It should come as no surprise that David Cameron and the campaign for the UK to remain in the EU have argued that Britain’s continued membership of the EU will benefit the UK’s security. Britain’s EU membership has always had a security side to it. Membership has never been entirely about trade or jobs. And whatever the result of the referendum, the security relationship with the EU will remain vital for the UK.

Those campaigning for the UK to leave the EU do not dispute that relations with the EU, along with European security in general, are not of central concern for the UK. For them, however, not only does the EU make the UK and Europe less safe (for example by allowing free movement of criminals and terrorists), but putting international relations ahead of domestic politics, especially economic and democratic needs, weakens Europe’s nation states and their ability to combat the full range of problems facing them.

The UK government itself is clear that traditional security threats to the UK do not figure as highly as they once did, although they have certainly not disappeared. As successive national security strategies and strategic security and defence reviews have made clear, security challenges to the UK range from nuclear war to environmental disasters, with many not recognising the borders of nation states. While British governments are often reticent to admit to the EU playing a positive role in security cooperation, or admit that the UK has led in such cooperation, there is no denying that tacking these security challenges has been an important part in UK-EU relations.

From the start, European integration has had a security side to it, whether this be about managing the reintegration into Europe of West Germany and later a united Germany, or integrating former Eastern European Communist or Southern European Fascist states into a liberal European mainstream. The EU itself has not been sufficient to keep the peace. The argument by some Eurosceptics that it has been NATO that has kept the peace in Europe is as selective a reading of history as any pro-European that claims it has all been down to the EU. Nevertheless, for successive British governments, especially at the height of Britain’s retreat from empire in the 1960s, Britain’s declining ability to shape the world and the security challenges it posed meant membership of the European Economic Community and later EU was a necessary step for both British, European and transatlantic security cooperation.

Today, Cameron and others in the Remain campaign trumpet Britain’s ability to use the EU to boost Britain’s still substantial but reduced economic and military capabilities to give it the full range of tools and opportunities to face the full range of security challenges. Whether in facing a newly assertive Russia, dealing with Iran or tacking climate change, the UK’s EU membership has been cited as crucial to allowing the UK to shape its security. This is not to argue that EU cooperation is without its problems. Finding consensus amongst 28 states is never easy, even when you have the institutions and familiarity that EU membership offers.

Image by Djevdet via Flickr.

The referendum poses the question of what options the UK has beyond working through or with the EU. Talk of the UK rebuilding the Commonwealth is often oblivious to how strategically marginal that organisation can appear to most of its members. Britain’s NATO membership will remain important to it and Europe. NATO, however, is not the whole story when it comes to European security and the UK should not bet on the alliance being as solid as it was once. Close bilateral relations with the likes of the USA or France will remain, not least in the military fields. But this should not blind us to how the US and European states will continue to cooperate through a range of EU-US forums and that this could leave Britain outside the EU as something of an awkward in-betweener in the transatlantic relationship.

The US in particular is aware of the wider implications of a Brexit for Europe’s geopolitics. As Condoleezza Rice, former Bush Administration Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, told Chatham House: ‘It is a very different Europe if it is a continental one’. Accusations that the UK is a US ‘Trojan Horse’, sent to weaken EU cooperation from within, display an ignorance of how the USA – a European power since 1945 – has had a hand in European integration and security from the very start and doesn’t wholly depend on the UK for relations with the rest of the EU.

Britain’s departure from the EU could change the Union in any number of ways, with far-reaching geopolitical implications that will shape Europe’s security. That some Leave campaigners such as Michael Gove have spoken of Britain setting an example that could lead other states to follow gives a hint to the wider geopolitical changes to Europe some Eurosceptics hope a Brexit will bring about.

Such disintegration or radical reconfiguration of the EU has not been set out or anlaysed in any document or strategy. As such this half-baked approach risks a dangerous case of strategic overreach by the UK. Any changes to Europe would rely less on Britain’s willingness to offer the ways and means of managing such changes and more on encouraging a collapse of the EU. Losing control of such a development should not be overlooked. An uncontrolled collapse of the Eurozone, for example, would inflict significant costs on the UK, Europe, the USA and the wider world economy. As HM the Queen warned in June 2015 during a state visit to Germany, Europe’s division is in nobody’s interests.

It is possible that a Brexit will cause the opposite reaction, with an EU rid of ‘an awkward partner’ going forward by unifying further. One of Britain’s longest standing international aims has been to prevent any single power dominating Europe. The EU would be a benign power compared to previous attempts, but such an outcome warrants careful consideration by the UK. Whatever the outcome, the EU’s status quo is unsustainable. The question for those concerned with Europe’s security is whether changes – whether triggered by Brexit of not – can happen in a stable, cooperative way or bring about a collapse into nationalism and parochialism.

The best hope for UK and EU security is that whatever the result of the referendum both sides seek ways of cooperating, if only to rebuild trust. The initiative here will rest with the UK whose recent approach to the EU in the eyes of many elsewhere in Europe has been an unwanted distraction from the many other challenges facing the EU. A UK in search of cooperation with its European neighbours will find it can offer little to help with the problems in the Eurozone or Schengen. Instead, whether in or out of the EU, it will find itself playing its only trump card: security and defence cooperation.

