An Analysis of the gendered, racialized and colonial narratives that underlie the Swiss National Action Plans (NAPs) to implement the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda
INTRODUCTION
“To understand policy and its effects we have to ask where power lies and how it is exercised” (Chomsky, 1999, p.20). In his examination of the neoliberal world order, Chomsky (1999) analyses the U.S. domination over Latin American societies. Whilst he is looking at how neoliberal doctrines are imposed in other countries for reasons of power and profit, it is the poor who have to adapt to the doctrines of the rich. Chomsky’s succinct analysis of the interconnectedness of the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’ (1) leads me to the main topic of this essay. Not only are global powers like the U.S. hierarchically linked to less powerful states, but also small states like Switzerland. To find out where power lies, “sometimes the most pressing conversations are the ones that are ongoing closer to home” (Motlafi, 2018, p.21) and in this case, in Switzerland. It is important to critically explore the issues we study not only elsewhere, but also in our own backyards (Achilleos, 2018). In the following essay I, therefore, critically evaluate the gendered, racialized and colonial narratives that underlie the Swiss National Action Plans (NAPs) to implement the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) resolutions for Women, Peace and Security (WPS).
In 2002, the member states of the UN were asked to develop NAPs in order to implement the first UNSC’s WPS resolution 1325, which was launched in 2000 (UNSC, 2000). Switzerland, who joined the UN in 2002, adopted its first NAP on the 31st of January in 2007 (Swiss NAP, 2007-2009), which then was revised three times (Swiss NAP 2010-2012; 2013-2016; 2018-2022). NAPs of Western states such as the Swiss NAPs are criticized for functioning as a tool to spread liberal peace, and as a “foreign policy tool, indifferent to the violence and insecurity that mark the lives of women in the Western world” (Aroussi, 2017, p.30). Aroussi (2017) refers to the fact that most of the minority world’s (rich, ‘peaceful’ countries) NAPs are ‘outward facing’ and thereby reproduce the assumption that problems occur ‘elsewhere’, not ‘here’ (Shepherd, 2016). The focus exclusively on conflict and post-conflict societies inscribes an imperialist and interventionist role of the West, which delivers expertise, knowledge and aid to the ‘fragile’ states (Aroussi, 2017).
Therefore, when engaging with NAPs, it is important that “we cannot study foreign policy without attending to and scrutinising colonial legacies, as well as intersectional oppressions that necessarily inform and are central to its formulation” (Achilleos, 2018, p.36). Postcolonial Swiss scholars in the same line argue that colonial images and racist modes of thinking are very present in everyday Swiss culture and the oversimplified picture of Switzerland as a colonial innocent state should be complicated (Purtschert & Fischer-Tiné, 2015). As a white student writing for a Western university, it is indispensable to be aware of the risk of reproducing authoritative discourses or a ‘colonial gaze’. One decolonial practice to counter Western academic authority recommended by Motlafi (2018) is to value contributions from scholars coming from less privileged and colonized countries. For this purpose, I critically evaluate the Swiss NAPs by using the concept of coloniality as a framework for a feminist, decolonial analysis. To analyse the Swiss NAPs from a feminist, decolonial perspective can open up a space to investigate underlying assumptions which guide foreign policy making (Achilleos, 2018). In this essay I ask how gendered, racialized and colonial narratives are reproduced in the Swiss NAPs, and I argue that the ‘colonial gaze’ of the Swiss NAPs obscures (some) women’s insecurities and gender inequality within Swiss territory.
I begin this essay by elaborating on the concept of coloniality and what it means to analyse foreign policy documents from a feminist, decolonial perspective. I will then briefly touch upon Swiss colonialism without colonies. Finally, in the main part, I will present an analysis of gendered, racialized and colonial narratives that underlie the Swiss NAPs. This section is divided into three subsections: In the first one I examine the Swiss double standards of caring ‘elsewhere’ but ignoring ‘at home’. The second subsection deals with the narrative of Swiss nationals saving “brown women from brown men” (Spivak, 1988, p.92), and in the third subsection I finally argue that the classifying of human beings or certain harms, and the locating of suffering, are colonial practices that reproduce the Eurocentric world order.
