Concerning the Status of Refugees, 1951(‘Convention’) is the centerpiece of international refugee protection that provides protection to individuals who are forced to flee their homes due to a well-founded fear of persecution. The United States of America (‘US’), one of the treaty’s signatories, has adopted Article 1(A) of the Convention without any substantial reservation, understanding or declaration (‘RUDs’). Section 101(a)(42) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 1952(‘INA’) grants asylum if an alien is unable or unwilling to return to his/her country of origin because s/he has suffered past persecution or has a well-founded fear of future persecution on account of ‘race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.’ 

Notably, both the Convention and the INA leave out ‘gender’ as a ground for persecution. However, this has not stopped women from making claims of asylum on the basis of their gender. In fact, the US records a 30-year-long quest in establishing gender as a protected category in asylum law. In the recent decision of Jaceyls Miguelina de Pena-Paniagua v. William P. Barr (‘De Pena’) the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recognized gender as a legal basis for granting asylum, allowing the US to finally become a safe haven for women fleeing domestic violence. The Harvard Immigration and Refugee clinic that represented the asylee, a Dominican woman escaping domestic and sexual violence, expressed that the Judge saw domestic violence for what it was–persecution for her gender, and that the decision has finally put gender on par with other grounds for asylum. 

Persecution of Women 

In order to obtain asylum, an asylum-seeker must prove past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution. The term ‘persecution’ has not been defined in the INA or Convention. There is no universally accepted definition of persecution, however most acts of bodily violence have been recognised as such. The Board of Immigration Appeals (‘BIA’) has defined persecution as a ‘threat to the life or freedom of, or the infliction of suffering or harm upon, those who differ in a way regarded as offensive.’[i]

While considering the case for women, instances of persecution can be split into two categories:

  1. The firstkind occurs within private spheres, where the persecutor is generally an individual who shares an intimate relationship with the woman, such as a romantic partner or relative. This include acts of sexual/domestic violence, economic/emotional abuse, or regressive cultural practices such as female genital mutilation, honour killings, etc. 
  2. The secondkind is where the persecution is carried out or condoned by a public or private, non-state actor, such as Governments, or militant groupswho specifically subject women of an  ethnicity to sexual violence or subjugation. This category encompasses forced population control strategies, penalties that restrict women’s reproductive freedoms, sexual assault, rape, trafficking, forced marriages, etc. 

Evidently, in both categories, women are persecuted because of their gender and their particular societal status as women.  If persecution is studied as a means of exerting control over a race, religion or particular social group, it is clear that women fit this bill.

Additionally, the asylum-seeker must also prove that she is unable or unwilling to return to, or is unable to avail protection from persecution in, her home country. Interestingly, in most cases of persecution of women, the government and the law enforcement are unresponsive to domestic violence or sexual violence, and in some cases, are even responsible for it. 

Women as a Particular Social Group 

Defining a PSG is extremely important because, depending on how narrowly or broadly it is construed, it can result in vast differences in who is granted asylum. The UNHCR Executive Committee in 1985 recognised that women asylum-seekers who face harsh or inhuman treatment due to their having transgressed the social mores of the society may be considered as a PSG. In 1991, the UNHCR issued guidelines on the protection of refugee women in which it reiterated the same principle. The US BIA also has provided some guidance on the matter. In the Matter of Acosta, the BIA recognised that a PSG should share a common, immutable characteristic, such as sex. It is relevant to note that sex and gender are conflated in refugee law. However one can argue that gender is also an ‘immutable characteristic’, as it fundamental to an individual’s identity or conscience. Later, ‘social visibility’ and ‘particularity’ were identified as additional factors for PSGs. 

The issue that women face while claiming membership to a PSG is that they have to prove the group’s constitution, characteristics and then establish that they fit the set criteria. This double liability makes it harder for women to seek asylum. While certain women have been successful in making a claim for asylum in the US – women who refuse to undergo the process of female genital mutilation, and victims of domestic violence, there are still gaps that can only be filled by classifying ‘women’ as an independent PSG. 

Case for the wider group of ‘women’

The decision of the First Circuit in De Pena makes an effort to classify women as a PSG. While the asylee only made a case of belonging to the PSG of Dominican women who were unable to leave or escape a domestic relationship, the court positively considered and advocated for the wider category of ‘women’ to be classified as a PSG.

