Women Peace and Security

Conflict-related sexual violence: consequences and needs of female victims (part 2).

/ Morgane Greco / Leave a comment

This blogpost is the continuation of “Conflict-related sexual violence: consequences and needs of female victims (part 1)“, posted yesterday morning.

III. … and questions the importance of justice within the healing process

As potential victims of crimes against humanity, war crimes and eventually genocide, survivors of CRSV deserve justice. Congolese gynecologist Dr. Denis Mukwege, 2018 Peace Nobel Prize Laureate, explained at a University of Montreal in June 2019 that justice is an integral part of the victims’ healing process. To him, justice is key both to the victims’ psychological well-being and to the restoration of their dignity. As Dr. Yael Danieli points out in her 2014 article, reparative justice can take place at every step throughout the justice process: from the first encounter of a court with a potential victim or witness to the aftermath of the completion of the case, every step represents an opportunity for redress and healing.

Despite the increased attention of the international community towards impunity for sexual violence crimes, according to the last Secretary-General Annual Report on conflict-related sexual violence, accountability remains elusive. The ability of victims to access a justice system is frequently hindered by reporting barriers both at the individual and structural levels. Across most countries, victims are often reluctant to report their experiences owing to stigma, fear of reprisal or rejection by their families or communities, and lack of confidence in judicial and non-judicial responses. As an example, in Guinea, the 2009 repression has traumatized a large number of civilians. Even if some courageous female victims did testify before Guinean courts, the absence of specialized investigation and prosecution units within justice system to provide support to vulnerable victims, combined to the lack of relevant training for magistrates, registrars and lawyers – professions in which males are largely overrepresented –, did not encourage victims to testify in a climate of trust.

The justice process can also cause secondary victimization or second injury. Sexual violence victims often have to tell their story many times to different persons, with a high level of details, and fight to be trusted. Moreover, depending on the various national and international judicial systems’ requirements, victims may have to bring evidence of their rape, while such an evidence is expensive to obtain. They can notably have to bring a medical certificate to the court. As an example, Guinean victims of the event of 28 September 2009 did face difficulties to prove the evidentiary value of a medical certificate confirming that sexual violence took place.

It is also important to mention that, for some victims, justice does not necessarily mean seeking a reparation order or a conviction from a court. According to Salah Aroussi’s article titled Perceptions of Justice and Hierarchies of Rape: Rethinking Approaches to Sexual Violence in Eastern Congo from the Ground Up (2018), “survivors of rape by armed groups or civilians in the DRC primarily conceive justice as economic assistance and have limited interest in the prosecution of perpetrators […]. [R]epairing the harm and restoring the victim is at the heart of communities’ understanding of what justice is.” The author warns that “at the same time, survivors’ reluctance to pursue formal justice must be understood in the light of the inaccessibility of the Congolese criminal justice system and its failure to play a positive role in society.” 

CONCLUSION

Victims of conflict-related sexual violence suffer from long term, if not lifelong consequences. During the Commemoration of the 10-Year Anniversary of the Mandate on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Tatiana Mukanire, survivor from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and leader of the survivors SEMA Network, explained that raping a person amounts to killing her or him while letting him or her breathe. At the same time, impunity, corruption, lack of services and difficult access to healing resources tend to silence CRSV victims. Lack of confidence towards nationals and international justice systems are also an issue, whereas the International Criminal Court has already failed to deliver justice in the case of Jean-Pierre Bemba, despite the struggle of victims to hold him accountable. 

As a conclusion, to answer CRSV victims’ needs, it is imperative to understand the consequences of the victimization on the survivors’ lives. Otherwise, there is a chance to see the survivors’ care not to be optimal. Nobody can speak in place of victims. They have their own voice and have to be heard. Our role is to listen to them.

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This blogpost and the author’s attendance to the 18th Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court are supported by the Canadian Partnership for International Justice and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Conflict-related sexual violence: consequences and needs of female victims (part 1).

