Peace and Justice through a Feminist Lens: Gender Justice and the Women’s Court for the Former Yugoslavia

ABSTRACT

Post-conflict interventions to ‘deal with’ violent pasts have moved from exception to global norm. Early efforts to achieve peace and justice were critiqued as ‘gender-blind’—for failing to address sexual and gender-based violence, and neglecting the gender-specific interests and needs of women in transitional settings. The advent of UN Security Council resolutions on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ provided a key policy framework for integrating both women and gender issues into transitional justice processes and mechanisms. Despite this, gender justice and equality in (post-)conflict settings remain largely unachieved. This article explores efforts to attain gender-just peace in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). It critically examines the significance of a recent ‘bottom-up’ truth-telling project—the Women’s Court for the former Yugoslavia—as a locally engaged approach to achieving justice and redress for women impacted by armed conflict. Drawing on participant observation, documentary analysis, and interviews with women activists, the article evaluates the successes and shortcomings of responding to gendered forms of wartime violence through truth-telling. Extending Nancy Fraser’s tripartite model of justice to peacebuilding contexts, the article advances notions of recognition, redistribution and representation as crucial components of gender-just peace. It argues that recognizing women as victims and survivors of conflict, achieving a gender-equitable distribution of material and symbolic resources, and enabling women to participate as agents of transitional justice processes are all essential for transforming the structural inequalities that enable gender violence and discrimination to materialize before, during, and after conflict.     

“I know! I live here”: poor women and the work of empowerment

To trace the effects of empowerment programmes in the Global South, attention needs to be focused on the everyday practices of frontline staff, or fieldworkers, who convey empowerment ideas and practices at the grassroots. This is especially critical when fieldworkers work in the marginalised communities where they also live. Instead of looking outward towards a programme’s outcomes, this article turns inward to examine the impact of women fieldworkers’ dual experiences of development on their decisions and practices in the field. The ethnography of women fieldworkers in a government-led women’s empowerment programme for the poor in Delhi, India reveals the uneasy relationship of women’s empowerment to the larger contradictory development paradigm that they work within. Fieldworkers used their experiences as poor women to meet programme quotas, while also side-lining social change in favour of shielding clients from ineffective programme activities.     

Chemical enhancement of soil based footwear impressions on fabric

This study investigates the enhancement of footwear impressions prepared with soils from different locations on a variety of fabric surfaces with different morphology. Preliminary experiments using seventeen techniques were carried out and the best responding reagents were evaluated further. Results indicated that the soils investigated (a cross-section of soils from Scotland) are more likely to respond to reagents that target iron ions rather than calcium, aluminium or phosphorus ions. Furthermore, the concentration of iron and soil pH did not appear to have an effect on the performance of the enhancement techniques. For the techniques tested, colour enhancement was observed on all light coloured substrates while enhancement on dark coloured fabrics, denim and leatherette was limited due to poor contrast with the background. Of the chemical enhancement reagents tested, 2,2'-dipyridil was a suitable replacement for the more common enhancement technique using potassium thiocyanate. The main advantages are the use of less toxic and flammable solvents and improved clarity and sharpness of the enhanced impression. The surface morphology of the fabrics did not have a significant effect on the enhancement ability of the reagents apart from a slight tendency for diffusion to occur on less porous fabrics such as polyester and nylon/lycra blends.     

Rapid quantitative colourimetric tests for trinitrotoluene (TNT) in soil

A rapid quantitative colourimetric test was developed for the determination of 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene (TNT) in soil. Quantification was achieved using an innovative application of photography where the relationship between the Red Green Blue (RGB) value and concentration of colorimetric product was exploited. The wide linear range (1-50mg/L) and low detection limit (0.73±0.01mg/L to 3.5±0.4mg/L) achieved was comparable with spectrophotometric quantification methods. Quantification was validated both with known concentration standards and spiked soil extracts confirming the accuracy of the technique. The results demonstrate a powerful technique with the capacity for development as a rapid on site field test for the analysis of explosives.     

Stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry and physical comparison for the forensic examination of grip-seal plastic bags

Plastic bags are frequently used to package drugs, explosives and other contraband. There exists, therefore, a requirement in forensic casework to compare bags found at different locations. This is currently achieved almost exclusively by the use of physical comparisons such as birefringence patterns. This paper discusses some of the advantages and shortcomings of this approach, and presents stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) as a supplementary tool for effecting comparisons of this nature. Carbon and hydrogen isotopic data are presented for sixteen grip-seal plastic bags from a wide range of sources, in order to demonstrate the range of values which is likely to be encountered. Both isotopic and physical comparison (specifically birefringence) techniques are then applied to the analysis of rolls of bags from different manufacturing lots from a leading manufacturer. Both approaches are able to associate bags from a common production batch. IRMS can be applied to small fragments which are not amenable to physical comparisons, and is able to discriminate bags which could be confused using birefringence patterns alone. Similarly, in certain cases birefringence patterns discriminate bags with similar isotopic compositions. The two approaches are therefore complementary. When more than one isotopically distinct region exists within a bag (e.g. the grip-seal is distinct from the body) the ability to discriminate and associate bags is greatly increased.     

More than Writing on a Wall: Evaluating the Role that Codes of Ethics Play in Securing Accountability of Public Sector Decision‐Makers

This article argues that the essential factors of a public service code of ethics can be divided into five categories. These categories or principles are fairness, transparency, responsibility, efficiency and conflict of interest. These principles are identified in this article as being the basic elements of democratic accountability in relation to public sector decision‐making. The issues explored are not only the obstacles that the public service decision‐maker faces in internalising these principles but, also, the challenges for a pro‐active management in fostering such internalisation.     

Race against timekeeper: big cat can't stop non-competing registration of identical mark

The Irish High Court dismissed an appeal by Jaguar Cars againstthe rejection of its opposition to the registration of the trademark JAGUAR by Montres Jaguar.     

Arabian Travellers, 1800–1950: An Analytical Bibliography

Western travelogue writing has long been a crucial source of information for scholars of the Arabian Peninsula, but nonetheless, this body of literature has not yet been studied comprehensively and systematically by a modern scholar. This article addresses that deficiency by collecting data on the nationality, routes travelled and intertextual citations of 91 authors active in Arabia from 1800 to 1950. The results of this study provide quantitative verification for several existing theories on Western travel writing in Arabia, including Edward Said’s claim that ‘Orientalism’ was predominantly an Anglo-French project, and observations by Said, James Canton and others that European travellers had intimate ties with European imperialism. At the same time, this study challenges some existing arguments about Western travel writing in Arabia, especially claims by Alaine Hutson and others about the inherent unreliability of this corpus of sources.