SESSION 5

WAR AND SEXUAL

VIOLENCE
Gender, War and Conflict
Orla Ní Cheallacháin
orla.ni-cheallachain@ucdconnect.ie
Lecture Overview

Policy and Empirical

Legal Context Evidence

Ethical
Explanations
Considerations
Questions and Themes from literature
Why has sexual violence been dealt with separately
from other types of war violence? Should it be?
Why/Why not?
How are peacetime gender relations reflected in
wartime sexual violence
What explanations for are given in the literature for
the prevalence of sexual violence across different
conflict settings?
What are the ethical considerations and material
obstacles in researching conflict related sexual
violence?
What is Conflict Related Sexual Violence?

• A violation of international humanitarian law

• An international crime
• Rooted in jurisprudence of International Tribunals of the
Former Yugoslavia and of Rwanda, the Special Court for
Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts on
Cambodia
• International Criminal Court Rome Statute
What is Conflict Related Sexual
Violence?

‘Rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced

pregnancy, enforced sterilization and any other
form of sexual violence of comparable gravity,
which may include indecent assault, trafficking,
inappropriate medical examinations and strip
searches’
Legal Landscape
Sexual violence
Sexual violence as a crime
as a war crime against
humanity

Sexual violence Sexual violence

as a form of as an element
torture of genocide
International Policy Environment
UNSCR 1325 •Recognized women are disproportionately affected by
conflict and called for the active participation of women at
all levels of decision making in conflict prevention, conflict
(2000) resolution, peace processes and governance

UNSCR 1820 •Recognised conflict-related sexual violence as a matter of

international peace and security

(2008) •Called on armed actors to end practice of sexual violence

and to end culture of impunity for such acts

UNSCR 1888 •Strengthened UNSCR 1820 through establishment of effective

support mechanisms

(2009) •Called for inclusion of issue of sexual violence and its

consequences in peace negotiations

UNSCR 1960 •Established accountability system for implementation of

UNSCRs 1820 and 1888

(2010) •Established Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Arrangements

for sexual violence within conflict zones
Definition of Conflict Related Sexual
violence for MARA purposes
Conflict-related sexual violence refers to incidents or (for SCR
1960 listing purposes) patterns of sexual violence, that is rape,
sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced
sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable
gravity, against women, men, girls or boys. Such incidents or
patterns occur in conflict or post-conflict settings or other
situations of concern (e.g., political strife). They also have a direct
or indirect nexus with the conflict or political strife itself, i.e. a
temporal, geographical and/or causal link.
In addition to the international character of the suspected crimes
(that can, depending on the circumstances, constitute war
crimes, crimes against humanity, acts of torture or genocide), the
link with conflict may be evident in the profile and motivations of
the perpetrator(s), the profile of the victim(s), the climate of
impunity/weakened State capacity, cross-border dimensions
and/or the fact that it violates the terms of a ceasefire
agreement
Impact of Conflict Related Sexual
Violence
Physical Psychological
Social stigma
Health Health

Vulnerable to
Injury and
Trauma victim-
infection
blaming

Unwanted Isolation and Expulsion from

pregnancy humiliation community

Risk of poverty
Societal
HIV and further
Trauma
insecurity
Social Stigma
‘When some of us escaped from the rebels and went back
to find our families, we got disappointed. They called us
names. They said we were defiled and they didn’t want us
anymore. So what could we do? We had to live so we
went to Freetown and sold ourselves just to survive’
(Young woman abducted by RUF in Sierra Leone quoted in
DeLargy, 2013: 67)

‘No, my wife was absolutely not raped while she was being
held. If she had been raped, then I would not be able to let
her come home and take care of the children and be my
wife’
(Kosovar man speaking about his wife held by Serbian
militia, DeLargy, 2013, 68))
Prosecution of Conflict Related Sexual
Violence
Imperative to end culture of impunity
But
Requires
• Proper laws criminalizing sexual violence
• A functioning security and judicial system
• Financial resources
• Social barriers to reporting
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda
• Rape in the Bosnian Conflict (1992-1995)
• Between 20,000 to 60,000 women were raped.
• Rape camps.
• Gang Rapes
• Male Rapes.
• Serb notions of military masculinity intersecting with notions of
nationalism and ethnic superiority
• Rwanda 1994
• Between 100,000 and 250,000 women raped during three
months of genocide
Cases
• Sierra Leone (1991-2002)
• 60,000 women were raped

