Essex Public International Law Lecture: Women, Peace and Maritime Security

Please join us for the latest instalment of the Essex Public International Law Lecture Series.

The Essex Public International Law Lecture Series welcomes you to to the latest instalment presented by Professor Gina Heathcote, SOAS, University of London and chaired by Dr Emily Jones from the School of Law at the University of Essex.

Women, Peace and (Maritime) Security

Maritime security has not held a significant space within the women, peace and security framework. In this paper, I demonstrate that within the Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security there is an implicit assumption that the agenda addresses land-based security issues. Security Council resolutions on traditional security issues at sea, for example in UNIFIL which continues to include a maritime dimension, does not explicitly link women, peace and security components of the mandate with the maritime components. In addition, the larger discourse on women, peace and security across the scholarship and policy initiatives of feminist, queer and gender actors has yet to address maritime security. This paper uses postcolonial feminist accounts to, first, identify the importance of maritime security in the history and maintenance of empire and great power privilege under international law. I argue that traditional security concerns at sea benefit from a postcolonial feminist analysis. Second, I examine the nature of maritime security threats from maritime crime, across trafficking (human, drug and weapons), piracy, terrorism and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing to examine where a gender analysis might illuminate the gendered nature of the regulation of the ocean. Finally, the paper contributes an analysis of the use of military technologies at sea, from intelligence gathering to automated maritime vessels, to demonstrate the need for a gender analysis that is mindful of the legacy of colonial histories on the mechanisms through which international law is mandated.

About the speaker: 

Gina Heathcote is a Professor of Gender Studies and International Law at the SOAS School of Law, Gender and Media. Gina writes on feminist methodologies, collective security and international law and is currently working on a book to be titled, International Law of the Sea; a Feminist Analysis. Her most recent publications include a chapter in Talking International Law (Jonstone and Ratner) titled 'Protesting the Preamble: Normative Pronouncements and Feminist Jurisprudence in the Security Council,’ an entry in the Oxford Bibliography on Gender and Security and a forthcoming article in the London Review of International Law on Maritime Demarcations in the Gulf. Gina is also the author of Feminist Dialogues on International Law (OUP 2019) and The Law on the Use of Force: a Feminist Analysis (Routledge 2012) and co-author, with Sara Bertotti, Emily Jones and Sheri Labenski, of The Law of War and Peace: a Gender Analysis (Bloomsbury 2021).