Women with Disabilities as Agents of Peace, Change and Rights

Experiences from Sri Lanka

Karen Soldatic, Dinesha Samararatne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351618977
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Handicaps en sociologie

Drawing on rich empirical work emerging from core conflict regions within the island nation of Sri Lanka, this book illustrates the critical role that women with disabilities play in post-armed conflict rebuilding and development.

This pathbreaking book shows the critical role that women with disabilities play in post-armed conflict rebuilding and development. Through offering a rare yet important insight into the processes of gendered-disability advocacy activation within the post-conflict environment, it provides a unique counter narrative to the powerful images, symbols and discourses that too frequently perpetuate disabled women's so-called need for paternalistic forms of care. Rather than being the mere recipients of aid and help, the narratives of women with disabilities reveal the generative praxis of social solidarity and cohesion, progressed via their nascent collective practices of gendered-disability advocacy.

It will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of disability studies, gender studies, post-conflict studies, peace studies and social work.

1 Introduction

Out of the shadows: Women with disabilities as agents of peace, justice and reparations in Sri Lanka

Karen Soldatic and Dinesha Samararatne

When we asked for help from organizations individually there weren’t any results but when we formed a team and started asking for help, we got a lot of attention.

Dinushika, mother living with a disability, Sri Lanka

I was a normal person who became disabled, so if not all, some people still talk about me. I am the treasurer of an organization called DPO. So people are friendlier towards me and I socialize with them too. Our organization is for people disabled by war and other disabilities.

Deepani, mother living with a disability, Sri Lanka

Peace-building has come under considerable criticism in the last 20 years or so. As Richmond and Mac Ginty (2015) have shown in their work, this has largely occurred on two fronts. First, historically, there has been a heavy reliance on international systems of state power as a strategy to secure peace. Global institutions, such as the United Nations, or third-party countries, often former colonial powers, have been central to peace negotiations and have asserted their international positions of power to set the terms and conditions for the transition to peace. There are numerous examples. The two most illustrative of these processes are Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia. The Comprehensive Cambodian Peace Agreements signed in Paris in October 1991 to end the war between Vietnam and Cambodia was followed by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) to facilitate elections (March 1992–October 1993) and, more recently, the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes against humanity committed under the Khmer Rouge in 1975–79. In the former Yugoslavia, it began with the National Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military intervention, the unsuccessful installation of UN peacekeepers across Bosnia, the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (negotiated in the USA, November 1995 and formally signed in Paris, December 1995) and, again, an International Criminal Tribunal for war crimes on all sides of the conflict.

Southern scholars suggest that these so-called exemplary international relations of peace securitization are often no more than a reassertion of colonial relations of state power (Weerawardhana 2018) wherein smaller, less powerful, previously colonized states are coerced into peace negotiations and ratification by the former colonizer. As Weerawardhana (2018) articulates, these former colonial powers not only determine the content of peace negotiations and treaties, but also the path to peace.

More significant, in relation to our own work on which this book is based, is the second set of criticisms, especially those identified by local peace movement advocates and activists. Localized civil society movements of peace and justice increasingly argue that international relations of peace can either consolidate or undermine local experiments, interventions and practices of peace-building (Kew and Wanis-St. John 2008). Internationally ratified processes to secure peace may disrupt everyday peace-building practices that have been occurring on the ground (Berghs and Kabbara 2016), in that they are largely exclusive and state focused, with demilitarization as the principal priority (Wanis-St. John 2008). The concerns of local actors and their everyday reality of armed conflict are not considered and can emerge in conflict with those formalized international peace agreements that are rolled out on the ground (Wanis-St. John 2008). Berents and McEvoy-Levy (2015) amplify these points, arguing that longstanding international peace interventions can no longer ignore the multiplicity of civil society practices, processes and actions implemented by those directly affected by protracted armed conflict. As this rich qualitative work has begun to map out, international relations of peace are only the final component, the tying together of diverse and divergent commitments, of bringing an end to violent hostilities and conflict (Gordillo 2020). Initially, these strong critiques emerged from locally embedded feminists and members of the women’s peace movement, yet over time, these criticisms have been taken up by other movements, including, but not limited to, young people’s movements, Indigenous movements, and refugees and the diaspora (Berents and McEvoy-Levy 2015, Cochrane et al. 2009, Karam 2000, Milner 2011).