Whether in facing a resurgent Russia – and therefore the continued relevance of hard power in European and international relations – or the more nuanced but potentially far more catastrophic global environmental challenges, the UK and EU could find common ways forward that help both sides realise their mutual interdependence. The UK and the rest of the EU must appreciate that instability or division in Europe limits their options to shape security in the wider world.

Last, but not least, we should not overlook that if the first priority of any state is its own survival then alarm bells should be ringing about how the referendum could lead to the end or weakening of the UK itself. The vote could throw into doubt the place in the Union of Scotland and Northern Ireland, both bringing with them a host of traditional security concerns whether they be terrorist related or the future of the UK’s nuclear weapons. Tensions within England should not be overlooked. Immigration and economic changes have made London the UK’s undiscovered country, much to the chagrin of some elsewhere in England and Britain who feel a Europeanised and globalised capital city has left them behind. Arguments over identity, immigration, radicalisation, race, equality and standards of living rumble beneath the surface of the EU referendum. A reminder, if any were needed, of how sustaining the UK’s own stability and security will be no easy challenge after the 23 June.

Dr Tim Oliver is the Dahrendorf Fellow for Europe–North American relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations of the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC. He has worked in the House of Lords, the European Parliament, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), RAND Corporation, and taught at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the London School of Economics and University College London. 

The beginning of the Arab Awakening and its mass-based social and political mobilizations has spurred a dynamic debate about whether and how the international community should support and back the revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa region. An especially thorny and controversial issue has been that of armed intervention: are there circumstances under which external parties should become militarily involved on the ground? If yes; with what goal? Debates over the legitimacy of direct external intervention have been widely discussed in the past few years; often with a specific reference to the emerging ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) norm.

The concept itself began to be employed in the early 2000s as a term of reference to replace the more ambiguous and controversial ‘humanitarian intervention’ framework. The idea of R2P broadly posits that sovereignty, beyond rights, also encompasses duties; and specifically the obligation for each state to guarantee the safety and protection of its citizens. If the state is unable or unwilling to do so, the international community has a responsibility to assist it, and if these efforts also fail, outside intervention—including but by no means limited to military action—can become justifiable. Since the endorsement of the concept within the international community, first by the United Nations General Assembly and then by the UN Security Council (UNSC), the principle of R2P has been used to both stress individual countries’ obligations towards their own people, as well as to argue in favor of international intervention to uphold the principle.

In this context, the UNSC’s authorization of the use of force in Libya is often cited as a watershed moment in the development of R2P. But did military intervention in Libya assist or hinder in the strengthening of a global ‘responsibility to protect’ norm?

Image of RAF Typhoon pilot climbing into the cockpit before a mission over Libya by Defence Images via Flickr.

To some observers, the Libyan intervention gave R2P the boost it needed. They argue that the principle itself was invoked to support external military intervention. Accordingly, this gave R2P ‘teeth’ whilst showing its growing international legitimacy and acceptance. Yet, a closer reading of the international community’s reliance on R2P in the weeks preceding Operation Unified Protector may lead to lesser enthusiastic evaluation. On the one hand, it is true that both UNSC 1970 (2011) and 1973 (2011) urged the government of Libya ‘to meet its responsibility to protect its population’ thus openly referring to R2P. On the other hand, when it came to justifying the use of force, the UN Security Council grounded its authorization on Chapter VII of the UN Charter, after labeling the violence taking place in Libya a threat to international peace and security.

On balance, while the period leading up to NATO’s Operation Unified Protector did show a growing role and relevance for the R2P norm in the international arena; still it would be an exaggeration to say that military intervention was grounded solely (or even predominantly) on R2P. This is the case even though it is possible to justify Operation Unified Protector according the ‘R2P’ criteria: the intervention came in response to the Qaddafi government’s manifest brutality and unwillingness to halt targeting of its population and it was encouraged not only by prominent internal defections but also backed by significant regional support. The use of force was also directly authorized by the UNSC, though Resolution 1973 (2011). Finally, the official mandate of the operation, which included employing all ‘necessary means’ to protect ‘civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack’ was—despite being quite broad in its scope—was similarly in line with the R2P framework.

But whether it would be correct to state that R2P was revitalized in the discussions leading up to the beginning of Operation Unified Protector, it is important to look at both the conduct and the legacy of the intervention to make a more long term assessment of its impact on R2P.

Here the record is decidedly mixed. Operation Unified Protector’s mandate was about civilian protection, while explicitly excluding a military occupation of Libya and reiterating the international community’s commitment to ‘Libya’s ‘sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity.’ Yet in its actual military operations it is possible to see how the military mandate was gradually stretched beyond the original (or intended) boundaries, leading to the de facto pursuing of regime change in Libya. By the spring of 2011, military sorties against the regime’s military and communication gradually went beyond merely disabling the government’s capacity to harm the civilian population and directly focused on weakening the regime’s military capabilities, in turn key to shifting the balance of power against Qaddafi. This is especially the case as NATO’s military operations, including air-cover provision for opposition forces, went hand-in-hand with coalition members, like France or the UK, active train and equip programs of rebel groups.