The main objection in construing ‘women’ as a PSG, is that it encompasses a large number of people and this will open floodgates to a large number of women seeking asylum.[ii]But in De Pena, the court acknowledged the view of Perdomo v. Holder that if race, religion and nationality refer to large classes of persons, PSGs may do as well as they are equally based on innate characteristics. Therefore a PSG cannot be rejected because it represents too large a portion of the population as this would misunderstand the function of the protected categories. Gender, like all other grounds, only functions to recognise the reason an individual is persecuted and does not imply anything larger.[iii]

While US asylum law only recently has recognized gender as a protected status, other countries set a good example for the way forward. In 1993, the Immigration and Refugee board of Canada released guidelines for gender-related persecution. Interestingly, this has not led to an explosion of claims. Further, in 2006, the House of Lords recognized that gender alone may fall within the definition of a PSG. Such definitive cases and specific guidelines aid the cause of women asylum seekers, and go a long way in recognizing the case for women as a particular social group. 

[i]Hernandez- Ortiz v. INS, 777 F.2d 509, 516 (9th Cir. 1985); Guevara-Flores v. INS, 786 F.2d 1242 (5th Cir. 1986).

[ii]Andrea Binder, Gender and the Membership in a Particular Social Group Category of the 1951 Refugee Convention, 10 Colum. J. Gender & L. 167 (2001), p 191.

[iii]Andrea Binder, Gender and the Membership in a Particular Social Group Category of the 1951 Refugee Convention, 10 Colum. J. Gender & L. 167 (2001), p 191.

VP Biden’s Ambitious Agenda for Women

/ Beth Van Schaack / Leave a comment

The presumptive U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, has released his “Agenda for Women.”  It’s a tour de force of dozens of key policy priorities, both domestic and international, focused on advancing women’s rights at home and abroad.  Some key takeaways in the national security and human rights space are outlined below along with some areas where additional attention would be welcome:

ERA YesOne Biden’s his core pledges is to advocate for Congress to recognize that the necessary ¾ of the states have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (the ERA). First introduced in 1923, approved by Congress in 1972, and then sent out to the states for ratification with a deadline of 1979 (later extended to 1982), the ERA received its 38th ratification in January 2020 when Virginia finalized its ratification. Litigation over whether the time limits placed on ratification by Congress are constitutional has been proceeding in several courts (with one suit filed by Equal Means Equal being dismissed  earlier this month for lack of standing). The House passed a resolution that eliminates the putative deadline; so far, there has been no comparable action in the Senate. The Alice Paul Institute—named for the Quaker suffragist who authored the ERA after being instrumental in gaining passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the vote—offers a history of the amendment here. Prof. Julie Suk’s take on why it failed before and how it can succeed is here. Biden co-sponsored the ERA nine times while in Congress. President Donald J. Trump, on the other hand, has opposed the lawsuits, including one  brought by three states attorneys general (Virginia, Nevada, and Illinois) to add the ERA to the U.S. Constitution.

On the multilateral plane, Biden will seek ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a treaty dedicated to global women’s rights. Nearly all U.N members have ratified this treaty (in holding out, the United States enjoys the company of Iran, Somalia, and Sudan and a couple of small island nations—see map below). The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has debated the treaty several times, but so far the full Senate has refused to give its advice and consent to ratification, in part due to unfounded fears the treaty will be cited to promote abortions and prostitution and will undermine U.S. sovereignty. Several U.S. cities and municipalities, including San Francisco, have adopted ordinances and policies in keeping with the treaty and the “human rights cities” movement. 1200px-CEDAW_Participation.svg

When it comes to reproductive rights, Biden calls for the repeal of the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which bans U.S. federal funds (mainly Medicaid) from paying for abortions (except in cases in which the pregnancy results from rape or incest or if the woman’s life is endangered by the pregnancy). The Amendment disproportionately impacts low-income women and women of color. This marks a welcome reversal from Biden’s stance at an early Democratic debate during the primary race.  A bill to repeal the Amendment, known as the EACH Woman Act, is working its way through Congress.

Biden would also rescind the so-called “Mexico City Policy” (a.k.a. the global gag rule) that President Trump reinstated but in a more far-reaching form. Withdrawing this ruleGlobal Gag Rule would enable the federal government to support civil society organizations engaged in global health efforts around the world, even if recipients provide information on safe and legal abortion services as part of their public health work. Remarkably, as one of his first moves as President, Trump, flanked by a phalanx of beaming white men, dramatically expanded the policy. Heralding the vindictiveness that has so characterized this administration, this move followed on the heels of hundreds of Women’s Marches that drew millions around the world into the streets (my dispatch is here) and a campaign that repeatedly revealed his deep-seated misogyny. Reversing the global gag rule should be an urgent priority: research has shown that the policy dramatically undermines women’s health and, paradoxically, leads to increased abortion rates in developing countries. Although this move can be accomplished by executive action, the Global Health, Empowerment, and Rights (HER) Act (currently in the Committees on Foreign Relations and Affairs) would prevent future Republican presidents from reinstating it again.

