Policy Lab: Women in Conflict & Security (de Silva de Alwis)
Faculty
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| Rangita de Silva de Alwis Senior Adjunct Professor of Global Leadership rdesilva@law.upenn.edu |
Additional Information
Experiential CourseYes
Skills Training
Oral Presentations
Team Projects
Drafting Legal Documents
Expository Writing
Grading
100% Paper
No
Class meets in person.
Course Continuity
Students are encouraged to stay home if you are ill or experience flu-like symptoms. If you miss a class for any reason, it is still your responsibility to make up the work missed.
I offer the following to students who miss class due to illness:
- Class sessions are regularly recorded. I will make these recordings routinely available on the course site to everyone in the class.
- Class sessions are regularly recorded. If you are absent due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can send you an email with instructions for accessing the recording for the class session(s) you missed.
- If you are absent, due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can ask for volunteers among your classmates to share their notes with you.
- I will make PowerPoint slides or other class materials routinely available on the course site to everyone in the class.
- If you are absent due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can make PowerPoint slides or other class materials available to you.
- When you are better, please make an appointment to meet with me and I will review/answer questions about what you missed.
- I am always available for students. I can do individual sessions for those who miss the class.
Meeting Times/Location
M 1:00PM - 2:59PM
Gittis Hall 213
Category
Upper-Level
Credits
2.0
Policy Lab: New Debates in Women Peace & Security Faculty: Rangita de Silva de Alwis Contact: rdesilva@law.upenn.edu Meetings: Monday 1-3pm Location TBD Office Hours: Mondays 9- 11 am in person; Fridays, 10am-5pm via Zoom. The course will focus a gender lens on the most recent theaters of continuing conflict: Afghanistan, Iran, Ukraine, and the Sahel region in Africa, the world’s most conflict heavy region. Collaborating with UN Security Council non-permanent members, this class will examine these recent conflicts, its impact on women, and the role of women as peace builders. From the denial of women's and girl's education in the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan to Africa’s Sahel region’s climate collapse which has impacted a gathering crisis in food security, access to water, migration, and the feminization of poverty, the class will analyze some of the root causes of recent conflict and provide new policy imperatives through a gender, intersectional, structural and post-colonial perspective. We critique the hierarchy of violence created by the paradigm of "conflict- related sexual violence" and call for an understanding of a more nuanced and structural analysis that looks at violence as layered rather than episodic. Furthermore, in the context of an evolving category of gender persecution, we examine the denial of women's and girl's education as a new category of violence in conflict and a risk to security. We look at how interpersonal violence often overlaps with structural violence in conflict. The confluence of the 3 Cs, conflict, climate change and colonization will continue to have a disproportionate impact on the lives and livelihoods of women.
The course will develop an alternative Global South perspective to the security discourse by bringing leaders from the field to the classroom. Sudan is at the cusp of a civil war which threatens the stability of the entire region and the world. The crisis in Afghanistan has raised new debates of gender apartheid. The Policy Lab will focus on these cutting-edge debates from a gender perspective. The class will engage with recent UN Security Council Resolutions and global policymakers working in geographies of conflict. The global policymakers include: H.E. Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka, Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg and the African Union Panel of the Wise (and only woman on the High-Level Panel of Eminent Africans for the Ethiopian Peace Process chaired by H.E. Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria) Former Vice President of South Africa and Former Head of UN Women.
Please see further for course description https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/15923-women-peace-and-securityLinks to an external site.
International and Comparative Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of international and comparative law, both substantively and procedurally; Perform legal analysis in the context of international and comparative law; Communicate effectively on topics related to international and comparative law; Demonstrate an understanding of the role of international and comparative law, and their interconnection with domestic law.
Perspectives on the Law Learning outcomes: Demonstrate an understanding of how the law affects, and is affected by, the individual course topic; Perform legal analysis in the context of the individual course topic; Communicate effectively on the legal and other aspects of the individual course topic; Demonstrate the ability to use other disciplines to analyze legal issues relevant to the individual course topic, including economics, philosophy, and sociology, as appropriate.
Public Interest Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of the varied legal aspects of public interest law; Perform legal analysis in the context of public interest law; Communicate effectively on topics related to public interest law; Demonstrate an understanding of how public interest law is connected to and affected by a wide variety of legal and regulatory structures and doctrines.
Equity and Inclusion Learning outcomes: Demonstrate a core understanding of the varied legal aspects of equity and inclusion; Perform legal analysis in the context of topics related to equity and inclusion; Communicate effectively on the legal aspects of equity and inclusion; Demonstrate an understanding of how equity and inclusion are connected to and affected by a wide variety of legal and regulatory structures and doctrines.