While these actions were not blatantly disregarding UNSC Resolution 1973—they indeed be seen as necessary to prevent and halt targeting of the civilian population—still they certainly stretched the mandate to ‘the absolute limit’—as argued by Gareth Evans. While such ‘mission creep might have been inevitable and dictated by the changing realities on the ground, still in NATO’s gradual expansion of its operations went de facto well beyond the UNSC 1973.

In turn, this fueled criticism from countries like Russia or China, states that were already skeptical about the merits of the R2P framework and championing a much stricter interpretation of state sovereignty and the right to non-interference. Put simply, the ‘generous’ interpretation of the mandate in Libya contributed to further curb the international enthusiasm for the emerging R2P norm. It allowed countries like China to become even more skeptical and reluctant to authorize future ‘R2P’ operations, citing the risk that the limited mandate will be then extra-judicially expanded to pursue regime change. Criticism has also come from countries lacking a strong pro-state sovereignty stance. For example, Brazil has argued for the creation of stricter guidelines and monitoring mechanisms to prevent future unauthorized expansion of the norm.

In this context, the Libyan experience has certainly not helped making the case for R2P or strengthening its popularity on the global stage. The general skepticism towards R2P in Libya undermined the level of international consensus for the R2P norm and laid the basis for the reluctance to authorize a similar mission in Syria. At the same time, it is important not to over-emphasize the link between Libya and Syria. Geopolitics explains the lack of R2P intervention and UNSC agreement on Syria better than international law. Here factors like the Syrian regime’s better air-defense system and military apparatus, the strong economic and political interests of countries like Russia in supporting the Assad regime, the more fractionalized nature of the anti-Assad opposition, and the far less prominent direct national interests of NATO member countries in Syria all help understanding the lack of agreement and decisive strategy to deal with the protracted and blood conflict.

Still, Operation Unified Protector did not strengthen the overall stance of R2P on the global arena, while underlining some of the pre-existing dilemma related to humanitarian intervention, including how to prevent its politicization (or whether that is possible at all); how to ensure strict adherence to the mandate and how to remain engaged in the ‘day after’—another key shortcoming of the Libyan intervention.

Dr. Benedetta Berti is a foreign policy and security researcher, analyst, consultant, author and lecturer. Her work focuses on human security and internal conflicts, as well as on post-conflict stabilization (specifically integration of armed groups, democracy/governance and crisis management and prevention) and peacebuilding. Dr. Berti is the author of three books, including Armed Political Organizations. From Conflict to Integration (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and her work and research have appeared, among others, in Al-Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She is a fellow at INSS, a TED Senior Fellow, a FPRI Senior fellow, a Young Atlanticist Fellow, a Körber Foundation’s Munich Young Leader and a member of the UN Alliance of Civilizations “Global Experts.” In 2015 the Italian government awarded her the Order of the Star of Italy (order of Knighthood).

 (This piece was originally published by Channel 4 News on  January 22, 2013 and is the first of two parts by Anna Alissa Hitzemann and Ben Zala)

Britain is on standby and the US is already transporting French troops into Mali. But a new paper says the west is “betting on the wrong horse” by intervening in the region.

Climate change and human migration are often presented as threats to national and international security. But what is the actual link between these phenomena and conflict?

Author’s Note: This commentary presents key arguments from the articles Christiane J. Fröhlich (2016) Climate migrants as protestors? Dispelling misconceptions about global environmental change in pre-revolutionary Syria, Contemporary Levant, 1:1, 38-50, DOI: 10.1080/20581831.2016.1149355 (available online here), and Michael Brzoska & Christiane Fröhlich (2015): Climate change, migration and violent conflict: vulnerabilities, pathways and adaptation strategies , Migration and Development, DOI: 10.1080/21632324.2015.1022973 (available online here).

Climate Change and Conflict

Photo by Martine Perret/UNMIT via Flickr.

Today, climate change is often perceived predominantly as a security risk. The most common argument behind this train of thought is that many societies’ adaptive capacities will be overstretched by the effects of global warming within the short- to midterm, potentially leading to destabilization and violence, and jeopardizing national and international security in a way that is unprecedented (see WBGU, 2007; UNSC, 2007; UNGA, 2009). One additional concern is that, should the international community fail to adopt an effective and globally coordinated climate policy, climate change may deepen pre-existing lines of conflict on the local, national, inter- and transnational levels. Another worry are conflicts over natural resources, since reduced availability and changes in the distribution of water, food and arable land are considered by some to potentially trigger violent conflicts (Hsiang et al., 2013; Burke et al., 2009). Other hypothesized pathways from climate change to the onset of violent conflict are a deterioration of the governance capacities of formal and informal institutions as well as the increase in horizontal inequality among groups (see Gleditsch, 2012; Scheffran et al., 2012).

Bringing Migration in

Very much the same is true for human mobility: Large migration movements have frequently been presented as a threat to national and international security, particularly when crossing into the United States and Europe (see Huysmans 2000; Ceccirulli & Labanca, 2014; Adamson, 2006; Alexseev, 2006; Waever, Buzan, Kelstrup, & Lemaitre, 1993). The underlying assumption is that in a globalised world, states enjoy growing benefits and opportunities stemming from increasing human mobility, but are also threatened by an unknown and equally growing potential for crime, trafficking, drugs and terrorism within these new migratory flows. Therefore, human mobility is framed as a matter of security, leading to what has become known as the ‘migration-security nexus’.

