Sexual violence in conflict has received a lot of attention
in the last couple of years. I would say this is mostly thanks to the cases prosecuted at
the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (the ICTY has a
very interesting
documentary on the
subject of its prosecution of sexual violence crimes).
Even at a national level, as has been the case in Kosovo
(where I currently live and work), wartime rape is a hot topic.
In June this year, an art installation at the sports stadium
in Pristina, Kosovo, made
headlines
around the world.
The installation, entitled
‘Thinking of You’, featured 10,000 women’s dresses, paid tribute to the many
female victims of sexual violence during the war in Kosovo in 1998-1999.
In
2014,
female politicians and women’s groups in Kosovo petitioned the UN to
investigate wartime sexual violence. It is estimated that about 20,000 women
were raped or sexually assaulted during the conflict, however there is no
reliable statistics on this and some say this number is unrealistic if one
compares the war in Kosovo (e.g. the length of the war, its intensity, and the
total number of victims) to that of Bosnia.
However, the discussion here in Kosovo about sexual violence
war victims is only centered around female victims and the groups involved in
pushing
for these victims’ rights are women’s groups such as UN Women and the Kosova
Women’s Network. The 2014 petition in Kosovo only asked that the UN investigate
sexual violence against women (and also focused only on ethnically Serb
perpetrators), and the ‘Thinking of You’ installation clearly had only female
victims in mind (being a display of dresses and all).
The same is true at the international level. In June 2014,
the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office hosted a ‘Global Summit to End
Sexual Violence in Conflict’, co-chaired by Foreign Secretary
William Hague and UN Special Envoy Angelia Jolie. The event brought together Government
representatives from over 120 countries, over 1,000 experts, faith leaders,
youth organizations and representatives of civil society and international
organizations. However, the Summit focused almost exclusively on female victims
(Angelina Jolie did mention men as
potential victims of sexual violence in conflict in a speech, but the overall tone
of the Summit was that this was a conference to end conflict-related sexual
violence against women).
Let me be clear: I am not saying that
we should not discuss female victims of sexual violence during war. Of
course we should! Women are still the majority of victims of sexual violence
crimes during conflict.
However, when victims’ advocates and the international
community only mention men in passing when talking about sexual violence in
conflict, it marginalizes and already marginalized group of victims.
The idea, both
internationally and at a national level, thus still seems to be that men are
perpetrators of sexual violence and women victims. I would therefore like
to speak in this post about two things that challenge that perception –
namely male victims of sexual violence
in conflict and also female perpetrators.
Male Victims of
Sexual Violence in Conflict
Despite the lack of attention from the international
community, victims’ organizations and advocates, men and boys have long
been targeted for sexual violence in particular and gender-specific ways that
deserve the attention of the human rights community.
The issue of
sexual
violence against men in conflict is severely and chronically under-reported.
One explanation is that male victims are often unwilling to come forward, due
to shame, guilt and fear.
If you thought
it was difficult for women in patriarchal societies to speak up about what they
have been through, imagine what it is like for men in these societies,
where by national law men might not even be able to be raped. In countries
where homosexuality is criminalized, survivors are often faced with an
assumption that they have engaged in consensual homosexual activity, and can
themselves face criminal charges.
Another factor is the
reticence of civil society to recognize that male victims even exist. In fact, in 2002 it was
reported
that out of 4,076 NGOs that focused on conflict-related and
politically-motivated sexual violence
only 3% mentioned male victims. 25% of these NGOs explicitly denied that male-on-male violence was a serious
problem.
The
lack of attention
paid to the sexual abuse of men in conflict is particularly disturbing given
the extent of the problem. In recent years sexual violence against men has been
documented
in conflicts in Argentina, Chechnya, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC), El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Kenya, Liberia, Northern Ireland,
Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Uganda, the former Yugoslavia, and many other
countries.
For example, 21% of Sri Lankan Tamil males
said they had
experienced sexual abuse while in detention, and a
study
of 6,000 concentration camp detainees in Sarajevo found that 80% of the males
had been raped. A 2010
study
in the DRC reported 23.6% of men having been subject to sexual violence, with
64.5% of the sexual violence being conflict-related.
