Wounded civilians arrive at a hospital during the ongoing Syrian civil war. Source: Wikimedia

Recent events in the Syrian civil war have proved the greatest test of the norm against the use of chemical weapons since the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the clearest and most comprehensive expression of that norm, opened for signature in 1993. At its core, this was a test of the willingness of countries to uphold the norm, in this case in the face of a flagrant violation causing the deaths of nearly 1,500 people. While the international community may have stumbled upon a satisfactory conclusion – one that reaffirms  the special category of chemical arms – the global response said a great deal about current attitudes to the use of military force as a means of humanitarian intervention.

The Ghouta incident

Despite a number of alleged incidents of chemical weapons use in Syria in the early months of 2013 – the use of which was reportedly first confirmed by British scientists in April from soil samples smuggled out of the country – it was August before their apparent use touched mass consciousness around the world.

The catalyst for global outrage, and near-intervention with military means by western powers, was an attack in the early hours of 21 August in the Ghouta district of eastern Damascus. Chemical weapons, it seemed, had been deployed in Ghouta on a scale far greater than witnessed in any of the handful of previous alleged attacks. Video footage showing evidently sick and distressed adults and children, as well as dozens of bodies, began to rapidly circulate around the world—with Médecins Sans Frontières, the medical aid charity, reporting shortly after the attack that three hospitals supported by it in Damascus had treated around 3,600 patients displaying so-called neurotoxic symptoms. Of these, it said, 355 had died.

On 30 August, the United States issued a press release in which it claimed that 1,429 people—including at least 426 children, it said—had ultimately died in the attack on Ghouta. As for the who and the what of the incident, the US asserted that on the basis of both open-source information and covertly-acquired intelligence, it assessed ‘with high confidence’ that the attack had been carried out by the Syrian government, and that a nerve agent had been used.

UN chemical weapons experts wearing gas masks carry samples from one of the sites of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Ain Tarma neighbourhood of Damascus. Source: Tetovasot

Following access to three sites in the Ghouta neighbourhood, inspectors operating under the auspices of the United Nations Secretary-General subsequently confirmed that the fast-acting nerve agent sarin had been used there on a ‘relatively large scale’. Their report, released in mid-September, stated that biological samples taken from survivors showed ‘definitive evidence of exposure’ to sarin—evidence, they said, that was consistent with clinical assessments of survivors’ symptoms. Lab analysis of environmental samples taken in Ghouta was reported to have also confirmed the presence of sarin or its by-products.

While UN verification of chemical weapons-use in Ghouta provided important independent confirmation of what had taken place there (if not who was responsible, which it was not part of the inspectors’ mandate to ascertain), for most onlookers it came as little surprise. Videos, photos and survivor accounts were enough to leave most with few doubts that a toxic weapon of some kind had been used on a mass scale in Ghouta—a dark new low for a conflict already characterised by widespread savagery and the almost total disregard for the lives and welfare of non-combatants.

Less expected, however, was the decision by the Syrian government, in the days immediately preceding the release of the inspectors’ report, to give up its chemical weapons arsenal in an immediate, verifiable fashion and to join the CWC – a plan proposed by Russia, a key ally of the Assad regime, and an agreement to it by Syria that saw the prospect of US-led airstrikes averted.

In truth, it is unclear how likely airstrikes would have been had Syria not agreed to give up its chemical weapons. A parliamentary vote in the UK, held in late August, saw a government motion for intervention defeated, ruling Britain out of any involvement In the US, early September saw President Obama step back from the seemingly-imminent launch of airstrikes that would have most clearly of all upheld the ‘red line ’ he himself had set in 2012 regarding any use of chemical weapons in Syria. Instead, President Obama announced that he would first seek approval for the use of force from Congress – a vote that was ultimately overtaken by events and never held, but one that was by no means sure to end in favour of military intervention. Indeed, the vote looked likely to go against.

To intervene, or not?

If Syria’s decision to join the CWC and rid itself of chemical weapons stands as one unlikely positive outcome of the Ghouta incident, it is a positive that distracts little from the more troubling features of the attack and the global response to it. For one, the use of chemical weapons on the scale witnessed in Ghouta laid bare the lack of limits that seems to have become a feature of this war.

Moreover, the reluctance of most Western powers – and publics – to move beyond rhetorical outrage, in the face of the massacre of nearly 1,500 Syrian citizens with a weapon of mass destruction, threatened to erode the sense of chemical weapons’ unique evilness in a fashion not seen at any other time in the recent past.

All of which says more about the current Western appetite for military intervention, in the Middle East particularly, than it does about their attitude to the use of chemical weapons in warfare. That President Obama had placed chemical weapons use on the other side of the red line of acceptable conduct in warfare—the crossing of which may, the implication was, trigger more forceful intervention—is evidence of that.