Furthermore, as part of his broader immigration platform, Biden promises to dedicate himself to immigration reform and undo the Trump administration’s harshly punitive policies. This includes: reopening the United States to refugee resettlement (raising the admissions cap to 125,000), re-establishing a humane and expeditious asylum process for people fleeing persecution, and reinstating asylum protections for people who are escaping domestic and sexual violence. The latter requires the reversal of a decision by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to invoke a rarely used power and overturn a Board of Immigration Appeals decision that had allowed such survivors to demonstrate persecution on the basis of their membership in a “particular social group”—one basis for receiving refugee status. Biden will also increase the number of visas for survivors of domestic violence under the Violence against Women Act (VAWA) and for victims of crime (so-called U-visas), and expedite the process for granting these and related immigration benefits, including T visas for victims of human trafficking. It will not be enough, however, to simply dismantle these cruel Trump policies; rather, Biden should develop ways to repair the harm done, including through providing psycho-social rehabilitation to children and families traumatically torn asunder and placed in inhumane detention conditions. Biden should also explore the implementation of restitutionary immigration benefits, such as expedited pathways to asylum and family reunification.

In addition to issuing a whole plan devoted to ending violence against women, Biden has endorsed passage of the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA), which would make ending the epidemic of violence against women worldwide a key foreign policy priority. The proposed legislation recognizes that

“Rape and sexual assault against women and girls are used to torture, intimidate, and terrorize communities. Rape and sexual assault are used as tools of war in conflict zones, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and South Sudan.”

If enacted, the IVAWA would commit the United States to helping women and girls who are victims of violence to gain access to justice. The timing of this will be crucial; women everywhere are experiencing higher levels of domestic violence while suffering from reduced access to protective services due to the Covid-19 pandemic. These commitments reflect the fact that Biden co-authored the U.S. Violence Against Women Act in 1994 (one of the legislative achievements of which he is most proud) and helped pass the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which strengthened the United States’ anti-trafficking framework.  Biden released a statement on the World Day against Trafficking in Persons, July 30th, setting forth his anti-trafficking priorities.

This focus on ending VAW globally is part of Biden’s larger Women, Peace & Security (WPS) plank that will focus on supporting women’s leadership globally. This includes full implementation of the Women, Peace, and Security Act, passed by Congress in 2017, which is premised on research that including women in conflict prevention efforts, peace building processes, and post-conflict governance helps to reduce conflict and instantiate stability. The Act mandates a government-wide strategy to increase the participation of women in peace and security operations and to support transitional justice and accountability mechanisms that reflect the experiences of women and girls. 1_Qz_BwcroQlTViHAMkaJswgThe Act responds to a suite of resolutions emanating from the U.N. Security Council to the same end (starting with Resolution 1325) and builds on the United States’ National Action Plan on WPS, which was released in 2011 and then strengthened in 2016. Both plans call for effective measures to investigate sexual and gender-based violence and to bring those responsible to justice. The Trump Administration has only haltingly implemented the WPS Act, while taking a number of concrete steps in the opposite direction, as demonstrated by Ambassador Don Steinberg, who once led USAID.

Biden’s Agenda for Woman contains a whole slate of economic pledges, underscoring a recognition that economic security is a women’s issue just as much as reproductive rights or the imperative to end gender discrimination. These include support for a number of pieces of draft legislation, including:

Biden has also drawn attention to the need to better support caregivers, particularly in the Covid-19 era. The Agenda announces a whole array of measures in the health, education, and economic sectors for LGBTQI+ individuals (indeed, the list of policies to be reversed vis-à-vis this community is regrettably a long one), as well as disabled, incarcerated, native, immigrant, and veteran women and women of color.

Finally, consistent with an Obama-era Executive Order, Biden has also pledged to ensure his political appointees, and the entire federal workforce, reflect the diversity that is America. Besides his intention to choose a woman Vice President and an African American women for the Supreme Court, he also committed to work for gender parity as he builds his foreign policy and national security teams, a campaign launched by the Leadership Council for Women in National Security (LCWINS) at the start of the election season. The commitment—which other Democratic candidates also adopted—is based not only on legitimate concerns for gender equity but also on consistent research that diverse teams are stronger, more effective, and more creative. This imperative is echoed by organizations such as Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security & Conflict Transformation (WCAPS), the Athena Leadership Project, and Women in Defense (WID).

All this may explain why polls have VP Biden up 25 points over Donald Trump with women as a whole—an historic margin. This is notwithstanding Trump’s pandering to “The Suburban Housewives of America,” perhaps because Biden’s numbers are also higher in suburban polls. To be sure, gender has always been—and likely will be—an issue on the campaign trail, but the disparity between the two candidates could not be more stark.

 

Horrors of a Rape Trial in India: A Saga of threat for masturbation or delivery of Justice?

