Sexual Violence in Conflict: Rape as a Deliberate War Weapon
Written By: Sara Tatiana
During the night of June 5 to June 6 1944, American soldiers arrived in Normandy, leading to the liberation of France. In the collective memory, Americans are considered heroes, but a part of the truth is forgotten and rarely, if ever, mentioned: upon arrival, American soldiers raped thousands of French women. These rapes are among the most heinous crimes and acts of violence committed by Allied troops on the civilian population they were tasked with liberating. This phenomenon is attested by various evidence: birth statistics showing a peak in the number of single mothers in France after the passage of American soldiers, medical statistics giving accounts of injuries linked to rape, but also a letter from the American army sent to Ms. Lucienne B., one of the victims of these rapes, where The Commanding General expresses his “sincere regret that this unfortunate incident occurred, and that members of the American troops could be guilty of such shameful conduct.”
As is often the case when it comes to sexual violence inflicted on women, this event is forgotten and minimized, considered as collateral damage by those who study conflicts. The study of conflicts refers to the analysis of the causes, dynamics, impacts and resolutions of clashes between different actors, whether armed, political, economic or social conflicts. This includes understanding the internal and external factors that lead to conflict, the strategies employed by belligerents, and the effects of conflict on populations. Conflict studies often lack a gendered perspective, leading to the invisibilization of women. This perspective refers to the analytical approach taking into account differences and inequalities between genders. This involves considering how gender power relations influence and are influenced by various social, economic, political and cultural phenomenons. Applied in conflict analysis, this perspective examines how conflicts affect men and women differently, and how gender dynamics can influence the origins, developments and resolutions of conflicts. Adopting a gendered perspective in conflicts studies means no longer minimizing sexual violence inflicted on women. We will therefore answer this question:
How is the rape of women during conflicts a war weapon and not collateral damage?
We will begin by looking at why sexual violence inflicted on women is often ignored and considered as collateral damage, then we will see how rape is a war weapon, then in the last part we will try to understand why we need gendered perspective in conflict studies.
First, it is important to understand why the rape of women is often considered as collateral damage, starting by examining the lack of gendered perspective of the results of conflicts, then by how rape is made invisible due to the discrimination that women suffer. The rape of women is very often defined and considered as collateral damage, or as victims having been caused accidentally. Conflict assessments contribute to this approach: in fact, they often focus on the raw figures of dead, injured and missing, without distinction of gender. This quantitative approach tends to make the specific violence suffered by women invisible. For example, the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 saw between 20,000 and 80,000 women and children raped by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. If the massacres and destruction are widely documented, sexual violence, although massive, is often relegated to the background. Similarly, in Algeria, thousands of women suffered from systematic rape and sexist violence such as their unveiling and the constant sexualization of Muslim women by the French government. But these atrocities are also drowned out in the general statistics of dead and injured. This omission is a form of structural violence that perpetuates ignorance and silence around sexual violence and reflects an androcentric approach to conflict, so an approach consisting of viewing the world solely or mostly from a male perspective, which therefore ignores women's specific experiences such as rape.
Rape is not often defined as a gendered crime, yet the statistics are clear: according to the US Department of Justice, 91% of rape victims are women and 99% of rapists are men. Even if the roles can occasionally be reversed, we can observe an almost systematic dynamic of rapist man and raped woman. Globally, one in three women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life, and these numbers rise significantly in times of conflict. Susan Brownmiller, an American journalist and author, says that rape is nothing more than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men maintain all women in fear, whether committed in peacetime or wartime.
Sexual violence is not isolated incidents or acts of opportunistic violence but systematic gendered crimes, which during conflicts are often tools of domination and control exercised by military forces. The lack of official recognition of sexual violence in war reports has serious consequences, preventing the implementation of specific measures to protect women and punish the guilty. It also contributes to the stigmatization of victims and maintains a vicious circle where sexual violence remains unpunished, encouraged by silence and inaction, both during the conflict and after.
Historically, rape is not taken seriously, and today is no better . The taboo surrounding rape and the stigmatization of victims contribute to this invisibility, as does misogyny, which discredits the words of women. In many cultures, raped women are seen as "impure" or "dishonored", which adds to their trauma. This forced silence perpetuates the violence, because the attackers know they are unlikely to be reported. In times of war, this dynamic is exacerbated, as support structures are often non-existent or destroyed. Misogyny and racism play a crucial role in minimizing sexual violence: women of color and disadvantaged women are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence, but their voices are often ignored. For example, black women in the US have historically been more often victims of sexual violence, but these crimes have been largely ignored by the justice system. Similarly, Indigenous women in Canada and Australia experience disproportionate rates of sexual violence, but their complaints are not taken seriously. We can therefore clearly see that rape is a targeted crime, with a gendered but also racial perspective.
