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Summary on Carpenter - Women and Children First. Gender, Norms, and Humanitarian Evacuation in the Balkans 1991-95
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Women and Children first: Gender, Norms, and Humanitarian Evacuation in the Balkans 1991-1995 –Carpenter
Of all noncombatants in the former Yugoslavia, adult civilian men were most likely to be massacred by enemy
forces+ Why, therefore, did international agencies mandated with the “protection of civilians” evacuate women
and children, but not military-age men, from besieged areas? This article reviews the operational di- lemmas
faced by protection workers in the former Yugoslavia when negotiating access to civilian populations. I argue
that a social constructivist approach incorporating gender analysis is required to explain both the civilian
protection community’s discourse and its operational behavior. First, gender beliefs constitute the discursive
strat-egies on which civilian protection advocacy is based. Second, gender norms operate in practice to constrain
the options available to protection workers in assisting civilians
Introduction
Of all war-affected noncombatants worldwide, those most at risk of summary execution are adult civilian males.
The propensity of belligerents to single out adult men for massacre has now been documented in dozens of
ongoing conflicts. More often than women, children, or the elderly, military-age men are assumed to be
“potential” combatants and are therefore treated by armed forces as if they are in fact legitimate targets.
International agencies mandated with the protection of war-affected civilians generally aim to provide protection
in a neutral manner, but when necessary they prioritize the protection of the “especially vulnerable.” According
to the professional standards recently articulated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),
“special attention by organizations for specific groups should be determined on the basis of an assessment of
their needs and vulnerability as well as the risks to which they are exposed.” If adult men are most likely to lose
their lives directly as a result of the fall of a besieged town, one would expect that, given these standards, such
agencies would emphasize protection of civilian men in areas under siege by armed forces+ Nonetheless, in
places where civilians have been evacuated from besieged areas in an effort to save lives, it is typically women,
children, and the elderly who have composed the evacuee populations.
- the victim of highly discriminate massacres in which military-age male civilians were separated from
women, children, and the elderly and executed while the latter were permitted to flee
- When the debate over whether to evacuate began, senior protection officers at the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) insisted that only persons facing “an acute, life-threatening
situation” should be evacuated.
- Yet when humanitarian agencies later began to evacuate “vulnerable” civilians en masse from war
zones, the evacuees were nearly always women, children, and the elderly. Able-bodied “military-age”
male civilians ~precisely those civilians most likely to be killed or detained on suspicion of engaging in
hostilities! were almost never given safe pas- sage along with their families. Why?
- Below, I argue that a social constructivist approach incorporating gender analysis is required to explain
both the discourse and behavior of actors in the civilian protection network+10 By this I mean the
transnational community of citizens, journalists, protection organizations, and statespersons who,
believing that civilian immunity norms should be respected, aim at the more widespread
implementation of those norms, through persuasion or purposeful action. Gender ideas are embedded in
both the category “innocent civilian” and the category “especially vulnerable.” These ideas exert
constitutive effects on the discourse and regulative effects on the behavior of actors within the network.
Sex-selective killing and protection: A gender constructivist approach
In international relations ~IR! have traditionally been associated with feminism,the use of gender as an
explanatory framework does not necessitate a simultaneous feminist perspective or an emphasis on women’s
needs and interests+13 In seeking to integrate gender into forms of ideational analysis more familiar to
neoliberals and conventional constructivists, this study departs from most IR feminism in several ways.
1
, - First, I use gender primarily as an analytical tool rather than a means of critiquing or destabilizing
gender hierarchies. Second, whereas IR feminism has often problematized the traditional research
agenda of international relations, 15 “gender constructivism” as attempted here aims to advance that
very agenda: the dependent variable is not women’s emancipation or gender equity per se, but the
emerging civilian protection network and its operational strategies+ Third, while recognizing the impact
of gendered assumptions on women, I take equal account of the extent to which adult men are rendered
vulnerable by gendered institutions and norms+
- Explanatory gender analysis involves demonstrating that a taken-for-granted belief about men and
women is actually socially constructed rather than biologically inherent; and demonstrating that those
adhering to the belief act differently than they would in the absence of the belief. Gender beliefs—here,
the socially constructed and often misleading belief that women and children, but not adult men, are
noncombatants—produce sex-selective behavior, such as massacres that target adult men and
humanitarian evacuations that rescue women, children, and the elderly. The point of this study is to
unpack the conceptual misfit between these actions and explain both how they have come to pass and
how they have come to be seen as so unquestionable.
Sex-selective killing of men and older boys in the Balkans
- However, adult males were instead frequently killed on the spot. In general, wherever villages fell to
the BSA, unarmed adult men and older boys were most likely to immediately lose their lives. The
argument is not that women, children, and the elderly did not suffer.
- As noted, women were targeted for sexual torture and were not always spared death. However, one’s
chances of at least surviving the siege and fall of a town was typically much higher for women ~and
higher yet for slightly older women with small children! than for males between sixteen and sixty. the
particular vulnerability of men and boys to slaughter in this context, why were protection workers
leaving civilian men and boys behind while rescuing other civilians from besieged areas?
Sex-selective evacuation of women and younger children in the Balkans
- Protection agencies in the region did not have a specific mandate to evacuate civilians per se. Indeed, it
was unclear during the Bosnian experience precisely what “protection of civilians” meant in the context
of ethnic cleansing. The UNHCR and the ICRC were initially engaged primarily in the delivery of relief
and monitoring and discouraging violations of humanitarian law.
- Both UNHCR and ICRC subscribe to the basic humanitarian principle of impartiality. In cases where
resources or opportunities were limited however, the agencies would fall back on the “reverse-triage”
principle of prioritizing the most vulnerable.
- In the latter cases, the goal was to “determine on the basis of an assessment of needs and vulnerability
as well as risks to which [civilians] are exposed.
o Protection officials should determine “whether the persons are in an acute, life-threatening
situation weighed against various local constraints and possible adverse consequences.”
o Mass evacuations of “vulnerable groups” developed only gradually as a response to protection
agencies’ inability to protect civilians in situ. A few small evacuations had taken place early in
the war. Typically some women and children might be allowed out along with wounded, space
permitting.
o Two kinds of mass evacuation scenarios occurred in the Balkans. Evacuations of women,
children, and the elderly during the fall of a town were sometimes carried out by the
conquering forces themselves, and there was seldom room to negotiate terms at that point.
- In “preemptive” evacuations, protection workers had more agency. For example, in April 1993,
UNHCR evacuated several thousand women and children, along with wounded, from the enclave of
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