/ Amreen Tapadar & Deeksha Sharma / 1 Comment

Introduction

About 50% of the Indian male population is positively traced with a sexual dysfunction which creates hindrances in basic human instincts, leaving one crippled with ignominy. Impotence is the inability in developing or maintaining a penile erection sufficient to conclude the act of intercourse to orgasm and/or ejaculation occurring biologically which is mainly of two types-physical and psychological. Unlike sterility, potency is transitorily dependent on various factors. Untreated Impotence results in sexual sadism. The Mental Healthcare Act 2017, disregards sadism or psychologically generated impotence, indirectly making India the “impotence capital of the world.”

Secondly, the atrocious Impotence Test prevailing chiefly is considered a decisive piece of evidence in cases of rape. This embarks the beginning of torture in the Indian Criminal Justice System. The inhumane approach adopted by the Indian Penal Code in giving discretionary powers to the police officers attacks the scheme of the Indian Constitution. Despite the generic relevance of the test in most cases, routine practice violates Article 21 (Right to Life) of the Indian Constitution. In this article, we highlight the extraneous essence of the impotence test in light of the Indian Criminal justice system and the Indian Constitution.

The terror of the Impotence Test

Traditional female-centric laws pertaining to sexual offences in India butcher male integrity and violate their basic human rights. Checking the potency in rape cases remains a significant practice of law. The relevance of potency extends to adoption, nullity of marriage and divorce along with sexual offences.

Section 53 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.P.C.) showers “unfettered discretionary power” on police to believe that an examination will afford evidence for the case and wistfully magistrates are ousted of such powers. The lacunae in the provision can be identified as:

Firstly, according to acclaimed Modi’s Indian Medical Jurisprudence, the potency test establishes the capability of committing the alleged sexual acts but the hamartia is the laxity of courts in considering situational and psychological factors, resulting in varying opinion of courts on similar matters.

Secondly, force may be used by the police authorities on the unwilling person to collect samples, otherwise threat of masturbation performed on him is invited caused by wrongful interpretation. Religious seers,like Raghaveshwara Bharathi and Asaram accused of rape faced a similar threat. The DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2018, bifurcates consent required in taking bodily fluid into two instances, written Consent  in crimes with less than 7 years of punishment and no consent for crimes with punishment of more than 7 years. The clear legislative intent is to differentiate between the two which gets contradicted by the unchecked power given to police authorities in deciding the necessity of performing the examination. Thus, the Indian Penal Code violates the ‘due process of law’ of the Indian Constitution.

Continue reading →

State Sponsored Persecution of Uighur Muslims in China

/ Vaishnavi Chaudhry / Leave a comment

It is a well known fact that the People’s Republic of China is infamous for carrying out human rights violations on a large scale. Right now, an organized state sponsored reign of terror is being perpetuated by the authoritarian regime against the Uighur Muslims  of the country. The Uighur Muslims are an ethic Turkish minority group residing in the northwestern region of Xinjiang province of China. This region is known as Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). 

Ever since Chen Quanguo , the Chinese Communist party secretary, has been given the charge of XUAR, the crimes against the Uighur Muslims have considerably increased through their illegal detention in internment camps. Though there is little information about the treatment of detained Uighur Muslims in these camps, some credible sources have reported that detainees are forced to live in prison like conditions in these camps and are subjected to torture on a regular basis. Apart from these, the Uighur Muslims are also subjected to state surveillance so as to ensure that they are prevented from practicing Islam in any form or manner. Furthermore, the Chinese government has also adopted the policy of harvesting human organs from the Uighur Muslim community. 

Beijing has often responded to accusations about illegally detaining Uighur Muslims by terming the detention or internment camps as ‘re-education centres’ for the betterment of the Uighur Muslim Community. However, this is a poor attempt on Beijing’s part to thwart any criticism by the international community.

China’s Violation of International Law

The mass detention of Uighur Muslims, prevalence of torture against detainees, lack of information about the whereabouts of the detainees and the harvesting of their organs constitute crimes against humanity. Article 7 of the Rome statute of the International Criminal court lays down the criteria as to what specifically constitutes Crimes against Humanity and that criterion is being fulfilled by the Chinese government. Crimes against humanity take place when civilians are subjected to continuous human rights violations which are ignored or perpetuated by the governing authorities. According to Article 7(2) (a) of the Rome statute , crimes against humanity are committed in accordance with the state’s formal policy as in the case of China.  Additionally, according to the Rome statute, persecution of a community on the basis of religious or cultural ground also constitutes a crime against humanity.

Application of Human Rights Law

There are four major conventions on human rights and China is a party to all four of them. These are the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination , the International Covenant on Economic, social and Cultural Rights , Convention against cruel and other, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Through the unjustified mass detention of the Uighur Muslims, China has been flouting the above mentioned conventions and has drawn widespread criticism from around the world. 