COLONIALITY AS A FRAMEWORK FOR A FEMINIST, DECOLONIAL ANALYSIS
Coloniality is a concept developed by Latin American scholars (Quijano, 2000; 2007; Lugones, 2010; Mignolo, 2009; 2011) and describes the current colonial conditions whilst formal colonialism has been abolished (let aside settler colonialism). Quijano defines coloniality as “still the most general form of domination in the world today” (2007, p.170): today’s exploited and marginalized are the same ones who were colonized during colonialism, while they are expected to aspire to the European way of life (Quijano, 2007). This colonial framework has existed since more than 500 years. The “coloniality of power” (Quijano, 2007, p.171) is maintained by a racist, colonial and capitalist world power, and through ‘colonial unknowing’, which circumscribes the phenomenon of not having and not wanting to know the colonial past and present (Baldwin cited in Vimalassery et. al, 2016). Coloniality, whether cultural, academic, epistemological, economic or political, is furthermore reproduced through the assumption that there is one universal rationality: European (Quijano, 2007). This Eurocentric rationality or “a perspective of knowledge […], was made globally hegemonic, colonizing and overcoming […] other knowledges (Quijano, 2000, pp.549-550). Finally, the three elements which affect everyone on this planet are the coloniality of power, capitalism and Eurocentrism (Quijano, 2000).
The concept of coloniality lays the foundation to understand the concept of decoloniality and why it is fruitful to analyse the NAPs from a feminist, decolonial perspective. Decoloniality, as the counterpart of coloniality, requires a practice of ‘epistemic disobedience’ (Mignolo, 2009), which refuses every form of coloniality, respectively the dominant forms of knowledge and worldviews, and allows for the creation of alternative rationalities. A feminist, decolonial analysis of the NAPs, hence, deconstructs existing binaries (reproduced through foreign policy tools) such as colonizer/colonized, colonial/postcolonial, domestic/foreign, here/there, donors/beneficiaries (Randeria, 2012; Achilleos, 2018; Shepherd, 2016; Scharffscher, 2011). Dichotomies such as colonial/postcolonial negate connected histories that explain racialized, gendered, classed and colonial policies (Achilleos, 2018). As Motlafi states, “both the dominant and subaltern feminists of the West have not always adequately considered the complexities of colonial or imperial power dynamics between states” (2018, p.10). However, it is crucial to learn about global interconnections of the past, but also about the contemporary global economic changes, reconstruction processes, human rights and military interventions that shape the relations between states (Orford, 2002). Additionally, a feminist, decolonial analysis criticizes the privileging of gender as it is done by the designers of most of the NAPs. The majority of foreign policy analysis focusses on gender, when in fact foreign policy is gendered, racialized, sexualized and classed. The following analysis takes into account the intersections of oppressing categories, as well as connected histories (Achilleos, 2018). This perspective helps to unmask the ‘colonial gaze’ inherent in the NAPs and to analyse the “objectifying, disempowering, or exclusionary portrayals of the previously colonized” (Motlafi, 2018, p.21).
SWITZERLAND – COLONIALISM WITHOUT COLONIES
As stated above, a decolonial analysis aims to reveal alternative knowledge. In the context of Switzerland, postcolonial scholars speak of ‘colonialism without colonies’ and expose Swiss colonial entanglements in order to deconstruct the image of Swiss ‘colonial innocence’ and ‘exceptionalism’ (Purtschert & Fischer-Tiné, 2015). This is crucial because in Europe it is common that different forms and effects of colonialism are forgotten, downplayed or erased (El-Tayeb, 2011).
Switzerland is often seen as a “special case” (2) due to its federalism, direct democracy, humanitarian tradition and its permanent neutrality (Eberle, 2007). As a neutral state, Switzerland militarily stayed out of any active involvement in belligerent conflicts, whilst the neutrality fostered the view of Switzerland as having a moral superior policy. Swiss neutrality is internationally welcomed, and Swiss ‘experts’ are often employed in truce supervisions, diplomacy, humanitarian aid and peacebuilding (Hagmann, 2010). However, the romanticized Swiss neutrality or the “myth of neutrality” (Widmer, 2003, p.13) is challenged, because Swiss actors were, and are, involved in shadowy affairs, as for example in arms trade with belligerent actors (3), financial transactions in World War II, Swiss money laundering cases, bank secrets and the hoarding of private fortunes of dictators (Purtschert & Fischer-Tiné, 2015). ‘Colonial outsiders’ like Switzerland have built informal networks and indirect forms of governance, combined with colonial imaginaries that persist until today (Minder, 2011). Swiss actors are involved in activities within a global network of states and with multi- or transnational companies and institutions, and Switzerland forms part of a wider European modernity, which was constituted through colonial expansion and racism (Dzenovska, 2013). Consequently, “Swiss economy, science, culture and politics are deeply enmeshed with various colonial projects” (Purtschert & Fischer-Tiné, 2015, p.5).
