The politics of sexual violence in the Kachin conflict in Myanmar

Responding to sexual violence in armed conflict

Ending sexual violence in conflict and beyond

One of the most shocking aspects of civil war is the prevalence of sexual violence committed by armed groups. Recent research identifies many of the factors driving this horrific phenomenon. What is generally lacking, however, is an understanding of the factors that can prevent conflict-related sexual violence. We argue that women’s economic rights are key. Women’s economic rights provide women with the ability to flee dangerous war zones, work in less vulnerable environments, and access to safe housing. We test our claims using a global sample of civil conflicts from 1989 to 2019. We find evidence that the presence of robust women’s economic rights is associated with significantly lower levels of observed sexual violence in civil conflicts, even after controlling for a variety of potential confounders. Additionally, we probe the possibility of egalitarian gender norms driving our results by examining the relationship between women’s political empowerment and conflict-related sexual violence. We find no relationship between women’s political empowerment and conflict-related sexual violence. Importantly, we continue to find a negative relationship between women’s economic rights and conflict-related sexual violence even when accounting for women’s political empowerment, suggesting women’s economic rights have an independent effect on conflict-related sexual violence. Our findings highlight the importance of enhancing women’s economic rights in the global fight against wartime rape. Providing women with greater economic agency has the potential to curb sexual violence in conflicts around the world.

Since the 1998 Rome Statute recognised widespread and systematic acts of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) as an act of genocide, a war crime and crime against humanity, the last decade has seen historic recognition that egregious acts of sexual violence merit international political and legal attention (UN General Assembly, 1998). Notably, there are now no fewer than seven United Nations Security Council resolutions on the cross-cutting theme of Women, Peace and Security.1 This significant international attention on sexual violence in armed conflict was further heightened with the launch of the United Kingdom’s Prevention of Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) in May 2012 by Foreign Secretary William Hague. Thus far, the PSVI has prompted a G8 Declaration (April 2013), a Security Council Resolution,2 the United Nations General Assembly Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict (September 2013) supported by 150 states and a new International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict (June 2014) (UK FCO, 2014). These actions illustrate the high-level political actions being taken to address sexual violence in conflict around the world. Yet current research on the early warnings of ‘widespread and systematic’ sexual violence in conflict discounts the relevance of structural gender inequality in the prevention of these atrocities.

In international policy circles, conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) is commonly viewed as a weapon of war, a framing that researchers have criticized as overly simplistic. Feminist scholars in particular caution that the ‘weapon of war’ framing decontextualizes sexual violence in conflict from the structural factors of gender inequality that underpin its perpetration. In light of these tensions, how do politically relevant local actors perceive the nature and the origins of conflict-related sexual violence? Civil society organizations often actively confront conflict-related sexual violence on the ground. A better understanding of how their perceptions of this violence align or clash with the globally dominant ‘weapon of war’ narratives therefore has important policy implications. Interviews with representatives of Colombian women's organizations and victims' associations reveal that these civil society activists predominantly view conflict-related sexual violence as the result of patriarchal structures. The mobilized women perceive sexual violence as a very gendered violence that exists on a continuum extending through peace, the everyday and war, and which the presence of arms exacerbates. Strategic sexual violence, too, is understood to ultimately have its basis in patriarchal structures. The findings expose a disconnect between the globally dominant ‘weapon of war’ understanding that is decontextualized from structural factors and a local approach to CRSV that establishes clear linkages to societal gender inequality.