• Liberia (1989-2003)
• 40,000 women were raped

• Democratic Republic of Congo

• ‘rape capital of the world’
• 200,000 since 1998

• Syria
• Widespread conflict related violence throughout conflict
International Tribunals
• International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia 1993
• 2001 first international court to find an accused person guilt of
rape as a crime against humanity
• Expanded definition of slavery to include sexual slavery
• International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda 1994
• 1998 first international court to find an accused person guilty
of rape as a crime of genocide
• Court found Jean-Paul Akayesu guilty as rape and sexual
assault were committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, the Tutsi ethnic group
• See ‘Sexual Violence and the Triumph of Justice’, UN ICTY
https://youtu.be/HZ4EM6iiq0k
Explanations in the Literature
• A weapon of war:
• Impregnate ‘the other’ collective (woman as symbol of
collective)
• Humiliate ‘the other’ men
• Dishonour ‘the other’ collective by dishonouring their women
• The result of a breakdown in social constraints;
• The consequence of a ‘root cause’ of masculinity;
• The expression of frustration-aggression and male trauma
• Proof strength of own emasculated society/group
Rape as a ‘weapon’ of war
• Enloe (2000: 111) – Uses of rape during war
1. Recreational Rape
i. Resulting from soldiers’ inadequate access to ‘militarized
prostitution’
2. National Security Rape
i. The use of rape by government forces against women and
men associated with insurgency movements or who
transgress gender norms
3. Systematic Rape
i. Rape as an instrument of open warfare
ii. Systematic rape is ‘administered’ rape
Strategic ‘value’ of rape as weapon
of war
• Cheap
• Hard to prosecute
• Effective means of terrorising civilian population to
• Clear populations from specific areas
• Destroys ethnicity (Forced pregnancies of Muslim women in
Bosnia-Hergegovina)
• Galvanises group cohesion within militaries?
• Reward for troops
• Rooted in essentialist and deterministic understanding of
male sexual desire
Biologically driven sexual aggression
Claim:
Natural sexual aggressiveness of men coupled with
breakdown of social constraints of peacetime =
wartime rape
However
• Does not explain the organised, purposive
employment of rape as a weapon of war
• Does not explain variation of sexual violence and
rape across time
• Does not explain why rape would be targeted at
one group over another
Hegemonic Masculinity as root cause
• Rape of women communicative act among men
• Disrupts ethno-national constructions of women as bearers of
the nation and men as protectors
• Sexual violence against men an act of ‘feminisation’ thus an
act of humiliation and demoralising defeat
• Militarism as a root cause of sexual violence
• Training denigrates the ‘other’ and the feminine
• Hyper-masculinity of ‘aggression and uncontrolled virility

• Does not explain variation of instances of sexual

violence across different conflict contexts.
Frustration-Aggression and Men’s
Trauma
• Previous trauma an explanation for violence
• Example – childhood trauma leading to violent
behaviour in adult life
However
• Variation in men’s behaviours, even when they have
been through similar experiences, complicates any
straightforward correlation between participation in
war, and violence against women.
Kirby – Modes of Critical Explanation
Kirby 2012
‘It has been argued that rape happens because the
militaries in question are extremely hierarchical
organisations in which troops obey specific orders to
rape (instrumentality) and that sexual violence is
opportunistic, occurring because the militaries in
question are insufficiently hierarchical, leading troops
to ignore orders and carry out their own wishes’
(Kirby, 2012: 814)