SWISS NATIONAL ACTION PLANS
Today, Switzerland has adopted four NAPs adhering to the implementation of UNSCR 1325 and the following UNSC resolutions, which is crucial for UN member states in order to look committed to ‘gender equality’ (Fritz et. al, 2011). Switzerland forms part of a ‘NAP industry’ (Swaine, 2017), a term that refers to the fact that since 2005, many (mostly Western) states have adopted NAPs, despite the limited results their adoption has produced (Aroussi, 2017). The responsible ministries for the formulation of the NAPs in most of the countries ‘without conflict’ are the ministries of foreign affairs (Aroussi, 2017), which results in the outward facing orientation of the NAPs (Shepherd, 2016). Swiss NAPs fit into this category of outward facing NAPs while the main responsible actor is the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) (4). With this information in mind, I will now critically elaborate on the gendered, racialized and colonial narratives underlying the outward facing Swiss NAPs.
GENDERED, RACIALIZED AND COLONIAL NARRATIVES OF THE SWISS NAPs
The outward facing minority world’s NAPs equip ‘experts’ with tools to apply in the ‘majority world’ (Shepherd, 2016), whereas the national orientation tends to focus on the state’s militaries and peacekeeping activities. The fact that most of those NAPs are exclusively outward facing is disturbing, when the idea of the NAPs was that each plan should be relevant to its own context (Swaine, 2017). In the Swiss NAPs, the only ‘inward’ looking recommendations are that there should be an “equal participation of men and women in military and civilian peacebuilding efforts” (Swiss NAP, 2013-2016, p.11) and that the Swiss government should “recruit more women to the diplomatic service and increase the number of women at middle and higher management level in the FDFA in order to […] be credible in the implementation of gender policy” (Swiss NAP, 2013-2016, p.8). However, it is interesting to see that in the latest NAP (Swiss NAP, 2018-2022) they mention a partially inward-looking goal: The necessity to integrate a ‘gender perspective’ e.g. in the security sector. Additionally, they recommend, for the first time, that “the situation and needs of refugee women in Switzerland must be analysed” (Swiss NAP, 2018-2022, p.19). A report should be written on the support and housing needs of women and girls who seek asylum, also with respect to SGBV (5). In the following discussion I will return to this recommendation.
Swiss double standards of caring ‘elsewhere’ but ignoring ‘at home’
The first issue with the almost exclusively outward-facing Swiss NAPs, is that it creates a dichotomy between regions, where women live under security (Switzerland) and other regions (conflict affected regions) where women’s security is not ensured (Aroussi, 2017). Thereby Switzerland creates itself as a ‘zone of peace’ (Shepherd, 2016) or as a “women friendly and gender equal welfare state” (Jauhola, 2016, p.338). This implies that gender equality is nationally achieved and therefore Switzerland is able to promote it abroad. The view of Switzerland as a gender equal society stands in strong contrast with feminist critique within the country in relation to various issues. Switzerland in its NAPs commits itself to “support projects, and actors, which address the specific problem of violence against women (rape, trafficking in women, exploitation, etc.) in the context of armed conflict” (Swiss NAP, 2007-2009, p.8). At the same time, a study from Amnesty International in 2019 has revealed that sexual violence against women in Switzerland is very widespread: at least every fifth women in Switzerland has experienced sexual assault and more than every tenth women has experienced sexual intercourse against her will (Amnesty International, 2019).
The Swiss NAPs do not mention national insecurities or harm, rather they point to countries like Nepal, where “there is still a long way to go […] before gender equality finally becomes reality” (Swiss NAP, 2010-2012, p.19) or to the ‘Balkans’, where victims of violence suffer in silence because it is a “society where masculinity is synonymous with power, physical force and heroism” (Swiss NAP, 2010-2012, p.18). The designation of other regions as insecure and misogynistic in turn fosters the image of Switzerland as ‘always already peaceful’ and women-friendly (Shepherd, 2016). Why, we may ask – if we assume that Switzerland is a stronghold of gender equality – did half a million of Swiss women gather for a national women’s strike on the 14th of June 2019 (Swissinfo, 2019)?
Furthermore, Switzerland, through its NAPs, claims to be committed to the protection of women and girls who are migrating: “The search for lasting solutions for refugees and other person in need of protection is a further priority in Switzerland’s humanitarian engagement” (Swiss NAP, 2013-2016, p.6). Switzerland appears to care about refugees, but only in foreign asylum camps; as soon as they enter the Swiss territory, the only thing the NAPs recommend is to “analyse the situation and needs of refugees” (Swiss NAP, 2018-2022, p.19). This is disturbing given that refugees within Swiss camps live in extremely precarious situations. Women, particularly, live under constant fear of sexual harassment and assaults. Swiss activists criticize that the responsible Cantons don’t see those issues as a priority (Marti, 2019).