Despite these burgeoning and important criticisms of historical international peace-building initiatives, processes and practices, there has been a dearth of research that has explicitly identified the peace-building work of women with disabilities during armed conflict or its aftermath. This is curious, given the embodied dynamics of militarized violence and conflict (Berghs and Kabbara 2016). The body-and-mind is the primary site of destruction, debilitation and disability (Puar 2017). Long before the first rounds of the Geneva Convention (1864), it was well recognized that military strategy not only involves the death and destruction of enemy combatants, but also the use of maiming, harm and injury as a tactical instrument (Carnahan 1998). This so-called military necessity is aimed at impeding further advancement of an enemy military offensive and at asserting ongoing control over civilian populations (Utas and Jorgel 2008). Given this history, it should not be surprising that any focus on disability has been on demobilization and rehabilitation; the demobilization of disabled ex-military (male) combatants back into civilian life (see de Mel 2016); and the rehabilitation of civilians with a war-acquired disability (Mukashema and Mullet 2013). There has been almost no consideration of disabled people, particularly disabled women, as active agents within the peace-building process (Berghs and Kabbara 2016).

As the opening two quotes from Dinushika and Deepani demonstrate, the work of disabled women during times of armed conflict and its immediate aftermath are central to the peace-building process. Through collectively organizing on issues of disability justice, as illustrated in the chapters to follow, disabled women are engaged in a multiplicity of peace-building actions and activities. Frequently, they are leading strategists for disability justice, through everyday forms of negotiation, organizing and advocacy. Therefore, this book is framed through the second set of criticisms emerging within the broader church of international relations and peace and security studies. The narratives of the activists and advocates in this book strongly suggest that, for peace and peace-building to be sustained beyond the transitional process, international formalized peace processes need to identify, recognize and actively support the everyday embodied processes of peace-making that occur in the discourses, actions and collective organizing for peace by local civil society subjects and actors (Elayah and Verkoren 2019).

Positioning disability within the feminist transnational peace movement

Even though the transnational feminist peace movement has demanded justice after militarized violence because of protracted civil conflicts (Bouta and Frerks 2002), it has overlooked the important work of disabled women in organizing for peace. We suggest that disabled women are the forgotten sisters in international relations of peace and peace-building (see Gartrell and Soldatic 2016). This book seeks to counter the ableist assumptions within the transnational feminist peace movement and the international relations of peace-building that position disabled women as passive recipients of these groups’ peace-building efforts. As each of the chapters illustrate, disabled women are active agents of peace. Disabled women’s peace-building advocacy and activism work is multidimensional. Dinushika’s and Deepani’s quotes at the start of this introduction illustrate their collective organizing and active agency in disability organizations as women living with disabilities within conflict zones. Thus, these opening quotes signify the critical work of disabled women in mobilizing disabled people to garner broad-scale support for their claims within the polity. The work that they do is both gendered and gendering (Soldatic 2020). Gendered practices of peace-building within the disability movement are often contradictory; they reaffirm the historical gendered dimensions of everyday relations of power, yet contest these very gendered relations as women with disabilities take up leadership positions to collectively organize for rights, recognition and reparatory justice.

I have never ever felt worried that I don’t have a hand. I will do all the work. But I can’t comb my hair. My husband didn’t get angry for the reason that I don’t have a hand. But the relatives of my husband’s side didn’t like me due to this reason. I am a member in social organizations. I know what rights are available to disabled persons in Sri Lankan law. But still I didn’t ask anybody to help me.

Leela, woman from the Northern Province

Importantly, as the women with disabilities in this book articulate, as disabled women, they are able to move through and beyond past ethnic, racial and religious tensions, and play an important role in processes of reconciliation through focusing on the injustices that emerge through ableist peace-building processes. Their advocacy and activism as disabled women strategically combine a repertoire of actions, practices and tactics that is creatively generative on the grounds for disability justice claims. They seek to demystify strategies of ableist memorializing and reconciliation by foregrounding their disabilities over ethnicity, race and religion. As the following quote from Lakshmi demonstrates, such processes are, thus, more than a struggle for fair and just reparations for the impact of longstanding militarized violence on their bodies.