“Climate Migration”

With global warming well under way, climate change-induced migration has come to the forefront of such risk assessments (see Myers 1998; Myers 2005; Myers and Kent 1995; Brown 2008; Barnett 2003, Smith and Vivekananda 2007; Boano 2008; Hummel et al. 2012; Warner et al. 2013). The underlying assumed causality is that climate change will engender or exacerbate resource scarcities, which in turn might drive migration as well as conflict. In its first assessment report, for instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned as early as 1990: ‘the gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration as millions are displaced by shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and severe drought’. This was the basis for predictions of major conflict in receiving regions both within countries suffering from climate change and internationally. In 2008, the European Commission and the EU’s High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy released a report on climate change and international security in which they stressed that as a result of climate change, ‘Europe must expect substantially increased migratory pressure’.

But reality is much less linear and simple, and empirical data is scant. The underlying imaginaire, which assumes linear causality between global environmental change and conflict via environmentally-induced migration, contains several misconceptions. Firstly, migration decisions are complex and not determined by environmental factors alone. Scholarship has identified five main drivers for (internal and international) human mobility, namely economic, political, demographic, social and environmental factors, which are deeply interconnected and mediated through socially, politically and economically determined institutions and structures. Secondly, chain migration and migration networks need to be taken into account as factors that guide migration streams in certain directions and not others. Thirdly, there are few systematic studies researching the assumed causality between climate change and migration (Reuveny 2007, 2008; Raleigh, 2010; Raleigh et al., 2010) or between (climate) migration movements and (violent) conflict. In fact, there is very limited evidence for both propositions. Fourthly, it remains disputed how many people will leave their habitat due to climate change: So-called maximalists assume a simple, direct relationship between migration and climate change and thus project comparatively large numbers of environmental migrants. Estimates reach from some 200 million up to 1 billion refugees globally by 2050 (Jacobson 1988; Myers 1997, 2002; Stern 2006). Minimalists, on the other hand, underscore the complex nature of migration decisions and stress the respective society’s vulnerability and adaptive capacity as a major factor for reducing the expected number of climate migrants (Suhrke 1994; Castles 2002; Morrissey 2009; Gemenne 2011, Morrissey 2012 gives a good overview). Fifthly, migration has been identified as a potentially powerful adaptation mechanism with regard to global warming, a view which is not reflected by the simple causality cited above. In a nutshell, the theoretical foundation and empirical support for propositions of a causal linearity between climate change, human mobility and conflict are thin. This does not mean that climate change will be irrelevant for future patterns of migration, including migration that may be linked to conflict. But the links are complex and defy simple and sensationalist conclusions.

Case Study Syria: A Climate War?

One case in point is Syria. The Syrian Arab Republic, as most of the Middle East and North Africa, has been suffering from long-term environmental changes linked to anthropogenic climate change. In recent years, a particularly long drought period immediately preceding the beginning of the Syrian uprising has negatively impacted what used to be the breadbasket of the Fertile Crescent, with consecutive crop failures in parts of the country, loss of livestock, the demise of whole villages and a distinct increase in internal migration. This has lead an increasing number of commentators to believe that this “century drought” was at least partly responsible for the timing and intensity of social upheaval in Syria (Werrell, Femia, and Sternberg 2015; Kelley et al. 2015, as well as numerous media contributions, for instance in The Independent and The New York Times. From the United States government to the European Union, from American to European think tanks, this powerful supposed ‘pre-story’ of the Syrian revolution is continuously gaining traction and has even been introduced into the overall discussion of the migration flows to Europe by assuming that the timing and magnitude of the current migration flows from the Middle East to Europe was at least partly environmentally motivated.

However, the existing studies of this link, while having received a lot of public attention, do not present authoritative evidence on the issue. On the contrary, they overstress environmental drivers of migration while tuning out other factors that influence migration decisions. For instance, the Syrian state only created around 36,000 new jobs per year between 2001 and 2007, with the agricultural sector losing 69,000 per annum, making (un)employment a very serious issue in the Syrian economy and powerful driver of migration long before the drought began. Modernisation, rapid de-peasantisation and slow replacement of agricultural employment with waged work in industry or services in the formal sector had taken their toll on both rural and urban environments before the drought even began.

Also, macro-economic policies of the Syrian government, which had for decades regulated agricultural crops, worked as economic push factor, too. The state-led system which had been imposed on the agricultural sector in the mid-20^th century was characterised by subsidies for farm inputs and fuels, especially for strategic crops such as wheat, cotton and barley. These state-led structures introduced strong dependencies into the agricultural sector that became liabilities when Bashar al-Assad started to deregulate the Syrian economy into what the 10^th five-year-plan calls “an open competitive economy”. Parallel to his reforms, an economy that had been based on rents from the oil sector started to give way to demographic pressures, a decrease in oil-production, depleting oil reserves and economic stagnation.

Socio-political drivers for migration also played a role in pre-revolutionary Syria. The rule of law was ambivalent, state institutions were characterized by manipulation and poor performance, the business environment was extremely fragile, corruption abounded, and Syrian citizens had little to no avenue to participate in political decision-making processes. Power and wealth were being distributed along highly informal but extremely resilient patronage networks. But the decade-old strategy of repressing those who advocated taghyir (change), while at the same time attempting to bind those advocating islah (reform) in patronage networks, began to crumble.

