March 3, 2016, 6:00pm – 7:30pm
Vanderbilt 218
40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012
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About the Talk
Extremist violence is increasingly a threat to international peace and security. This is exemplified by the growing attention paid to this phenomenon by the international community, including in particular the UN Security Council.
Women and girls are increasingly affected by the consequences of this extremist violence, as extremist groups deliberately attack those institutions that provide women and girls with developmental, educational, and socio-economic opportunities, try to reverse hard-won gains, or attack women’s fundamental human rights as part of their core agenda.
Yet, the discourse about women’s victimization only shows one side of the story. Women may also play a role as supporters, perpetrators or preventers of extremist violence, as the cases of Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Nigeria or Sri Lanka for example demonstrate. Even if women combatants continue to be a minority worldwide, their indirect role in facilitating extremist violence as ideologues and recruiters can be significant – as can be their role in preventing this kind of violence. Women and women-led organizations have played important formal and informal roles in resolving conflicts, building peace and challenging violent extremism.
While acknowledging this potential of women’s organizations in the struggle against violent extremism and the growing importance of the Women Peace and Security Agenda in this new context, a warning is also in place. In the absence of definitional clarity on terrorism and violent extremism, there is the danger that women’s engagement and rights can be intstrumentalized for counter-terrorism purposes.
During this talk, the speakers will address these issues, and will focus on how the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, and the UN more generally, are responding to the issue of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism. Speakers will look at the steps that have been taken since the agreement on the new resolution and the Global study by UN WOMEN, and will highlight how recent developments (including the January Report of the UN Security Council on the Threat posed by ISIL, the UN Secretary General’s new Plan of Action on Preventing Violent Extremism, Resolutions 2242, 2251, 2252, 2253 and 2259, and the various statements of the President of the Security Council) intersect with the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and its potential to bring about change.
About the Speakers
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is the Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School and a professor of law at the University of Ulster’s Transitional Justice Institute in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is co-founder and associate director of the Institute. Her teaching and research interests are in the fields of international law, human rights law, national security law, transitional justice, and feminist legal theory. Professor Ní Aoláin was a representative of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at domestic war crimes trials in Bosnia (1996-97). In 2003, she was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as Special Expert on promoting gender equality in times of conflict and peace-making. In 2011, she was appointed as consultant jointly by the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and UN WOMEN to prepare a Study on Reparations for Conflict Related Sexual Violence. In 2015, she was appointed by the International Criminal Court’s Trust Fund for Victims to lead an Expert Review on Reparations to victims in the Court’s first case.
Nahla Valji is the Deputy Chief of the Peace and Security section in UN Women’s headquarters in New York, where she has led the organization’s work on peacekeeping, peace negotiations, transitional justice, and rule of law, involving both global programming and policy work, particularly with regards to the Security Council. Recently, she headed the Secretariat for the Global Study on implementation of resolution 1325, a comprehensive study requested by the Security Council for the 15-year review of women, peace and security. She co-founded and managed the International Journal of Transitional Justice and is currently a co-editor on the Oxford Handbook on Gender and Conflict. Prior to joining the UN, Nahla worked in South Africa, where she led the regional transitional justice work of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and managed the African Transitional Justice Research Network.
Nikki Reisch is the Legal Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Her work focuses on social and economic rights, with an emphasis on corporate accountability, economic inequality and environmental justice. Prior to studying law, Nikki worked as an advocate with non-governmental organizations monitoring the effects of international financial and development institutions on communities in the Global South. She spent years conducting research and advocacy related to the human rights impacts of extractive industry and large-scale infrastructure projects, trade liberalization and climate change, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. Her research and practice interests also include immigrant rights and the intersection between domestic civil rights issues and international human rights law.