How should we respond? With more or less military

involvement?
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
• Vast natural resources
• 32 years US supported
dictatorship (Mobutu)
• Refugees from Rwandan
genocide and influx
from militants fighting in
Burundi: first Congo war
• Second Congo war
ends officially in 2006
with first democratically
elected president,
Joseph Kabila
Baaz and Stern 2009
Prior Explanations in Research
1. Sexual urge explanation– biological
2. Spiral of violence" incites rape
3. Ethnic strategy
4. Demands for group conformity, hierarchical
structures, and the dictates of loyalty, which are
integral to the ethos of the military as a globalized
institution (militarized masculinities)
5. Disconnection of rape from biologically “natural”
sex drives, rape as act of aggression that build on
sexist discourses at play in wider society
Interviews – FARDC
• Conducted between Sept 2005-2006 and some in
2008
• Took place during transition between signing of
Peace Accord in 2003 and parliamentary and
presidential elections in 2006
• Resources and salaries for FARDC low
• Demobilisation, Demilitarisation and Reintegration
(DDR) made difficult by multiple chains of command
and multiple armed actors
• Lack of material support contributed to general
levels of violence by FARDC soldiers on civilian
population
Male Sgt
• ‘There are no bad soldiers. It is our leaders/superiors
[mikonzi] who are bad. They don’t care about us. We
don’t get anything, no food, no training… instead
they send their children to school in Europe. I even
bought this uniform, the one that I wear, with my own
money! They are bad. And if there is one rotten
orange in the bag, it will make all oranges in the sack
rot’
(Baaz and Stern: 2008: 77)
Research Question
• What reasons do soldiers give to as to why rape
occurs in the DRC in order to query some of the
boarder governing discourses of this area.
Responses:
• The (hetero)sexually potent male fighter
• Male’s sexual needs emerged as a ‘given, known and
natural driving force which required satisfaction’ from women
whose role it is to satisfy those needs’
• Women in military
‘In general, especially at the front it could also be good [with
women soldiers]. Because women are like flowers, and she could
also satisfy my needs [sexually]. When have you been in battle it is
like a desert, then she could help you with that (Male, Sgt.)
• Manhood and money
Male, Sgt
• [A good soldier] is someone who knows discipline. But
how can we do a good job when we are hungry, when
you haven’t eaten something for the whole day, when
our children are hungry and don’t go to school and why
you could not leave any money for your wife in the
morning so she can cook for the children? What is she to
do? She is unhappy. When I come home and want to be
with her she is upset and says ‘don’t touch me’. What
should I do? If it continues, after three days and I have no
money to give for food she will get tired and when I am at
work she will give her body to another man just to get a
little something to feed the children. What else should she
do? But women are also weak. You cannot trust them’
Lust Rapes v. Evil Rapes
Rape (...) there are different types of rape. They are all
forbidden. There is the rape when a soldier is away,
when he has not seen his women for a while and has
needs and no money. This is the lust/need rape [viol
ya posa]. But there are also the bad rapes, as a result
of the spirit of war (...) to humiliate the dignity of
people. This is an evil rape (Male, Lt.)
(Baaz and Stern, 2009)
Lust Rape
‘ A soldier, if has not possibilities, no money so that he
can go the normal way […] if he has nothing in his
pocket, he cannot eat or drink his coke, he has
nothing to give to a woman – he will take her by
force. He will take a woman by force. Physically, men
have needs. He cannot got a long time without being
with a woman. It is very difficult to stop him… So a
soldier needs a bit of money in his pocket, and he
needs to have leave. If that would happen it would
reduce the rapes a lot’
(Male, Lt. Col.)
(Baaz and Stern, 2009)
Lust Rape - Congo
• Male Cpl. A: It is suffering which makes us rape.
Suffering. If I wake up in the morning and I am fine, I
have something to eat, my wife loves me, will I then
do things like that? No. But now, today we are
hungry, yesterday I was hungry, tomorrow I will be
hungry. They, the leaders/superiors are cheating us.
We don't have anything
(cited in Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2009, 77).
 Lust Rape - Congo
Female Major A: If they want the work of soldiers to
work/be good/end indiscipline, they have to give the
[financial] possibilities. If a soldier has his money, he will
think "let's go and look for a woman and give her money
so that 1 can be satisfied." The normal way, the official
way. But if he does not have money, he will look for an
easier road, to get it for free. Then he has to wear a
uniform to get a woman. Because, if you are to have a
woman, what do you need? You need money.
(cited in Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2009, 77)
Evil Rapes
• Stems from ‘moral disengagement that
accompanies the climate of war and violence in
which soldiers have been living.
• Violence creates its own momentum and constructs
its own moral economy.
Evil rape
[Rape] is bad. You cannot be with a women without
her consent. Even in the house. Also in the house, if
your owman does not want to, you cannot force her.
But in the sense that I am talking now, that rape is in
two sorts, what do I mean? Because if it is only lust,
then why do you sometimes kill her? Also if it is about
lust, you will use the organ that you have. Why would
you pick a stick in her? We see that a lot. It is
happening a lot in the East, in Kalemie. That is not
about lust. It is not about the physical needs. That is
from a need to destroy, to destroy the dignity, the
human dignity of a person […] rapes are committed
at both these levels. ‘
(Male Soldier B)
Distinction of forms of rape

