Cultural practice as resistance in the British colony of Kenya
In this article, I reframe the 'female circumcision controversy' 1928 - 1931, focusing on locating Ratna Kapur's 'erotic subject'. Kapur develops the terms 'sexual subaltern' and the 'erotic subject' in order to trouble the boundaries of, and ultimately expand the category of the legitimate, rights bearing subject (Kapur 2005). Searching for the voices of these disruptive subjects also compels fresh interrogations of the gendered, colonised subject.
What is 'heteropessimism', and why do men and women suffer from it?
A friend introduces their partner as "my current husband". Another jokes about marriage as a life sentence. Everyone laughs, no one is surprised.
The sentiments at the heart of these asides are pervasive and familiar to many people in (or who have had) heterosexual relationships. There is now a term for this negativity: "heteropessimism".
"Even if they are going to fail, we are going to fail with them": The hopes and realities of women's suffrage under the 2010 Constitution
Introduction
One of the greatest hopes of the 2010 Kenyan Constitution was that the extensive provisions for the promotion and protection of women's rights would be successful in in breaking the vicious grip of patriarchal politics and promote a new generation of women parliamentarians and local government officials. As well as mentioning women in a list of groups identified as marginalised and in need of institutional and structural support, quotas were entrenched to ensure women's representation in parliament. In spite of these safeguards, the first elections under the new constitution in 2013 returned very few women to elected to positions other than those designated as women only positions.
I could never be your woman - Gendered citizenship and the 2007 General Election in Kenya
The violence which followed the December 2007 elections in Kenya promoted an African Union led mediation. The subsequent agreement led to a power sharing government which would be committed to reforming the Constitution and reforming the public sector. A year after the establishment of the power sharing coalition, a group of women's organisations known as the G10 held a press conference where they announced a seven day sex boycott to protest the lack of progress the new unity government had made. This paper examines the significance of the sex strike in the context of the post-election violence and women's citizenship in the post-colonial period, and argues that the women involved in the protest were attempting to redefine and expand the typically masculine Kenyan political subject, by troubling the traditional public/private dichotomy through politicising sex.
'Women are not ready to [vote for] their own': Remaking Democracy, Making Citizens After the 2007 Post-Election Violence in Kenya
Following the announcement of disputed results of the December 2007 general election in Kenya, riots and inter-communal violence broke out across the country. The international community mobilised to repair the damage to Kenya's democratic institutions, and to seek to provide some measure of accountability for the violence. The transitional justice model deployed in Kenya relied heavily on the development of a new Constitution, as a way to remake Kenya's democratic institutions, and to provide mechanisms to address the gender imbalance in parliament, and government appointments. This chapter examines the 2010 Constitution, and its focus on women's representation through the 2/3 Gender Principle, not only in the context of the post-election violence (PEV), and as a product of a liberal peacebuilding agenda; but against the local history of colonial and independence constitutional reform, and the history of Kenyan women's political participation. I question the ability of the liberal peace framework, and human rights ideals more broadly, to challenge both Kenya's patriarchal public life and Kenyan women's own ambivalent relationships with their citizenship rights.
"She is made of and coloured by the earth itself": Motherhood and Nation in Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's Dust
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor identifies, '[t]he human body and person [as] the locus of [her] artistic quest'1 and it is this focus on the body which drives her intimate portrait of Kenya's independence struggle in her novel, Dust. Rather than engaging with the concerns of 'diasporic identities [and] cultural otherness' 2, which so often form the preoccupations of the African literary diaspora, Owuor's rendering of East Africa acknowledges the alterity experienced by Africans in their own lands, inhabiting peripheries within their home nations.
ACON's Multicultural Engagement Plan 2021 - 2024
The Plan provides a three-year framework to guide the way ACON engages with and empowers community members and staff from culturally, linguistically and ethnically diverse, migrant, and refugee backgrounds, and people of colour.
