class: center, middle, inverse, title-slide # Dirty Wars ## Lecture 5: Is Any War Clean? Sexual Violence in Conflict ### Jack McDonald ### 2019-10-24 --- class: inverse # Theory Discussion Question .pull-left[ We have talked a bit about commensurability in relation to proportionality. Non-communsurable: "Apples are not oranges." Commensurable: "Apples and oranges are both fruit." ] .pull-right[ .large[Are "normal" acts of violence commensurable with sexual violence? Why/why not?] ] ??? --- class: inverse # Outline .pull-left[ Any theory of war must account for variance between the stated rules/norms of war, and what actually happens in war. To understand this, it is necessary to address silences and absences of regulation, as well as the continuation of prohibited conduct as rules/norms change. ] .pull-right[ - What is Sexual Violence in Conflict? - When Did SVC Become a Crime? - Who Gets to Write the Rules of War? - Framing and Re-Framing War Crimes ] ??? --- class: inverse # Part 1: What is Sexual Violence in Conflict? ??? --- # "The Oldest Crime" .pull-left[ > Exactly what happened to women in these situations is largely a matter of speculation, as there are few records on this topic at the very early parts of written history... the Assyrian sources are replete with numerous other cruelties, but are silent about rape. Anthony Gillespie ] .pull-right[ > Soldiers ought not to be allowed by their officers to commit rape on women and maidens, nor, since it is illegal in itself, does the right of war excuse it, much less justify it. Christian Wolff ] ??? /// --- # SVC Theories: What Causes It? .left-column[ - Substitution - Institution/group - Feminist - Cultural Pathology - Strategic - Biosocial ] .right-column[ > Classic theories advanced to explain conflict-related sexual violence explain only a small part of the observed variation. In particular, theories to explain conflict related rape do not account for its variation because they _over_-predict rape during war. Elizabeth Jean Wood, _Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Policy Implications of Recent Research_ ] ??? /// --- # SVC in Context: Argentina > He told me he had orders to kill me... He offered to save my life if in exchange I would agree to have sexual relations with him... I carried out his demands under threat of death, so I felt and consider myself to have been raped. On leaving, he drove me to my in-laws' house. C.G.F. (file No. 7372), _Nunca Mas_ > One night a man came to her cell. He tied her up and beat her, then raped her amid threats, forbidding her to tell anybody what happened. After that he took her to a bathroom to get cleaned up. AN (file No. 6532), _Nunca Mas_ ??? /// --- # Problems With Analysing SVC .pull-left[ > any act of a sexual nature which is committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive. Sexual violence is not limited to physical invasion of the human body and may include acts which do not involve penetration or even physical contact. _Akayesu_, ICTR ] -- .pull-right[ .medium[ > sexual violence in its own right is not accorded the status of an international crime. Rather, it is only when sexual violence has a nexus to armed conflict, the intended destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, or an attack upon a civilian population, that the conduct becomes an international crime. Accordingly, sexual violence is a subsidiary act, which is recognised as an international crime only when framed by other forms of illegality. Kirsten Campbell, _The Gender of Transitional Justice_ ] ] ??? /// --- class: inverse # Part 2: When Did SVC Become a Crime? ??? --- # "Rape as a Weapon of War" in Yugoslavia .pull-left[ > the acts committed in Bosnia demonstrate a concerted scheme to annihilate the Muslim population of Bosnia through gender-determined genocide, and confirm the realization that rape is not a random or isolated wartime event. Elizabeth A. Kohn, _Rape as a Weapon of War_ ] .pull-right[  .picblock[  ] ] ??? /// --- # IHL and IHRL .pull-left[ Incompatibilities - Ontological incompatibility - "Combatants" don't exist in IHRL - Epistemic incompatibility - Differing standards of knowledge, processes of forming knowledge - Temporal incompatibility - IHL/LOAC applies in armed conflicts, only - Normative incompatibility - IHL indifferent to _jus ad bellum_, IHRL can't be - Conflicts: Right to life, detention, fair trial... ] -- .pull-left[ Interactions - Lex specialis - Where two bodies of law apply, the more specialised body of law takes precedence - Co-application - Both bodies of law apply at the same time - Problem of resolving conflicts of law - "Belt and suspenders" - Body of law that provides the most protection takes precedence ] ??? /// --- # SVC in Context: DR Congo > Approximately 1.69 to 1.80 million women reported having been raped in their lifetime... and approximately 3.07 to 3.37 million women reported experiencing intimate partner sexual violence. -- > estimates of rape among women aged 15 to 49 years in the 12 months prior to the survey translate into approximately 1150 women raped every day, 48 women raped every hour, and 4 women raped every 5 minutes. -- > ...because our data did not capture sexual violence among women and girls younger than 15 years or older than 49 years and did not include sexual violence among boys and men, even our estimates are a lower bound of the true prevalence of sexual violence. Amber Peterman et al., _Estimates and Determinants of Sexual Violence Against Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo_ ??? https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2010.300070 --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .question[Which of the descriptive, causal, and normative issues associated with sexual violence in conflict do you find most troubling? Why?] ??? /// --- class: inverse # Part 3: Who Gets to Write the Rules of War? ??? --- # Power and International Law .pull-left[ .medium[ > As a language of justification, international law is a means to articulate particular preferences or positions in a formal fashion, accessible to professional analysis... The law constructs its own field of application as it goes along, through a normative language that highlights some aspects of the world while leaving other aspects in the dark. Martti Koskenniemi, _From Apology to Utopia_ ] ] .pull-right[   ] ??? Four sources of constraint and cooperation - Normative - Political/social - Resources - Strategic --- # Gaps and Silences in IHL .pull-left[ > One misses a great deal by looking only at justice. The sense of injustice, the difficulties of identifying the victims of injustice, and the many ways in which we all learn to live with each other’s injustices tend to be ignored, as is the relation of private injustice to the public order. Judith Shklar, _The Faces of Injustice_ ] .pull-right[ .medium[ - Absences of prohibition ("I didn't sign that") - Absences of enforcement mechanisms ("I'm afraid you don't have jurisdiction") - Interpretations of law ("Actually, this is an act of self-defence") - Interpretations of fact ("I'm afraid that those people are 'on holiday' in that country") - Silence of states ("I don't have to give you my opinion") - Silence of international organisations ("My patron vetoed your UNSC resolution") ] ] ??? /// --- # Courts and Court Judgements .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[ .small[ ICTY - _Tadić_: Sexual violence against men - _Mucic et al_: Rape as torture - _Furundžija_: Rape as grave breach of the Geneva conventions and violation of laws & customs of war, rape as tool of genocide - _Kunarac et al_: Rape/sexual enslavement as crime against humanity ICTR - Dealing with 250-500k instances of rape ICC - First prosecution Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo (Bemba) in 2016 for sexual violence in CAR ] ] ??? /// --- # SVC in Context: GWOT .pull-left[ .medium[ > Given the unbridled homophobia demonstrated by the U.S. guards, it is indeed ironic, yet predictable, that the United States nonetheless emerges as more tolerant of homosexuality (and less tainted by misogyny and fundamentalism) than the repressed, modest, nudity-shy "Middle East." Apparently, the United States still regards itself as the arbiter of civilizational standards. Jasbir K. Puar, _Abu Ghraib: Arguing against Exceptionalism_ ] ] .pull-right[  ] ??? Quote from p.527 --- class: inverse # Part 4: Framing and Re-Framing War Crimes ??? --- # SVC in Context: Northern Ireland > when a woman is the target of a sectarian murder in Northern Ireland, invariably there is a great sense of outrage. This outrage exposes the gendered nature of public morality in its opposition to the murder of women in political conflict. However, when a woman has been murdered in a 'domestic' assault in the 'sanctuary' of her own home, there is less of a sense of violation. In Northern Ireland, as elsewhere, there is a kind of continuum that ranges from the least to the most acceptable type of murders that is perhaps best symbolised in the way in which murders not related to the political situation have been euphemistically referred to by police officers as 'ordinary decent murders.' Monica McWilliams, _Violence Against Women and Political Conflict_ ??? https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF02461137.pdf --- # Politics of SVC (Collaboration) .pull-left[ > Women almost always were the first targets, because they offered the easiest and most vulnerable scapegoats, particularly for those men who had joined the resistance at the last moment. Anthony Beevor, _An Ugly Carnival_ ] .pull-right[  ] ??? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/05/women-victims-d-day-landings-second-world-war --- # Politics of SVC (Forced Prostitution) .pull-left[  ] .pull-right[ .medium[ The Korean Council's demands: 1. Acknowledge the war crime. 2. Reveal the truth in its entirety about the crimes of military sexual slavery. 3. Make an official apology by the Japanese Government. 4. Make legal reparations. 5. Punish those responsible for the war crime. 6. Accurately record the crime in history textbooks. 7. Erect a memorial for the victims of military sexual slavery and establish a historical museum. ] ] ??? /// --- # SVC in Context: Vietnam > By the time the Americans had fully replaced the French in Indochina the war had sufficiently disrupted South Vietnamese society to a point where it was no longer necessary to import foreign women for the purpose of military prostitution. I do not mean to imply that prostitution was unknown in Vietnam before the long war. As Peter Arnett told me, "Prostitution was a time-honored tradition. Certain heads of families would not think twice before routinely selling their daughters if they needed the money." But as the long war progressed, prostitution increasingly became the only viable economic solution for thousands of South Vietnamese women. Susan Brownmiller, _Against Our Will_ ??? /// --- class: inverse # Small Group Discussion .question[ How do incidents or patterns of sexual violence relate to the kinds of wars/conflicts that you are interested in studying? Why do you think this is so? ]