Preface: On the Duty to Face Sexual Violence and Conflict The Honourable Michaelle Jean. Acknowledgments. Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies: Situating International Agendas and their African Contexts 1. Seeing Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies: The Limits of Visibility Doris Buss 2. The Political Economy of War: What Women Need to Know Meredeth Turshen Sexual Violence and Conflict: Civil Society Perspectives on Patterns, Causes and Solutions 3. Sexual Violence Patterns, Causes, and Possible Solutions: An Interview with Kudakwshe Chitsike, Research and Advocacy Unit, Zimbabwe and Jessica Nkuuhe, Independent Consultant, Uganda Doris Buss 4. Sexual Violence Patterns, Causes, and Possible Solutions: An Interview with Julienne Lusenge, Solidarite Feminine pour la Paix Integrale (SOFEPADI), Democratic Republic of Congo Sexual Violence and Harm: From Conflict to Post-Conflict Societies 5. Gendered Insecurity and the Enduring Impacts of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Northern Uganda Rebecca Tiessen and Lahoma Thomas 6. Through War to Peace: Sexual Violence and Adolescent Girls Donna Sharkey 7. Ritual and Reintegration of Young Women Formerly Abducted as Child Soldiers in Northern Uganda Christine Mbabazi Mpyangu 8. Considering Gender Relations and Culture in the Psychosocial Adaptation of Individuals and Communities Affected by Sexualised Violence in African Conflicts Sophie C. Yohani Representing Harms and the Trouble with (Victim) Categories 9. Sexual Violence, Female Agencies, and Sexual Consent: Complexities of Sexual Violence in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide Jennie E. Burnet 10. The Representation of Rape by the Special Court for Sierra Leone Valerie Oosterveld 11. Justice and Reparations for Rwanda's Enfants Mauvais Souvenirs Sandra Le Courtois 12. On Transitional Justice Entrepreneurs and the Production of Victims Tshepo Madlingozi The Gender of Security 13. A Gendered Reading of Security and Security Reform in Post Conflict Societies Fionnuala Ni Aolain, Naomi Cahn and Dina Haynes 14. Security Sector Reform in Africa: A Lost Opportunity to Deconstruct Militarised Masculinities? Yaliwe Clarke 15. Women Peacekeepers and UNPOL Officers in the Fight Against Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Post-Conflict Zones Sophie Toupin Post-Conflict Development and International Agendas 16. Development and Its Discontents: Ending Violence Against Women in Post-Conflict Liberia Pamela Scully 17. International Assistance to Combat Sexual Violence in the Congo: Placing Congolese Women at the Heart of the Process! Denis Tougas

Sexual violence and intimate partner violence are exacerbated by armed conflict and other humanitarian crises. This narrative systematic review of evidence for interventions to reduce risk and incidence of sexual and intimate partner violence in conflict, post-conflict and other humanitarian crises, updates and expands our review published in 2013. A search of ten bibliographic databases for publications from January 2011 to May 2020 used database specific key words for sexual/intimate partner violence and conflict/humanitarian crisis. The 18 papers, describing 16 studies were undertaken in conflict/post-conflict settings in 12 countries. Six intervention types were reported: i) personnel; ii) community mobilisation; iii) social norms; iv) economic empowerment; v) empowerment; and vi) survivor responses, with the most common being economic empowerment (n = 7) and gendered social norms interventions (n = 6). Combined interventions were reported in nine papers. Four studies identified non-significant reductions in incidence of sexual/ intimate partner violence, showing an evident positive trend; all four evaluated gendered social norms or economic empowerment singly or in combination. Evidence for improved mental health outcomes was found for some economic empowerment, social norms and survivor interventions. Some evidence of reduced risk of sexual violence and intimate partner violence was identified for all intervention types. Qualitative studies suggest that experiences of social connection are important for women who participate in programming to address sexual and intimate partner violence. Interventions with multiple strategies appear to hold merit. Achieving and demonstrating reduced sexual and intimate partner violence remains challenging in this context. Future research should continue to explore how social norms interventions can be most effectively delivered, including the impact of including mixed and same sex groups. Work is needed with local partners to ensure programs are contextually adapted.

Increasingly, the UNSC has applied targeted sanctions against individuals and entities in an effort to deter sexual violence against civilians in conflict. The use of targeted sanctions for this purpose marks a fundamental shift in the international community’s perceptions regarding conflict-related sexual violence, now considered a threat to international peace and security warranting UNSC intervention. This chapter considers the UNSC’s use of targeted sanctions to deter wartime sexual violence, as one available tool within the larger framework of women, peace and security initiatives to combat sexual violence in conflict. While the UNSC’s ability to impose targeted sanctions has the potential for deterrence, improved implementation is needed to increase the cost of permitting or using sexual violence in conflict. The chapter concludes with recommendations to improve the effectiveness of targeted sanctions through consistent, comprehensive, and transparent action against responsible persons.