Young, Vulnerable and Voiceless: A Case Study of the Reasons for Child Marriage in the Syrian Refugee Population in Jordan
The Syrian Civil War has been deemed one of the worst humanitarian crises of the twentyfirst century. Since 2011 a large-scale number of Syrian civilians have been displaced and have been forced to seek protection and humanitarian assistance in neighbouring countries. Unprecedented political, social, and economic conditions in Syria have undermined all aspects of human security for the Syrian population. Syrian children, in particular, have been adversely affected as a result of this conflict. Displaced from their homes, and often separated from their families, children are especially vulnerable. With a focus on the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan serving as a host nation for Syrian refugees, this study critically examines one significantly under-reported aspect of violence affecting Syrian refugee children, in particular girls, that has been occurring exponentially since the onset of the Syrian Crisis, that of the practice of forced child marriage in Jordan. By examining international human rights laws and contextualising human rights laws and discourses in relation to Middle Eastern, Islamic and Jordanian understandings of international law and human rights, the aim of this thesis is to critically understand how the practice of child marriage not only continues, globally as well as in the Middle East, but appears to be proliferating. These areas of inquiry are critically examined in relation to conceptualisations of childhood vulnerability, particularly structural and institutional factors, including culture, religion and power relations between adults and children, as each act to subordinate voiceless refugee children.
This thesis finds that in a juxtaposition of human rights definitions and obligations, between the traditional and modern, the religious and the secular, there are mixed implications for the realisation of universal human rights and that this has consequences for the most vulnerable - child refugees. As a result, Syrian children exist in a precarious situation. They are living in a foreign state with an unclear legal status, are largely unidentified and, in effect, stateless. It is in this liminal space that Syrian children are vulnerable and voiceless and highly exposed to forced marriages and the resultant violence and possibly death. While allowed to continue, the practice of child marriage not only severely impedes upon progressive international human rights efforts to eliminate gender-based violence, slavery and discrimination, but significantly impacts on children's physical, mental and emotional health, and their opportunities for growth and development in society.
Exploring the access to, and experiences of people of diverse sexual orientation and/or gender identity engaged in fisheries: A scoping study
People of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression (SOGIE) exist throughout the Pacific and its diasporas, but many people of diverse SOGIE across the Pacific, and in Samoa in particular, are at best tolerated, superficially accepted or treated with indifference, and often face sustained institutional, cultural and social discrimination, as well as cultural, physical and sexual violence.
Disrupting Peace: A Critical Inquiry into Elite Power and the Prevalence of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Conducted by UN Peacekeepers
Peacekeeping is regarded by the United Nations (UN) as integral tool for international peace and security in which peacekeepers are sent to conflict-torn countries to help them navigate and rebuild their society to one of peace and stability. It operates within unique spaces of duality, both physically and discursively, wherein notions of 'peace' interacts with 'conflict'. The body of the peacekeeper may also be seen as a complex, albeit contradictory, figure of duality, in which notions of militarised masculinity are appropriated into 'soldiers for peace'. Concerningly, allegations continue to be reported of UN peacekeepers engaging in behavioural misconduct and human rights violations during missions, most notably, sexual exploitation and abuse against host-peacekeeping women and children. The dominant explanation for this issue is gender inequality. Previous studies examining this issue from a 'bottom-up' perspective have primarily focused on micro factors at either the individual or mission level, such as 'militarised masculinities' and 'hypermasculinity' that cause destructive normative behaviours among peacekeepers against vulnerable identities. Feminist studies also tend to point to UN strategies such as 'gender mainstreaming' as a solution to overcoming and preventing sexual exploitation and abuse through the equal representation and contribution of men and women in peacekeeping. While these factors are plausible, they largely neglect a macro-institutional examination of why sexual exploitation and abuse continues to be prevalent in peacekeeping missions worldwide. This study contributes to current knowledge by using empirical interview data to examine the UN's organisational and institutional power structures through a critical power elite framework. Findings reveal that sexual and gender-based violence at the micro peacekeeping mission level occur because of discrepancies at the macro systemic (institutional) and systematic (organisational)-level of UN peacekeeping. This study significantly demonstrates a discrepancy between discourse and action within UN peacekeeping due to unequal elite power dynamics.