A Feminist Perspective on Peace and Security in Northeast Asia
Akibayashi Kozue, Doshisha University / Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Introduction: Women, Peace and Security
The pledge of the international community to ensure participation of women in peace and security policies at all levels appeared for the first time in United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), adopted in October 2000. This is the first UN Security Council Resolution that addresses “gender” as an essential element of peace and security. It is a part of “gender mainstreaming,” the overarching UN policy to integrate a gender perspective in all aspects of its policies. This is one of the achievements of the mid-1990s when women’s human rights movements were gaining global power, demanding that women’s rights be recognized as universal human rights and that a gender perspective be regularly included in policy making processes.
Another significance of UNSCR 1325, something that civil society organizations strived to achieve, is the recognition of systematic sexual violence as a peace and security issue, not an unfortunate but inevitable outcome of armed conflicts. The UN, its member states, and all parties to armed conflicts are responsible for the prevention of sexual violence during war time, the resolution says.
UNSCR 1325 is known to have been lobbied for by the very strong, well-coordinated and focused efforts of civil society organizations, from its inception to its adoption. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the first international women’s peace organization which began in 1915, was among those civil society organizations that created the NGO coalition for women, peace and security in the New York UN community. The coalition constitutes peace and human rights organizations active at the UN Headquarters in New York. The NGO coalition activists even drafted the resolution to make it visible that the achievement of gender equality is indivisible with the achievement of peace.
Since then, the UN Security Council has adopted 7 more resolutions that are referred to as Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) by the New York UN Community.1 The WPS Agenda has become a standard policy within the United Nations and all member states. In addition, the United Nations itself has made it its own responsibility to implement what WPS resolutions call for. To fast forward to the present day, we are now looking at a commitment from almost 80 UN member states with a National Action Plan (NAP) that is a series of national policies for implementation of UNSCR 1325 and in some cases of UNSCR 1820 that articulates sexual violence during armed conflicts is a tactic of war.
What, then, is the status of gender mainstreaming in peace and security in the Northeast Asian region? Has the UN-led gender mainstreaming been helpful to bring peace in the region? This short piece tries to shed light on feminist peace movements in the region, which have been tackling the issues of peace and security in an attempt to answer these questions.
Feminist Peace Movements in Northeast Asia
In looking for quick answers to the above questions, one may point out that there has been increased public discussion lately on the participation of women in peace and security. If we look at NAPs in the region, however, only ROK and Japan have completed their NAPs. This does not necessarily mean that other countries are not interested in the WPS agenda or that the governments of ROK and Japan are more interested in the WPS agenda. Some countries assert that they already have sufficient participation of women in peace and security policies thus, there is no need to introduce new policies. That may capture some realities. Even those with NAPs should not be immune to criticism with regard to the focus of their NAP or even the level of inclusion of civil society participation in the process of creating, implementing and monitoring the NAP. Indeed, as the region has suffered for almost seven decades of conflict in the form of the Korean War, and as denuclearization of the region remains a pertinent issue, even more substantial discussions on the WPS in the region should be in place.
In fact, a further question should be asked. Would an increase in women’s participation bring sustainable peace and security to the region? Some civil society activists have been critical of the UN approaches to the WPS agenda and NAPs, arguing that explicitly designed policies to change the discourse and policies for peace and security to incorporate a feminist perspective are more urgently needed than a mere headcount of the number of women in peace and security related policies. Simply put, “more women” does not assure inclusion of a feminist perspective.
Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence (OWAAMV), a feminist peace movement in Okinawa, Japan, is one of the long-time advocates of a feminist perspective in peace and security with whom I have worked to develop transnational solidarity networks. Since its official establishment in 1995, OWAAMV women have called for a fundamental transformation of the concept of militarized security to more human-centered security with a clearer aim of achieving gender equality. Okinawa, the southernmost archipelago of Japan, is host to a disproportionately large percentage of United States military personnel and land-occupation in Japan. OWAAMV women have called attention to the problem of sexual violence perpetrated by U.S. soldiers against women and girls, (and at times, men and boys), that has continued since the U.S. military landed on their islands in 1945 at the end of the Asia-Pacific War. It was indeed after the war had ended, throughout so-called peace-time that they have been most exposed to sexual violence by soldiers. When it comes to sexual crimes, it is known that there is a large gap between the number of reported crimes and actual occurrences due to the strong stigma attached to the victims who are more reluctant to report these crimes to the authorities than victims of other crimes. In this aspect, OWAAMV members who have worked to support victims of sexual crimes in Okinawa are in general deeply critical of the community’s patriarchal culture that inflicts shame on the victims.
