Gender-Based Terrorism

Gender-Based Terrorism Involving Sexual Violence

Gender-based terrorism involving sexual violence frequently occurs within the context of armed conflict or civil unrest. The mass raping of civilian women during war, pervasive across time and cultures, is a leading example. War rape has historically been constructed as an unfortunate but normal part of war, as suggested, for instance, in references to the “looting and raping” by victorious soldiers, or the expression, “to the victor goes the spoils.” Some war rape is opportunistic, and victims are randomly selected. However, war rape is often purposive and systematic, intended to cause terror and chaos among civilian populations in war zones. The strategy often involves raping the enemy's women in order to shame and humiliate enemy men (the target audience), and thus demoralize their war effort. As part of a genocidal strategy, mass rape may also entail the extermination of the enemy's ethnic “purity” through impregnation of their women.

In the 1990s, reports of mass raping in the Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda armed conflicts gained international attention. As part of the state-sponsored genocide—also referred to as “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia—thousands of women were rounded up and imprisoned in make-shift camps, where, during vicious interrogations, they were gang-raped and serially raped, then often [Page 228]murdered. In such camps, as well as in their homes and villages, some 20,000 to 50,000 mainly Muslim and Croatian women were raped over the course of this four-year war, part of a destabilizing terror strategy implemented by the Serbian army and affiliated paramilitaries. Similarly, an estimated 250,000 Rwandan women were raped during the state-supported genocide carried out by Rwandan Hutus. A strategy of ethnic cleansing by impregnation was indicated in both cases. Criminal tribunals seeking justice for both the Rwandan and former Yugoslavia war atrocities have formally identified rape as a war crime.

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