Ending Impunity for Gender Crimes under the International Criminal Court

[T]hey brought her fourteen-year-old son and forced him to rape her. . .On [another] occasion, I was raped with a gun by one of the three men. . .in the room. . . . Others stood watching. Some spat on us. They were raping me, the mother and her daughter at the same time. Sometimes you had to accept ten men, sometimes three. . . . I felt I wanted to die. .
. .
The Serbs said to us, "Why aren't you pregnant?". . . . I think they wanted to know who was pregnant in case anyone was hiding it. They wanted women to have children to stigmatize us forever. The child is a reminder of what happened.
- Anonymous, Bosnia

Introduction

For millennia, women and girls have suffered rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy and other brutal forms of sexual and gender violence during armed conflict. Like other forms of war related brutality, such violence is often sanctioned, tolerated or ordered by military, paramilitary or other governmental actors. Although the international community has made some strides in outlawing and punishing atrocities committed during armed conflict through the development of international humanitarian law, gender-based violence has been consistently marginalized or dismissed as a natural consequence of war.

The international community's conclusion of a treaty in July 1998 to create a permanent International Criminal Court (the ICC or the Court) to investigate and punish genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in circumstances in which national authorities fail to do so was indeed an important step forward for humankind. Women's rights activists viewed the negotiations for the ICC as an historic opportunity to address the failures of earlier international treaties and tribunals to properly delineate, investigate, and prosecute wartime violence against women. Building on their successes in drawing attention to atrocities suffered by women in recent conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda, women's rights advocates ensured that history did not pass women by yet again. The recognition that rape and other forms of sexual violence are among the most serious crimes under international humanitarian law was one of many historic accomplishments of the July 1998 United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries that negotiated the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). The Rome Statute's gender provisions are an encouraging example of how the development of the international women's rights movement is positively impacting international human rights and humanitarian law despite the strong influence of conservative political forces.

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