Gender Stereotypes and Ignored Dimensions of Sexual Violence in Conflict

Several parts of this post come from two previous posts published on the University of Essex Human Rights Centre Blog, entitled ‘What about the Men? – The Silence on Male Victims of Sexual Violence in Conflict’ and ‘Women – the Ignored Perpetrators of Sexual Violence in Conflict ‘.

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.

In 2014, the Kosovo parliament also amended its ‘Law on the Status and the Rights of the Martyrs, Invalids, Veterans, Members of Kosova Liberation Army, Civilian Victims of War and their Families’, to include sexual violence victims. This means that victims of sexual violence victims can have access to reparations. The amended law states that a victim of sexual violence is a ‘person who survived sexual abuse and rape’ during the war. Clearly this is a gender-neutral definition of a victim.

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.