Many activists like to point out that women are subjected to
sexual violence in ways specific to their gender, and just because they are
women. However, it is important to note that men are also targeted in
particular and gender-specific ways, just like women, and that sexual abuse
of men during armed conflict frequently touches upon issues of shame and
degradation.
Male rape does not
only include anal rape by a perpetrator or by a foreign object. Victims
may, for example, be
forced to perform
fellatio on their perpetrator or on another victim. In the
case of
Prosecutor v. Ranko Češić the defendant
admitted forcing at gunpoint two detained Muslim brothers to perform fellatio
on each other, in the presence of other people. Male victims may also be forced to rape fellow victims.
Another type of sexual violence suffered by men is that of
enforced sterilization, which largely
comprises castration and other forms of sexual mutilation. The UN Commission of
Experts
observed
that in the former Yugoslavia
“[c]astrations
are performed through crude means such as, forcing one internee to bite off
another's testicles, and tying one end of a wire to the testicles and the other
end to a motorcycle, then using the motorcycle to yank off the testicles”.
(For a gruesome example of this type of sexual violence in the war in Bosnia,
read the
judgment
in
Prosecutor v. Tadić,
(IT-94-1) at para. 206).
Other forms of sexual violence of particular prevalence are
genital violence that does not amount
to enforced sterilization, such as being hit in the testicles,
forced nudity, and enforced masturbation.
Sexual abuse of prisoners often begins with forced nudity, accompanied by
verbal threats, which adds to the humiliation.
In Kosovo, the most common way of sexually humiliating men was to force
them to strip naked in public. Forced nudity was also
reported
in relation to the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, where male prisoners
were also forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped.
Despite the grave and widespread nature of sexual violence
against men and boys, there is still a lot of reluctance to acknowledge the
extent of the problem and to properly address the issue. As I mentioned above,
many women’s organizations and NGOs are reluctant to bring up male victims, perhaps out of fear that it will take some of the attention away from female victims, who had to fight so long for recognition.
Furthermore, the international instruments that contain the most comprehensive
and meaningful definitions of sexual violence prima facie exclude men, reflecting and embedding the assumption
that sexual violence is a phenomenon relevant only to women and girls. ‘Gender-based
violence’ is too often associated exclusively with violence against women,
and when it is acknowledged that men are also victims of sexual violence it
is most often only mentioned in passing.
Female
Perpetrators of Sexual Violence
While I have long known about the issue of male victims
I discovered the topic of female perpetrators rather recently, while doing
research
for a presentation on sexual violence in conflict. And I have to admit that,
even though I consider myself very open-minded about the issue of sexual
violence,
I found the idea of women committing sexual violence crimes in a
conflict context extremely shocking and disturbing.
If the issue of male victims of sexual violence in conflict
is often sidelined, the issue of female perpetrators is almost completely
ignored altogether, both in international discourse about sexual violence in
conflict and in academic research.
Nevertheless data shows that women do acts as perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict.
In a
study
from 2010,
41% of female victims of sexual violence in the DRC, and 10% of male victims, reported they were victimized by
female perpetrators. Furthermore, women have reportedly committed acts of
sexual violence in conflicts around the world, such as
Liberia, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland
and Sri Lanka.
Women commit and participate in the commission
of sexual violence in a number of ways, including as direct perpetrators. In Sierra Leone, female combatants
in the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)
located potential victims, and restrained them when they were raped. Women also
raped other women with various foreign objects, such as bottles or sticks.
In other
instances women may commit sexual violence although as an indirect perpetrator.
Rwanda’s former Minister for Family and Women Affairs,
Pauline Nyiramasuhuko,
is the first, and only, woman convicted by an international tribunal for rape.
Up to half a million women were raped during the Rwandan genocide according to
the UN, and Nyiramasuhuko ordered women and girls to be raped.
