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Otto, Dianne --- "Afterword: The future(s) of feminist engagement with international law" [2019] ELECD 733; in Harris Rimmer, Susan; Ogg, Kate (eds), "Research Handbook on Feminist Engagement with International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 533

Book Title: Research Handbook on Feminist Engagement with International Law

Editor(s): Harris Rimmer, Susan; Ogg, Kate

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section Title: Afterword: The future(s) of feminist engagement with international law

Author(s): Otto, Dianne

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

Afterword: The future(s) of feminist engagement with
international law
Dianne Otto



Nearly two decades into the 21st century, it is clear that at least some feminist ideas
have found their way into international legal and political institutions, influencing the
development of the law, as well as its procedures and practices. This inclusion has been
hard won. In many instances, it has relied on grass roots women's movements
organising nationally, regionally and internationally to demand change. Yet political
pressure from outside international institutions, while crucial, is not alone enough.
Feminist change also needs supportive insiders, such as state representatives, people
working within UN institutions and agencies, human rights treaty bodies, tribunal
members, practitioners and others. That feminism has had an impact means that in
some fields of international law, feminists are no longer `just talking to ourselves'
although marginalisation is an ever-present danger. The earlier relegation of feminist
perspectives to the field of human rights law ­ specifically to `women's rights' ­ has
been roundly challenged, with feminists now engaging critically with the laws of war,
international humanitarian law, environmental law, trade law, private international law,
refugee law, international criminal law, labour law and many others, as this volume so
amply demonstrates.
Yet, while there is much to be celebrated, the embrace of certain feminist ideas by
international legal and political institutions has come at some cost to feminist hopes for
a transformed international order, in which peace is reimagined outside the `frames of
war'1 and every human ...