Rape

From Spoils to Weapons: Framing Wartime Sexual Violence

Citation:

Crawford, Kerry F. 2013. “From Spoils to Weapons: Framing Wartime Sexual Violence.” Gender & Development 21 (3): 505–17.

Author: Kerry F Crawford

Abstract:

The way an issue is ‘framed’ (viewed and understood) has a profound effect on whether it is viewed as a priority for action by international organisations, states, and civil society. Wartime sexual violence used to be framed as a ‘women's issue’, but since the issue gained widespread notoriety in the mid-1990s, it has shifted to being understood as a ‘security issue’. Activists and campaigners have used this as an opportunity to press for more attention at international and national levels, and policymakers have given higher priority to the issue of ending wartime sexual violence. Yet framing wartime sexual violence in terms of security – and in particular, a focus on ‘rape as a weapon’ – comes at a cost. First, it isolates this violence conceptually from the wider context of gender-based violence before, during, and after active armed conflict, and other types of violence may receive little attention. In addition, the specific emphasis on ‘rape as a weapon’ affects the types of wartime sexual violence recognised and condemned by the international community, the kinds of ‘victims’ granted assistance, and the extent to which women and men are perceived as victims, empowered agents, or perpetrators.

Keywords: sexual violence, wartime rape, international security, international law, war, advocacy

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Society, Gender, International Organizations, Security, Human Security, Sexual Violence, Rape, Violence

Year: 2013

The New Sexual Violence Legislation in the Congo: Dressing Indelible Scars on Human Dignity

Citation:

Zongwe, Dunia Prince. 2012. “The New Sexual Violence Legislation in the Congo: Dressing Indelible Scars on Human Dignity.” African Studies Review 55 (2): 37–57. doi:10.1353/arw.2012.0047.

 

Author: Dunia Prince Zongwe

Abstract:

This article describes a legal thread running from the commission of massive sexual violence in the eastern provinces of the Congo since 1996 to the enactment of liberal legislation in 2006 to combat sexual violence throughout the country, especially in eastern Congo. In doing so, the article fills a gap in the nascent legal literature on systematic sexual violence. It finds that the new rape law is progressive, liberal, gender-neutral, and in keeping with international law. However, an unfortunate lapse in legislative drafting puts in doubt the authority of the courts to use the new rape law to prosecute systematic sexual violence. Despite this weakness, as well as harsh realities such as resource limitations and institutionalized corruption, the new sexual violence law, "the law of shameful acts," nonetheless provides a framework on the basis of which the state and rape survivors can prosecute perpetrators. It is a necessary step in upholding accountability and preparing for the more daunting task of healing communities affected by a devastating regional war.

Topics: Extractive Industries, International Law, International Criminal Law, Justice, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Africa, Central Africa Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Year: 2012

The Experiences of Male Intimate Partners of Female Rape Victims from Cape Town, South Africa

Citation:

van Wijk, E. 2012. “The Experiences of Male Intimate Partners of Female Rape Victims from Cape Town, South Africa.” In Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: International Law, Local Responses. Sterling: Kumarian Press. https://www.rienner.com/title/Conflict_Related_Sexual_Violence_International_Law_Local_Responses.

Author: E. van Wijk

Topics: Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2012

After Rape: Comparing Civilian and Combatant Perpetrated Crime in Northern Uganda

Citation:

Porter, Holly E. 2015. “After Rape: Comparing Civilian and Combatant Perpetrated Crime in Northern Uganda.” Women’s Studies International Forum 51 (July): 81–90. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2014.11.005.

 

Author: Holly E. Porter

Annotation:

Synopsis:
This article explores responses to rape in northern Uganda. The continuum of violence that women experience, before, during and after war is well noted, yet how this relates to exceptional approaches of transitional justice is underexplored. Based on three years of participant observation and in-depth interviews with a random sample of 187 women from two Acholi villages, this article focuses on a comparison between rapes perpetrated by combatants and civilians, both of which followed abductions that were intended to result in “marriage.” The comparison illustrates how experiences of rape do not fit neatly into “war” and “ordinary” categories, and rather suggests that a more useful way of conceptualizing women’'s experiences comes from understanding how particular circumstances of rape shape the social harm she suffers. It shows how experiences of rape and the harm it causes are predicated on understandings of wrongdoing related to challenges posed to social harmony.