We will now focus on the dimension of rape as a war weapon, starting with its role as a systematic and planned tool used for ethnic cleansing, then its use for sexual slavery in times of conflict as well than the other less known sexual violence that results from it.
Rape in war is systematic and often planned. It is used as a tool of violence to accomplish the goals of war, genocide, or ethnic cleansing. For example, in the case of Uyghurs in China, forced sterilizations and rape are reported in re-education camps. Tursunay Ziyawudun, A 42-year-old woman, testified to the sexual violence she suffered from during the nine months she spent in a detention camp in China. She evoked electroshocks in her private parts, repeated rapes, by two or three men at a time. The testimony of another Uighur woman, Gulzira Auelkhan, confirms the idea of systematic rape on Uyghur women. She says she was forced to “prepare” young girls by stripping them naked then handcuffing them.
These practices aim to weaken the Uighur community and reduce its population.
During Ethiopia's Tigray War, thousands of women were victims of sexual and gender-based violence, used as a method of ethnic cleansing. Tigray regional authorities estimate the number of victims of sexual abuse at 120,000. Rape and sexual violence were deliberately carried out to terrorize and destabilize the population. Tigrayan soldiers raped dozens of women and girls, often in their own houses, after forcing them to give them food and cook for them. The sexual violence was accompanied by shocking levels of cruelty, including beatings, death threats and ethnic insults. Of the 30 victims interviewed by Amnesty International, 14 said they had been gang raped by multiple Tigrayan soldiers, sometimes in front of their children. Seven of the victims were children. Lucy, a 14-year-old girl, and her mother were both raped by Tigrayan fighters in their home in Did-Bahr. The young girl recalls : “I was at home with my mother and grandmother when two young men armed with guns arrived at our house in the morning, around 11 a.m. One of them wore a military uniform and the other wore civilian clothes. They spoke a mixture of Tigrinya and a little Amharic. They said: “Our families have been raped, now it’s our turn to rape you. “One of them raped me in the yard, while the other took care of my mother inside the house. My mother has been very ill since then, very depressed and desperate. We don't talk about what happened, that's impossible. »
These rapes used for ethnic cleansing are similar to those that happened during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Rape was systematically used as a weapon at the heart of the Tutsi genocide. During this period, sexual violence followed orders. They were not only tolerated but controlled and ordered by the hierarchy. Marie-Odile Godard shows us how, in Rwanda, the cruelty that accompanied sexual violence particularly relied on the taboos that were at the heart of society, turning culture against itself. Insults like "Cut off your mum’s tits" or " sleep with your mum" were realized, put into action:
"It is through the rise of words, proverbs, insults like enunciation of the taboos that the first cruelty appeared”, says Marie Odile Godard. Thus, during this genocide, Tutsi women were disemboweled, the baby torn from the maternal body and exposed for all to see. Women were raped with crucifixes and stakes. Nothing was hidden, everything was exposed.
Another example is the genocide of the Yazidis by the Islamic State. Yazidis, considered as “religious infidels” by the Islamic State, have seen thousands of women and girls captured and reduced to sexual slavery. Nadia Murad, winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, spent 11 months in the hands of DAESH in Mosul, Iraq. Like many Yazidi women, she was reduced to sexual slavery before being able to escape.
In times of conflict, sexual slavery is a common phenomenon. For example, Japan enslaved thousands of “comfort” women during World War II. These women, often minors, were kidnapped and forced to work in military brothels, where they lived in appalling conditions and were often executed after being tortured.
Here are some testimonies from victims:
“The Chief of the village was threatened by the Japanese soldiers and he ordered us to work for the Japanese. We would be visited by Japanese soldiers who forced us to have sex. There were many men, they exchanged one another. In one night it could have been 10 or more. I could not walk properly and my abdomen felt like I would die. We were treated like animals. I slept like a dead person.”
“I couldn’t bear the torment at the comfort station. I tried to commit suicide three times by drinking antiseptic, but I didn’t die. I stayed alive to come back to see my grandma.”
