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Rethinking ‘Rape as a Weapon of War’

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Abstract

One of the most significant shifts in current thinking on war and gender is the recognition that rape in wartime is not a simple by-product of war, but often a planned and targeted policy. For many feminists ‘rape as a weapon of war’ provides a way to articulate the systematic, pervasive, and orchestrated nature of wartime sexual violence that marks it as integral rather than incidental to war. This recognition of rape as a weapon of war has taken on legal significance at the Rwandan and Yugoslav Tribunals where rape has been prosecuted as a crime against humanity and genocide. In this paper, I examine how the Rwanda Tribunal’s record of judgments conceives of rape enacted as an instrument of the genocide. I consider in particular how the Tribunal’s conception of ‘rape as a weapon of war’ shapes what can be known about sexual violence and gender in the Rwandan genocide and what cannot, the categories of victims legally recognised and those that are not, and the questions pursued, and those foreclosed, about the patterns of violence before and during the genocide.

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Notes

  1. See, e.g., United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820 (S/Res/1820/2008), available at http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_resolutions08.htm (accessed 1 March 2009).

  2. See Statement of the President of the Security Council, S/PRST/2008/47 (10 December 2008), available at http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/scact2008.htm (accessed 28 February 2009).

  3. See, generally, Prosecutor v Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic, Case No. IT-96-23 & IT-96-23/1-A (ICTY, Trial Chamber), 22 Feb 2001, available at http://www.icty.org/x/cases/kunarac/acjug/en/kun-aj020612e.pdf.

  4. Patricia Viseur Sellers, for example, has been a Legal Advisor for Gender-related Crimes in the Office of the Prosecutor for the ICTY, while Catharine MacKinnon was appointed Special Gender Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (Press Release, ‘ICC Prosecutor appoints Prof. Catharine A. MacKinnon as Special Adviser on Gender Crimes’, The Hague, 26 November 2008, available at http://www.icc-cpi.int/press/pressreleases/450.html (accessed 21 December 2008)).

  5. Rape can be charged also as a war crime, a serious violation of common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (see, e.g., De Brouwer 2005, Chap. 3), though this tends to be the least used of the charges to address sexual violence at the ICTR.

  6. ICTR Statute, Article 3.

  7. ICTR Statute, Article 2.

  8. Prosecutor v Mikaeli Muhimana, Case No. ICTR-95-1B-T (ICTR, Trial Chamber III), 28 April 2005, at para 558, available at http://69.94.11.53/default.htm.

  9. Ibid at para 561.

  10. Ibid at para 562.

  11. Prosecutor v Jean Paul Akayseu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T (ICTR, Chamber 1), 2 September 1998, available at http://69.94.11.53/default.htm.

  12. Ibid at para 731.

  13. Ibid.

  14. There are many different ways to count cases at the ICTR and I have focused only on contested decisions on the merits of the case, and excluded, for example, convictions for perjury.

  15. The five men found guilty of rapes, as of December 2008, are Akayesu, Bagasora, Gacumbitsi, Muhimana and Semanza.

  16. The research for this part of the paper is based on interviews I conducted with Tribunal staff in April–May 2008, as well as on the published research of Binaifer Nowrojee, a human rights activist who has worked as a consultant for the Tribunal as well as undertaking research on the experience of women who testified at the Tribunal (see Nowrojee 2005b). I have left the interview material unaccredited in this section because the items listed here were identified by multiple interview subjects and appeared as almost a ‘consensus’ view among the Tribunal staff, both in the OtP and Registrar’s office.

  17. See, e.g., Prosecutor v Sylvestre Gacumbitsi, Case No. ICTR-2001-64-T (ICTR, Trial Chamber), 17 June 2004, at para 329, available at http://69.94.11.53/default.htm; Prosecutor v Juvenal Kajelijeli, Case No. ICTR-98-44A-T (ICTR, Trial Chamber), 1 December 2003, at para 680, available at http://69.94.11.53/default.htm.

  18. Akayesu, supra n 11 at para. 731.

  19. Prosecutor v Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, Hassan Ngeze and Ferdinand Nahimana, Case No. ICTR-99-52-T (ICTR, Trial Chamber), 3 December 2003, at paras 114 and 1079, available at http://69.94.11.53/default.htm (accessed 25 July 2008).

  20. Prosecutor v Clement Kayishema and Obed Ruzindana, Case No. ICTR-95-1-T (ICTR, Trial Chamber), 21 May 1999, at paras 294 and 547, available at http://69.94.11.53/default.htm.

  21. Prosecutor v Théoneste Bagasora, Gratien Kabiligi, Aloys Ntabakuze, Anatorle Nsengiyumva, Case No. ICTR-98-41-T (ICTR, Trial Chamber), 18 December 2008, at para 1728, available at http://69.94.11.53/default.htm.

  22. Supra n 11 at para 732.

  23. Supra n 17, dissenting opinion of Judge Arlette Ramaroson at para 97.

  24. The rape of Hutu women could only be prosecuted as a crime against humanity if it could be shown the rape of the Hutu woman constituted or was part of the attack against the Tutsi population: see Gacumbitsi, supra n 17. Under Article 4 of the ICTR statute, rape of Hutu women could be prosecuted as a war crime, though this is generally seen as a less significant category of crime than genocide or crimes against humanity.

  25. Supra n 8 at paras 441–444.

  26. Ibid at paras 448–450.

  27. Interview by author with Florida Kabasinga, Assistant Appeals Counsel, ICTR, 6 May 2008, in Arusha Tanzania (see also Melvern 2000, p. 186).

  28. Email correspondence from Susan Thompson to author, 27 July 2008, on file with author.

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Acknowledgments

My thanks to Christiane Wilke, Chiseche Mibenge, Diana Majury and the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions. My particular thanks to Erin Stevens for her excellent research assistance and comment on drafts of this article and Brittany Sheridan for her assistance. Earlier versions were presented at conferences at The Netherlands Defence Academy/Emory University and Keele University, UK and I benefited from comments and feedback at those events. Research for this paper was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Carleton University.

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    Doris E. Buss

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Buss, D.E. Rethinking ‘Rape as a Weapon of War’. Fem Leg Stud 17, 145–163 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-009-9118-5

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