Topics: Combatants, Justice, Transitional Justice, Sexual Violence, Rape Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2015

The Securitization of Rape: Women, War and Sexual Violence

Citation:

Hirschauer, Sabine. 2014. The Securitization of Rape: Women, War and Sexual Violence. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. http://link.springer.com/10.1057/9781137410825.

Author: Sabine Hirschauer

Abstract:

This book uniquely applies securitization theory to the mass sexual violence atrocities committed during the Bosnia war and the Rwandan genocide. Examining the inherent links between rape, war and global security, Hirschauer analyses the complexities of conflict related sexual violence.
 
(Palgrave Macmillan)

Keywords: military and defence studies, human rights, terrorism and political violence, political science, sociology

Topics: Gender, Women, Rights, Human Rights, Security, Human Security, Rape, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Rwanda

Year: 2014

Sexual Violence in Sierra Leone’s Civil War: ‘Virgination’, Rape, and Marriage

Citation:

Marks, Zoe. 2014. “Sexual Violence in Sierra Leone’s Civil War: ‘Virgination’, Rape, and Marriage.” African Affairs 113 (450): 67–87. doi:10.1093/afraf/adt070.

 

Author: Zoe Marks

Abstract:

Rape and sexual violence loom large in the study of civil war in Africa. Sierra Leone has been one of the most prominent cases for establishing rape as a ‘weapon of war,' yet little is known about how sexual violence was understood by commanders or combatants within the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Mainstream analyses of armed groups and civil war rarely engage with gender dynamics, despite their centrality to war making, power, and violence; and research that does focus on sexual violence tends to overlook the complex internal dynamics of the groups responsible. This article examines the internal gender dynamics of the RUF from the perspective of male and female members in seeking to understand the perpetration of sexual violence. It shows that both formal and informal laws and power structures existed to regulate gender relations and control sexual behaviour within the group. It identifies four categories of women – non-wives, unprotected wives, protected wives, and senior women – and shows that women's interests and experiences of sexual violence were not homogeneous, but were instead shaped by their status within the group. In this way, sexual violence, examined in social context, provides an entry point for understanding how power, protection, and access to resources are brokered in rebellion.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Class, Combatants, Gender-Based Violence, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Sierra Leone

Year: 2014

Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone: Sex, Security, and Post-Conflict Development

Citation:

MacKenzie, Megan H. 2012. Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone: Sex, Security, and Post-Conflict Development. New York: New York University Press.

Author: Megan H. MacKenzie

Abstract:

The eleven-year civil war in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002 was incomprehensibly brutal—it is estimated that half of all female refugees were raped and many thousands were killed. While the publicity surrounding sexual violence helped to create a general picture of women and girls as victims of the conflict, there has been little effort to understand female soldiers’ involvement in, and experience of, the conflict. Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone draws on interviews with 75 former female soldiers and over 20 local experts, providing a rare perspective on both the civil war and post-conflict development efforts in the country. Megan MacKenzie argues that post-conflict reconstruction is a highly gendered process, demonstrating that a clear recognition and understanding of the roles and experiences of female soldiers are central to both understanding the conflict and to crafting effective policy for the future. (New York University Press)

Topics: Civil Wars, Female Combatants, Development, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rape, SV against Women Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Sierra Leone

Year: 2012

Sexual Violence During War and Peace: Gender, Power, and Post-Conflict Justice in Peru

Citation:

Boesten, Jelke. 2014. Sexual Violence During War and Peace: Gender, Power, and Post-Conflict Justice in Peru. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.