Finally, the assumed causality between climate change induced migration and social unrest is based on the idea that the migrants were the driving force behind the Syrian uprising. However, orchestrating popular protest requires social networks built on trust and at least some kind of organizational structure (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996; Tarrow 1998; Diani and McAdam 2003; Chesters and Welsh 2011). There is no evidence that new migrants, who were often living below the poverty line, could initiate large-scale, long-lasting popular uprisings, especially in repressive autocratic regimes like Syria.

Christiane Fröhlich is Mercator-IPC-Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center of Sabanci University and Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at Hamburg University. Her research focuses on reasons for migration, with a particular focus on environmental drivers. She has done extensive ethnographic field research on the impact of a prolonged and climate change-related drought period in Syria which immediately preceded the Syrian war. Moreover, she inquires into the role of the Global North for current migration movements from the Global South from a Postcolonial Perspective. In the past, she has worked extensively on water conflicts on the international, national and local levels, as well as on the Israeli-Palestinian core conflict and its role for Middle Eastern geopolitics. She holds a PhD from the Center for Conflict Studies at Marburg University, and a Master in Peace Research and Security Policy from Hamburg University. More information is available at www.christianefroehlich.de

Introduction

The acknowledgement of gender issues through the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda marked a watershed moment for women’s rights. Despite this, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) framework remains gender-blind. I argue that R2P and the WPS agenda share overlapping commitments and mutually beneficial and reinforcing protection mandates. Through three intersecting commitments – prevention and early warning systems, gender protection in peacekeeping, and women’s participation in post-conflict reconstruction – careful alignment between R2P and the WPS agenda could overcome this silence and move towards achieving more sustainable security.

The Responsibility to Protect and Women Peace and Security

Systematic human rights atrocities perpetrated against individuals based on their ethnicity, gender, and race have framed contemporary political discourses. With the international community’s inability to collectively respond to prevent mass atrocities and other severe humanitarian emergencies, former United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan spearheaded the challenge to create a norm permitting states to intervene in another sovereign state in the event of ‘gross and systematic violations of human rights that affect every precept of our common humanity’. Spurred on by  failures of the international community to prevent genocides in Rwanda (1994) and Srebrenica (1995), the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) was established in September 2000 to address how and when the international community should act to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The report entitled “The Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) was released in December 2001. The unanimous adoption of R2P at the World Summit in 2005 established its prominence as a normative framework within the international community. The use of R2P as rhetorical backdrop to the Libyan intervention in 2011 via UNSC Resolutions 1970 and 1973 and the inaction in responding to the crisis in Syria demonstrates the prevalence of R2P in international discourse. Furthermore, R2P is interwoven with existing international principles, obligations, and peacebuilding initiatives. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon asserts that R2P rests upon three interrelated, central pillars – responsibilities of the state to protect its population from mass atrocities; international capacity building to ensure states meet their protection responsibilities and prevent mass atrocities; and collective and timely responses through diplomatic, humanitarian and political means with coercive military action as a last resort.

Female United Nations police officers of the United Nations Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT). Image by UN photo via Flickr.

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda gained traction on the international peace and security platform following the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in October 2000. The WPS agenda is the most comprehensive articulation of women’s rights and gender issues in international peace and security. It establishes a nexus between conflict prevention and women’s rights, highlighting the relationship between gender inequality and conflict. Resulting from the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 in Beijing, and the pivotal Beijing Platform for Action which named ‘Women and Armed Conflict’ as one of twelve areas of critical concern, the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security was formed to advocate a UNSC Resolution focused on women’s unique contribution and experiences of conflict. Through lobbying and advocacy, the NGO Working Group played a vital role in drafting the resolution and through UN Resolution 1325 successfully complicated the popular narratives that stereotyped women as either victims or inclusive peacebuilders. UN Resolution 1325 directs policymakers to consider all of women’s experiences in conflict and links women’s rights to international peace and security. The adoption of an additional seven resolutions builds upon 1325 and make up the WPS agenda. It rests upon a four-pillar mandate; prevention of violence and derogation of rights; protection from violence; participation in peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction; and relief and recovery. Laura Shepherd and Jacqui True broaden ‘relief and recovery’, to include identifying the structural social, political and economic conditions required for sustainable and lasting peace. Specifically the WPS agenda addresses sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in conflict, measures to ensure women’s participation in decision-making processes and post-conflict programs, gender mainstreaming in UN activities and peacekeeping operations, and gender-sensitive prevention frameworks. The WPS agenda provides basis for international engagement with gender issues. With R2P, the WPS shares a commitment to improve human security and revealing and preventing women’s human rights abuses through international engagement. Disappointingly, despite both frameworks emerging sharing similar underpinnings, R2P and its community continue to fail to address gender issues encompassed within the WPS agenda.

R2P did not embrace the central messages of Resolution 1325 nor were points of synergies explored where there was a lack of dialogue and acknowledgement towards gender issues. From the outset, gender was excluded from the original formulation of R2P with only one of the 12 commissioners being a woman and only seven of 2000 sources consulted including gender. Women within the original R2P document were framed in terms of vulnerable populations in need of protection. ‘Women’ were mentioned three times only in reference to ‘rape and sexual violence’, which was mentioned seven times, where SGBV falls under crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. No reference was made of women being active participants and agents in conflict prevention, protection and post-conflict reconstruction. This is despite the transformative possibilities of including aspects of the WPS agenda. R2P disregards WPS as a paradigm for conflict prevention and its centrality to peace and security. Here, as discussed below, three common intersecting commitments could overcome this disconnect.

