Women judges in transitional justice and their impact on trials on cases of sexual and gender-based violence committed as war crimes

Abstract

Unfortunately, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against women and men who are identified as enemies very often appears as a tool of war. For a long time, SGBV-related atrocities were not perceived as an element of combat, thus they were not investigated as war crimes. None of the war criminals prosecuted in the Nurnberg and Tokyo trials was ever charged with crimes that specifically targeted women, despite overwhelming evidence of mass-scale rapes committed during World War II by their subordinates. Only in 2000, the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery was established to hear cases of women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army more than 50 years earlier.The perception of the SGBV crimes in armed conflicts has considerably changed because of the mass atrocities committed in Bosnia and Hercegovina and in Rwanda. Women who as victims of the sexual violence dared to talk about their suffering, played the crucial role in changing the general attitude towards SGBV crime committed during the war. Simultaneously, the composition of international prosecution and judiciary included numerous female prosecutors and judges.It may be argued if judge's characteristic, personal experience, or gender indeed or to what extent influence judicial decisions. Some fundamental questions related to the judge's gender remain without an answer: Would the gender of judges impact the quality of fact-finding in SGBV as a war crime? Would a female judge assess the evidence more thoroughly than a male judge? Would a SGBV victim's well-being be better protected by a judge of the same gender? Would the risk of a victim's re-traumatisation be lower if the trial was handled by a judge of the same gender as the victim? And finally: would the risk of a victim's re-traumatisation be lower if a judge of the same gender as the victim handled the trial? All these questions seem particularly relevant in the context of the new wave of war crimes SGBV cases resulting from the war in Ukraine.