ONLINE SEMINAR: The Nature of Women, Peace and Security - Lessons from Colombia

Abstract

In 2020, the UN Security Council will mark the 20th anniversary of Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1325 (2000) which marked the official beginning of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. This anniversary presents an important opportunity to glance back at the development of the agenda but also to consider areas which remain underdeveloped in relation to conflict prevention and peace. The talk focuses on Colombia as a case study to explore how women activists and human rights defenders, NGOs, the judiciary, and academics in the country have drawn connections between gender-based violence, the environment and climate justice in the context of the internal armed conflict and subsequent peace process. It follows a workshop which took place at the University of Rosario in Bogota on the 9 and 10 December 2019 as part of the British Academy small grant on Gender, Nature and Peace and the AHRC project on the Feminist International Law of Peace and Security (LSE).

Bio of the speakers

Keina Yoshida

Having gained her PhD from the LSE on the topic of law, film and international law, Keina now manages a portfolio that combines practice and academic work. She is a barrister at Doughty Street chambers and has particular expertise in women’s human rights, including VAWG, CEDAW, sexual and reproductive rights and LGBT rights. She is part of the Doughty Street International team where she has experience litigating before domestic, regional and international courts and bodies.  

Keina is currently a research officer on the project ‘A Feminist International Law of Peace and Security’ at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics.  She has taught on LLB and masters courses in a number of universities in the UK and further afield on the topic of international human rights law, conflict, feminism and women’s human rights. She is a member of the editorial board of Feminist Legal Studies. 

Keina is currently working on research which draws together the links between the environment, the Earth, the gendered causes and impacts of violence against women, and structural inequalities in the context of international legal conceptions of peace and security. This research seeks to bring together literatures on the emerging concepts of “environmental peacebuilding” and “environmental justice” with existing literature on the international law of peace and asks how these interrelate with the Women Peace and Security (WPS) framework and a feminist conception of international law. It asks what a feminist approach to nature and peace might look like, how the environment and nature are included within the WPS framework and how this interrelates with CEDAW’s recent endeavours to enact a General Recommendation on Natural Disasters. 

Lina María Céspedes Baez