The National Security and Human Rights Campaign at the Open Society Foundations supports organizations that are working to protect civil liberties in post-9/11 America and to promote national security policies that respect human rights. On the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, contributing Campaign grantees offer reflections on their work in this series 9/11 at 10.
As the world commemorates the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, we collectively struggle with how best to honor the victims and first responders of the tragic events of that day and its aftermath. This is the case for those whose stories we have come to know, as well as for those stories that remain untold and unheard. These stories include the experiences of women and sexual minorities who for the past decade have been invisible victims of terrorism and counter-terrorism.
For us, the need to give more attention to these stories became clear in 2008 while meeting with family members of former CIA detainees represented by the Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law. As we sat on living room floors and in hotel meeting rooms, we heard first-hand their separate struggles to locate loved ones, run households, care for children, and withstand societal stigma while becoming human rights advocates under unimaginable circumstances. It was impossible to ignore how U.S. counter-terrorism had devastated their lives and startling to realize how distant their situations were from the human rights community’s attention, let alone that of policy-makers.
As advocates who had come to work on post-9/11 issues from strong gender backgrounds—Lama having examined women’s rights within both Islamic and human rights legal frameworks, specializing in the Middle East, and Jayne having focused on women’s rights with respect to trafficking, transitional justice, and political economy issues—we knew these stories would not, and should not, emerge as byproducts of other investigations. We also knew that once we began to ask the gender question, impacts on female family members would be the tip of the iceberg—not least because of the sheer breadth of the U.S. government’s “3D” (defense, diplomacy, and development) approach to countering terrorism and its emphasis on the importance of women’s rights to national security.
It was also clear that filling this tremendous information gap would require an extensive ground-up approach. From New York to Nairobi to Bangkok and Istanbul, we convened unprecedented workshops of local human rights advocates to share their unique experiences and common challenges, and to make recommendations to ensure that counter-terrorism enhances rather than undermines gender equality.
In July 2011, based on these workshops and scores of government interviews, the Center released A Decade Lost: Locating Gender in U.S. Counter-Terrorism [pdf], documenting how U.S. counter-terrorism profoundly implicates and impacts the rights of women and sexual minorities and often squeezes them between terrorism and counter-terrorism. This is the case in southern Somalia where U.S. anti-terror cuts in humanitarian aid for fear of diversion to Al-Shabaab adversely impact women and girls, both because gendered vulnerabilities mean they bear the brunt of crisis (e.g. as the majority of the refugee population) but also because cuts leave them dependent on Al-Shabaab for aid.
In other cases, this squeezing effect occurs because governments justify counter-terrorism in the name of women’s rights (as the U.S. did in Afghanistan) but then barter them—a concern in Afghanistan where the U.S. recently began discussions with the Taliban and in Iraq where the U.S. failed to protect targeted Iraqi gay men. Women’s rights are also passed over as a result of the recent shift in development policy to target male youth for enrollment in livelihood programs because they are considered vulnerable to terrorism recruitment. Within the United States, A Decade Lost also documents how programs that empower the police to enforce immigration law (e.g. the Secure Communities Program and through section 287(g) of the INA) actually increase insecurity of immigrant women who fail to report crime, including domestic violence, because they fear immigration consequences.
Ten years after the events of 9/11, it is time for the United States to take stock of, redress and deter gender-based violations in its counter-terrorism policies. We call on the government to identify violations, including by using gender as a criteria in assessing counter-terrorism impacts; consult with affected women and LGBTI groups to best support their work; repeal and reform policies that undermine rights, including anti-terrorism financing laws that cut off money to those that need it the most; redress violations, including through accountability mechanisms that recognize the suffering of female family members; and deter future violations including through adopting a robust National Action Plan for implementing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325 to promote peace and security for women, signal to the world that women’s rights need to be taken seriously, and encourage other nations to follow suit.
We hope you will join us on September 15, 2011, at 6:30 pm at NYU School of Law (245 Sullivan Street, Room 216, in New York City), as we discuss the findings of A Decade Lost and explore challenges and strategies in ensuring that women and sexual minorities are the beneficiaries rather than the casualties of U.S. counter-terrorism. Read more about the event and the project.
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