/ Morgane Greco / 1 Comment

The first blogpost of this series entitled “Conflict-related sexual violence: what are we talking about (part 1) and (part 2) aimed at providing an introduction to the issue of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). We saw that CRSV is a crime as old as war itself, targeting both women, girls, men and boys, and its use is today recognized, codified and prosecuted as one of the most serious violations of international law.

In this blogpost, we will first demonstrate that conflict-related sexual violence has long-term consequences on female victims’ lives and on their communities. Even if men and boys also suffer from conflict-related sexual violence, this post will not address their particular situation, and will specifically focus on women and girls. Then, we will address the needs of these female victims. Finally, we will discuss the importance of justice in the victims’ healing process.

I. Understanding the consequences of CRSV on victims…

Sexual violence results in multiple consequences for survivors and their communities. These consequences can be classified in four categories, namely social, psychological, medical and economic consequences. 

Social consequences of CRSV may include the rejection of the female victim by her own family, her husband and her community. The raped woman is considered as impure: for example, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a raped woman is often considered as unworthy of respect in her community. Rape is taboo – but while taboo is sometimes perceived as needed to preserve societal welfare, in the context of CRSV, it rather appears as a powerful tool of domination of men over women.

In many societies, raped unmarried women can forget the idea of getting married one day. Especially when a child is born from a rape committed by an enemy group, the mother tends to be considered as an “affiliate of the enemy,” and both the mother and the child are highly stigmatized. To avoid stigma, women and their children often have to flee from their homes. Women in this situation are then alone to take care of a child they did not necessarily want to have, and to meet the family’s financial needs. The economic consequences of rape tend to bury women in poverty. Also, ostracized young victims usually quit school. In addition to rejection, as explained in the work of a University of Montreal PhD student, raped women can notably face depression and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, which may drive them to suicide. Last but not least, CRSV threatens the victims’ physical integrity: in addition to the physical violence inherent to it, it can also infect women and children born of rape with HIV or other sexually transmissible diseases. Furthermore, in places where abortion is not accessible, women can resort to illegal and clandestine abortion threating their lives. Lots of women lack resources to receive proper medical treatment or surgery or suffer from the lack of medical structures in some remote areas. 

Conflict-related sexual violence can result in a highly traumatized population. This victimization tends to modify social relationships, pervert the community dynamics and even cause intergenerational trauma.

II. …allows to better respond to their specific needs…

Having a look to CRSV consequences is useful to provide a better response to victims’ needs. Professor Jo-Anne Wemmers, in her book entitled Victimology: A Canadian Perspective (2017), explains that some similarities exist between the fundamental needs of human beings and those of victims. The first are illustrated by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as illustrated below. This pyramid, created in 1940, exposes the hierarchy of human needs and should be read from the bottom up. The transition from one step to another requires the entire fulfillment of the need below.

Source: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

If Professor Jo-Anne Wemmers mostly supports Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when it comes to assessing victims’ needs, she prefers to summarize the range of their needs as falling into these five categories: medical needs, financial needs, need for protection, need for support in order to help them deal with the psychological effects of their victimization, and need for recognition and respect in the criminal justice system. A comparison between these two pyramids shows us that victims of crimes have specific needs and concerns compared to “un-injured” human beings.

The United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, in its last Annual Report also shares a similar approach. The report mentions that survivors often require immediate life-saving health care, including comprehensive clinical management of rape, and medication to prevent sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies. Survivors may also require life-saving psychosocial support to recover from the psychological and social impacts of conflict-related sexual violence. 

Applying this framework to CRSV victims leads to think that the importance of fulfilling their needs of safety and security cannot be overstated. On the one hand, for victims of sexual violence, feelings of security, serenity and trust are key for them to be able to speak out about what they experienced. On the other hand, a context of armed conflict tends to lower the victims’ feeling of security, making them even more vulnerable and less likely to have access to relevant services. 

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To read the second part of the piece, click here: Conflict-related sexual violence: consequences and needs of female victims (part 2).

