Iraqi Women as Legally Vulnerable Subjects: Applying Gender-Mainstreaming and Vulnerability Theory in the Post-Conflict Iraqi State

Authors

Jenna Breslin

Abstract

Despite U.N.S.C.R 1325 being hailed as a momentous breakthrough for women in international law, such post-conflict reconstruction policies that rely on injecting women into the peacemaking process to achieve gendered equality prove ineffective and dangerous when applied to foreign nations torn apart by war. In the context of post-conflict Iraq, Resolution 1325 not only rendered Iraqi women more vulnerable as symbols of western invasion but failed to address the crumbling state infrastructure that left women without electricity, clean drinking water, employment, food, and security. This Comment argues that the ¿add women and stir¿ equality of Resolution 1325 must be abandoned in favor of reconstruction following Martha Fineman¿s Vulnerability Theory. Vulnerability Theory focuses instead on rebuilding the political, economic, and social infrastructure of the post-conflict state, ameliorating the conditions that exacerbate vulnerability, recognizing that poverty, diminished access to life-saving resources, unemployment, and insecurity intersect with gender to perpetuate suffering and violence.

Recommended Citation

Jenna Breslin, Iraqi Women as Legally Vulnerable Subjects: Applying Gender-Mainstreaming and Vulnerability Theory in the Post-Conflict Iraqi State, 33 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 259 (2019).
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/eilr/vol33/iss2/3