Author: Jelke Boesten

Abstract:

Using the Peruvian internal armed conflict as a case study, this book examines wartime rape and how it reproduces and reinforces existing hierarchies. Jelke Boesten argues that effective responses to sexual violence in wartime are conditional upon profound changes in legal frameworks and practices, institutions, and society at large. (Palgrave Macmillan)

Annotation:

Table of Contents: 
1. Introduction
 
2. Sexual Violence in War
 
3. Sexual Violence and the Reproduction of Inequalities 
 
4. Transitional Justice, Truths, and Narratives of Violence 
 
5. Impunity 
 
6. Peacetime Violence
 
7. Sexual Violence and Post-Conflict Justice

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality, Justice, Impunity, Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Rape Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Peru

Year: 2014

Making Race, Making Sex

Citation:

Briggs, Laura. 2015. “Making Race, Making Sex.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 17 (1): 20–39. doi:10.1080/14616742.2013.855089.

Author: Laura Briggs

Abstract:

This article is interested in how biomedicine, psychology, and anthropology have produced the rape-able, violable Arab body that need not be the subject of law, national or international. In the 1970s, feminists argued that violence produced gender, that rape and the threat of rape made “women” as a social category, abuse-able and inferior. In the 1980s and beyond, feminist science studies has shown how science makes sex, gender and race, at the level of constructing the basic categories. This article argues that we can extend these feminist theoretical insights to explore the ways that torture is itself a science that racializes, that produces and relies on a notion of Arab-Muslim masculinity as distinct from that enacted in “the West,” a region that is produced alongside a Muslim “Orient.”

Keywords: Abu Ghraib, Torture, feminism, rape

Topics: Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Justice, Religion, Rights, Human Rights, Sexual Violence, Rape, SV against Men, Terrorism, Torture, Sexual Torture Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2015

Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and Beyond

Citation:

Baaz, Maria Eriksson, and Maria Stern. 2013. Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and Beyond. London: Zed Books. 

Authors: Maria Eriksson Baaz, Maria Stern

Annotation:

Summary: 
All too often in conflict situations, rape is referred to as a 'weapon of war', a term presented as self-explanatory through its implied storyline of gender and warring. In this provocative but much-needed book, Eriksson Baaz and Stern challenge the dominant understandings of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Reading with and against feminist analyses of the interconnections between gender, warring, violence and militarization, the authors address many of the thorny issues inherent in the arrival of sexual violence on the global security agenda. Based on original fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as research material from other conflict zones, Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? challenges the recent prominence given to sexual violence, bravely highlighting various problems with isolating sexual violence from other violence in war. A much-anticipated book by two acknowledged experts in the field, on an issue that has become an increasingly important security, legal and gender topic. (Summary from Zed Books)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Sex/Gender Violence
 
2. 'Rape as a Weapon of War'?
 
3. The Messiness and Uncertainty of Warring
 
4. Post-Coloniality, Victimcy and Humanitarian Engagement: Being a Good Global Feminist?
 
5. Concluding Thoughts and Unanswered Questions 

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Gender, Women, Men, Gender-Based Violence, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Non-State Armed Groups, Rape, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Africa, Central Africa Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Year: 2013

Pages

© 2024 CONSORTIUM ON GENDER, SECURITY & HUMAN RIGHTSLEGAL STATEMENT All photographs used on this site, and any materials posted on it, are the property of their respective owners, and are used by permission. Photographs: The images used on the site may not be downloaded, used, or reproduced in any way without the permission of the owner of the image. Materials: Visitors to the site are welcome to peruse the materials posted for their own research or for educational purposes. These materials, whether the property of the Consortium or of another, may only be reproduced with the permission of the owner of the material. This website contains copyrighted materials. The Consortium believes that any use of copyrighted material on this site is both permissive and in accordance with the Fair Use doctrine of 17 U.S.C. § 107. If, however, you believe that your intellectual property rights have been violated, please contact the Consortium at info@genderandsecurity.org.

Subscribe to RSS - Rape