Why is
there such resistance to address the issue of women as perpetrators of sexual
violence in conflict? What is it about it that makes us so uncomfortable? After
all, international law provides a definition of rape and sexual violence where
men and women can be both victims and perpetrators. When looking into these questions, it often becomes an issue of presumptions and stereotypes around gender and the nature of 'male' and 'female' behavior.
The
argument is often made that the presence
of women in combat units will lower the tendency to abuse non-combatants,
particularly non-combatant women. This of course is in line with stereotypical
assumptions about gender that makes men into powerful warriors and women into
peaceful creatures, or into victims. It reflects the widely held belief that women are nurturing and much less violent than
men, even when involved in armed groups, and often assumes female
combatants to be cooks, dependents etc., but not fighters
. Thus, women are considered very
unlikely to commit rape and sexual violence. This perspective has been used
to argue for more women in peacekeeping operations, since women would have a
‘civilizing effect’ on their male counterparts.
However, if
we look at the reality of the situation these assumptions seems not only
extremely archaic in their view on gender and gender roles, but also completely
incorrect.
For
example, in the conflict in Sierra Leone, rape was endemic with most rapes reportedly committed by the RUF (85.6%),
despite the fact that the RUF consisted of 24%
female fighters (compared to under 10% for other armed groups). 25% of the
gang rapes were committed by mixed male/female groups and women participated in
a quarter of the reported gang rapes.
There was
also no evidence that either male of female perpetrators felt differently about shame regarding sexual violence crimes. The male perpetrators
did not feel shame committing these crimes in front of the female fighters, and
the female perpetrators felt that the shame was the victims', just like the male perpetrators did.
There is
thus little to suggest that women are by nature less prone to sexual violence
than men, or that their presence in armed groups would have a calming effect on
the male fighters. In fact, in the conflict in Sierra Leone, women were rumoured to be particularly vicious
fighters and had a reputation for encouraging excessive violence. Studies
have shown the same in armed groups, such as the IRA in Northern Ireland and
the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
Another
argument is sometimes made that the
presence of women in armed groups diminishes the ‘need’ for the rape of
non-combatants. This argument is obviously based on the assumption that rape and sexual violence
has to do with sexual gratification. It suggests that groups with more
female fighters would be less likely to commit rape, and that perpetrators of
sexual violence would be almost all male, regardless of the number of women in
the group.
However, as
seen above, the RUF consisted of a large number of female fighters, which did
not seem to affect the prevalence of rape of female non-combatants, or the
gender of the perpetrator. Furthermore, it was common for female fighters in
the RUF to be raped when they first joined, and 70% of the reported cases of
sexual slavery were committed by the RUF. This indicates that the presence of
women does little to diminish the ‘need’ for rape of non-combatants.
This
argument, which rests on the assumption about sexual gratification, is also problematic since the likelihood that every male in the armed forces would be sexually satisfied by a willing female participant is highly unlikely. Also, the idea that it's a woman's job to sexually satisfy her colleagues if she's part of the military is perpetrating rape culture. Furthermore, this argument cannot account for the form of sexual violence occurring during conflict, and the persistence of rape with foreign objects.
Clearly gender stereotypes and preconceived notions about
the true nature of men and women make us blind to reality; that women also
commit sexual violence crimes.
Research has shown that women can be, and are, perpetrators
of sexual violence, just as well as men. Women are subject to similar pressures
from within armed groups and, facing similar circumstances, should be expected
to commit similar crimes. Furthermore, women clearly commit acts sexual
violence in conflict both as direct and indirect perpetrators. It is obviously
wrong to take the simplistic view of men as perpetrator and women as victims of
men’s violence.
Gendered assumptions about the rules of women as combatants
and perpetrators of sexual violence has serious policy consequences and have
resulted in these women being largely excluded from various types of
post-conflict policy processes that deal with perpetrators of sexual violence.
If we are serious about
addressing the issue of sexual violence in conflict we not only need to
acknowledge the widespread prevalence of male victims of sexual violence, but
also that of female perpetrators of these crimes.