A year on from his proclamation of the red line, however, the situation on the ground had evolved dramatically. Arguably the ripest time for intervention in the conflict has long passed, with al-Qaeda-affiliated and other radical Islamist groups increasingly entrenched within a rebellion that has no clear leadership nor common vision. For western powers, all choices may now be bad ones; though of course that does little to help the millions of refugees and internally displaced Syrians that the conflict continues to produce.

Slow progress in verifying destruction

Against a backdrop of ongoing violence, personnel from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the implementing body for the CWC, have been working in Syria since last autumn verifying Assad’s chemical arsenal and overseeing its removal from the country. Progress, though, has so far not been encouraging. An end-of-year deadline for the removal of Syria’s most dangerous chemical stockpile was missed over difficulties in implementation, largely due to the ongoing fighting, and more recently concerns have been raised that Syria is not doing enough to ensure the smooth implementation of the ‘framework’ agreement under which the elimination operation is proceeding. Russia has sought to quieten concerns, announcing in the past few days that a large shipment of chemical weapons would leave Syria this month.

Pressure on Syria, as war continues

That world powers are continuing to lean on Syria to ensure implementation of the framework, however, is evidence that the use of chemical weapons is taken seriously at the highest level, and that the issue remains high on the priority list of foreign policymakers in world capitals. What it says to the rest of the world is that the use of chemical weapons will incur consequences, but that leads to a host of questions over what level of use would generate a response (the Ghouta incident was the largest, but almost certainly not the first use of chemical weapons in the war there), as well as how to prove the use of these weapons in circumstances where use has been alleged—and, by extension, what level of doubt is acceptable.

Meanwhile, in Syria, as the war continues, so the country becomes ever more a kind of ‘new Somalia rotting in the heart of the Levant’, as The Economist so vividly put it last year. Long-awaited peace talks recently concluded in Switzerland achieved nothing of substance, beyond agreement to resume on 10 February. That we may have seen the last use of chemical weapons as Syria tears itself apart is a silver lining of sorts, but a silver lining around a cloud of particularly heavy darkness.

This article was written in a personal capacity. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERTIC.

David Cliff works as a researcher at the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC) in London. There, his work focuses on research into the verification, implementation and compliance aspects of nuclear and chemical arms control and disarmament treaties. He holds a BA in Geography and an MA in International Affairs, both from the University of Exeter in the UK.

by Caroline Donnellan and Esther Kersley

This article was originally published on openSecurity’s monthly Sustainable Security column on 22 June 2014. Every month, a rotating network of experts from Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security programme explore pertinent issues of global and regional insecurity.

Caroline Donnellan manages of the Remote Control project of the Network for Social Change, which examines and challenges the new ways of modern warfare, including the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Private Security Companies, Special Forces, aspects of cyber warfare and surveillance methods. Caroline has a background in multilateral diplomacy and has worked on international security and human rights issues for a number of years. Before joining ORG, she was Senior Policy Advisor to the Ambassador, Irish Permanent Representation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna. 

Esther Kersley is the Communications Assistant for Remote Control. Prior to joining ORG, Esther worked in Berlin for the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International as an editorial and online communications officer. She has a particular interest in counter-terrorism and conflict resolution in the Middle East, having previously worked with the Quilliam Foundation and IPCRI (Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information), a Jerusalem based think tank.

Much has been written about the prevalence of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and in particular about the use of rape as a “weapon of war”. The horrific stories of rape and sexual violence published worldwide have led to the DRC being labeled the “worst place in the world for women” and the “rape capital of the world”. Feminists have long decried the silence which has historically surrounded rape and sexual violence during conflict, and so the fact that political leaders and world media are now talking about sexual violence in the DRC and pushing for solutions to this problem should be applauded. However, much of the discourse and reporting reduces this to a simple narrative of “bestial” or uncontrolled soldiers or militias raping the women and girls in villages which they attack. This narrative, in addition to employing colonialist and racist stereotypes about the behaviour of Congolese men and women, fails to grasp the complexities of gender relations in the DRC, the multiple and varied nature of sexual and gender-based violence, and of the social structures and norms which underlie this violence.

