Sexual Violence In Conflict Research Articles

Elusive accountability: governing sexual exploitation and abuse under the grip of sexual violence in war

Abstract This article investigates the governance of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by peacekeepers and aid workers. We argue that efforts to prevent and address SEA reflect a confluence of structural-bias feminism and governance feminism, whereby a focus on sexual harm and consensus on the importance of criminal accountability have been institutionalized, with counterproductive consequences. What feminist and bureaucratic impulses drive these efforts, and what colonial legacies play out in policy implementation? Which feminist concerns lose out when these categories of sexual (mis)conduct are collapsed? We argue that the grip of sexual violence in conflict on feminist imaginations and work—documented by Karen Engle—took hold while SEA governance was being established, and that the former embedded in the latter a preoccupation with the search for criminal accountability. However, this carceral impulse is unsuited to dealing with sexual exploitation, which can span both coercive and consensual interactions. Moreover, in peacekeeping and humanitarian contexts the carceral impulse extends colonial logics by elevating a duty to care and protect ‘vulnerable’ local people through the enactment of rules that materially control their intimate choices.

Distinguishing between the “soldier” and the “brute”: engraving hierarchies of masculinity in conflict-related sexual violence discourse

ABSTRACT 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.

Climate Change Exacerbated Sexual and Gender-Based Violence: Role of the Feminist Foreign Policy

Feminist foreign policy (FFP) ensures the representation and participation of women both nationally and internationally. Initially, it aimed to focus on some special areas relating to women, peace and security especially sexual violence in conflict and women representation in peace process. Now, the ambit has been broadened and issues relating to climate change are also included. The research has already proved that women suffer double victimization as a consequence of climate change. Climate change exacerbates sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), so, they face all types of consequences of climate change (CC) and natural disasters as human beings but they face SGBV in particular because of their gender. The FFP states respect for international law and efforts to address gender inequalities and violence. Unfortunately, the existing international law e.g. the CEDAW or human rights treaties etc. generally or law on climate change e.g. the UNFCCC, the Paris Agreement etc. specifically do not address the issue. Also, the interlinkage between climate change and SGBV has not been discussed earnestly. The FFP has been consistently pursued at the UNFCCC COP negotiations in the context of climate peace initiative etc and involved women especially local and indigenous in the decision-making process. Thus, the FFP can be one of the strongest global voices to end SGBV by ensuring women’s participation; addressing the legal gap; and advocating for the adoption of the gender-responsive law and policy both nationally and internationally. They can be a leader at the international level and a change-maker at the national level. This study has sought to explain how climate change exacerbated SGBV has emerged as a subject of FFP and how it can address the challenge of SGBV exacerbated by CC, the relevant legal issues therein and the road ahead.

Translating survivor-centredness into pedagogical approaches to training on sexual violence in conflict and emergency settings: A case study

Abstract To encourage further interrogation of the language of “survivor-centredness” in the field of conflict-related sexual violence, this article offers a case study of efforts to build and intensify more survivor-centred pedagogy for use in the training of humanitarian workers seeking to address sexual violence in conflict and emergency settings. Set against the backdrop of a literature review of existing usages, it builds on key aspects of an earlier evaluation in which all three authors were involved in different capacities.

Forms of sexual violence perpetrated in conflict and post-conflict settings against South Sudanese men resettled in two communities in Uganda: an exploratory qualitative study

BackgroundConsideration for men as survivors of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings has gained some prominence in the last decade. There remains a paucity of empirical data on forms of sexual violence from the survivors’ perspective, and no study has considered the context of the 2013 South Sudan conflict specifically.MethodsThis paper reports the findings of an exploratory qualitative study on the forms of sexual violence perpetrated against men in conflict and post-conflict settings, with the survivors as the main participants. A purposive sampling technique was used to recruit 26 South Sudanese male sexual violence survivors who have resettled in two refugee resettlement communities in Uganda since the onset of the 2013 South Sudan conflict. In-depth semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data from the male survivors. Six humanitarian aid workers who support sexual violence survivors also participated as key informants. Thematic data analysis was performed on the qualitative data.ResultsThe 26 survivors reported experiencing eight direct and two indirect forms of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. The direct forms include (1) striping men naked; (2) male rape; (3) exchange of sex for favours; (4) forcing men to rape other people; (5) genital mutilation; (6) genital beating; (7) insertion of objects into men’s anus, and (8) taking men as wives. The indirect forms were forcing men to witness the rape of a female relative and forcing men to cheer or assist during the rape of other people.ConclusionTo maximize positive health outcomes for survivors, stakeholders must consider both direct and indirect forms of male-directed conflict-related sexual violence in policy and practice.

