VIEW FROM THE CWP


WOMEN AGAINST GLOBAL TERRORISM


View from the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) Chairperson


Our dear readers, welcome yet again to another issue of The Parliamentarian. It is always an honor for us as the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians and for me personally as the Chairperson to contribute to this Journal. This time, I feel a sense of responsibility to touch on an issue which is a major threat globally to the entire mankind – the issue of global terrorism. Recent times have showed that women are very much at the centre of this real threat in different capacities; as victims, as accomplices and as fighters against terrorism.


Women as victims of terrorism


If there has been one common strand shared by the extremist movements that have captured the world’s attention in the last year, from northern Nigeria to northern Iraq, Syria to Somalia, and Myanmar to Pakistan, it is that in each and every instance, the advance of extremist groups has been coupled with vicious attacks on women’s and girls’ rights. Terrible mass violations are mirrored in the accounts of the Nigerian girls who fled from Boko Haram; in the narratives of Somali women liberated from the rule of Al-Shabaab; and in descriptions of life under the Islamist group Ansar Dine in northern Mali. In all these scenarios, the bodies of women have been turned into ‘battlefields’ where rape is used as an instrument of humiliation, degradation and oppression.


Rt Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, MP Chairperson of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians and Speaker of the Parliament of Uganda


Women as accomplices of terrorism It is evident that women are increasingly playing a role in terrorism or at least abetting the crime. The war on terror has restricted freedom of action within the security environment for terrorist organizations, making it more advantageous for terrorist organizations to use women to support or execute terrorist activities.


In countries where terrorism originates and extremist organizations find safe haven and freedom of movement, the social environment can also play a significant role in leading women towards supporting terrorism. Discriminatory religious and social customs in these same countries leave women as a largely untapped resource in supporting the ideological causes of terrorist organizations.


Female terrorist acts can also generate much greater media attention than those conducted by males, further encouraging terrorist organizations to expanding their recruiting of women.


The identity and scene may change, but the common agenda and first order of business for these extremist groups is almost invariably to place limits on women’s access to education and health services, restricting their participation in economic and political life and enforcing the restrictions through terrifying violence. These violations are the extreme end of a global wave of fundamentalist conservatism, but it is an agenda shared by extremists of all religions, whose efforts seem invariably to focus on the suppression of women’s autonomy and a return to delineated, outdated gender roles. In the last couple of years, over 1,000 terrorist attacks occurred worldwide, resulting in more than 17,800 deaths and more than 32,500 injuries. In addition, more than 2,990 people were kidnapped or taken hostage, with the majority being women.


74 | The Parliamentarian | 2015: Issue Two


Counterterrorism strategies tend to ignore gender as a relevant factor and in doing so exclusively focus on male imposed threats. Although women taking part in terrorist and extremist acts is not new and dates back many years, their presence in terrorist organizations as both leaders and executors is increasing around the globe. The increasing role of women in terrorist organizations in many cases can be attributed to meeting a need or a shortage within the organization. Terrorist organizations are struggling with a shortage of available personnel with so many males being captured, killed or unwilling to support the cause. International cooperation in the global war on terror has made it difficult for organizations to continue to fight without access to the appropriate human and financial resources. This is a pattern associated with terrorist organizations that increases pressure on both women and men. In Iraq for example, women were deployed to smuggle arms and execute suicide bombings, during a clamp down on Al-Qaeda in the mid-2000s. The perpetrators usually capitalize on the women’s superior ability to evade security checks, cache weapons in clothing and attract less suspicion as suicide bombers.


The tactical use of women due to lesser suspicion has also been evident in Islamist violence in Pakistan and Indonesia; and within the


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76