PO377 Ethnic Conflict and Political Violence

1. PO377 Ethnic Conflict and Political Violence Week 12: Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict

2. Lecture Outline • Defining Sexual Violence • Issues with Defining Sexual Violence • Background • Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict • Essentialist explanations for sexual violence • Early feminist (essentialist??) explanations for sexual violence • Instrumentalist explanations for sexual violence • Constructivist explanations for sexual violence • Rape as the product of intersections between gender and ethnicity? • What about male victims? • Rwandan Case Study: Intersections between ethnicity and gender in sexual violence • Wartime Sexual Violence and International Law • Summary

3. Defining Sexual Violence • Rape (involving some kind of penetration) is only one of several forms of sexual violence. • The ICTR and ICTY define sexual violence as ‘any act of a sexual nature which is committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive ... not limited to physical invasion of the human body, and may include acts which do not involve penetration or even physical contact’. • Acts of sexual violence include rape, forced marriage, being forced to parade naked, enforced prostitution, enforced sterilisation, enforced impregnation, sexual mutilation, enforced masturbation, forcing people to perform sexual acts on others, and more.

4. Issues with Defining Sexual Violence • Despite the current international definition of sexual violence (in the context of war), what is conceptualised as sexual violence in local contexts is subject to broader socio-cultural understandings. • Both men and women (and children) can become victims and perpetrators of sexual violence, which is acknowledged in international law, yet the dominant presumption remains that men are not victims and women are not perpetrators.

5. Background • Sexual violence features in almost every war but until the early 1990s was very under-researched. • ‘The rape of women in Bosnia-Herzegovina… appeared unique because the rape of women in history… has been rendered invisible.’ (Copelon 1995) • Increase in scale and brutality of wartime sexual crimes in twentieth century and onwards?? (Open for debate.)

6. Background (2) • Former Yugoslavia: estimated 20,000-50,000 women suffered rape and other forms of SV during the wars 1991-1995; further victims later in Kosovo. Forms of SV: mass rape; rape as part of ‘ethnic cleansing’ of areas; rape in detention (rape camps); forced impregnation; sexual torture; mutilation; forced assaults on family members; SV against men and boys (numbers unknown) as well as women and girls. • Rwanda: estimated 250,000-500,000 women and girls suffered rape and other forms of SV during the genocide, the vast majority Tutsi. Forms of SV: mass rape; sexual torture; mutilation; forced ‘marriage’; deliberate HIV infection; SV as a prelude to murder.

7. Background (3) • Sri Lanka: forms of SV: rape and other sexual assaults on Tamil women and girls by police officers and by state soldiers; rape and other sexual assaults on Tamil women and girls by members of the Indian Peacekeeping Force; sexualised torture in prison on Tamil men and boys as well as women and girls; sexual assault or forced nakedness as a prelude to murder in the final stages of the war. Most at risk: Tamil women believed to be members of the LTTE or to be associated with male members. • Northern Ireland: forms of SV: sexual harassment of local (mainly Catholic) women by British soldiers; harassment and assaults by police officers of women arrested for paramilitary offences; degrading, violent and constant strip searches of women imprisoned for paramilitary offences.

8. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict Reconsider the schools of thought we have discussed which attempt to explain ethnic violence more generally: • Primordialism: ethnic violence is rooted in tensions between different communities that result from fixed, ‘naturally’ predisposed group identities; • Instrumentalism: ethnic violence is contingent upon the behaviour of political elites who instrumentalise ethnic features for their own material interests; • Constructivism: both feelings of ethnic belonging and ethnic violence are the outcome of social interactions and depend on wider societal, political and economic circumstances.

9. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (2) Essentialist Explanations for Sexual Violence • Similar to using primordialism when explaining the causes of ethnic violence more generally, there is an essentialist explanation for sexual violence in ethnic conflict and other wars: the old (and contested) idea that sexual violence follows from uncontrollable male sexual desire and, following this, that sexual violence (specifically rape) is one of the ‘spoils of war’ for male soldiers, a reward for service. BUT…

10. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (3) Essentialist Explanations… • Psychological research shows that rape is a crime of power, not of lust; a sexual manifestation of aggression, not an aggressive manifestation of sexuality. • Biological research shows that the connection between the male hormone (testosterone) and aggression is complex (Archer and Lloyd 2002). • Rape of women as ‘spoils of war’, as reward: if rape is notabout sexual gratification this idea is problematic. Rape still occurs in conflicts where prostitution is readily available.

11. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (4) Early Feminist (Essentialist??) Explanations for Sexual Violence • Ironically, some of the early second wave feminist analysis of rape and sexual violence was so universalising that it had essentialist overtones itself, though it was certainly concerned with socialisation (and thus constructivism). • Example: Brownmiller (1976) argued that sexual violence was motivated by a universal male tendency towards indiscriminate violence against women and a masculine desire to humiliate and maintain social control: ‘a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear’.

12. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (5) Early Feminist Explanations… This analysis was also applied (then and later) to sexual violence occurring in war: • ‘Rape in war is a familiar act with a familiar excuse…. War provides men with the perfect psychological backdrop to give vent to their contempt for women’ (Brownmiller 1976, p. 32). • ‘Rape… happens during war for the same reasons it happens during peace. It is a phenomenon rooted in inequality, discrimination, male domination and aggression, misogyny and the entrenched socialization of sexual myths’ (Tompkins 1995). BUT…

13. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (6) Early Feminist Explanations… Problems with the universal, indiscriminate male violence explanation for wartime sexual violence (see Alison 2007): • Not all men rape or commit acts of sexual violence; • The extent of sexual violence in different societies and at different times varies (culturally and socially determined); • Men sometimes commit sexual violence against other men; • There are cases of women committing or directing sexual violence; • The intersection of gender with ethnicity is disregarded; • This masks the complexities of wars and doesn’t account for wartime variation (see E Wood 2006); • Wartime sexual violence is rarely indiscriminate; it’s committed by specific men against specific women (and men) and is often directed at a military objective.

14. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (7) Instrumentalist Explanations for Sexual Violence • Applying an instrumentalist explanation, sexual violence as a mass phenomenon and/or a deliberate strategy is the outcome of the manipulation of ethnic publics by political elites. • It is true that, in our case studies, political elites either publicly encouraged (Rwanda and probably former Yugoslavia) or at the very least ‘turned a blind eye’ (certainly in former Yugoslavia; arguably in Sri Lanka and even Northern Ireland) to sexual violence. • However, this does not explain ‘why ethnic publics follow leaders down paths that seem to serve elite power interests most of all’ (Fearon and Laitin 2000). It also does not seem to explain all forms of wartime sexual violence.

15. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (8) Constructivist Explanations for Sexual Violence • According to constructivist explanations, wartime sexual violence needs to be understood in the broader socio-cultural framework in which it takes place (Skjelsbæk 2001). • With regard to sexual violence in ethnic conflict specifically, we need to look at both gender power imbalances and ethnic power imbalances, and how the two intersect, to begin to see why and how sexual violence occurs and the particular forms it takes (Alison 2007).

16. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (9) Sexual violence as the product of intersections between gender and ethnicity? • During conflict multiple binary constructions take on heightened significance: ‘masculine’ vs. ‘feminine’ within a group; ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ between groups; ‘our women’ vs. ‘their women’; ‘our men’ vs. ‘their men’. ‘Our women’ = chaste, honourable, to be protected; ‘their women’ = unchaste and depraved, deserving degradation. • Militarized nationalism ‘does not simply allow men to be violent, but compels them so to be. In militarized societies… men who resist violence are suspect. Not only is their loyalty to the state [or nation] questioned, but also their loyalty to (heterosexual) masculinity’ (Price 2001).

17. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (10) Intersections between gender and ethnicity… • ‘Enemy’ women are targeted for sexual violence because of women’s importance in constructing and maintaining the ethno-national group. Roles as biological and cultural reproducers, signifiers of ethno-national difference etc. mean they’re targets in attempts to dominate or destroy a collectivity. The female body is ‘a symbolic representation of the body politic’; rape of women is ‘the symbolic rape of the body of [the] community’ (Seifert 1994). [Think about the gender and nationalism literature.] • Wartime sexual violence as communication between men; a way to emasculate the male enemy through their failure to protect ‘their’ women. Also communication from men to women (that they are powerless objects of contempt) (Tompkins 1995).

