Women's Freedom from Want After Armed Conflicts. Does the Inclusion of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Transitional Justice Help Women?

This article deals with gender in transitional justice from the lens of women’s “freedom from want”, that is women’s enjoyment of basic economic, social and cultural human rights (ESCR), such as the right to freedom from hunger, the right to non-discriminatory access to health-care, housing or work. Women and girls have often been disproportionally affected by the effects and consequences of violent conflict. Some progress has been made in including gender considerations in approaches dealing with a violent past. However, the current approaches to deal with gender issues in transitional justice suffer important limitations. This paper focuses on one of them. It outlines the consequences of limiting transitional justice strategies to civil and political rights in so far as gender dimensions of the conflict are concerned. The article argues that by narrowly focusing on violations of civil and political rights, transitional justice mechanisms gloss over important gender dimensions of the past conflict.