OWAAMV’s activities show that not a single year has passed without sexual violence by the U.S. military in Okinawa since 1945.2 They have argued that sexual violence by U.S. soldiers in Okinawa takes not only the form of direct violence against local individuals in the host community, but is also a form of structural violence intrinsic in the institution of the military and militarized security. This highlights the fundamental contradiction of military security: the presence of the U.S. military on Okinawa, supposedly for the provision of “security,” is in fact the source of threat and insecurity of the well-being and even survival of its people. This is particularly true in the case of, women and children who are considered more vulnerable and therefore the object of security policies. Having lived under this contradiction for decades, OWAAMV has posed such vital questions as “Whose security is the U.S. military in our community supposed to provide?” and “What is security when the very presence of the U.S. military has caused insecurity in our lives?”
Their questions have led them to deepen their critical analysis of military security itself, including the very assumption on which military security has been conceptualized: the exercise of coercive force is the primary method to assure “security” therefore strengthening the coercive force and its institution of the military is given the highest priority of policies including resource allocation. The sanction of coercive force or direct violence, they further argue, is the source of sexual violence by soldiers because violent and destructive masculine traits are taught to soldiers in military to enhance their capability to exercise force to kill the enemy. This analysis has resonated with researchers and activists who have shown that sexual violence is about displaying power and control over the weaker, the feminine.3 There are also various kinds of discrimination and discriminatory attitudes, such as racism, that soldiers are expected to learn or internalize in the process of becoming a soldier. OWAAMV views that sexual violence by soldiers in a host community under long-term military stationing is a manifestation of the larger problem of military security and the military.4
A Feminist Perspective on Peace and Security
OWAAMV also challenges the dichotomy of “peace and war” and has put forward an argument for a perspective of “long-time military stationing” for more profound understanding of the problem of military security. As a part of Japan, Okinawa is not under armed conflict. However, the presence of the U.S. military since 1945 has always placed Okinawa much closer to the wars that the U.S. military has constantly waged in East Asia and beyond. After Japan gained independence in 1952 from the Allied Forces occupation after the Asia-Pacific War and the Armistice Agreement of the Korean War was signed in 1953, the majority of the U.S. Marine Corps in Japan was moved to Okinawa and since then, the U.S. military bases in Okinawa have hosted the largest number of Marines, trained to engage in direct combat, outside the United States. During the Vietnam War, it was the unique semi-tropical climate of Okinawa that catered to the need for the U.S. military to train their soldiers for the jungle warfare in Vietnam. Under this pretext, U.S. military have been stationed there for over seven decades. The people of Okinawa have suffered adverse impacts from the activities of the U.S. military including various forms of environmental destruction or violation of basic rights. Their experiences and conceptualization of their historical experiences to live only a fence away from the active military, demonstrates that it is a false notion to conclude that the mere absence of war is peace: violence exists in a continuum.
The conceptualization of long-term military stationing as a problematic of peace and security has driven OWAAMV to form a network of feminist peace activists in other host communities of the U.S. military in the Asia-Pacific region. This includes the ROK and the Philippines, with whom some of the OWAAMV members had already forged solidarity on the issue of sexual violence and prostitution around the U.S. military bases since the mid-1980s.5 The network later developed to include other groups on the continental United States, in Hawai’i, as well as the unincorporated U.S. territories of Guam and Puerto Rico. It is no coincidence that there are former U.S. colonies, like Okinawa, among them. The connection with Hawai’i, Guam/Guahan and Puerto Rico, which were colonized, has contributed to fostering the analysis around military security and colonialism and the post-colonial conditions of the host communities.
With feminist activists in other parts of the world, OWAAMV started to advocate an alternative framework for human-centered security expressed in the following four conditions: Assuring an environment that is sustainable for all lives; meeting basic needs such as food, shelter, clothing, basic medical care and education; respecting individual and cultural rights and dignity; protection from avoidable harm. These should be the priorities of security policies, they argue.
