Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Citation:

Atuhaire, Pearl Karuhanga, Nicole Gerring, Laura Huber, Mirgul Kuhns, and Grace Ndirangu. 2018. The Elusive Peace: Ending Sexual Violence during and after Conflict. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace. 

Authors: Pearl Karuhanga Atuhaire, Nicole Gerring, Laura Huber, Mirgul Kuhns, Grace Ndirangu

Annotation:

Summary:
"The consequences of sexual violence during armed conflict include trauma, social stigma, cyclical poverty, health issues, and unwanted pregnancies. Furthermore, the impacts of sexual violence during armed conflict last generations, disrupting societies and making peace elusive. Recognizing the scale of the problem, the United Nations Security Council in 2008 adopted Resolution 1820, which condemned sexual violence as a tool of war and offered specific actions to address the causes and consequences of wartime sexual violence. The implementation of Resolution 1820 has primarily focused on sexual violence committed by armed actors, but ten years of programming and research demonstrate clear connections between conflict and sexual violence that extend beyond wartime. Other forms of sexual violence, including sexual exploitation and abuse, domestic sexual violence, and violence targeted at women in politics, are often exacerbated by armed conflict and increase insecurity. This report defines this violence as conflict-associated sexual violence. Conflict-associated sexual violence contributes to the normalization of violence, undermines social cohesion, and worsens structural inequalities. The harmful impacts of conflict-associated sexual violence threaten the security of women, communities, and states, and disrupt peace processes. The United Nations and its member states, civil society organizations, media outlets, the private sector, and academia must recognize and address the detrimental impacts of conflict-associated sexual violence. The policy community must consider conflict-associated sexual violence as both a public health and a security concern” (Atuhaire et al 2018, 1).

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Society, Economies, Poverty, Domestic Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Health, Peace and Security, Post-Conflict, Political Participation, Peace Processes, Security, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1820, Violence

Year: 2018

Citation:

Banwell, Stacy. 2018. “Forced Prostitution: Unpacking the Links between Globalization, Neo-liberalism, and the Illicit Sex Trade.” Paper presented at Prostitution, Pimping and Trafficking, Conway Hall, London, September 5.

Author: Stacy Banwell

Abstract:

Transnational feminism attributes women’s social, political and economic marginalization to capitalism, class exploitation, neo-imperialism and neo-liberalism. It addresses the local and global contexts in which violence against women and girls occurs. Allied to this is the political economy approach. This approach addresses the relationship between the economic, the social and the political. Moving beyond direct acts of physical violence - by addressing structural forms of inequality and violence - the political economy approach broadens what is meant by violence and abuse. Accordingly, forced prostitution - resulting from a lack of employment opportunities - is considered a form of structural violence. Drawing on both of these perspectives, and focusing on Iraq and Syria, Dr Banwell examines how globalization and neo-liberalism impact the day-to-day lives of women and girls in war-shattered economies. The talk will conclude with some thoughts on what is being done to address gender-based violence and what measures can be taken to achieve gender equality in post-conflict situations.

Topics: Economies, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Girls, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Globalization, Political Economies, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Women, Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq, Syria

Year: 2018

Citation:

Fordham, Maureen. 2012. “Gender, Sexuality and Disaster.” In The Routledge Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction, edited by Ben Wisner, J. C. Gaillard, and Ilan Kelman. Oxon: Routledge.

Author: Maureen Fordham

Abstract:

In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, The Independent newspaper reported occurrences of the rape and sexual abuse of women and girls (Nguyen 2010). This is the most recent evidence at the time of writing that cases of gender-based violence are frequent and still at an unacceptably high level in disasters. This raises questions about why women, as compared with men, continue to be disadvantaged, abused or made vulnerable in disasters, and highlights the importance of recognising gender as of vital consideration in disaster management and in instigating measures for disaster risk reduction (DRR).

Topics: Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries Countries: Haiti

Year: 2012

Citation:

Moncrief, Stephen. 2017. “Military Socialization, Disciplinary Culture, and Sexual Violence in UN Peacekeeping Operations.” Journal of Peace Research 54 (5): 715-30.

Author: Stephen Moncrief

Abstract:

The sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) of civilians by international peacekeepers is a form of post-conflict violence that is pernicious and understudied, but far from inevitable. However, there are very few cross-mission analyses of the phenomenon. This article considers whether the socialization experiences of troops in two environments, the contributing state military and the peacekeeping mission itself, help to explain the observed variation in SEA. Drawing on a dataset of SEA allegations between 2007 and 2014, as well as the first publicly available data from the United Nations that identify the nationalities of alleged perpetrators, this article analyzes the layered nature of socialization through the lens of SEA. Specifically, this article presents evidence that SEA is positively associated with disciplinary breakdowns at the peacekeeping mission’s lower levels of command, and argues that a peacekeeping mission may carry its own norms and socializing processes that either constrain or facilitate the emergence and endurance of SEA.

Keywords: peacekeeping, sexual violence, Socialization

Topics: International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Violence

Year: 2017

Citation:

Mutlu-Numansen, Sofia, and Ringo Ossewaarde. 2015. “Heroines of Gendercide: The Religious Sensemaking of Rape and Abduction in Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean Migrant Communities.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 22 (4): 428-442. 

