Ecofeminism & Feminist Film/Media Theory

Whistleblowing is intrinsically tied to the concepts of feminist media theory and ecofeminism. Today, I’d like to focus on a specific incident where the core of both feminist critical theories is present: the story of Kathryn Bolkovac and how she single-handedly uncovered a sex-trafficking ring created by conflict. This story includes elements from both concepts. First, the environments reported by whistleblowers often incorporate the same elements of ecofeminism, where catastrophes hit certain groups, primarily women and girls, more pervasively than other groups. As a result of this exploitation, whistleblowing itself has an essential ally in the media, because it can be very difficult to speak up and follow “official” whistleblowing channels, though that same media often struggles to follow-up on the whistleblower’s reports of systematic and continued violation.

In an interview with German news agency Deutsche Welle at the end of February, 2016, Kathryn explained how in 2001 she caught the United Nations and its contractor, DynCorp, not just covering up but actively encouraging the trafficking of underage girls to then post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina, for sexual exploitation by employees of DynCorp stationed there. A former officer of the Lincoln Police Department, Kathryn quickly noticed an unusually high amount of DynCorp contractors, her coworkers, who would service local brothels, where they would take advantage of the distance from their home country and the fact that they represented the local law enforcement to engage in the rape of clearly underage girls, and they got away with it. Unfortunately, the U.N. forces there to stabilize the post-war country were in fact destabilizing it for their own benefit, at the expense of women, and not just those from the area, but also girls trafficked from countries including Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, and other Eastern European countries. Upon discovering the issues and reporting them internally to her superiors and higher up in the U.N., she was dismissed from her posting and told to return home. A complete lack of accountability for the U.N. and its contractors meant there was no internal motivation to try to solve the issue, especially when such high-level officials as the head of the U.N. mission in Bosnia were more than complicit in the perpetration of the crime. Kathryn described it succinctly as being an instance of “abuse of vulnerable populations by organizations who are created and bound to protect” (Deutsche Welle).

After disasters, some groups are disproportionately more vulnerable, and women are among some of the hardest hit. That it was an organization designed to serve those groups makes the crime even more reprehensible. The origin of the exploitation of the girls in this story is intrinsically linked with the plundering of the natural world, or as ecofeminist Mary Mellor puts it, “the domination of nature and the exploitation of women.” In this case, the destruction created by war destroyed the habitat in which peace resided, and was replaced with a breeding ground for post-war profiteers to get away with the violation of humanity. When the knights in shining white armor with U.N. flags plastered across their shoulders arrived, they told the world that everything was going to be alright before joining the plunderers in their mission to prolong the effects of both natural and human exploitation. A core motivation was the knowledge that kicking the community while it was already down wouldn’t just hurt women the most, it would allow them to personally cause the injury, for their own gratification. The effects of an international organization’s involvement is what elevated the catastrophe, opening up channels for trafficking, to tear down the country into a barren wasteland and rebuild a safe haven for international sexual profiteering.

Upon her dismissal, Kathryn fled the country, fearing retaliation after acts of vandalism and attempts on her life by her coworkers, many of whom were long-time perpetrators and took issue with her doing the job she signed on to do. Upon fleeing to Great Britain, she filed suit against the U.N. for her unfair dismissal, which constituted a clear violation of the whistleblowing protections she should have received. This suit brought media attention to the incident, attention that should have happened before when she followed the disclosure guidelines that were laid out for whistleblowers. It’s much like the idea of a police department investigating itself for a perceived rule violation: the bias is always towards innocence, and the accuser often becomes under investigation, regardless of evidence, to pressure them into silence. From the beginning of her reporting, she was silenced and ignored under the basis that she was criticizing and attempting to dismantle a system that “worked.” She was told that nothing would happen, that she was wrong, but regardless of what evidence existed, due the U.N.’s diplomatic immunity, there was no possibility of forcing prosecution. As she describes it, “investigations were never allowed to be completed. That was the reason I was terminated and fired from my job, because I was trying to investigate these cases” (Deutsche Welle).

It was at this point that the world began to know about what she had found, and the stories were amplified around the world. Similar to Hooks’ oppositional gaze, she ended up utilizing the media to remove some support for an organization responsible for horrible crimes. Mulvey’s male gaze is embodied in the internalized acceptance that people in countries where the U.N. had established themselves as saviors were entitled to whatever they wanted, in this case at the expense of women. The male gaze was protected by the male leadership, as the specific employees named for their criminal actions never faced consequences, protected by the U.N.’s willingness to use diplomatic immunity even when it should never be used (there is no situation in which sexual assault, especially of a minor, should be protected). The media response largely focused on the main issue of the sex trafficking of minors, leading to minor U.N. response in the form of a public discussion about sex trafficking that has been all but wiped from history, but took almost a decade to really discuss how the broken system silenced Kathryn, and how the problem in Bosnia was not an isolated incident, but rather one created by a toxic culture of abuse all the way to the top of the U.N. For an organization created in a moment of international unity, it benefits disproportionately from conflict, and there is no reason for that to stop. Almost two decades after the incident, very little has visibly changed, and the media’s ability to place a focus on issues has left the arena, leaving the male perpetration of crimes off-camera because unlike the U.N., media benefits not on the post-conflict world but on conflict itself, downplaying the highly relevant systematic sexism that leads to those conflicts..

The 2016 DW article brings up a 15-year old story because it remains relevant today. Within the U.N. and its contractors, there remains the male gaze, fetishizing the missions they are sent on, taking advantage of disaster for male sexual gratification. No one faced consequences, and “the UN continues to use [DynCorp], the US government continues to use them” (Deutsche Welle). The article in question brings up Kathryn’s story because at the time, a new scandal had come out, that the U.N. was following the same playbook in the Central African Republic. That the problem is so pervasive and so widespread across individuals involved poses the question of the motivations of U.N. employees, the organization itself, and their contractors, whether unopposed exploitation of women in disasters is at least part of the motivation for new generations of “peacekeepers,” safe with the knowledge their employer will protect them, no matter what they do. The power systems that enable crimes of this scale to happen try their best to silence those that want to speak out. Whistleblowers represent a tiny sliver of the voices that need to be heard, they are the survivors who have gone through hell and back willingly, and lived to tell the tale, despite the hardships. Despite their hard work, they represent the beginning of change, and unfortunately the world they blow the whistle to is not designed to continue it.