Browsing by Subject "wartime rape"

Historically, wartime rape has largely been ignored as a ‘women’s issue’ in international law and condoned as something that ‘just happens’ in war. In the 1990s, however, the sexual violence perpetrated in the conflicts in Yugoslavia and Rwanda awoke the international community to condemn the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. This paper will examine the nature of wartime rape, especially so-called ‘tactical’ rape, and the international law applicable to it. It will be argued that the law remains inadequate, the approach taken is too narrow, and that the harm of rape is mischaracterised in its emphasis on the harm done to the community, carrying with it a number of problematic implications related to both gender and ethnicity. Specifically, the paper advances the argument that the problematic notion of ‘honour’ remains implicit in the law today.