Women And Ethnic Conflict: Roles And Perceptions

With the end of the cold war,international wars worldwide have been basically paused,but local armed conflicts still exist with an increasing trend between regions or countries and within various ethnic groups of a nation.Since this kind of armed conflicts is frequently coming along with serious ethnic factors and categorized as national conflicts,they become a chief form of modern armed conflicts,In terms of source,history and culture,every national conflict has its own unique specialty.But such violent behaviors as rape and abuse armed groups and paramilitary groups practiced towards ordinary women during armed conflicts are regarded as a battle strategy in many modern cases related to national conflicts.It's the universal use of these strategies that renders victims of sexual violence to nearly become the shared identity tag for those women suffering a lot in national conflicts.Based on the reality that women are continually falling victim to national conflicts,ordinary women in national conflicts are closely noticed by the outer world and given many expectations to transform themselves into major forces fighting against national conflicts,cultivating peaceful areas and achieving ethnic reconciliation.From the reality,they do play a role of war fire hydrant in some ethnic conflicts,and they break the identity limit of national conflicts,thus establishing a horizontal league among different nations and laying a good foundation for the smooth treatment of national conflicts.Under the background of complex and regular national conflicts,new phenomena have appeared and some theories are face a plight where they fail to explain well.Regarding women as victims and war protesters(pacifists)attests the influence of women on armed conflicts and enhances their identity as victims in these national conflicts,which demonstrates women's polarized role in national conflicts.A binary mind is behind this polarized identity:when we analyze the different role of men and women during conflicts,women are essentially peaceful,anti-war and passive while men are violent,militant and active.Therefore,women have no relation with conflicts or violence.In reality,the role of women has already become diversified in armed conflicts and some women have worked as combatants and military directors in charge of military organization in some areas,or taken part in guerilla warfare with women.And some women even have been involved in extreme organizations to organize and take part in terrible raid events.We can see from these that women are not always war protesters,but have a keen interest in military schemes and violent actions,and get themselves engaged actively like men.Nyiramasuko is the first woman to be directly embroiled in the crime of sexual violence during national conflicts in the international court.This trial proves that women are also able to execute violent behaviors including sexual violence and those victims are often women as well.The debate on the relationship between women and national conflicts originated in the 1980s and experienced four stages:women are without relation to national conflicts(Stage 1),women are victims of national conflicts(Stage 2),women are agents of national conflicts(Stage 3)and women are violent organizers of national conflicts(Stage 4).With more relevant debates on this subject,women's role in national conflicts are no longer single but more diversified,and women are no longer passive but more active to participate in national conflicts.The result of their participation is sharply different in specific cases.Although the academic circle has basically agreed on their diversified role in national conflicts,modern academic studies chiefly highlight those academic works related to negative impacts of women on national wars and conflicts.Regarding women as absolute victims to national conflicts will cover their activity in conflicts,weaken the multi-dimensional,interactive and intermingled relationship between women and national conflicts,and absolutize their gender identity and gender role in national conflicts.This is not only hard to interpret new phenomena suddenly occurring in several decades that women universally have access to more political involvement chances after multinational conflicts,but hard to provide support for national conflict settlement,national reconciliation after conflicts and national reconstruction from the academic perspective because of the neglect of their impacts on the process of national conflicts.Therefore,this passage,combined with relevant theories and practices,uses the method of case analysis and takes four important national conflicts in the 20th century as research objects to display the evolution process of women's role in national conflicts according to historical pace and discuss deeper on related subjects in the academic field.