Testing the Norms of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda: Ukraine’s Decolonial Feminist Response to Russiaʼs Conflict-Related Sexual Violence
Abstract
This study examines how Ukraine’s feminists responded to Russia’s use of conflict-related sexual violence during 2014–2024, including whether the new norms of the Women, Peace, and Security agenda proved helpful. Drawing upon online research, our study finds that the responses of Ukrainian feminist organisations after the full-scale invasion in 2022 were prompt, inventive, and wide-ranging. Considering the decolonial critiques, we find it remarkable that Ukrainian feminists were able to strategically use the new norms against CRSV while adding their own more empowering language to enlist international support. This gave the activists enough leverage to insist that the Ukrainian state make bureaucratic and legislative reforms. The Ukrainian feminist successes do not mean that there are no problems in these norms or the Women, Peace, and Security agenda, but instead suggest how feminist criticism may help activists figure out how to navigate this complex environment and democratise the state of Ukraine.
Keywords
Ukraine, feminism, conflict-related sexual violence, Russia, war, decolonization
Author Biography
Janet Elise Johnson
Janet Elise Johnson is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her most recent book is The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (co-edited with Katalin Fabian and Mara Lazda, 2022), winner of the Heldt Prize for the best book in Slavic/East European/Eurasian Women’s and Gender Studies from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. Since 2008, she has been one of the coordinators of a monthly workshop on Gender and Transformation in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia now located at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Veronika Tsiko
Veronika Tsiko is a J.D. candidate at the CUNY School of Law and a graduate of Macaulay Honors College at CUNY Brooklyn College. She emigrated from Ukraine in 2016 following Russiaʼs invasion and maintains close ties to the country, with family members still residing there. She is co-founder of the Slavic and Eastern European Law Students Association at CUNY Law and a member of JurFem in Ukraine.