Peacekeeping sex : a feminist regulatory framework
Date
2010
Authors
Simm, Gabrielle Anne
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Peacekeeping sex, or sex between peacekeepers and local people, is a long-standing and serious issue, and its current regulation is fraught and unsatisfactory. The United Nations (UN) has shifted from an unofficial 'boys will be boys' approach in Cambodia in the early 1990s to the current 'zero tolerance' policy that prohibits sexual exploitation and abuse. Until recently, the peacekeeping literature largely ignored the issue of peacekeeping sex. The academic literature is split between supporting the zero tolerance approach and critiquing the policy's over-inclusiveness, problems with enforcement and unintended consequences. This thesis asks how peacekeeping sex can be better regulated and proposes a feminist regulatory framework that uses regulatory tools to make international law more responsive and effective in achieving feminist objectives. This thesis differs from other studies of peacekeeping sex by examining international law from a regulatory perspective. Responsive regulation sees law as one of a range of regulatory options and envisages a broader range of regulatory mechanisms and actors than a state-centric view of law. A regulatory perspective involves evaluating the capacity of international law for setting standards, monitoring compliance and enforcement through a discussion of jurisdiction, immunity and the responsibility of states and international organisations. The thesis assesses whether regulatory tools, such as the zero tolerance policy, advance feminist objectives by highlighting the extent to which local women are empowered or disenfranchised by particular regulatory regimes. Unlike other studies of peacekeeping sex, this thesis also considers sex between private military contractors and humanitarian non-government organisation (NGO) workers, who increasingly act as subcontractors and partners in UN peace operations. The discussion of legal and policy regulation is grounded in three case studies of how the regulation of peacekeeping sex operates in practice. The first case study considers private military contractors employed by the private military security company, DynCorp, who participated in and benefitted from the trafficking of women into the Bosnian sex industry in the late 1990s-early 2000s. The second case study looks at humanitarian NGO workers who exchanged aid for sex with teenage girls in refugee camps in West Africa in 2002. The third study, of UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2004, highlights the unenforceability of the UN zero tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse. All the case studies point to problems of irrelevance, incoherence and non-responsiveness in the current regulatory regime for peacekeeping sex. The thesis concludes by suggesting ways in which law can be made more effective and responsive to feminist concerns through coupling it with non-legal regulatory mechanisms. These include building on developments in regulating NGOs and private military security companies, such as peer review and reporting mechanisms, and more traditional means at international law, such as the development of new treaties and amendment of existing treaties. Peacekeeping sex highlights the need for new ways of including non-state actors in international law, as both the subjects and objects ofregulation. The thesis also indicates the potential for greater engagement between international law and regulatory theory, as well as between feminist theory and regulation.
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