Intersecting Commitments

• Prevention and early warning systems

The inclusion of gender issues into existing early-warning frameworks and systems may illuminate potential and/or existing R2P situations. Studying macro- and micro-level changes to women’s lives reveals the escalation of violence and derogation of individual rights in hyper-masculinised and militarised societies. Gender-sensitive indicators include average levels of female education, impunity towards SGBV, increased kidnappings, sex work, female heads of households and domestic violence. Moreover, gender-sensitive indicators are not synonymous with women-sensitive indicators, but can monitor aggression and militarisation within a society, such as the persecution of men that do not take up arms. UN Women implemented several context-specific programs that have resulted in a comprehensive how-to guide of 85 gender-sensitive indicators that provide a holistic early warning system. Furthermore, through empirical analysis Sara Davies and Jacqui True found strong connections between systemic gender inequality and discrimination and the use of SGBV in conflict and non-conflict settings.

Despite the benefits of including gender-sensitive indicators, gaps in women’s participation in early-warning initiatives have not been overcome. The UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect have not addressed the role of gender inequality or gendered violence in early warning systems. A recent framework of analysis on the prevention of R2P crimes continues to situate women in the narrative of ‘vulnerable population’ with children and the elderly, and in regards to sexual violence and reproductive rights. This is despite, as Davies and True argue, systemic and structural gender inequality is a potential early warning factor for preventing mass SGBV.

Since gender inequality increases the likelihood of R2P crimes any strategy of prevention must address gender norms that oppress and marginalise women. Gender-sensitive indicators highlight structural political, economic and social inequalities that maintain gender inequality in a given society that impacts post-conflict reconstruction and conflict protection.

• Gender-sensitive Protection in Peacekeeping Operations

The protection pillar of WPS stresses the full involvement and participation of women in the maintenance and promotion of international peace and security. This includes gender mainstreaming in all peacekeeping missions and the addition of gender units and advisers. Providing an official female presence in conflict areas, refugee and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps is essential to improve access and support for local women to communicate in an official capacity. Women can approach each other more easily in female-only settings where women may be prohibited to talk to male strangers. Moreover, SGBV is more likely to be reported between women. However, as of February 2016, only 3.34 per cent of military and 9 per cent of police were female. Although there is at least one female in every peacekeeping force, the number varies from 1 woman out of 17 deployed in the UN mission in Afghanistan to 799 women out of 17,453 deployed in the UN-African Union Mission in Darfur. Of 105,315 deployed peacekeepers, women only comprise 4.05 per cent. Although numbers have improved since the adoption of UN Resolution 1325, increases have been marginal and reflect the low number of women included in UN peace building efforts.

Furthermore, implementation of gender-sensitive protection needs to move beyond the ‘add women and stir’ policy. Rather, WPS knowledge needs to be utilised in peacekeeping operations and wider UN peacebuilding efforts. For instance, the assumption that men are heads of households and therefore assistance being distributed to mainly men does not reflect post-conflict realities. Women are often widowed during and after conflict and adopt non-traditional roles such as heads of households. Since post-conflict programs and assistance does not recognise this, women are forced to take drastic measures to support their family and may take part in exploitive aspects of peacekeeping economies, like the sex industry. The misconception could be countered through gender units, gender-awareness training on more than an ad hoc basis and extensive comprehension of WPS.

• Women’s participation in post-conflict reconstruction.

The post-conflict phase is complex with many overlaps where the WPS agenda would assist states and the international community in post-conflict responsibilities. However, here I will focus on women’s participation in peace processes. Women’s involvement in peace processes is mentioned in every resolution of the WPS agenda. Evidence suggests that the inclusion of women at the peace table as witnesses, signatories, negotiators and mediators makes it 35 per cent more likely a peace agreement will last. Nevertheless, women’s quality participation in official capacities remains insufficient. Women and gender provisions have slowly started to be incorporated into peace agreements with a textual increase since the passing of Resolution 1325.

However, by essentialising women as mothers, caregivers and victims, women are excluded from peace negotiations where, ironically, the cessation of hostilities is reliant on those who took up arms. I am not arguing that women are better peacemakers, but that their participation is vital to ensure that their experiences of conflict are acknowledged. Around the world, women lobby for participation to ensure their needs and security concerns are addressed. In Somalia, the Sixth Clan was formed in response to the five traditional Somali clans failure to include women in negotiating teams. Asha Hagi Elmi became the representative of the Sixth Clan in 2000 and in peace talks in 2002, becoming the first female signatory to a peace agreement in 2004. Peace processes must include women as more than lip service to inclusivity.

Conflict transition provides a chance to create a more equal society by transforming the gendered relationships and identities that contributed to the production of violence. Women’s participation is essential to represent half the population during peace negotiations, to ensure explicit inclusion of women’s rights and gender provisions, and could have major implications for women’s social, political and economic status, and involvement in wider post-conflict initiatives. It is imperative that women are involved during that critical post-conflict transition to be enabled to affect positive changes.