Crimes against Uighur Women 

China is also a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. It is arguably the most widely violated convention by China when it comes to Uighur Muslims. Reports have emerged that Uighur Women are subjected to rape, medical experiments, forced sterilization and their menstrual cycles are often disrupted so as to prevent them from procreating. Apart from that, China is also implementing a ‘ Pair Up and Become a Family’ program under which Uighur women are forced to live in the same household as communist party officials so as to acquaint them with the ethnic Han Chinese culture. All these are indicative of the fact that China has been violating the CEDAW. 

Conclusion

Under the garb of combating religious extremism, China has adopted policies against the Uighur Muslim Community which have resulted in the creating of genocide like situation in the Xinjiang province. The cultural genocide that is being committed by China deserves much more attention from the world. Owing to the country’s global influence, it hasn’t received the kind of backlash that it deserves from the world community.

New Women in International Law Scholarship Prize

/ Milena Sterio / Leave a comment

The Inaugural Women in International Law Interest Group (WILIG) Scholarship Prize Committee (Lori Damrosch, Adrien Wing, Viviana Krsticevic, Nienke Grossman and Milena Sterio) is excited to create the inaugural WILIG Scholarship Prize.

The WILIG Scholarship Prize aims to highlight and promote excellence in international law scholarship involving women and girls, gender, and feminist approaches. Although scholars have utilized gender and feminist analyses in international law for at least a quarter of a century, such approaches frequently fail to permeate the mainstream of international legal scholarship and practice. This prize, awarded every two years, recognizes innovative contributions to international law scholarship that theorize or utilize a feminist lens or lenses, highlight and seek to address topics disproportionately affecting women and girls, or consider the impact of international law or policy on gender more broadly.

WILIG’s Scholarship Prize Committee invites all ASIL members to submit a single article, chapter, or book published in the last three years, for consideration. Self-nomination is welcome, as is nomination of others. The Committee will consider the following criteria in granting the award, and encourages nominators to include a brief cover letter describing how the submitted work meets these criteria:

(1) Appropriate Substance. The work utilizes a feminist lens or lenses, addresses a topic that disproportionately affects women and girls, or considers the impact of international law or policy on gender more broadly.

(2) Innovative. The work addresses topics not covered by previous scholars, highlights diverse perspectives on law and policy, uses new theoretical or methodological approaches, or applies theoretical or methodological approaches to topics in new ways.

(3) Learned. The work demonstrates in-depth knowledge and expertise concerning a topic.

(4) Impactful. The work has affected or has the potential to affect the way scholars and policy-makers view or address a particular topic or issue going forward.

Please email your cover letter and scholarly work to lschnitzer@ubalt.edu with subject line “WILIG Scholarship Prize Submission” by June 15, 2020. Questions about the prize can be emailed to wilig@asil.org.

The WILIG Scholarship Prize will be awarded at the WILIG Luncheon at the 2021 ASIL Annual Meeting.

Conflict-related sexual violence: what are we talking about? (Part 1)

/ Morgane Greco / 2 Comments

In the context of the author’s attendance to the 18th Assembly of State Parties to the International Criminal Court, this blogpost aims at sharing knowledge about conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and providing a preliminary understanding of the issue. It first explores the use of CRSV through history. Then, it highlights how it targets both women, girls, men and boys. Last but not least, this blogpost depicts the slow development of international tribunals’ responses to this scourge.

I. Conflict-related sexual violence is an old phenomenon…

According to the United Nations, CRSV refers to rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict. The term also encompasses trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual violence or exploitation, when committed in situations of conflict. 

The French NGO We are NOT Weapons of War stresses that sexual violence used as a weapon of war has always been present in conflict, even though its victims have long seemed invisible. This idea is also supported by Stand Speak Rise Up, a non-profit organization from Luxembourg. In its white book, we can read that sexual violence in conflict is not new and the historical roots of this phenomenon are deep: from the Viking era to the Thirty Years’ War and the Second World War, rape has been part of the “spoils of war” throughout history, a weapon of the victors and conquerors. War rape is rarely the result of uncontrolled sexual desire, but rather a way to exert power and install fear in victims and their community. 

In the 1990s, the conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region marked a major turning point in the use of sexual violence as a weapon to weaken and subdue vulnerable populations or to advance a political agenda. The Stand Speak Rise Up white book explains that CRSV was methodically organized and implemented in cold blood on a very large scale. Sexual violence in particular was also a tool of submission and terror at the end of the Cold War. 

Still nowadays, sexual violence can play a vital role in the political economy of terrorism, with physical and online slave markets and human trafficking enabling terrorist groups to generate revenue from the continuous abduction of women and girls. As an example, the Yezidi community in Iraq suffered and still suffers from these crimes, as the so-called Islamic State continues to target women and girls, abducting them and reducing them to sexual slavery and forced marriages. 

Perpetrators of such acts are often affiliated with States or non-State armed groups, including terrorist entities.

