Gender is Happening

Love Me Gender is the motto of a one-week extravaganza at the Gunda Werner Institute, the feminist branch of Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin: a rich succession of events around gender identity, policies and practice... A (German language) blog informs about panel discussions, film projections and workshops - including queer poetry slams and a three-day crash course in drawing comics (Title: Any Tool is a Weapon if You Hold it Right). I have joined a group of volunteer blog reporters to produce my impressions in English here and, eventually, in German on the official site. Tonight, workshop on masculinities. To be continued - this blog is going to be devoted to Love Me Gender for the rest of the week.

R2P and women in conflict

The feminist Gunda Werner Institut (Böll Foundation, Berlin) convened an experts' meeting on 27 May on the Right to Protect (R2P), a fairly new concept in international law, and its implications on women. The bottom line: R2P is innovative in that it places human rights above State sovereignty, traditionally held inviolable in international law. But this political concept does not come with new enforcement mechanisms: it is still the UN Security Council that determines whether a State has proven incapable of protecting its citizens' human rights, in which case R2P can justify military intervention.