Transnational Connections to Stop Rape Now: Engaging the Women in CRSV Advocacy Alexandra C. Budabin*, Natalie F. Hudson**
Summary: 1. Studying the dynamics of transnational advocacy networks – 2. Background on transnational advocacy for the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda – 3. Case study of transnational advocacy around CRSV – 3.1. Political training, opportunities, and story-telling – 3.2. Support for local mobilization, funding, and agenda-setting – 3.3. Communications, single narratives, and compromises – 3.4. Leveraging from and embedding the discourses of UN SCR 1325 – 4. Conclusions.
Although bringing women together to address gender security has a long history going back to World War I, it wasn’t until 1995 that the Beijing Platform for Action explicitly linked women’s experiences in conflict to human rights and international security. This led to the language of women’s experiences of armed conflict and their protection needs in the context of war being circulated at the UN. When the UN Security Council passed resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) in 2000, protection was one of the four pillars – alongside participation, prevention, and relief and recovery. UN Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1325 was a critical first step in framing women’s rights as essential to the maintenance of international peace and security, laying the foundation for securitizing conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV)1. After the passage of SCR 1325, references to CRSV did emerge in the context of Security Council country-specific resolutions, but these were always linked to other forms of violence. It was clear that CRSV was not a stand-alone security issue nor enough to motivate intervention. * Eurac Research Institute for Minority Rights, Bolzano-Bozen, Italy. ** University of Dayton, United States of America. 1. N.F. Hudson, Gender, Human Security and the United Nations: Security Language
as a Political Framework for Women, Routledge, 2010.
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