The consequences of Sudan’s armed conflict on public health: a closer look at the devastating impact

The consequences of Sudan’s armed conflict on public health: a closer look at the devastating impact

Book Review: The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict: Feminist Interventions in International Law by K. Engle

Book Review: <i>The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict: Feminist Interventions in International Law</i> by K. Engle

Achieving Justice for Child Survivors of Conflict-related Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Light of the Kavumu Case

Abstract In this article, the author questions some assertions on issues of international and Congolese criminal law made in the context of an article published in a Special Issue of the Journal on ‘Justice and Accountability for Sexual Violence in Conflict: Progress and Challenges in National Efforts to Address Impunity’. While he credits the article with helping to bring to the attention of a wider audience the atrocities experienced by the victims of the Kavumu case — and thus contributing to the overall justice-effort on their behalf — he notes a few areas of legal concern, including: (i) the impact of Article 27(2) ICC Statute on parliamentary immunities in prosecuting crimes under the Rome Statute before national courts; (ii) the determination of liability of the accused when military judges have failed to identify direct perpetrators of crimes or the group to which they belong; and (iii) the relationship between the forms of criminal responsibility of individuals that make up the leadership of an organization and the policy element of crimes against humanity attributed to that organization. In sum, the article seeks to investigate to what extent the judicial reasoning in this case may have contributed to clarifying the provisions of the ICC Statute as applied by military judges in Congolese courts.

Event centrality and conflict-related sexual violence: A new application of the Centrality of Event Scale (CES)

Berntsen and Rubin’s Centrality of Event Scale (CES) has been used in many different studies. This interdisciplinary and exploratory article is the first to apply the scale and to analyse event centrality in the context of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). It draws on a research sample of 449 victims-/survivors of CRSV in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia and Uganda. Existing research on event centrality has mainly focused on the concept’s relationship with post-traumatic stress disorder and/or post-traumatic growth. This article, in contrast, does something new, by examining associations between high event centrality, resilience, well-being and experienced consequences of CRSV, as well as ethnicity and leadership. Its analyses strongly accentuate crucial contextual dimensions of event centrality, in turn highlighting that the concept has wider implications for policy and interventions aimed at supporting those who have suffered CRSV. Ultimately, the article juxtaposes event centrality with a ‘survivor-centred approach’ to CRSV, using the former to argue for a reframing of the latter. This reframing means giving greater attention to the social ecologies (environments) that shape legacies of sexual violence in conflict.

Social ecologies of health and conflict-related sexual violence: Translating “healthworlds” into transitional justice

This article discusses the relationship between health and transitional justice through a particular focus on the issue of conflict-related sexual violence. It is not, however, about the individual health needs of victims-/survivors, nor about possible ways that transitional justice processes might address these. Drawing on empirical data from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia and Uganda, it explores some of the health legacies of sexual violence in conflict and their wider significance for transitional justice. Embracing the World Health Organization’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”, the article specifically seeks to demonstrate that conflict-related sexual violence (and its frequent entanglement with other forms of violence) affects not only individual but also social-ecological health. The article’s overall contention, thus, is that in the context of transitional justice, more than individual health matters. The broader “health” of social ecologies themselves is also critically important. Ultimately advocating a social-ecological reframing of transitional justice, the article utilizes Germond & Cochrane’s (2010) concept of “healthworlds” to explore what this reframing might look like in practice.

Sexual Violence in Conflict Situations as Structural Injustice

Jus post bellum, a relatively new addition to the just war tradition, offers a set of principles to ensure a just peace. The jus post bellum principles establish important guidelines for punitive and transitional justice in the wake of unjust aggression. However, sexual violence during conflict highlights some of the limits of relying solely on a rights-based approach to jus post bellum. Using the jus post bellum principles, I offer some suggestions for what might be required regarding punishment, compensation, and rights vindication for both individuals and communities, highlighting throughout the limits of relying solely on a rights-based approach to jus post bellum. I then argue that post bellum considerations need to account for the structural injustices of sexual violence in conflict situations. Doing so supports important social justice initiatives proposed for a global response to sexual violence in conflict aimed not only at punishment but at prevention.

