Has Patriarchy Been Stealing the Feminists' Clothes? Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and UN Security Council Resolutions

The UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2106 in June 2013 and the declaration on preventing sexual violence in conflict adopted by G8 in London in April 2013 signal a possible paradigm shift in how the international community can do ‘gender’, particularly in the arena of conflict-related sexual violence. Whilst UNSCR 1325 and its successors succeeded in drawing greater attention and funding to the particular needs of some women, they failed in comprehensively responding to the phenomenon of conflict-related sexual violence. This is largely due to a systematic reluctance to confront the reality of conflict-related sexual violence against men and boys, coupled with an active complicity in silencing that reality in what effectively reverted to a patriarchal discourse dressed up in feminist clothing. A new and unashamedly gender-inclusive resolution is required if gender-based violence (GBV) interventions are to be released from the stifling grip of a patriarchal mode of ‘doing gender’.