"New Perspective for the Responsibility to Protect: reducing gender inequality as a means to reduce the risk of genocide"

Abstract

Preventing atrocities saves lives, is less expensive than reaction and rebuilding, and raises fewer difficult questions about the unending tension between State sovereignty and interference. However, it is difficult to translate rhetorical support for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities into a cohesive strategy. Atrocity prevention requires tailored engagement and, for accurate they are, Risk Assessment and Models for Genocide Prevention are not perfectly accurate yet. Prevention of genocide is still partial and some indicators are still missing. This research seeks to discover what impact gender equality has on genocide to verify whether one of these missing indicators is gender equality. Indeed, many scholars have argued that a domestic environment of gender inequality and violence results in greater likelihood of violence both at national and international level. This project aims at upgrading this line of inquiry. The main hypothesis is that the lower gender equality is, the greater the likelihood that a State will experience genocide is. The aim of this project is to test whether States characterized by lower levels of gender equality are more likely to experience genocide. The hypothesis is confirmed. This should lead to consider the need to add gender indicators to the existing early warning assessment for the prevention of genocide, and the need of greater commitment to improve gender equality, through formulation of policies directed at the improvement of it not just as a means to improve women's conditions but as a tool to reduce the risk of genocide and mass atrocities. Indeed, it might work as a means to reduce the risk of genocide concerning the Responsibility to Protect, for the negative repercussions that gender inequality has at the societal level go beyond the negative impact on women.