II. …that targeted and still targets both men, boys, women and girls…

In September 2019, during the United Nations 74th General Assembly, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict recalled that conflicts exacerbates existing gender inequalities, exposing women and girls to various forms of sexual and gendered-based violence. Women and girls, in particular, suffer sexual violence in the course of displacement, navigating their way through checkpoints and across borders without documentation, money or legal status. It is also important to note than men and boys also suffer from conflict-related sexual violence . 

Conflict-related sexual violence refers to incidents including rape, gang rape, forced nudity and other forms of inhumane and degrading treatment in a context of armed conflict. A disturbing trend is that sexual violence is increasingly perpetrated against very young children. The Secretary-General emphasized that during the Colombian civil war, that has lasted for 50 years, rebels systematically used sexual violence against the civilians, targeting women as well as their children. The Colombian Constitutional Court has recognized “a widespread, systematic and invisible practice.” It is also important to keep in mind that both men and women can be perpetrators. 

…

To read more, click here: Conflict-related sexual violence: what are we talking about? (Part 2)

Colombia’s Constitutional Court issues landmark decision recognising victims of reproductive violence in conflict

/ Dieneke de Vos / 2 Comments

A month ago, on 11 December 2019, the Colombian Constitutional Court issued an important decision recognising that women and girls who suffered forced contraception and forced abortion by their own armed groups should be recognized as ‘victims of armed conflict’. The decision is one of very few in the world to specifically recognise reproductive violence as a form of harm committed against women and girls in times of conflict. It thus sets important legal precedent in recognising a form of gender-based violence that has long remained invisible. Although the full written decision has not yet been made available, a summary of the decision has been published. In what follows, I analyse this summary.

Helena’s case

The case was brought by Women’s Link Worldwide on behalf of Helena (pseudonym), a young woman who had been forcibly recruited into the FARC at the age of 14. While with the FARC, she was forced to take contraceptives (injections) and forced to undergo an abortion when she became pregnant. She suffered significant and long-lasting health consequences as a result of the unsafe conditions in which these procedures were forcibly carried out. Continuing to suffer negative health consequences, Helena fled and was in hiding for many years until the peace deal with the government was signed. In 2017, she submitted an application to be recognised as a victim and to seek reparations under Colombia’s Law on Victims and Land Restitution (Law 1448). This law, adopted in 2011, recognizes victims of the armed conflict and confirms their rights to truth, justice and reparations. It includes provisions on the restitution of land and other reparations, and requires that special attention be paid to the needs of specific groups and communities, such as women, survivors of sexual violence, trade unionists, victims of forced displacement, and human rights defenders.

The agency charged with the registration of victims under this reparations framework (UARIV), however, subsequently denied Helena’s claim for victim status. In doing so, UARIV had relied upon an article in Law 1448 that denied victim status to members of illegal armed groups (Article 2(3)), and held that, in any case, Helena’s claim was submitted outside of applicable timelines set out in Law 1448. Helena fought this decision; while the first instance court did grant her access to government-provided medical support, her claims for recognition as a victim and for reparations under Law 1448 were dismissed in both first and second instance. She thus appealed her case to the Constitutional Court, who heard the matter in 2019, and issued this landmark decision at the end of last year. Importantly, Helena’s case was selected for review by the full panel of nine judges, rather than being decided upon by a panel of three judges. This illustrates the importance the Constitutional Court attached to the issues.

Constitutional Court’s decision

In its December 2019 decision, the Constitutional Court firstly found established that Helena was the victim of grave violations of her fundamental rights. The Court subsequently held that in dismissing her application to be registered as a victim of the armed conflict, UARIV violated Helena’s fundamental rights on two grounds. Firstly, UARIV had violated Helena’s rights as a victim by failing to interpret the applicable rules in accordance with established constitutional principles of most favourable interpretation, good faith, pro personae, and the primacy of substantive law. Secondly, UARIV failed to properly substantiate its decision by neither acknowledging the acts of forced abortion and forced displacement Helena suffered, nor by recognising that Helena’s specific circumstances constituted force majeure, preventing her from submitting an application within designated timelines.

The Court acknowledged that, on its face, Article 2(3) of Law 1448 allowed for the denial of victim status to ex-combatants who demobilised as an adult, and that, under this interpretation, Helena would have to seek reparations through other mechanisms, not including Law 1448 (as Helena fled the FARC after she turned 18). However, the Court also questioned whether this exclusion in Article 2(3) was consistent with Colombia’s obligations towards victims of the armed conflict, noting in particular the coercive nature of the practice of forced contraception and abortion within the FARC and that these acts were often perpetrated upon girls under 18, or upon young women who had only just reached the age of maturity.