Conclusion

Despite these areas of common engagement, R2P remains silent towards analysis and discourse surrounding the WPS platform. Both frameworks emerged at similar times and share central tenets of prevention, participation and protection, however women’s involvement in R2P has been grossly deficient. I have briefly demonstrated here, and examine in depth elsewhere, three areas of common engagement between R2P and the WPS agenda. I identify three common intersecting commitments – prevention and early warning frameworks, protection and gender-sensitive peacekeeping, and women’s participation in peace processes. Implementing gender-sensitive policies, legislations and programs will highlight the different lived experiences of men and women and the insecurities that arise during conflict and post-conflict reconstruction. R2P has much to gain from the WPS agenda and vice versa, where alliance with R2P and its community could aid the WPS agenda in addressing major gaps in its implementation. Alignment, both practical and normative, could provide an inclusive and holistic protection platform and encourage sustainable peace.

Sarah Hewitt is a PhD candidate at Monash University, Australia with the Monash Gender, Peace and Security Centre. Her article,  ‘Overcoming the Gender gap: The Possibilities of Alignment between the Responsibility to Protect and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda’, was recently published in the Global Responsibility to Protect Journal. Sarah has also posted on Protection Gateway.

One year on from the French intervention in Mali, Saharan jihadist groups continue to threaten not only Mali but Algeria, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Tunisia. Will French and US plans to expand their military presence in the Sahel combat, contain or exacerbate the threat from militants displaced from Mali?

Fragmentation, Displacement and Reconsolidation:  The AQIM Threat in 2014

French General Pillet, Chief of Staff of MINUSMA, Kidal, during the visit of the Joint Security Committee in charge of the observance of the cease-fire between the Malian army and armed groups from the north. Source: MINUSMA (Flickr)

Last January, the French military, supported by African troops and 10 non-African air forces, intervened militarily in Mali at the request of its transitional government. Over the following four weeks they recaptured all of the towns in the northern half of Mali. This vast desert region had been seized by Islamist and separatist militia in March-April 2012 and declared independent as the ‘State of Azawad’, the Tuareg name for their homeland in northeast Mali. Since then, French troops have continued to conduct security operations across northern Mali to locate and ‘neutralise’ militants associated with Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a jihadist group of Algerian origin, and its West African splinter groups. Reduced numbers of French forces now support Malian and African forces within the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             However, the final quarter of 2013 saw an increase in violence in northern Mali, including terrorist attacks, violent protests and inter-communal violence. Moreover, the French advance into northern Mali displaced rather than destroyed AQIM and its two local allies, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and Ansar Dine, a Tuareg Islamist group. Their impact has been particularly felt in Niger and Libya and may also have bolstered jihadist groups operating in northern Nigeria, Tunisia and Egypt’s Sinai. The lawless desert of southwest Libya is believed to be the new stronghold of AQIM.

A new group, al-Murabitun, combining MUJAO and the most active elements of AQIM’s Saharan front, now appears to pose more of a threat to western and West African interests than AQIM. This is because its strategic direction is towards the weak states of West Africa, including Niger, Mali and Mauritania, where critical infrastructure and individuals are more difficult to protect. It is also better connected to the kidnapping and trafficking enterprises that fund Saharan militancy, and more deadly. During 2013, its militants were behind frequent raids on Gao (northern Mali’s main town), on a prison, garrison and French-owned mine in Niger, and on the Algerian gas plant at In-Amenas. These audacious operations attest to its range, training, discipline and cosmopolitan membership. If it finds common purpose with the larger jihadist groups in northern Niger, as some analysts suggest, it could represent a severe threat to stability in the already shaky regional power.

French Repositioning in the Sahel

In recognition of the expansion of jihadist groups, France announced a major repositioning of its forces in Africa in January. The new French military posture will refocus from large coastal bases, designed to train, transport and supply African Union and regional rapid reaction forces, to smaller forward deployments in the Sahel and Sahara. 3,000 French troops will now be based indefinitely in Mali, Niger and Chad.

U.S. soldiers and French commandos marine conduct a reconnaissance patrol during a joint-combined exercise in Djibouti. Source: Wikipedia

The new posture is heavily influenced by US ‘War on Terror’ strategy in Africa, Yemen and south-west Asia, relying heavily on Special Forces, air strike capacities and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). French and US forces (including contractors) already share facilities in Djibouti, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, and there is a small US liaison detachment with the French Combined Air Operations Centre in Chad. The French repositioning is explicit about confronting Islamist terrorist groups and the threat to regional security posed by the security vacuum in southern Libya. While the repositioning focuses on Mali, Niger and Chad, supplied via a coastal base in Côte d’Ivoire, it will actually include deployments to over a dozen small bases and elite detachments in the Sahel and Sahara, covering at least seven countries. In some cases it will mean French Special Forces reoccupying desert forts long abandoned by the Foreign Legion.

There will also be greater use of aerial reconnaissance and targeting. French Navy patrol aircraft already criss-cross the Sahara and two MQ-9 Reaper UAVs arrived with French forces at Niamey airport in December after the US fast-tracked French acquisition of and training on these ‘hunter-killer’ drones. These double the effective range of the Harfang target-acquisition UAVs formerly used by the French in the Sahel, bringing all of Mali, Niger, almost all of the rest of West Africa and much of Algeria, Chad and southwest Libya into range.

