The UNSCR 1325 ‘encourages all those involved in the planning for disarmament,
demobilization and reintegration to consider the different needs of female and male ex- combatants and to take into account the needs of their dependents’.101 One of the first steps in most post-conflict contexts is disarmament and demobilisation. Sierra Leone and Liberia adopted the Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration programme, creating an opportunity for the UN to test the efficacy of UNSCR 1325.
Sierra Leone
In Sierra Leone, all four peace agreements provided for demobilisation and resettlements. The first efforts at demobilisation came after the Conakry Peace Plan, which targeted 75,000 for disarmament; about 3,000 were disarmed before the war broke out in 1999.102
According to the International Center for Transitional Justice report, the Lomé DDR led to the disarmament and demobilisation of 18,000 combatants, before it was aborted by another outbreak of war in 2000. The Abuja Agreement called for an immediate ceasefire and reinstated the DDR programme in May 2001.103 Thus in Sierra Leone, in order to effectively oversee these
100
The UN Secretary General (2002) 212.
101 UNSCR 1325 [13].
102 Sesay and Suma (n 70) 10: the 1999 disarmament is categorised as phase 1. 103 ibid 11.
programmes, the government of Tijan Kabbah established the National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (NCDDR) and the National Commission for Social Action (NACSA). According to available reports, ‘the NCDDR was able to disarm 72,490 ex-combatants, 42,300 weapons, and over 1.2 million rounds of ammunition’.104 The process, however, had little impact on the reintegration of female ex-combatants into society, since it was not designed within a gender framework.105
Women associated with armed groups included medical care providers, spies, cooks, and active combatants. At the start of the DDR process, an estimated 45,000 ex-combatants were in need of support; 12% of this population was female. According to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, at the end of 2002 more than 75,000 combatants were demobilised, yet only 6.5% were women.106
One reason that women did not participate in the DDR programme was related to the criteria for entry. In the first stages of DDR, the ability to receive benefits was based on weapon ownership.107 Most women combatants either did not possess weapons, or their commanders had ordered them to hand their weapons over to male colleagues before demobilisation. Later, the programme permitted group disarmament, meaning that a group of combatants could report to reception centres with a single gun, and more women entered the programme. Another reason for the low participation of women was because of the stigmatisation attached to ex-combatants.
104
Amadu Sessay et al., ‘Post War Regimes and State Reconstruction in Liberia and Sierra Leone’ (2009) CODESRA 59.
105 Chris Coutler, Bush Wives and Girls Soldiers; Women’s Lives through War and Peace in Sierra Leone (Cornell
University Press 2009) 248.
106 United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), ‘The DDR Process in Sierra Leone: Lessons Learned’
(Freetown: UNAMSIL DDR Coordination Section 2003) in Sesay and Suma (n 70) 12.
Women did not want to be further labelled in their communities.108 Mazurana et al.’s report additionally showed that the reintegration locations were also not gender-friendly; women and girls were afraid they might be attacked at the DDR Centre,109 given the number of combatants attending, and the official denial that one of the rebel forces, the Civil Defence Force, did not engage female combatants.110 Women who were conscripted by this force thus failed to appear.
Another issue was the general assumption that women were only victims and did not participate in the war as combatants. Most importantly, the women were disarmed by the commanders and discouraged from attending the DDR Centres. Women who participated as combatants and played supporting roles were tagged as ‘camp followers’ and abductees, while the men who did the same benefited from the DDR without being labelled.111 The exclusion of women demonstrates the failure of the WPS agenda of the UN.
Liberia
The United Nations Mission in Liberia was established via Security Council Resolution 1509 to implement the CPA. One of the major mandates of the mission was to implement the Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration programme (DDRR). The DDRR in Liberia took place after the conclusion of the Sierra Leone Programme and was completed in 2004 with 101,496 combatants disarmed and 90,000 participating in the
108 ibid 21.