According to the Court, denying Helena the right to be recognised as a victim under Law 1448, therefore, would violate her rights to access justice and to timely and adequate protection measures. Noting the principal obligation on the state to recognise victims of sexual violence as victims in such a way as to guarantee their rights to integral reparations, the Court also held that as a victim of sexual violence committed within an armed group, Helena would not have access to other avenues of reparations beyond Law 1448. As such, for the Court, registration in the Register of Victims constituted her only available avenue to adequately repair her fundamental rights.

Importantly, the Court held that the exclusion stipulated in Article 2(3) could not become an obstacle to reparations for victims of sexual violence who, as ex-combatants, were forcibly recruited into those illegal armed groups at a young age. Such a rigid interpretation of Article 2(3), according to the Court, would thus create an unconstitutional lack of protection and vulnerability. The Court also reiterated the state’s obligation to provide immediate, comprehensive, gender-sensitive and specialised health care to all victims of sexual violence by armed actors for such time as deemed necessary to overcome the physical and psychological health consequences of such violence.

For this reason, the Court relied upon the principle of declaring a ‘constitutional exception’ (‘la excepción de inconstitutionalidad’) as provided for in Article 4 of Colombia’s Constitution to overrule the applicability of Article 2(3) of Law 1448 to Helena’s case. Pursuant to this principle, when faced with a conflict between an ordinary legal norm and a constitutional norm, the Court may declare a constitutional exception to preserve rights guaranteed by the constitution in a specific case. In this case, the Court held that relying upon this principle was the only way to guarantee Helena’s fundamental rights and to find an adequate balance between Colombian law and Colombia’s international legal obligations under international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Not doing so, the Court stressed, would give rise to consequences that it held to be unconstitutional. As such, the Court rendered Article 2(3) of Law 1448 inapplicable to this specific case.

The Court thus ordered:

  • that the decision by UARIV not to include Helena in the Register of Victims be declared void;
  • that within 10 days of the date of its decision, UARIV admit Helena to the Register of Victims on the basis of her having suffered forced recruitment as a child, sexual violence (including forced use of contraceptives and forced abortion), and forced displacement;
  • that within 15 days of the date of its decision, UARIV reinstate the provision of psychosocial and medical assistance to Helena to address the emotional, mental health and physical effects of having suffered sexual violence;
  • that in the provision of integral reparations to Helena, UARIV take a gender-sensitive approach to ensure her fundamental rights; and
  • that the health services provide and guarantee access to Helena to immediate, comprehensive, gender-sensitive, specialised care for as long as necessary to address the physical and psychological consequences of the violations she suffered.

Significance of the decision

In finding in favour of Helena’s registration as a victim of the armed conflict, this case establishes that ex-combatants who were forcibly recruited into illegal armed groups and suffered sexual violence, as well as reproductive violence, within those armed groups may seek victim status and thus have access to reparations under Law 1448 – a right they did not have before – regardless of the age at which they demobilised or fled. Beyond the significance of this finding for the claimant in this specific case, therefore, this decision also sets important legal precedent in recognising that victims of sexual and reproductive violence within armed groups are victims of armed conflict. This follows earlier jurisprudence by the International Criminal Court in the Ntaganda case (here and here; see also this 2017 post by IntLawGrrl Rosemary Grey). The Colombian decision is also one of very few in the world to specifically recognise reproductive violence as a distinct form of harm committed against women and girls in times of conflict.

As part of the case, the Court received 17 expert briefs from national and international human rights organisations, women’s rights organisations, academics and international experts, including one from the author of this blog post (written jointly with Ciara Laverty). In our amicus request filing, we offered the Court a comprehensive overview of the way in which reproductive violence long remained invisible in international law, how it is increasingly being recognised, and why it should be recognised as a specific and distinct form of harm, including when committed within armed groups.

Reproductive violence is a widespread yet understudied phenomenon that occurs in times of both conflict and of peace. It can have serious physical, mental, emotional and other consequences that persist long after the violence has occurred. It is a form of victimisation connected to but also different from sexual and other violence, due to the distinct harm it inflicts and the underlying value it is said to violate, i.e. reproductive autonomy. Although reproductive violence affects individuals of all genders, there are distinct forms of harm and violence that are inflicted only upon women and girls because of and directly targeting their sex-specific biological reproductive capacities, such as forced contraception, forced abortion and forced pregnancy.

Historically, however, there have only been few instances where such violence has been independently recognised and considered. This left reproductive violence relatively invisibilised in international law. Nonetheless, current developments reflect a growing recognition that reproductive violence constitutes a distinct form of violence that should be independently recognised as violating specific, individual rights and may also constitute (international) crimes in certain circumstances. This decision by the Colombian Constitutional Court recognising the specific victimisation of female ex-combatants through forced contraception and forced abortion thus contributes to providing greater legal recognition to a form of gender-based violence that has long remained invisible in international law.