Authors: Sofia Mutlu-Numansen, Ringo Ossewaarde

Abstract:

This study seeks to understand a diaspora community narrative of rape and abduction suffered during the genocidal massacre of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire and its aftermath. Based on interviews with 50 Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean migrants in Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, whose families are from the village of Bote, known as one of the ‘killing fields’ in southeast Turkey, the article explores the ways in which descendants remember the ‘forgotten genocide’ of Aramean, Assyrian and Chaldean communities in 1915. The research reveals that the descendants of survivors make sense of the sexual violence experienced in Bote mainly through a religious narrative and that, for them, the genocide is, in spite of all the sufferings the males had to go through, a feminized event. In their gendercide narrative, the abducted and raped women are identified as the ‘heroines’ of the genocide.

Keywords: Armenian genocide, feminization, gendercide, migration, narrative, post-genocide, sexual violence

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Conflict, Genocide, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Sexual Slavery, SV against Women, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking Regions: MENA, Asia, Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Turkey

Year: 2015

Citation:

Munro, Brenna. 2016. “Locating ‘Queer’ in Contemporary Writing of Love and War in Nigeria.” Research in African Literatures 47 (2): 121–38.

Author: Brenna Munro

Abstract:

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Child Soldiers, Gender, Men, Boys, LGBTQ, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Race, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Men, Terrorism Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Nigeria

Year: 2016

Citation:

Neudorfer, Kelly. 2014. "Reducing Sexual Exploitation And Abuse: Does Deterrence Work To Prevent SEA In UN Peacekeeping Missions?" International Peacekeeping 21 (5): 623-641. 

Author: Kelly Neudorfer

Abstract:

The data on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in UN peacekeeping missions show a sharp decline between 2006 and 2007 which has yet to be explained in the relevant literature. This article partially closes that gap by examining one measure which was introduced to improve investigation processes and deter possible perpetrators, the conduct and discipline units (CDUs). Using a mixed methods design, the quantitative analysis shows that overall, the introduction of a conduct and discipline unit in missions is negatively and significantly correlated with the number of SEA allegations. The case study of MONUC/MONUSCO corroborates these results, indicating that deterrence measures likely contributed to the reduction of the number of allegations.

Topics: Peacekeeping, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Women

Year: 2014

Citation:

Cerretti, Josh. 2016. “Rape as a Weapon of War(riors): The Militarisation of Sexual Violence in the United States, 1990-2000.” Gender & History 28 (3): 794-812. 

Author: Josh Cerretti

Topics: Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Sexual Violence, Male Perpetrators, Rape, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, SV against Men, Sexuality Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2016

Citation:

Chertoff, Emily. 2017. “Prosecuting Gender-Based Persecution: the Islamic State at the ICC." Yale Law Journal 126 (4): 1050-117.

Author: Emily Chertoff

Abstract:

Reports suggest that Islamic State, the terrorist "caliphate," has enslaved and brutalized thousands of women from the Yazidi ethnic minority of Syria and Northern Iraq. International criminal law has a name for what Islamic State has done to these women: gender-based persecution. This crime, which appears in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has only been charged once, and unsuccessfully, in the Court's two decades of existence. The case of the Yazidi women presents a promising opportunity to charge it again--and, potentially, to shift the lately unpromising trajectory of the Court, which has been weakened in recent months by a wave of defections by former member states. This Note uses heretofore unexamined jurisprudence of the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber to elaborate--element by element--how the Prosecutor of the Court could charge gender-based persecution against members of Islamic State. I argue that the prosecution of Islamic State would not just vindicate the rights of Yazidi survivors of Islamic State violence. It would help to consolidate an international norm against gender-based persecution in armed conflict--a norm that, until now, international law has only incompletely realized. This Note argues that only by prosecuting the crime of gender-based persecution can international criminal law cognize violence, like the attacks on Yazidi women, that is motivated not just by race, ethnicity, or gender, but by the victims' intersecting gender and ethnic or racial identities. I conclude by reflecting on the role that a series of prosecutions against perpetrators of gender-based persecution might have in restoring the legitimacy of the ailing ICC.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnicity, Women, Gender-Based Violence, International Law, International Criminal Law, Justice, International Tribunals & Special Courts, Race, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Terrorism, Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq, Syria

Year: 2017

Citation:

Lowicki, Jane, Allison A Pillsbury, and Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. 2002. Precious Resources: Adolescents in the Reconstruction of Sierra Leone : Participatory Research Study with Adolescents and Youth in Sierra Leone, April-July 2002. New York, N.Y.: Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children.

Authors: Jane Lowicki, Allison A. Pillsbury

Annotation:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction pg. 1

Chapter II. Executive Summary pg. 3

Chapter III. Map pg.  9 

Chapter IV. Adolescence and Youth: A Community in Crisis pg. 10

Chapter V. Education: A Linchpin for Peace and Recovery pg. 14

Chapter VI. Livelihood: Young People Need Skills and Jobs pg. 22

Chapter VII. Health: Myth Versus Reality pg. 26

Chapter VIII. Protection: Few Resources, Many Categories of Vulnerability pg. 36

Chapter IX. Psychosocial: Moving Beyond Manipulation and Abuse pg. 55

Chapter X. Survey Results: Education, Poverty and Health Care Are Top Concerns pg. 64

Chapter XI. Adolescent Researchers Lead the Study: Methodology and Lessons Learned pg. 80

Chapter XII. International, Regional, National and Local Responses to Adolescent and Youth Concerns pg. 90

Chapter XIII. Recommendations pg. 101

Chapter XIV. Appendices pg. 108

Sierra Leone: Glossary of Key Players and Other Basics pg. 108

Methodological Materials pg. 112

Task Force on Protection From Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Humanitarian Crises pg.117

Youth Organizations pg. 118

Acronyms pg. 120

Chapter XV. Endnotes pg. 122

Topics: Age, Youth, Gender, Girls, Boys, Health, Mental Health, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Sexual Violence, Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Sierra Leone

Year: 2002