One of the common perceptions about gender-based violence in the DRC, is that rape is the prevalent form of this violence and that sexual violence committed as a direct consequence and/or a strategy of war. It is undeniable that Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (the official army of the DRC) soldiers as well as numerous other rebel fighting groups have committed acts of sexual violence during the multiple and ongoing conflicts in the country, and continue to do so, as demonstrated by an attack in 2015 on the town of Kikamba in South Kivu during which over 100 women were raped. But to think of gender-based violence only as war rape is to miss the multiple other forms of violence, and the fact that these persist not only in areas of the country most directly affected by the conflict (notably the Eastern Regions) but across the whole country.  Common barriers to reporting GBV, such as stigma and fear of reprisals of the survivors, as well as poor infrastructure within the DRC mean that there is a lack of accurate statistics on GBV. But studies that do exist have shown that most of the incidences of GBV recorded in recent years are committed by civilians and not by soldiers, and that the most prevalent forms of GBV are domestic or intimate partner violence. A recent study by UNFPA listed multiple forms of GBV which are common in DRC including domestic  violence, rape and sexual violence, forced and early marriage, mistreatment of widows, psychological violence, economic violence and deprivation of resources.

Meeting of victims of Sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Image by USAID via Wikimedia.

So although armed conflict has exacerbated gender-based forms of violence in the DRC, it cannot be the only explanation for the existence or persistence of this violence. Instead, we should look to the country’s underlying gender norms, discriminatory laws and policies, and socio-economic structures. Although the new  2006 constitution of the DRC has made some progress towards recognizing gender equality, such as in article 14 which states that the public authorities should ensure the promotion and protection of women’s rights,  discriminatory laws still remain, which reinforce persistent norms and beliefs about the roles of men and women in society. The Family Code of the DRC still maintains that a man is the head of the household who has authority over all other members of the household including his wife who must obey him. Women must obtain their husband’s permission before performing any legal act such as selling or leasing property, opening a bank account or applying for a visa or passport. The idea that men are heads of the household is strongly engrained and supported by many Congolese who see it as a part of the national “family values”. This persistence of a family code which legitimates men’s control over women and the symbolic and normative values which it perpetuates are key barriers to the achievement of gender equality. Further, research has shown that prevalent gender norms seem to accept a certain level of violence within couples as normal and even desirable.

A new law on sexual violence passed in 2006, showed progress in criminalizing forms of violence not previously recognized such as sexual harassment, sexual slavery or forced pregnancy, but it still fails to recognize marital rape. This reflects that fact that many men and women think it is part of a woman’s duty to have sex with her husband whenever he wishes. And, for many, a certain level of violence within couples is “normal”, so that a man giving a “light tap” to his wife or girlfriend to keep her in line is perfectly acceptable.  Some even share the belief that if a man does not hit his partner, then he does not really love her. This normalization of a certain level of violence in intra-personal relationships is just part of a wider continuum of gender-based violence which is normalized and accepted. There are also various forms of violence which are condoned or encouraged by customary law which remains strong in some areas of the country, such as the rules of sororate and levirate under which women may be forced to marry the brother of their dead husband or the widow of their dead sister.  The continuum of these different forms of violence, which are accepted and normalized within Congolese society, can be seen to provide the context within which the rape and sexual violence, that has occurred during the armed conflicts, should be understood.

The normalization of GBV also contributes to the continuing impunity of perpetrators, as do the weak police and judicial systems in the country. As noted above, many incidences of GBV are not even recognized as such, and even when it is acknowledged that an act of gender-based violence has been committed, it is unlikely that he perpetrator will be prosecuted or punished. And in the absence of a robust judicial system, many cases are still settled through “amicable” arrangements between perpetrator and victim.

Gender inequalities are also obvious in many areas of public life, such as the lack of women in decision making positions in the government. Women make up only 8.9% of representatives in the National Assembly, 5.5% of Senators and 14.8% of government ministers (despite a strong recommendation from the national consultation held in Kinshasa in 2013 to appoint at least 30% of women to the government). Although a law on gender parity in political representation was passed by the National Assembly in April 2014, so far it has not had any noticeable impacts. There is still widespread opposition to women’s participation in public and political life because this is equated with a threat to the “traditional” family life and culture of the DRC. Women have also been under-represented in all of the various peace negotiations which have taken place to try and end the conflicts in the DRC, and remain a very small minority in the armed forces, the police and the judiciary.

Much more can be written about the various forms of gender inequality which persist in the DRC and which provide foundations for the various forms of GBV which exist in the country. The necessary links between broader social gender inequalities and GBV are vital to understand if there is to be any effective response to the problem of GBV, and effective policies for prevention. The Women, Peace and Security agenda, has a focus on not only prevention of violence, but also of increased participation of women in public life and decision making. Increasing participation means considering women not only as “vulnerable victims” of sexual violence, but as actors should be given an equal role in political life.  All of the many complexities and layers of gender inequality need to be taken into account if real solutions to the problem of GBV are to be found, and in doing so Congolese women need to be actively engaged in making decisions and finding the solutions.

Jane Freedman is Professor at the Université Paris 8, and member of the Centre de recherches sociologiques et politiques de Paris (CRESPPA). She has researched and published widely on issues relating to gender, violence, conflict and forced migration.