To offer some background to each of the four conditions, the environment that we live in should be sustainable for all lives as human beings are an integral part of the environment. The second condition on basic needs is about resource allocation, especially the proportion of military/defense related budget that could be reallocated to meeting basic needs. The third condition about rights and dignity derived from several aspects of the problem of military security, which operates via various forms of discrimination, such as sexism and racism. It is also about the disrespect and even destruction of indigenous cultures of the host communities that have been colonized. It is a common experience of those in the former colonized communities that military exercises and operations are often conducted on their sacred sites. The fourth condition calls on us to be clearer about what can be avoided and what cannot. For example, armed conflicts or war can be avoided because they are the result of political decisions. On the other hand, natural disasters themselves are not avoidable, but their impacts can be reduced or avoided if adequate policies are taken. This is about policy priorities and also about people’s behavior and choices.6
These conditions are the embodiment of the values that are often characterized as “feminine”, closely associated with the daily lives of the community, the management of which is the primary responsibility given to women. The solidarity networks of feminist peace movements have advocated that these feminine values should be central in the notion of peace and security.
Looking Forward
A feminist perspective on peace and security is a challenge to the notion of coercive force and the military as the primary source of security, as well as to military security, that in reality has caused harm. It highlights the continuum of violence in our daily lives. As discussed above, the solidarity networks of feminist peace movements, particularly under long-term military stationing, reveal the central problem of military security, something that is vitally missing in the UN-led WPS agenda discourse, which places a strong focus on the situation under more visible armed conflicts. We have seen that the UN-led WPS policies often confine the problem to directly impacted areas in developing nations, thereby neglecting to capture the entirety of the issue of peace and security. In the Northeast Asian region, where the issues of peace and security are more nuanced and have played out over the long-term, a feminist perspective would offer a new direction for civil society actions.
1 UNSCRs 1820 (2009), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2010), 1960 (2011), 2122 (2013), 2242 (2015), and 2467 (2019) are considered the Women Peace and Security Agenda.
2 Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence. “Sexual Crimes by US soldiers against Women in Okinawa: 1945–2017”.
3 For example, Reardon, Betty. (1985). Sexism and the War System. New York: Teachers College Press.; Enloe, Cynthia. (2000). Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
4 Akibayashi, Kozue and Takazato, Suzuyo. “Gendered Insecurity Under Long-term Military Presence: The Case of Okinawa” (pp.38–60) in Reardon, Betty, and Hans, Asha. eds. (2010). The Gender Imperative: Human Security vs State Security. London and New Delhi: Routledge.
5 Suzuyo Takazato, co-representative of OWAAMV cooperated with members of Durebang in ROK, an organization to support women in U.S. military camp town prostitution, and Buklod Center, a similar organization in Olongapo, Philippines. Both organizations were established in 1986.
6 For more detailed discussions on the conditions, please see Reardon, Betty. “Women and Human Security: A Feminist Framework and Critique of the Prevailing Patriarchal Security System” (pp.7–37.) in Reardon, Betty and Hans Asha. (2010).
Akibayashi Kozue is a feminist researcher/activist, living in Kyoto, Japan. She is a member of Kyoto branch of the Japan section of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). WILPF is the first international women’s peace organization that began in 1915. Kozue has been active in the international activities of WILPF and a member of International Board. She was elected International President of WILPF at their 100th anniversary Congress in the Hague in 2015 and served until August 2018. She is a professor at Graduate School of Global Studies, Doshisha University in Kyoto Japan where she teaches feminist peace education/research. She has a doctoral degree in education from Teachers College Columbia University. Her research and activism have been on feminist analysis of peace and security, demilitarization and decolonization of security, and global feminist peace movements. She has worked with Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence in Japan on the issue of sexual violence by US soldiers who have been stationed in Okinawa since 1945. With OWAAMV, she has been a core member of the International Women’s Network Against Militarism, the international solidarity network of feminists in host communities of the US military in such places as Okinawa, mainland Japan, ROK, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. She has recently become more active in the global campaign for peace on the Korean Peninsula, Korea Peace Now! that is jointly organized by Women Cross DMZ, WILPF and the Nobel Women’s Initiative in cooperation with the Korean Women’s Movement for Peace. Korea Peace Now! was officially launched in 2018 as a result of 2015 Women Cross DMZ, which was an international feminist peace action to cross the DMZ from DPRK to ROK calling for ending the Korean War and uniting the separated families. Kozue was among the 30 feminist peace activists who crossed the DMZ.
