Strengthening gender justice in the Asia-Pacific through the Rome Statute
Many conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region have included sexual violence crimes targeted primarily against women. However, in comparison to other regions, Asia-Pacific states have been reluctant to embrace international law innovations to end impunity for such crimes into the future, as evidenced by their unwillingness to become signatories to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Of the 39 countries constituting the Asia-Pacific region, only 17—less than half—have joined the Rome Statute. This article initially surveys some of the reasons for non-ratification of the Statute. It further examines the role of civil society and the potential normative impact of the Statute to enhance national sexual violence legislation and prosecutions. Finally, it identifies some practical steps that the Australian government could take to encourage regional states to ratify, implement and enforce the Rome Statute in order to further protect all victims of international crimes and bolster the broader Women, Peace and Security framework.
Gender, race and Orientalism: The governance of terrorism and violent extremism in global and local perspective
ABSTRACT In this article, we investigate two complementary elements of the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) agenda. The first concerns the ways in which race and gender structure the logics of the multilateral counterterrorism landscape that has taken form since the adoption of UNSC Resolution 2178 in September 2014. The second traces how this global discourse in turn shapes local dynamics, specifically in relation to the reproduction of P/CVE discourse in Australian national P/CVE strategy. We argue that the ways in which the governance of terrorism and violent extremism can be imagined discursively, in practical, material form, is shaped by co-constitutive racialised and gendered assumptions, logics, and representations. We pay particular reference, at the global level, to the post-2014 landscape at the United Nations, and its implications for the reproduction of gendered, racialised and orientalist governance logics at the local level, in the Australian context. We demonstrate that race and gender together mould the governance of terrorism and violent extremism and its range of practices. We work, especially, to extend the knowledge base of critical research on race and gender in the governance of terrorism and violent extremism, and to contribute to decolonising neoliberal global governance.
Health-care practices of the rural aged.
1. One of the primary concerns of the rural aged is the maintenance of their physical health so that they may function independently and remain in their own homes. 2. The findings of this study indicate that most older rural adults do not regularly have positive health-care practices. This may be due to the unavailability of health-care providers or health promotion programs in isolated rural areas. 3. Implications of this study include the need to make health promotion programs relevant to the concerns of the rural aged rather than those of the urban elderly.