*Originally published in 2020. Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work.

On 28 October 2014, Suaad Allami, a women’s rights activist and attorney from Iraq, addressed the United Nations (UN) Security Council at the UN Headquarters in New York City. Invited on the occasion of the Council’s annual open debate on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), Allami spoke of her experiences supporting women and girls affected by the armed conflict in Iraq. Since 2007, Allami has directed the Women for Progress Center in Baghdad, an all-female legal clinic that she founded in order to provide free services to women and girls displaced by war and violence. ‘Imagine fleeing because your daughter is at risk of being kidnapped, forced to marry a militant fighter or trafficked into sexual slavery’, said Allami to representatives of UN member states gathered in the Security Council’s chamber. ‘Recently’, she continued, ‘two young Yazidi women were rescued when they were bought from ISIS fighters. They had been passed from one group of fighters to another across the country and repeatedly raped.’ Many women in such situations, the attorney explained, ‘are traumatized from the violence’ and stigmatized upon returning to their war-strained communities.

On behalf of the NGO Working Group for WPS – a global network of organizations dedicated to gender justice in peace and security initiatives – Allami reasserted the demands of existing international legal and policy frameworks. Member States should ensure the protection of women displaced by war, and work to prevent these wars from happening in the first place. Boldly, the women’s rights activist also insisted that ‘women must fully participate and be consulted systematically in decision-making, across all displacement settings’ (emphasis ours). Unusually, Allami asserted displaced women’s agency and democratic right to shape their own conditions of living. This demand pointedly challenged the tendency in legal, political, and media discourse to treat displaced women as voiceless victims.

The full implications of Allami’s progressive request became increasingly apparent from 2015 onward, as wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan led a rising number of women and girls to attempt a perilous journey to reach Europe through sea or land. Our 2020 article in the European Journal of International Security addresses the implications of Allami’s claim in this aftermath of Europe’s ‘refugee crisis’. We argue that current discussions on ‘conflict-affected women’ on the part of European policymakers should be broadened to better attend to asylum seekers and the intense insecurity they experience at Europe’s borders. By taking seriously the experiences of these ‘conflict-affected women on the move,’ we posit that conflict-affectedness is not only a property that........

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