Importantly, in addition to claiming her rights as a victim through the constitutional action that was the subject of this decision, Helena has also requested participation as a victim in case 007 before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace. As such, further jurisprudence, including on individual criminal responsibility for acts of reproductive violence such forced contraception and forced abortion, may be forthcoming in Colombia.

Stay tuned!

ICC Assembly of States Parties Symposium: Day One

/ Valerie Oosterveld / Leave a comment

ICC Prosecutor at ICC ASP18

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, Dec. 2, 2019 – Photo Credit: ICC

Welcome to IntLawGrrls’ symposium on the annual meeting of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Assembly of States Parties (ASP). The 18th session of the Assembly runs from December 2-7 in The Hague, Netherlands.

This year’s ASP will hold a plenary discussion on inter-State and regional cooperation initiatives for the effective implementation of the ICC’s mandate. It will also consider threats and challenges to the ICC, ways to strengthen the Rome Statute system, the 2020 ICC budget, preparations for the ICC elections of six new judges and a new Prosecutor taking place at next year’s ASP, victims’ rights, and potential amendments to the Statute, among other issues.

ASP President O-Gon Kwon opened the ASP, noting that “[t]his year the Assembly faces key decisions on the way forward in view of the anticipated review of the Court, one that would ultimately strengthen the Court and enable it to successfully confront the challenges that it faces today.” He also congratulated the newest state to accede to the Rome Statute, Kiribati, which deposited its instrument of accession on November 26. It will become the 123rd State Party.

ICC President Chile Eboe-Osuji began his speech in a very direct manner, stating that “During the past 15 months, the ICC has been subjected to unprecedented threats in a very public way, from leading officials of the incumbent Government of a powerful country”, referring to the September 2018 speech by former US National Security Adviser John Bolton. Bolton threatened ICC officials with various sanctions to deter them from opening an investigation into the Afghanistan situation and potentially implicating US citizens. That threat was subsequently reiterated by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced the cancellation of the Prosecutor’s standing travel visa to the United States. Eboe-Osuji said: “These threats were made in a very plain and unvarnished attempt to subvert the ‘course’ of action of a legitimate multilateral judicial institution.” He continued, “notwithstanding that the Court will do its work undeterred, I must urge, in the most fervent terms, that YOU, the States Parties to the Rome Statute, must do all that it takes – and be prepared to do more – to counter these threats, in all their ramifications.” The Prosecutor’s appeal on her request to open an investigation into the Afghanistan situation will be heard at the ICC this week.

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda presented an overview of her Office’s successes and challenges from the past year. The successes include the opening of an investigation into the situation in Bangladesh/Myanmar, while the failures include the acquittal of Gbagbo and Blé Goudé and the judges’ denial of her request to open an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan (currently on appeal). Referring to international divisions, she stated that “it is precisely at times like these when international criminal justice and indeed efforts to address gross human rights violations are under assault; when we are witnessing a clash and crisis of fundamental values, the courage and conviction must guide our actions to protect our common values and goals as defined under the Rome Statute”. She noted that attacks against the ICC will undoubtedly rise as the Court increases its work in more situations.

The General Debate also began today, with statements from numerous states. Echoing ICC President Eboe-Osuji’s theme, many states highlighted the need for States Parties to robustly defend the ICC against external threats to its work and its independence. States also referred to measures aimed at reviewing the Court’s performance as being essential steps in reinforcing the Court’s effectiveness. A number of states discussed the specific challenges facing the Prosecutor when investigating and prosecuting sexual and gender based crimes.

Some of the speakers today also called for the adoption of an amendment to the Rome Statute to include starvation as a war crime in situations of non-international armed conflicts. This amendment would mirror the same crime aready listed in the context of international armed conflicts.

Many states were focused on the 2020 elections of the next Prosecutor and six new judges, calling for transparent and objective processes to nominate and elect the most highly qualified individuals to lead the Court. Both Georgia and the United Kingdom announced judicial candidates for those elections.

One side event to take note of today was the launch of “The Hague Principles on Sexual Violence”, which aim to translate the lived experience of sexual violence survivors into law and policy. These were created as a result of consultations throughout 2019 with more than 500 survivors, over 50 civil society organisations, legal practitioners, academics, and policy makers.

Members of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice present at the ASP will join this symposium each day to provide their views on ongoing developments at the Assembly.

 

 

 

Gender-based crimes: A monumental day for the ICC

/ Rosemary Grey / 4 Comments

When it comes to prosecuting sexual and gender-based crimes, there have been few days as significant as today in the ICC’s twenty-one-year long history. The day began with a conviction for sexual violence crimes against male and female victims in the Ntaganda case, followed by the first attempt in any international criminal court or tribunal to prosecute gender-based persecution.

Rosemary Grey (University of Sydney) and Indira Rosenthal (University of Tasmania)[1]

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