What’s the meaning of this

distinction?
What do you think about this
distinction?
Syria
Syria – Inquiry on the Syrian Arab
Republic
Report to Human Rights Council – 8 March 2018
Actors engaging Conflict Related Sexual Violence
• Government and Associated Militias
• Armed Groups
• Jabhat Fatah al-Sham
• Islamic State
• Syrian Democratic Forces
Report to Human Rights Council
Government Forces
• Ground Operations, house raids, checkpoints
• House raids: arrest men, rape of women and girls as well as
looting and destruction of property and killing of occupants,
• Rapes form of collective punishment and way to deter
opposition
• Systematic and countrywide between 2011 and 2014
• Dara’a
• Damascus
• Hama
• Latakia
• Rif Damscus
• Idlib
• Homs
• Dayr az Zawr
Report to Human Rights Council
Government Forces
• Detention centres
• 2011-2017
• Thousands of women detained
• Subjected to rape, sexual torture, sexual abuse and
humiliation
• Male detainees also subject to rape, sexual torture and
• humiliation
• Such abuse often occurred in front of other detainees and/or
family members
• Sexual violence as means to extract information, punish and
terrorise opposition communities
Report to Human Rights Council
Armed Groups (non-state)
• Forced marriages of young girls to FSA members

Jabhat al-Nusra –
• Forced Marriages
• Punishment for homosexuality
• Capital punishment for extra-marital affairs
• Regulation of dress and freedom of movement
• Torture
Report to Human Rights Council
Armed Groups – Non-state
Islamic State
• Women placed under control of male relatives and
prevented from working
• Capital punishment for extra-marital affairs
• Capital punishment for homosexuality
• Corporeal punishment for infringement of social rules
• Forced marriage of girls to IS fighters
• Yazidi women and girls enslaved
Further Reading
• Brownmiller, S. (1975) Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, New York, Ballantine Books.
• DeLargy, P. (2013) 'Sexual Violence and Women's Health in War', in Cohn, C. (ed.) Women and Wars:
Contested Histories, Uncertain Futures. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 54-79.
• Enloe, C. (2000) Manoeuvres: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives, London, University of
California Press.
• Enloe, C. (2004) The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire, Berkley, California;
London, University of California Press.
• Erisksson Baaz, M. & Stern, M. (2018) 'Curious erasures: the sexual in wartime sexual violence', International
Feminist Journal of Politics, 20(3), pp. 295-314
• Eriksson Baaz, M. & Stern, M. (2016) 'Researching Wartime Rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A
Methodology of Unease', in Wibben, A. T. R. (ed.) Researching War: Feminist Methods, Ethics and Politics.
Oxen: Routledge, pp. 117-140.
• Eriksson Baaz, M. E. & Stern, M. (2009) 'Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the
Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC)', International Studies Quarterly, 53(2), pp. 495-518.
• Harrington, C. (2010) Politicisation of Sexual Violent: From Abolition to Peacekeeping, Surrey, Ashgate.
• Ní Aoláin, F., Cahn, N. R., Haynes, D. F. & Valji, N. (2018) The Oxford Handbook of Gender and
Conflict, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Pankhurst, D. (2015) 'Sexual Violence in War', in Shepherd, L. J. (ed.) Gender Matters in Global Politics: A
Feminist Introduction to International Relations. 2nd edition. ed. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 159-
170.
• Scarry, E. (1985) The Body in Pain : The Making and Unmaking of the World, New York ; Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
• Wood, E. J. (2018) 'Rape as a Practice of War: Toward a Typology of Political Violence', Politics & Society,
46(4), pp. 513-537.
• Wood, E. J. (2009) 'Armed Groups and Sexual Violence: When Is Wartime Rape Rare?', Politics & Society,
37(1), pp. 131-161.
• Wood, E. J. (2006) 'Variation in Sexual Violence during War', Politics & Society, 34(3), pp. 307-342.