The women, peace and security Agenda through a Queer Theory lens

The two decades since the adoption of the first Security Council Resolution under the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda has paved the way for much introspection and debate. While there have been several positive impacts such as the inclusion of women in peacemaking processes and in bringing to light the deliberate deployment of sexual violence in armed conflict as a tactic, there have also been several gaps in implementation. Since the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1325, legal, policy, and academic discourse has focused on armed conflict and women and has made an essentialist case for the inclusion of women in post-conflict peace processes. Among one of the major concerns with the WPS Agenda in its verbiage and implementation is the tendency to conflate 'gender' with 'women's issues.' As a consequence, non-binary gender identities in general, and their experience of armed conflict in particular, have been sidelined and rendered obscure. Sexual violence in conflict has been understood through a limited 'gender' lens, and the unique experiences of queer people in armed conflict have neither been acknowledged or addressed in policy, legislation, and transitional justice measures. Tis paper critically evaluates the WPS agenda and identifies gaps both in its language and implementation through National Action Plans. It presents the unique challenges of sexual and gender minorities in armed conflict and calls for a gender, peace, and security regime founded on the principles of intersectionality, queer theory, and the right to self-determination.

The making and re-making of the ‘rape capital of the world’: on colonial durabilities and the politics of sexual violence statistics in DRC

This article examines the production of knowledge about sexual violence in the postcolonial warscape of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with a particular eye on the politics of statistics. Over the last decade, ‘hard numbers’ have become central to ‘knowing’ sexual violence in conflict, including in DRC. Statistics depicting the exceptional scale of sexual violence in DRC were core to its making as the ‘rape capital of the world’. Given the challenges of quantifying this sensitive issue, sexual violence statistics are nevertheless imbued with striking, if misleading, reliability. In this piece, I explore how sexual violence statistics in DRC are produced and consider what they can and cannot convey. Subsequently placing DRC in historical context, I highlight eerie resonances of this contemporary emphasis on sexual violence with the country’s colonial past. Doing so, I join postcolonial scholars in calling attention to colonial durabilities that shape the knowledges that are not only accepted, but perhaps expected, in a region long cast under a deeply and intimately sexuo-racialised gaze. Notably, this gaze is one that depicts the ‘Congolese woman’ as always-already a victim, and the ‘Congolese man’ as always-already defined by presumed ‘perpetratorhood’. Affirming the importance of such analytical vigilance vis-à-vis sexual violence statistics in particular, this article concludes by calling for concurrent authorial vigilance on the part of critical scholars. Indeed, we must ensure that efforts to complicate dominant narratives of sexual violence in DRC do not undermine, silence, or deny the experiential realities encoded in the knowledges we critique.

Israeli settler colonialism, “humanitarian warfare,” and sexual violence in Palestine

ABSTRACT In recent years, Israel’s military practices have increasingly been described as “humanitarian,” entrenching the narrative that the State of Israel is at war with a “hostile” and “terrorist” Palestinian population. Taking the notion of “humanitarian warfare” as my point of entry, this article critically examines the relationship between the identification and documentation of sexual violence in conflict and Israel’s notion of liberal warfare. Palestine/Israel is often absent from international reports and scholarship on sexual violence in conflict, where attention is increasingly focused on non-state actors. The article argues that this absence functions to both obscure the sexual violence of Israel’s settler colonial occupation and bolster the notion of Israel as a modern liberal democracy engaging in a conflict against a population deemed terrorist. Against this narrative, the use of sexual torture against Palestinians held in Israeli prison and detention facilities is documented, as are the sexually violent structures of militarized settler colonialism and occupation more broadly. Exploring these sites of humanitarian and feminist complicity with war, colonial occupation, and sexualized violence, the article contends, can help us to better grapple with the complexities of sexual violence in conflict and reminds us of the necessity of incorporating anti-imperial and anti-colonial politics into feminist analysis. This article contains descriptions of sexual torture.

The politics of sexual violence in the Kachin conflict in Myanmar

ABSTRACT Conflict-related sexual violence has been the focus of significant international activism and policy attention. International legal norms and frameworks have evolved to recognize it as a war crime, and a representation of sexual violence as a “weapon of war” is now widely endorsed. This article examines how international norms about conflict-related sexual violence are adopted and utilized in multiple ways in the armed conflict in Kachin state in northern Myanmar. Throughout decades of civil war, international norms on sexual violence have constituted key resources for international advocacy and awareness raising by local women’s rights activists. Further, activists have drawn on international norms to effect changes in gendered relations of power within their own communities. However, international norms on sexual violence in conflict have also been effectively used as tools for ethno-nationalist identity politics, rallying support behind the armed insurgency and mobilizing women’s unpaid labor in the service of war. Thus, international norms on conflict-related sexual violence have simultaneously opened up space for women’s empowerment and political agency and reproduced gendered forms of insecurity and marginalization. Exploring these contradictions and complexities, this analysis generates novel insights into the politics of international norms in contexts of armed conflict.