Digital technological innovations make new types of responses to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) possible, bringing with them both potential promises and pitfalls. Aiming to provide a conceptual starting point for further analysis, this article problematizes the trend towards data extraction in exchange for aid, protection and justice, and argues for the importance of complementing technology-driven approaches to the struggle against CRSV with the inclusion of strategies for user participation and investment in digital literacy as key aspects of the response. To explore how the digital turn shapes the struggle against CRSV, the article offers a three-part analytical framework. First, the article unpacks how digital technologies create corresponding “digital bodies” – comprised of images, information, biometrics and other data stored in digital space – which represent the bodies of individuals affected by sexual violence, and which interplay with the risks posed upon the physical bodies of those facing CRSV. Second, the article maps out the role of digital technologies in a cycle of intervention, including prevention of, response to, documentation of and accountability for CRSV. Third, recognizing the increasing importance of data governance to the struggle against CRSV, the article considers how divergent humanitarian, human rights and international criminal law approaches to data may create different pathways for CRSV data. This could also give rise to new tensions in how international actors approach CRSV.

INTRODUCTION For a long time, sexual violence in conflict has been seen and largely prosecuted as crimes committed by men against women. Only recently, the international community is becoming aware of the brutality of sexual violence perpetrated against men in conflict situations, and that the number of these atrocities is much higher than has always previously been assumed. Similarly, like men, women and girls are capable – and indeed have done so – of committing atrocious forms of conflict-related sexual violence against men, boys, women and girls alike. According to Rosalind Petchesky, ‘acts of sexual violence against men, women … are named and experienced differently, which is what it means to say they are gendered’. Building on this insight, this chapter deals with the two oft en marginalised categories of conflict situations with regards to sexual violence, namely male victims and female perpetrators. It first explores the lack of awareness and knowledge surrounding both male victims and female perpetrators of sexual violence and the underlying reasons for such violence. It then discusses how gender norms regarding sexual violence impact on all aspects of the international justice process. In the case of male victims of sexual violence, attention is drawn to the tendency to erase the sexual nature of the crime by using a more general label, such as torture. It will be argued that this state of affairs derives from gender norms, which make male victimisation, and especially male sexual victimisation, inconsistent with ideals of masculinity. In the case of female perpetrators of conflict-related sexual violence, it will be argued that the existence of female perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict is at odds with ideals of femininity. Attention will, inter alia , be drawn to the tendency of these women to deny their ability – as women – to commit sexual violence. The chapter ends with some concluding remarks on the ways forward in understanding and prosecuting male sexual victimisation and sexual violence perpetrated by women.

What Do We Know About Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts? Recent Empirical Progress and Remaining Gaps in Peace and Conflict Research

The erosion of women's sexual and reproductive rights

Though the occurrence of rape in the conduct of war is by no means historically new, research into its causes and functions has only really begun in the past couple of decades. War rape is a difficult phenomenon about which to generalise, considering the variances in context and actors involved. This article, however, attempts to synthesise existing literature through the analysis of a case study that can enhance our understanding of rape as a weapon of war and the contextual conditions that facilitate its use. Applying this theoretical framework to the extreme war rape occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), this article offers insight into understanding the function of sexual violence in the ongoing conflict in the DRC. In particular, this article argues that the use of rape as a weapon in the Congo's bloody war must be understood in relation to both social constructs of masculinity and the politics of exploitation that have shaped much of the country's history.

Conflict-related sexual violence has attracted unprecedented research and policy attention. With the adoption of six UN Security Council resolutions and the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, a global framework of protection has emerged. Yet, criticism arose as to what the dominant discourse on “rape as a weapon of war” and a victim-focused perspective might entail for forwarding women’s participation in the work of peace and security – the latter being the primary reason for the adoption of UNSCR 1325 in the first place. This chapter discusses synergies between feminist and empirical research findings and implications for prevention.

On the one hand, feminists critique the securitization of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) on various grounds, but, on the other hand, also raise concerns that the Western hyper-fixation on CRSV reproduces colonial narratives about race, gender, and sexuality. However, the productive effects of specifically Western state discourse about CRSV have yet to be fully examined in this context. How do Western states make use of the colonial gaze in constructing CRSV as an issue of grave concern, and to what ends? Further, what are the implications of this for the nexus of feminist critique and praxis? This article utilizes a macro-structural approach to discourse analysis to analyze the 2014 Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, led by the United Kingdom. It argues that Western delegates securitized CRSV by relying on tropes of racialized men as maintaining backwards practices of gender and sexuality, and the construction of CRSV as a “pre-modern” weapon of war. This frame reproduces a racialized hierarchy of masculinity that constructs men from “conflict countries” as potential perpetrators in need of intervention, and men from “safe countries” as role models for gender-conscious militarized manhood. The article concludes by identifying potential practical implications of this discourse.