France also makes greater use of combat aircraft in the Sahel-Sahara, deploying fighter aircraft from its long-term base in N’Djamena, Chad to Bamako and Niamey airports. This brings northern Mali into range. Since October, French fighter-reconnaissance aircraft have deployed to Faya-Largeau in northern Chad, which brings southern Libya well within range. French Special Forces and armed helicopters have also operated from Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania in pursuit of AQIM.

US and China Extend Their Presence

French and US Reapers now operate from the same facility at Niamey airport, set up by the US in February 2013. While US UAVs in Niger are unarmed, it is unclear if French Reapers will be used for strike missions. US armed UAV bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Seychelles currently bring all of the Horn of Africa, East Africa and most of Arabia within range. US private military contractors have also flown unarmed, unmarked light aircraft on surveillance flights all across the Sahel belt since at least 2007. Using covert hubs in Burkina Faso and Uganda and smaller airfields in Mauritania, Niger and South Sudan, they have sought AQIM and the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

Since 2011, US Special Forces have established small bases in the Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to assist Ugandan forces seeking the LRA there. They also provide training to several African militaries countering the LRA. As with programmes in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad, these programmes have focused on creating elite counter-terrorism units. Unfortunately, all of these countries plus the CAR and South Sudan have experienced coups d’état or major army mutinies since this assistance began.

In order to combat Boko Haram, a Nigerian Special Operations Command was announced on 14 January with the US military providing advice, training and equipment. Massive attacks by Boko Haram since December suggest that the Nigerian army’s use of indiscriminate force in the northeast has not weakened the insurgency. Rather, the state of emergency is likely to have strengthened the recruitment base of Boko Haram since May.

China and Japan are also increasingly active in the Sahel. Chinese parastatals are the dominant actors in the oil industries of Sudan/South Sudan, Chad/Cameroon and Niger. They also mine uranium in Niger, and China is the primary buyer of iron ore from Mauritania’s vast desert complexes. So far, China is the only non-African state to deploy more than a few dozen troops with MINUSMA.  Japan, which saw ten of its nationals killed in the January 2013 militant attack on Algeria’s In-Amenas gas plant, has pledged $1 billion to stabilise the Sahel, including training of counter-terrorism units.

Compromised Alliances

This expansion of deployments and offensive operations relies on the status of forces agreements between western powers and’ friendly’ states such as Algeria. France, for example, depends on an air corridor across the Algerian Sahara. Securing such access puts host governments in a position of greater power. The highly authoritarian regime in Algiers – the world’s fifth or sixth largest arms importer – no longer faces western pressure to improve its dismal human rights record. Indeed, it has received friendly visits from the leaders of France and the UK and the US Secretary of State since late 2012. Mauritania’s military-based government faced little criticism over its unfair elections in November.

Chad, Uganda and Ethiopia may be the biggest regional beneficiaries of the militarisation of the Sahel. Each has been governed for a quarter-century by a former armed movement. They face little censure of their authoritarian and undemocratic internal policies and have become more assertive as regional military powers. Ethiopia has forces in Somalia while Uganda now has combat troops in operation (by agreement) in Somalia (under AU command), South Sudan, the DRC and the CAR.

Boosted by expanding oil revenues, French alliance and the demise of Libya’s Gaddafi regime, Chad has greatly expanded its military reach into Mali, Niger and the CAR, where its troops and citizens now face a violent backlash. It is also a Security Council member for the next two years and will be expected to help guide decisions on UN peacekeeping operations in Mali, South Sudan and potentially the CAR and Libya.

Burkina Faso, long relied on by Paris to negotiate with armed groups in francophone West Africa, is also facing unaccustomed turbulence in 2014 as its president seeks to permit himself an additional term of office. Algeria, which is wary of France’s military deployments on its southern border, is set to take over from Burkina the mediation of talks between Mali’s government and secular Tuareg and Arab rebels.

Foundations in Sand

In some respects, the eviction of AQIM and its allies from northern Mali has made the wider Sahara a less safe place, without obviously impeding the capacity of jihadist groups to threaten Europe. In 2014, southwest Libya and parts of Niger are not necessarily less safe havens than northern Mali was in 2012. The insurgency has moved closer to the Mediterranean and closer to critical European energy infrastructure in Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Niger (uranium). Unlike heterodox Mali, controlling Libya’s chaotic state is likely to be of interest to Arab Salafist groups, including AQIM.

As elsewhere, the western military approach to countering Islamist insurgency in the Sahel rests on very unsteady foundations. This applies to the political legitimacy of allied regimes, the stability and security of locations hosting French and US bases, the traumatic historical legacy of France as the former colonial power, and the potential for counter-insurgency tactics to provoke wider alienation and radicalisation. However asymmetric its military technology, reinforcing a new line of castles in the Saharan sand may be as futile a gesture in France’s long retreat from empire as the UK’s last stand in Afghanistan.

Richard Reeve is the Director of the Sustainable Security Programme at Oxford Research Group. He has researched African peace and security issues since 2000, including work with ECOWAS and the AU. Richard’s most recent security briefing ‘Security in the Sahel (Part II): Militarisation of the Sahel is available here.