109 ibid 20. See also International Crisis Group, ‘Sierra Leone: Managing Uncertainty’ (24 October 2001) 35 Africa Report 14. There were reports of demonstrations and attacks on the officials managing the DDR processes in Lussar and Port Loko camps.
110 Mazurana and Carlson (n 71) 21. 111
Christiana Solomon, Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration in West Africa: An Overview of Sierra Leone and Liberia (University of Bradford 2008) 11. See also Megan MacKenzie, ‘Securitization and
Desecuritization: Female Soldiers and the Reconstruction of Women in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone’ (2009) 18.2 Security Studies 241-261.
rehabilitation and reintegration programme.112 Field interviews for this thesis show that the DDRR also had two phases, with phase one excluding women but with phase two being more inclusive.
The Report by International Center for Transitional Justice shows that 22,370 women and 2,440 girls were disarmed and demobilised. Unlike in Sierra Leone, civil society participated and encouraged women to submit their arms and register at the DDRR Centres.113 Women were treated separately from men and, in particular, the maternity age and status of women were taken into account. Health care, including maternity care, was provided on site.114 It is estimated that women represented about 25-30% of the fighting forces in Liberia.115 Despite this, without the efforts of women’s networks116
in ensuring that women were present at the cantonment sites in Liberia, the DDR would have failed to respond to women’s human security needs because the programme was designed without a well thought-out gender response.117
Reports by Civil Society organisations showed that women were not properly integrated in the process.118 One of the major challenges of past DDRs has been a gender-neutral arrangement excluding the majority of women. In Bosnia, the DDR programme failed to support the inclusion of women. Rather, it focused on demobilised soldiers – ‘their boys coming home’ – and the local communities treated the soldiers with respect, unlike the women who had suffered all forms of
112 United Nations Security Council: Fifteen Progress Report of the Secretary General on the United Nations
Observer Mission in Liberia, UN Doc S/2007/479, 7 in Jaye (n 85) 34.
113 See Jaye (n 85) 15. 114 ibid 15. 115 ibid 42. 116 Clarke (n 89) 62. 117 ibid 62.
118 Isis-WICCE, ‘A situation analysis of the Women Survivors of the 1989-2003 Armed Conflict in Liberia’ (2008) Research Report 42.
violence as a result of the war.119 The Liberia DDR also emphasised ‘gun carrying combatants’ and this usually excluded women.120 From the victim’s point of view, however, the benefit of DDR was that it could undermine other transitional justice mechanisms – while reparation processes for victims are often slow, DDR is often a higher priority, and is one of the first steps any transitional government undertakes post-conflict. It is becoming clearer that failure to link the DDR with victim support, reparation, and rehabilitations means investment in DDR may generate resentment in transitional processes.121
With the assistance of international organisations, DRC and Burundi have adopted national DDR plans, as part of the Multi Country Demilitarization and Reintegration programme for the African Great Lakes region (MDRP) administered by the World Bank. However, the DDR processes and reforms have failed to take into account the needs of women, whether as combatants or supporters of armed groups, thus missing out on their enormous potential as peace-builders in the immediate aftermath of war. The DDR only placed priority on addressing ‘the needs of armed men, and have given less priority to those of women, including female combatants’.122
Testimonies from the field show that the UN DDRR process in Liberia originally was not designed to support women: ‘…the DDRR embarked on at the end of armed conflict in 2003 was
119
Massimo Moratti and Amra Sabic-El-Rayers, ‘International Transitional Justice and DDR; the Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina’ (June 2009) ICTJ <http://www.ictj.org> accessed 18 August 2012.