Of sex and war: carceral feminism and its anti-carceral critique

Abstract In the last three decades, wartime sexual violence has become one of the main concerns for feminists engaged with international law. This essay reviews Karen Engle’s monograph on the causes and implications of today’s common-sense narrative about sexual violence in conflict. It shows how Engle’s powerful critique of ‘carceral feminism’ may represent a starting point for a new discussion of sex and war in international law.

About the Contributors

About the Contributors

Prioritizing Accountability for Sexual Terrorism on the Global Peace and Security Agenda: An Assessment of the Way Forward from National Prosecutions of Sexual Terrorism by Boko Haram to Security Council Decisiveness

Twenty years after the United Nations (UN) Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security and twenty-five years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the prevalence of sexual violence by parties to armed conflicts continues unabated. Despite the responsibility of every State to address such crimes, conflict-related sexual violence has not been met with corresponding accountability. At the same time, national prosecutions of terrorist activities have largely focused on membership and financing of terrorist groups. Even though the majority of States have endorsed the historic 2013 Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict which provides that 'sexual violence committed in conflict must not be viewed as a lesser crime,' accountability for 'sexual terrorism' – defined in the article as conflict-related sexual violence and human trafficking utilized as a tactic of terrorism – has not garnered the same response as other terrorism crimes especially in Security Council resolutions.&lt;br/&gt; With the focus on Boko Haram, this article addresses the practicalities of national investigations and prosecutions in Nigeria of conflict-related sexual violence and human trafficking as acts of terrorism using Nigeria's 2011 Terrorism Prevention Act (TPA) and its 2013 amendment. Although these pieces of legislation make no express provision for accountability for sexual terrorism, the article proposes interpretations of provisions in the TPA that could be utilized to investigate and prosecute sexual terrorism by Boko Haram. The article also addresses some practical challenges faced by federal prosecutors in bringing such charges to court such as evidentiary practices requiring medical corroboration and it explores possible solutions to ensure accountability. Finally, the article juxtaposes Security Council resolutions on terrorist financing with resolutions on the nexus between terrorism, human trafficking, and conflictrelated sexual violence. It observes that, adopting resolutions pursuant to Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the Security Council gave terrorist financing a platform on which accountability was mandated. A similar platform has not been afforded to sexual terrorism and the article explores possible reasons. In the author's view, until sexual terrorism is given the same platform as terrorist financing, the push for domestic accountability for sexual terrorism remains a battle on an uphill road paved with good intentions.

Sexual violence, identity and gender: ISIS and the Yezidis

ABSTRACT This paper explores the gender dimension of the relationship between the political marketplace and identity formation. Gender is a central, not tangential, component of violence and gender norms are an essential part of singular and exclusive identity formation. The article focuses on ISIS’s sexual and gender-based violence against the Yezidis and contextualises this case within wider long-term gender- and identity-based structural inequalities that facilitate sexual violence in conflict. Structural inequalities are understood here within a continuum of violence and through an intersectional study of sexual violence in conflict. In the case of ISIS and the Yezidis, specific ethnic or religious constructions of identity intersected with gender, leading to targeting of a minority community. This identity formation is part of becoming a militarised masculine warrior within a group – ISIS used sexual violence in forming its group identity against a subordinated outgroup. In doing this, ISIS objectified and commodified the bodies of the Yezidi women and created an economic market around this. Objectification and commodification of Yezidi women reinforced ISIS’s hegemonic and militant masculinity. The construction of identity through sexual violence took place in a socio-economic and political context situated within a long-term history of the intersection of gender and identity-based hierarchies. This was possible because of the existing repertoires of values, perceptions and practices of hegemonic and militant masculinity. The organisation and institutionalisation of sexual violence and objectification and commodification of Yezidi women and girls was based on this repertoire which was based on intersectional hierarchies of gender and religious-ethnic-sectarian identities.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016)

UNSCR 1325 provides a useful framework from which to develop and improve policy and programming on gender peace security and development issues. Most importantly UNSCR 1325 provides a platform for civil society to demand accountability from their governments and to raise public and political awareness on the issue of sexual violence in conflict and beyond. UNSCR 1325 is an 18-point document focusing on four inter-related thematic areas: participation of women at all decision-making levels and in peace processes; inclusion of gender training in peacekeeping operations; protection of the rights of girls and women; gender mainstreaming in the UNs reporting and implementation systems. Within each of these thematic areas UNSCR 1325 encourages action by UN agencies the Security Council the Secretary General governments and all parties to armed conflict. Importantly a Security Council resolution brings international attention to a particular issue and also provides a political framework that recommends action to be taken by governments and international institutions. (excerpt)