The double standards of caring elsewhere but ignoring issues at home are sharply condemned by scholars like Aroussi (2017) who states that the changes in today’s globalized world, which led to so-called migration and refugee ‘crises’, should oblige states to implement the WPS framework at home. Aroussi writes:
It seems that the obligation of Western countries to protect women in conflict is only considered relevant when these women are located elsewhere, far away from home. While Western countries draft plans and dedicate funds to issues that relate to women’s security in geographically remote countries, once these women flee conflicts and cross borders as refugees and asylum seekers, they fall outside the remit of NAPs and are considered unworthy of protection (2017, p.36).
The strong separation of domestic and foreign policy can have negative consequences for marginalized women within Switzerland. Moreover, it obscures the interconnectedness of harms notably the continuum of violence, which circumscribes the phenomenon that violence against women and gendered insecurity are widespread globally (Achilleos, 2018; Aroussi, 2017). The outward- and downward-looking perspective resembles a colonial gaze: the actor who is designing the NAPs is represented as a “master of his/her area of study” (Motlafi, 2018, p.12), who applies his/her knowledge on the “people being studied” (ibid, p.12). To produce knowledge about the ‘real’ problems of ‘other’ women is seen as a colonial practice, even when it is done with ‘good intentions’. There are ethical concerns to be raised when ‘imperialist feminists’ try to speak for or produce knowledge about poor women from the ‘Global South’ (Orford, 2002; Spivak, 1988). Finally, the incorrect assumption that gender equality and security have been achieved in Switzerland reflects “racialised, imperialistic narratives that situate Western states as benevolent saviours of women in the conflict ridden and poverty-stricken Global South” (Aroussi, 2017, p.29).
Swiss nationals saving ‘the brown women from brown men’
The narrative of Switzerland as benevolent saviour of “the brown women from the brown men” (Spivak, 1988, p.92) is gendered, racialized and evokes colonial language (Pratt, 2013). The binary understanding of the West as saviour of the ‘rest’ locates agency, power and authority exclusively in the West (Shepherd, 2016). The stance of the male protector, who expresses concerns for the wellbeing of women, does this within a structure of superiority and subordination: “The male protector confronts evil aggressors in the name of the right and the good, while those under his protection submit to his order and serve as handmaids to his efforts” (Young, 2003, p.230). This colonial gaze creates “dehumanizing colonial stereotypes that portray Black and other people of colour as sexually licentious savages […] [which has] led to the trivialization of sexual violence against Black women and to the criminalization of Black men” (Motlafi, 2018, p.13). When, during the time of colonial domination, it was mostly white men who committed themselves to save brown women, today imperialist, white women joined the project of saving the women of the ‘Third world’ (Orford, 2002).
The narrative of white, Swiss nationals saving black, female victims can be visually observed in the latest Swiss NAP (Swiss NAP, 2018-2022). This NAP is the only one containing pictures: there are a total of six photographs and the first one shows a white, Swiss woman called Pascale Baeriswyl from the FDFA. The next three photos show black, female participants in a peace project in Mali, while the following is a picture of a white man and a white woman from a monitoring team of the Swiss Armed Forces in Kosovo. The last shows men and women, mostly white, at a review of the UNSCR 1325 at the UN (Swiss NAP, 2018-2022). The representation of the two individuals, man and woman, of the Swiss Armed Forces in Kosovo, which are represented as working together in harmonic accord, can be read as a representation of Swiss forces as “civilizing forces” (Shepherd, 2016, p.327).
Classifying/naming ‘others’ as a colonial practice
A further observation of the Swiss NAPs that might reproduce colonial narratives, is the naming and classifying of ‘other’ people. First, the NAPs, by categorizing women and men as separated ‘entities’, construct a binary understanding of gender in terms of men/women. Lugones (2010) shows through her concept of ‘the coloniality of gender’, that the binary understanding of gender is a Western construct exported by colonizers, whereby they first had to dehumanize the colonized in order to afterwards classify them as men and women.
Secondly, the Swiss NAPs categorize or define some ‘chosen women’ who are able to benefit from Swiss support. In the case of the Swiss support in Nepal, “three high-ranking women […] are now influential players in the Nepalese democratisation process” (Swiss NAP, 2010-2012, p.19). The classification of chosen people is a well-known colonial practice of Europeans who have organized and transformed non-Europeans according to European agendas (Escobar, 1994). Those women who are chosen through the NAPs should embody ‘progressive’ values and are used to legitimise Western interventions and militarism (Aroussi, 2017).
