The Law of War and Peace offers a cutting-edge analysis of the relationship between law, armed conflict, gender and peace. This book, which is the first of two volumes, focuses on the interplay between international law and gendered experiences of armed conflict. It provides an in-depth analysis of the key debates on collective security, unilateral force, the laws governing conflict, terrorism and international criminal law. While much of the current scholarship has centered on the UN Security Council's Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security, this two-volume work seeks to move understandings beyond the framework established by WPS. It does this through providing a critical and intersectional approach to gender and conflict which is mindful of transnational feminist and queer perspectives.
"He words me my women". The observation of Cleopatra on Ceasar coursed through my mind as I read this book. Joy and despair! Joy at the clarity of the analysis and the accessible, compelling narrative -(you don't need a legal back ground to enjoy this!) despair at the extent to which we have, indeed, been 'worded'. The authors beautifully pull back their feminist lens providing a fuller picture to emerge, one which exposes how; the language of our WPS resolutions has been subverted of meaning when it comes to practice, how perhaps our focus or even 'distraction', on WPS has enabled exponential international violence to become legitimized, how gender is, perhaps, the determinative issue in law, war and peace and how there is an absolute imperative to expose at all times the duplicity that flows from the patriarchal assumptions which regulate them. This book shows that we know what they do and like Cleopatra we 'will not be conquered'.