“Upon return to Taiwan, my uncle cursed me: “Our family can’t have whores.” So I had to leave home again.”
“It is so amazing that after the war, men came back with all these medals on their chest and all women came back with were these scars.”
“When the war was over we had no counselling, we were too ashamed to talk about it anyway. We just had to get on with our lives as if nothing had happened, that was really hard because for us the war never ended because the shame continued. You carry all the shame, you feel dirty, you feel sorry, you feel different, you feel unworthy, they took away my youth, my possessions, my dignity. “
Survivors of this system have long been silenced, and their suffering has only been recognized belatedly, after decades of struggles for justice. In 2021 only, twelve of these women were recognized as victims of “mental harm” by the Seoul court.
Lesser-known forms of sexual violence persist, such as genital mutilation or the use of pornography to humiliate and dehumanize women. Genital mutilation of children and women is another form of sexual violence that persists in times of war, used to control and oppress women. Concerning pornography, we notice a spike in the word “Ukrainian” searched on pornographic sites after the invasion by Russia, and an identical phenomenon with the word “Palestinian” after October 7. This phenomenon shows us how these acts of sexual violence against women are consumed, perpetuated and normalized by men and society. We have therefore seen how rape is used as a war weapon against women, and we will now focus on the need to recognize the systemic and gendered dimension of the rape of women in times of conflict.
To see why the gendered perspective during conflict analyzes is necessary, we will first observe the consequences of the lack of this perspective during the analysis and study of conflicts, then how the gendered perspective could improve things. Rape has been recognized as an official war crime since 1919, and was recognized as a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 1993. The first case of rape prosecuted as a war crime by The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1998 marked an important turning point. However, much remains to be done to take into account the systemic and gendered dimension of the rape of women in times of conflict. The consequences of sexual violence in times of war are obviously multiple and lasting for the victims, but there are also consequences which seem less obvious: the consequences on the management of conflicts and genocides. The lack of a gendered perspective in conflict analysis affects the way in which genocidal intentions are understood, and therefore affects the chances of identifying genocide risks. To determine whether there is a “serious risk” of genocide, the United Nations and various states have created risk assessment plans. However, most of them do not recognize the gendered dimension of crimes. In addition, the United Nations analysis plan, which identifies risk factors and indicators associated with crimes against humanity and genocide, only includes two gender-related indicators, which include women and children without differentiation. . There is therefore a notable gap in ensuring that sex and gender-based crimes are part of the genocide risk assessment. The situation in Tigray, Ethiopia highlights the dangers of ignoring gender-based crimes in risk assessments. In Tigray, reports of widespread and systematic rape were accompanied by testimonies from survivors saying these acts were carried out with the aim of ethnic cleansing. However, the international community has not recognized the indicators of genocidal intent associated with these acts. The vast majority of UN and state declarations have not mentioned sexual violence as an indicator of genocide risk.
We notice a lack of political will to integrate a gender perspective. But then, how can we take the gender perspective into account to improve things? States and international organizations can take certain steps to fill these gaps. First of all, it is necessary to improve the representation of women within governments and international institutions, particularly the judiciary. In this regard, it is important that women are represented at all levels and particularly in decision-making spaces. Second, gender competence should be required. States and international organizations should ensure that their personnel receive adequate training and education in this regard. Additionally, States and UN agencies should undertake a thorough review of their genocide risk management plans and tools to ensure that they appropriately take into account misogynistic crimes and gender perspectives. . Finally, it is necessary to severely punish misogyny and no longer normalize it, both in times of peace and in times of war. The fight against sexual violence in times of conflict is inseparable from the fight for women's liberation.
In conclusion, it is imperative to recognize the rape of women in war not as collateral damage, but as a deliberate and systematic weapon of war. Adopting a gendered perspective in the study of conflicts would not only make it possible to better understand the dynamics of war, but also to prevent sexual violence. It is crucial to integrate this dimension into analyzes and assessments of genocide risks as well as to recognize and combat structural misogyny, both in times of peace and in times of war.
Continuing this work, it would also be relevant to focus on the role of women as fighters and executioners during conflicts.
SOURCES :
https://www.cairn.info/revue-vingtieme-siecle-revue-d-histoire-2002-3-page-109.htm
https://www.cairn.info/revue-cahiers-de-psychologie-clinique-2015-2-page-165.htm?ref=doi
https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/asa220022006en.pdf