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This blogpost and the author’s attendance to the 18th Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court are supported by the Canadian Partnership for International Justice and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Conflict-related sexual violence: what are we talking about? (Part 2)

/ Morgane Greco / 3 Comments

This post is a continuation of “Conflict-related sexual violence: what are we talking about? (Part 1),” posted yesterday morning.

III. …and took time to be prosecuted as a crime against humanity and a war crime.

For centuries, CRSV crimes did not preoccupy international tribunals. While sexual violence had been committed during World Wars I and II, impunity for such crimes was considered as normal before the Nuremberg or Tokyo tribunals. Rape was assimilated to bad treatments committed against civilians, and sexual violence in conflict was perceived as a collateral damage. If none of CRSV crimes were prosecuted at that time, it is because these crimes did not exist under international law. Pursuant to the principle of legality, developed by Cesare Beccaria in the 18th century and also known as nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege, no one can be convicted of a criminal offence in the absence of a clear and precise legal text.

The first major step in the criminalization and recognition of sexual violence in conflict was the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Common article 3 does not expressly mention rape nor other forms of sexual violence, but bans “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention holds that “women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution or any form of indecent assault.” In addition, rape is expressly mentioned in article 4§2 of Additional Protocol II of 1977, which states that outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, rape, enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault are and shall remain prohibited at any time and any place.

The NGO We ARE Not Weapons of War notes that, in 1992, the issue of the mass rape of women in former Yugoslavia came to the fore at the United Nations Security Council, which declared that the mass, organized, and systematic detention and rape of women, in particular Muslim women, persecuted in Bosnia and Herzegovina constituted “an international crime that was not to be ignored.”

A few years later, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) were the first tribunals whose Statutes explicitly included CRSV crimes. Article 5 of ICTY Statute and Article 3 of ICTR Statute included rape as a crime against humanity, alongside other crimes such as torture and enslavement. In 1998, the ICTR became the first international tribunal to consider the acts of sexual violence as constituting genocide. In its judgment against a former Rwandan mayor, Jean-Paul Akayesu, it considered rape and sexual assault to be acts of genocide insofar as they were committed with intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in part.

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Conflict-related sexual violence: what are we talking about? (Part 1)

/ Morgane Greco / 2 Comments

In the context of the author’s attendance to the 18th Assembly of State Parties to the International Criminal Court, this blogpost aims at sharing knowledge about conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and providing a preliminary understanding of the issue. It first explores the use of CRSV through history. Then, it highlights how it targets both women, girls, men and boys. Last but not least, this blogpost depicts the slow development of international tribunals’ responses to this scourge.

I. Conflict-related sexual violence is an old phenomenon…

According to the United Nations, CRSV refers to rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict. The term also encompasses trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual violence or exploitation, when committed in situations of conflict. 

The French NGO We are NOT Weapons of War stresses that sexual violence used as a weapon of war has always been present in conflict, even though its victims have long seemed invisible. This idea is also supported by Stand Speak Rise Up, a non-profit organization from Luxembourg. In its white book, we can read that sexual violence in conflict is not new and the historical roots of this phenomenon are deep: from the Viking era to the Thirty Years’ War and the Second World War, rape has been part of the “spoils of war” throughout history, a weapon of the victors and conquerors. War rape is rarely the result of uncontrolled sexual desire, but rather a way to exert power and install fear in victims and their community. 

In the 1990s, the conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda and the Great Lakes Region marked a major turning point in the use of sexual violence as a weapon to weaken and subdue vulnerable populations or to advance a political agenda. The Stand Speak Rise Up white book explains that CRSV was methodically organized and implemented in cold blood on a very large scale. Sexual violence in particular was also a tool of submission and terror at the end of the Cold War. 

Still nowadays, sexual violence can play a vital role in the political economy of terrorism, with physical and online slave markets and human trafficking enabling terrorist groups to generate revenue from the continuous abduction of women and girls. As an example, the Yezidi community in Iraq suffered and still suffers from these crimes, as the so-called Islamic State continues to target women and girls, abducting them and reducing them to sexual slavery and forced marriages. 