18. Theorising Sexual Violence in Ethnic Conflict (11) What about male victims? • Male to male wartime sexual violence is no less gendered or ethnicized than male to female violence; it is still about asserting power and masculinity (Alison 2007). • A victim of wartime sexual violence (female or male) ‘is victimized by feminizing both the sex and the ethnic/religious/political identity to which the victim belongs, likewise the perpetrator’s sex and ethnic/religious/political identity is empowered by becoming masculinized’ (Skjelsbæk 2001). (The soldier-rapist asserts his ‘hetero-nationality’ (Hague 1997).) • HOWEVER, patterns/forms of wartime sexual violence against men seem to be different from those against women. Think about sexual violence against men during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. What does this make us consider?

19. Rwandan Case Study: Intersections between ethnicity and gender in sexual violence • Genocidal anti-Tutsi campaign: manipulation of constructions of gender as well as ethnicity. Gender issues ‘figured prominently in the social construction of boundaries between ethnic groups and in local cultural notions of racial purity’ (Taylor 1999). • Demonization of Tutsi women as oversexualized, dangerous, arrogant, enemies of the state. Legacy of colonial ideas: ideology of ‘Hamitism’. Contributed to sexual violence against Tutsis. • 1990 ‘Hutu Ten Commandments’ included directives relating to prohibiting fraternisation with Tutsi women. • Hutu women were involved in directing and participating in genocide and in directing and inciting sexual violence against Tutsi women.

20. Wartime Sexual Violence and International Law • 1949 Geneva Conventions and 1977 Additional Protocols: sexual violence not a ‘grave breach’ but a lesser abuse. Geneva Conventions characterise sexual violence as an attack against women’s ‘honour’ rather than as a violent crime that violates bodily integrity. See UN Division for the Advancement of Women (April 1998): http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/public/w2apr98.htm • 1974 UN Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergencies and Armed Conflicts; 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Neither mention sexual violence. By the mid-1990s, all forms of violence against women were on the feminist human rights activist agenda.

21. Wartime Sexual Violence and International Law (2) Important developments followed the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda: • 1994: UN Human Rights Commission established a Special Rapporteur on violence against women. • 1994: UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women addressed sexual violence but not in the context of war. • 1995: Sub-commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities established a Special Rapporteur on the situation of systematic rape, sexual slavery and slavery-like practices during periods of armed conflict.

22. Wartime Sexual Violence and International Law (3) • ICTY recognized and tried sexual violence for first time as a distinct war crime and as a crime against humanity (http://www.un.org/icty/). • ICTR recognized rape for first time as potentially an act of genocide, under Article II(b) in Genocide Convention which included in definition of genocidal acts those causing ‘serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group’ (http://unictr.org/default.htm). • Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also recognizes sexual violence (including forced pregnancy) as a war crime and a crime against humanity. • UN Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008) demands action to end wartime sexual violence (http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N08/391/44/PDF/N0839144.pdf?OpenElement); this alternates between gender neutral language (allowing for male victims), and explicit references to protection of women and girls.

23. Summary • The aim of sexual violence against women of the ‘Other’ ethnic group can be to rip apart the fabric of society. Remembering the significance of women’s actual and symbolic roles in ethnic groups and nationalist ideologies it is clear why this is such an effective strategy. • Men are also sometimes subjected to sexual violence, designed to humiliate (feminize) the man, his masculinity and the masculinity of his ethno-national group. • The explanatory power of essentialist and instrumentalist arguments about sexual violence in ethnic conflict is limited. Constructivist explanations that address socio-cultural context and the intersections between gender and ethnicity are more productive.

24. Summary (2) • Arguments based solely on sexual violence as a product of universal patriarchal gender relations do not explain why in ethnic wars this is often targeted at women of opposing ethnic groups, not at all women indiscriminately. They also fail to explain the (less frequent) sexual violence against men. • But to argue sexual violence is simply one abuse of many committed to demoralise the enemy group does not explain why sexual violence is usually or more commonly directed at women rather than men, or why the forms it takes are different depending on whether the victims are female or male. We need an analytical approach that takes account of both gender and ethnicity.