I can’t forget two unpleasant incidents in my life. One is when my father was arrested and the other is when I was imprisoned. I was mentally affected a lot by these two incidents. I attempted suicide many times. I slit my wrist, too. My mother and an organization helped me overcome this part of my life. At that time I was very antisocial. I wouldn’t go out of the house or get out of my bed. I did not want to talk to anybody. I couldn’t walk or use my hands because of my disabilities (Lakshmi can walk now) so my mother had to help me even in the bathroom. I couldn’t even comb my own hair. I was very embarrassed and I suffered both mentally and physically.

I am a disabled woman. Because of this reason the society looks at me in a different way. My family was disappointed at me and also angry as I couldn’t do my own work like combing my hair or going to the bathroom. I don’t attend weddings or birthday parties. If I must attend an occasion I just pop in at the last minute.

At the very beginning disabled people were excluded from meetings. Buses won’t stop if they see a pair of crutches. There was no place for disabled people in the society. But now things have changed because of awareness programmes. I get a letter for every meeting and people actually consider us as individuals, too. We can live in peace. We can go out without fear of getting shot or being killed. The sound of gun fire is finally over. Families are happy and there are only trivial problems. In the past, war was the major problem. Now that there is no war, little conflicts inside the family, trivial issues and such are the only problems. There is also loads of freedom. So much freedom that people don’t really know how to use it.

I have been interviewed many times. I know the people who interview me take the information for a good purpose. A lot of people are not aware of people like us. I think this is a good way of making them aware. I believe that when stories like mine are published the probability of a war occurring again is less as people become more aware.

Lakshmi, woman from the Eastern Province

As the deep narratives of this volume suggest, disabled women peace activists and advocates work to centre the possibility of disability during times of armed conflict and then foreground gendered-disability injustices within the post-conflict transitional landscape. Their activism and advocacy as disabled women is a ‘double move’, ‘an affirmative politics of disability … and … a transformative politics of impairment actively seeking just reparations’ (Soldatic 2013, p. 752).

Focusing on Sri Lanka: political positionings and transnational gendered-disability methodological reflections

The conflict

It can be suggested that the way the protracted civil war in Sri Lanka ended sits outside the norms of the last 50 years. Unlike Rwanda, former Yugoslavia or Sierra Leone, the end of active armed conflict occurred through state militarized violence. A UN report documents ‘credible allegations’ of international humanitarian law and human rights violations against both the government (e.g. the killing of civilians through widespread shelling) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, commonly known as the LTTE (e.g. using civilians as a human buffer) (United Nations 2011, p. 49).

The conflict in Sri Lanka stems from the failure of the government to guarantee equal treatment of the country’s largest minority, the Tamils (Wickremesinghe 2006, p. 163). Discriminatory practices, legislation and constitutional provisions in post-independence Sri Lanka contributed to an armed Tamil separatist movement in the 1980s (Wickremesinghe p. 265). Although the armed conflict was brought to an end in 2009, the issues faced by the victims of war remain, and a political solution to the conflict itself has been elusive (Hoglund and Orjuela 2012). Today, war-affected women with disability in Sri Lanka are compelled to contend with this legacy alongside the challenges they face due to patriarchy, poverty and rurality (Samararatne and Soldatic 2015). In the absence of a political solution to the conflict, tensions within and between communities on the basis of ethnicity remain unres...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Artwork by M. H. Rafika
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Out of the shadows: Women with disabilities as agents of peace, justice and reparations in Sri Lanka
• 2 Going beyond disability identity and creating communities of belonging: Perception management and gendered disability advocacy
• 3 Music, resistance and change: The gendered-disability performativity of a Tamil woman with multiple disabilities
• 4 Raging (e)motions
• 5 Women with disabilities, advocacy and the law
• 6 Learning about rights, claiming a gendered-disability identity: The role of reparations and gendered-disability justice
• 7 Conclusion and recommendations: Enabling women with disabilities’ advocacy and activism in the peace-building landscape
• Index