CANARIES IN THE COAL MINE: WOMEN, RACISM, AND NATIONAL SECURITY
BY C. STEVEN McGANN AND SAHANA DHARMAPURI
“Times of crisis present an opportunity for us to deepen our sense of responsibility, as individuals and as a society, and ask what we must improve for the sake of our own and everyone’s security.”
-Daisaku Ikeda
While Americans seem to be polarized more than ever about almost everything, we can still change the world for the better—only this time it’s through recognizing our biggest problems and taking the responsibility to change them. Me Too, Black Lives Matter, and Times Up are all examples of domestic security problems from the physical insecurity of sexual violence to the social fracture we are experiencing that stems from white supremacy.
We need to change.
There is one policy tool that can help with this goal: the Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017 (WPS ACT). The WPS ACT is rooted in the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, passed in 2000. In the last 75 years of the UN’s existence, this international body has been a champion of women’s rights at the highest levels of government to the grassroots globally.
From the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an effort led by Eleanor Roosevelt, to the Convention to Eliminate all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, to the Beijing convenings, and beyond, the UN has significantly influenced countries to create more peaceful and equal societies.
The WPS ACT is based on these ideals, but foremost it is based on the human right to participate fully in society. This legislation has begun to redefine the way we legislate security by mandating that women meaningfully participate in our security conversations, programs and policies. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of State, the Department of Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development are all included in this legislation. DHS is the only agency that has a clear domestic security focus.
This is an opportunity to focus on ensuring that the WPS 2017 Act helps inform actions that address our domestic issues and enhance the role women play in implementing peace at home. For example, Governors and Mayors can lean on the WPS Act to hold consultations with women’s organizations in cities across the country to discuss what they see as the most pressing peace and security priorities in their communities and nationally.
There are numerous examples and models to draw from that demonstrate how women have successfully implemented strategies that could help increase basic democratic rights—like the human right to full participation—and human security in the United States and abroad.
Such domestic peace and security consultations in the United States have precedent. In 2011, the Women’s League for International Peace and Freedom held public consultations with women’s groups in Detroit, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Portland, and Boston in order to inform the first U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security—before there was a law.
The women who participated in these consultations were the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. It is remarkable that they raised the issues of physical insecurity in American cities nearly a decade ago, yet no one really listened. In 2011, they pointed out that many urban areas in the United States resemble war-torn settings due to the high levels of violence and desperate living conditions. In one American city, Milwaukee, the African-American infant mortality rate was worse than the rate in Jamaica, Ukraine, Costa Rica, and 56 other countries.
At that time, in the same city, unemployment rates for African-American males were at 53 percent. The women also reported physical insecurities at home, such as domestic violence and the threat of sex-trafficking of young children. Elderly women were also noted to be extremely vulnerable and living in severe poverty. Federal and state budget cuts eroded or eliminated the social safety net for women and children in these cities.
One woman said, “We are living in a war zone with third world conditions right here in the United States. Where is the rule of law? Where are human rights?”
In 2020, unfortunately, we are asking the same questions. Pessimists might think we are out of answers.
But there are numerous examples and models to draw from that demonstrate how women have successfully implemented strategies that could help increase basic democratic rights—like the human right to full participation—and human security in the United States and abroad.
If skeptics think that talking with women about their views on political, economic, and social problems, would not be effective then consider using data that policy-wonks like to use: early warning indicators. Gender-sensitive early warning indicators are especially good at shedding light on extreme insecurities and the inability of states to respond to the needs of their citizens.
Women, especially women peace-builders and human rights defenders, can help—if we listen to them.
For example, empirical research over the last two decades shows that often women experience these political, social, and economic breakdowns first. They are on the frontline of a weakening state. Some of the sex-specific indicators that demonstrate this point are when women begin selling movable property such as their jewelry due to food or economic insecurity, or when we see a spike in domestic violence, which is a sign physical insecurity, or an increase in sex-specific violence which illuminates hidden social insecurities.
If skeptics still don’t believe that women are on the frontline of extreme insecurity, we only have to point at current news items to see this pattern of behavior happening right now, globally. For example, women in the Middle East are selling their jewelry due to the economic insecurity they are facing because of the pandemic. It is also well documented that domestic violence is on the rise, and has increased dramatically since March. There are reports of other forms of sex-specific violence increasing, such as femicide. Women also make up the majority of frontline essential healthcare workers.
American women and their international counterparts could explore together how both qualitative consultations and data collection would be deployed within the United States to better inform policy decisions. American consultations that include international and domestic minority women’s rights advocates would be timely, innovative, and welcome, particularly as we see George Floyd and Breonna Taylor becoming synonymous with a global movement to remove systemic discrimination from the institutions and promote equality in our respective societies.
At Our Secure Future, we are working civil society partners and government allies to convene conversations on how to better implement policies and programs that promote stability, like the Global Fragility Act and the Women, Peace and Security Act.
In our experience, over the last 20 years the WPS agenda has previously gravitated towards international concerns because the security component appears easier to fix overseas. It is easier to point out what is wrong in others, but more difficult to point out what is wrong with the reflection in the mirror.
But if we start with the mirror, we are not far off from the work that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked us to do—if we want to end injustice, we must start with ourselves. In this case, that means applying all the good thinking we have done about promoting equality and justice abroad…at home.
Women, especially women peace-builders and human rights defenders, can help—if we listen to them.
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C. Steven McGann is a Pacific Council member, founder of the Stevenson Group, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Republics of Fiji, Nauru, Kiribati, and the Kingdom of Tonga and Tuvalu from 2008-2011.
Sahana Dharmapuri is the director of the Our Secure Future program at the One Earth Future Foundation.
This article was originally published on Medium.com.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.