120 Jaye (n 85) 42. 121
Maria Dietrich Ortega, ‘Transitional Justice and Female Ex Combatants: Lessons Learned from International Experience,’ Research Project on DDR and Transitional Justice (International Center for Transitional Justice) <http//:www.ictj.org/en/researchproject/ddr/index/html (2010) P 1-4> accessed 28 August 2012.
just addressing the men until we (Civil Society Organisation) moved in to insist that women should also benefit from the process’.123
Reports from Liberia also show that female combatants formally associated with the fighting forces did not participate in the DDRR for various reasons: shame, fear, stigmatisation, misinformation, lack of knowledge and understanding about the process, and manipulation by commanders. The delay in funding and the government’s lack of political will were also major factors.124 The perception of gender roles in conflict no doubt played a role in policy formulations. Most women combatants, rather than going through the DDRR, left their arms with their commanders. One interviewee recounts, ‘I didn’t go during the DDRR, I was afraid; I left my arm with my commander’.125
According to another female combatant, it was the decision of her rebel group that the women should not go to the DDRR, ‘so none of us went to submit our arms but we disarmed to our superior’.126
Discouraging women from attending could also be a way for men to suppress women from benefiting from the DDRR programme, knowing fully that some empowerment programs are attached to it.
One of the respondents who participated in the DDRR process, however, narrates her experience:
I came from Puma to disarm…the UN people kept us for seven days first time and later call us back for another 7 days; each of the time they gave us 150 US dollars and they also gave us identity card…people were selling their identity cards and several women gave their arms to men, they also gave us toiletries and food’.127
123 Interview with Bernice in Women and Peace Network Office (Monrovia, Liberia, January 2012). 124
See ISIS-WICCE (2008) p. 43.
125 Interview with Clara (Monrovia, Liberia, January 2012). 126 Interview with Mimie (Monrovia, Liberia, January 2012). 127 Interview with Emy (Monrovia, Liberia, January 2012).
According to other reports, apart from the 150 US Dollars, no other financial packages seem to have been distributed to women.128
The DDRR process was criticised as a failure by most of the interviewees, even from government quarters; for example, a top gender ministry official said,
The DDRR Programme did not go far, it did not take into consideration a lot of things… the DDRR was not effective. But we are not going to look back but we are moving forward; what need for do is to concentrate and to correct those mistakes in upcoming activities of the implementation process.129
From the above, it is clear that the DDRR was constructed with a male bias, perceiving women as victims of conflict rather than actors, and this affected the outcome. Furthermore, it will be difficult to mainstream gender if we fail to address structural imbalances that will always restrain women from participating and benefiting from public goods.
Interviews conducted in Sierra Leone and Liberia show that the principle of gender mainstreaming did not guide the programme in either country. The reality was that men benefited from the reintegration processes, while the available options for vocational training did not take gender needs into consideration and the focus was more on male-dominated vocations than those targeting women.130 Another emerging issue from the interviews in both countries was the capacity of those who came to implement DDR, and their failure to understand the context so as to adequately apply the principle of gender mainstreaming.
128 Annalise Moser, ‘Women Count Security Council Resolution 1325: Civil Society Monitoring Report’ (2010) A Project of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders125<http://www http://www.gnwp.org/what-we-do/policy- advocacy/in-country-and-global-monitoring-of-united-nations-security-council-resolution-1325> accessed 20 June 2012.
129 Interview with an official of the Gender Ministry (Monrovia, Liberia, January 2012). 130 Interview with Morem (Freetown, Sierra Leone, 23 April 2010).
Gender mainstreaming has been criticised for its individual-centred approach, which makes it dependent on the capacity and ‘willingness or commitment of a particular individual’, who probably is leading the process; where the individual falters, gender mainstreaming collapses.131 While the Resolution emphasises the need to integrate men and women and their dependents in DDR, in practice this did not happen. In 2003, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan reported to the Security Council that the Liberian situation called for special attention on the specific needs of female ex-combatants.132 The failure of the DDR in both countries to meet the needs of ex- combatants, particularly women and other vulnerable groups, is well documented.133
The situation in Sierra Leone and Liberia raised several issues, including ownership of the process and need for such engagement to be founded on local norms and the culture of the people. While there has been some success recorded, in the overall interventions in both countries, the gains are unsustainable, given the reality of the situation.