Perpetrators of such acts are often affiliated with States or non-State armed groups, including terrorist entities.

II. …that targeted and still targets both men, boys, women and girls…

In September 2019, during the United Nations 74th General Assembly, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict recalled that conflicts exacerbates existing gender inequalities, exposing women and girls to various forms of sexual and gendered-based violence. Women and girls, in particular, suffer sexual violence in the course of displacement, navigating their way through checkpoints and across borders without documentation, money or legal status. It is also important to note than men and boys also suffer from conflict-related sexual violence . 

Conflict-related sexual violence refers to incidents including rape, gang rape, forced nudity and other forms of inhumane and degrading treatment in a context of armed conflict. A disturbing trend is that sexual violence is increasingly perpetrated against very young children. The Secretary-General emphasized that during the Colombian civil war, that has lasted for 50 years, rebels systematically used sexual violence against the civilians, targeting women as well as their children. The Colombian Constitutional Court has recognized “a widespread, systematic and invisible practice.” It is also important to keep in mind that both men and women can be perpetrators. 

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To read more, click here: Conflict-related sexual violence: what are we talking about? (Part 2)

Malian suspect at ICC: New opportunity for accountability for sexual crimes

/ Marie Forestier / Leave a comment

After Jean-Pierre Bemba’s conviction was overturned, the new Malian case at the ICC offers an opportunity to successfully convict a suspect for sexual crimes. Focusing on a gender analysis of crimes will be essential, as gender was at the center of armed groups’ strategy.

Few women in northern Mali believed that this day would come.  One of the chiefs of the Islamic police of Timbuktu during the jihadist groups take over of the north of the country in 2012-2013 appeared before the ICC last April. The prosecution alleges that Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud is responsible for rape and sexual slavery, torture, persecution, outrages upon personal dignity, passing of unlawful sentences, and attacking religious and historical buildings.

If the charges of rape and sexual slavery are upheld after the confirmation of charges hearing planned in the fall, it will be a not-to-be-missed opportunity to secure a conviction for sexual crimes as well as to focus on the gender dimension of some international crimes. Gender was indeed at the center of the Islamist militants’ strategy to secure their grip on Timbuktu and to subjugate its inhabitants. Meanwhile, it is the first time that a suspect is appearing before the Court on the charges of persecution on gender grounds.

In the sixteen years it has been operating, the ICC has deplorably failed to convict a single accused for sexual violence. In a recent setback earlier this month, the Court acquitted the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba, of war crimes and crimes against humanity – including rape.  In two other previous instances, accused were also acquitted.

Yet, in 2014, the Office of the Prosecutor committed to better integrate a gender perspective in all its work and to improve prosecution of sexual violence.  The Al Hassane case and the context in which crimes were committed in Timbuktu offer an opportunity to demonstrate this commitment.

Al Hassan was a member of Ansar Eddine, an Islamist group seeking to impose Islamic law across the country. Alongside Tuareg rebels and other jihadist groups including Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, they launched an offensive on northern Mali and took control of Timbutku between April 2012 and January 2013.

During this period, Islamist armed groups imposed a strict application of Sharia law. Men and women were not allowed to talk to each other outside of their families, music was forbidden, and shopkeepers were arrested and tortured for possessing tobacco. Jihadists imposed cruel punishments including public flogging and amputation. While these practices and destruction of mausoleums have caught the world’s attention, sexual crimes have been kept secret because of the stigma and the cultural taboo attached to them.

Women of Timbuktu were sexually harassed, forcibly married and raped. Women who were not fully covered were commonly harassed and beaten on the street by members of the Islamic Police or the so-called morality police, the Hisbah. They chased and arrested people considered not in compliance with Sharia law. During their detention at the police station, women were routinely tortured, sexually abused and in some cases raped.  Armed men controlling the city also kidnapped women after allegedly “marrying” them, detained them in their homes or abandoned houses to rape them repeatedly, and sometimes gang raped them.

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