Not only humans are classified within the Swiss NAPs, but a hierarchy of atrocities is created (Von der Lippe, 2012), and it is decided in which locations (Singh, 2017) the NAPs should apply. Regions, where the Swiss NAPs have already been implemented, are the ‘Balkans’, Colombia, Nepal (Swiss NAP, 2010-2012), Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia and Lybia (Swiss NAP, 2013-2016). To localize the suffering of women helps Western countries to feel safe and to maintain a distance from such problems. At the same time, this localizing process reminds me of the colonial world maps containing binaries such as industrial/developing, North/South, or in the case of WPS, donors/beneficiaries (Scharffscher, 2011).
CONCLUSION
In this essay I critically evaluated the gendered, racialized and colonial narratives that underlie the Swiss NAPs to implement the UNSC’s WPS resolutions. I have argued that, whereas Swiss colonial innocence, Swiss exceptionalism and Swiss neutrality are the most widespread images of this small state, Swiss actors were and are involved in reproducing (gendered, racialized and) colonial language, stereotypes and narratives. For this essay I chose the framework of coloniality in order to understand why it is crucial to analyse foreign policy tools like NAPs from a feminist, decolonial perspective, that is, such an analysis offers the possibility to deconstruct binaries such as colonizer/colonized, here/there, domestic/foreign, men/women and donors/beneficiaries. Additionally, this perspective reveals that harms and oppressions are intersecting and that histories are interconnected. It sheds a light on how the previously colonized, through tools like the NAPs, are still being objectified and racialized.
I have shown in three subsections how gendered, racialized and colonial narratives are reproduced in the Swiss NAPs. First, I outlined the Swiss double standards of caring elsewhere but ignoring at home: the almost exclusively outward looking orientation of the Swiss NAPs produces the image of Switzerland as a gender equal, refugee and women friendly country, where women don’t experience insecurity. I have disproved this image by showing that, nationally, sexual violence against women is very widespread, and that especially women who seek asylum are living under constant fear of sexual harassment or abuse. The outward and downward facing Swiss NAPs reproduce a colonial gaze: Switzerland presents itself as the benevolent saviour of women in conflict affected countries.
In the second subsection I explained that the narrative of Swiss actors saving ‘brown women from brown men’, which underlies the Swiss NAPs, is gendered, racialized and evokes colonial language, where authority is located exclusively in the West. The Swiss NAPs, especially through its visual representations, reproduce the image of ‘civilized’ Swiss forces bringing peace and security to women of the ‘Third World’ and saving them from criminal, ‘savage’ black men.
The third subsection, finally, was dedicated to reveal that the classifying of ‘other’ humans or of certain harms, and the localizing of suffering, are colonial practices that try to map the world into binaries such as industrial/developing, North/South, rich/poor, experts/ignoramuses and donors/beneficiaries.
As a final remark, and if asking ourselves, where we should go from here, I think that there is a real need to reconsider how and by whom foreign policy tools such as NAPs are designed, whom they serve, who they benefit and who they exclude. Furthermore, the findings of this essay elucidate that when NAPs are put into a larger context, we may realize that they are forming part of power structures that were historically constituted and that “the designers [of such policies] tend to do quite well, though the subjects of the experiment often take a beating” (Chomsky, 1999, p.26). As Chomsky so aptly puts it, “what’s right for the people of the world will only by the remotest accident conform to the plans of the ‘principal architects’ of policy. And there is no more reason now than there has ever been to permit them to shape the future in their own interests” (1999, p.40).
Notes:
(1) The terms ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ are not neutral terms and have to be used by being aware of their political significance. Walter Mignolo (2011) explains that the ‘Global South’ is used as a metaphor complementary to the ‘Global North’ and describes underdeveloped nations and the provider of natural resources for the ‘Global North’. The ‘Global North’, in turn, is the region, where a political society emerges which tries to save the ‘Global South’. Both terms, however, are constructed by the leading elite of the G7 nations and contain a certain meaning.
(2) In German: “Sonderfall“ (Eberle, 2007, p.7).
(3) The law of neutrality states that arms can be traded by private enterprises.
(4) The Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS), the Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP) and the Swiss Federal Office for Gender Equality (FOGE) share some responsibility, but the main responsibility lies with the FDFA.
(5) SGBV means sexual and gender-based violence.
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