GENDER AND GENOCIDE: Rape and the Destruction of a People

States and the international community have generally failed to seriously address rape in conflict situations, including those occurring within genocide, where women are raped by the thousands. Feminist analysis of rape and genocide has not only made an important contribution to studies on wartime rape and genocide, but also to the development of international laws which made possible the prosecutions of state and nonstate actors. Nevertheless, subsequent studies continue to raise critical questions concerning the role of gender in genocide. Among the issues debated is whether sexual violence inflicted on a group in wartime genocide constitutes genocide or is it instead, a war crime indirectly related to genocide. This post discusses how feminist analysis has responded to this issue. It will begin by a brief description of relevant international laws. 

 

 Legal Responses to Rape in Genocide

Analyses on genocide began after the atrocities of World War II and were mostly based on what have occurred during the Holocaust. The term genocide was first coined by Raphael Lemkin, a legal scholar, following the Holocaust. As a result of Lemkin’s advocacy, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was drafted in 1948 (Ashraph, 2017). Article II of the Convention defined genocide as an intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national ethnic, racial or religious group, through acts including killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. The convention did not explicitly state rape as genocide and there were no prosecutions of rape in the Nuremburg trials (Russell-Brown, 2003: 359–361). In contrast, the War Crimes Tribunal in Tokyo was the first milestone in terms of the indictment of wartime rape although unrelated to genocide. The Tokyo Charter, which was also established following World War II, included the act of rape as a violation of customs and convention of war and some Japanese military and civilian officers were found guilty of rape (Askin 2003: 300; Russell-Brown, 2003: 360).

Furthermore, none of the Geneva Conventions specifically list rape as a crime against humanity or grave breach, although wartime rape has been interpreted as such by the international community. To enforce the recognition of rape as crime against humanity, the international tribunals of Yugoslavia (1993) and Rwanda (1995) used as precedent the Control Council Law Number 10 charter for wartime crimes adopted in German courts after the Second World War, which included rape in the list of crimes against humanity. However, rape as a means of ethnic cleansing through the impregnation of Muslim and Croatian women and girls in Bosnia-Herzegovina was considered as a crime against humanity but failed to be defined as genocide in the tribunals of Yugoslavia (Joeden-Forgery, 2012: 101–102). It is the Rwandan Tribunal which has now set the precedent for rape as genocide by proving that rape was a tool used and part of a strategy to destroy the Tutsi community (Russell-Brown, 2003: 352; Joeden-Forgery, 2012: 89).

Early Feminist Inquiries on Genocide

Gender stereotypical roles lay the foundation for the sexual violence that become an effective tool of genocide. As in most societies women are considered men’s property, raping women from the enemy’s side is analogous to taking their valuables. Invading women’s body is equal to invading their enemy’s territory. In patriarchal culture women are typically under the protection of men and women’s chastity is related to the family’s honor. In this culture, women’s rape and sexual enslavement result in men’s powerlessness, while women become the shame of the community. This view developed the basis for feminist analysis in the role of gender and sexual violence in genocide. In the context of genocide, feminist scholars argue that women commonly become the target of rape and other acts of sexual violence because it can be used as a means to terrorize the enemy, disempower men of the enemy, as well as break families and weaken social cohesion in the enemy’s group, ultimately destroying the community.

 

When studies of genocide which occurred during the Holocaust began, scholars in general took a universal approach. Jewish people as a race were seen as being the target of mass killing. When feminist inquiries raised the fact about the rape and the biological-based human rights violations that Jewish women experienced, such as reproductive experiments and forced sterilization, it was not generally welcomed by the academia. There were concerns that by raising such issues, it would mean putting gender over race, and by doing so, it will somehow reduce the significance of the atrocity–the annihilation of the Jewish people (Rafter and Bell, n.d.:3–4).

However, early feminist inquiries into the genocide of the Holocaust and other atrocities of World War II developed into a body of theory that not only revisited the notion of women as a weapon of war in mass killings, but one that proclaimed genocide is gendered.

Feminist Analysis of Genocide

It was not until Susan Brownmiller’s ground breaking book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975)–which opened the discussion on rape during war time and genocide–that the issue of rape came to the forefront. During the following decade, feminist analysis of genocide focused heavily on women victims. As a response, in her 1985 book Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection, Mary Anne Warren used the term gendercide to coin the gender neutrality in the gender analysis of genocide, where both men and women can be specific victims of genocide. Although Warren may point out the lack of attention to male experience in genocide, still she confirms the general feminist viewpoint that genocide is gendered and that women and men experience genocide differently.

"women commonly become the target of rape and other acts of sexual violence because it can be used as a means to terrorize the enemy, disempower men of the enemy, as well as break families and weaken social cohesion in the enemy’s group, ultimately destroying the community."

In the 1990’s, following the atrocities in the Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda armed conflicts, a new discourse on genocidal rape emerged, contributing to important changes in International Law. Catharine MacKinnon, who was notably influential in developing the case of genocidal rape during that decade, sees rape against women in genocide as an attack carried out as part of strategies to destroy a group. It is used as a tool to shame the enemy, to disintegrate the victim’s community, to make women leave their land and never return (Mackinnon, 1993).

Thus, rape committed as part of genocide is a policy campaign carried out to achieve the ultimate goal of annihilation. This is seen in the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims through forced impregnation and the release of male HIVAIDS patients in order for them to rape Tutsi women of Rwanda (Russell-Brown, 2003: 354–355). 

However, the notion of rape as an act of genocide did not sit well with all feminist scholars. Some, such as Rhonda Copelon, feared that by acknowledging genocidal rape, rape as a gender-based violence in armed conflict will be obscured, undermining the fact that women are raped because they are women. The gender aspect of rape will then be reduced to issues concerning ethnicity. On the other hand, scholars such as MacKinnon and Sherrie L. Russell-Brown acknowledge the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity; that in armed conflict, women are raped because they are part of a group which another group seeks to destroy (Russell-Brown, 2003: 365). 

Recognizing this intersection does not have to reduce the fact that women are attacked or are more vulnerable to sexual violence because they are women. On the contrary; first, the intersection puts women into the sociological context of their community, and second, it strengthens the argument that ethnicity, class, caste, etc., are gendered. As seen in the Rwandan genocide, social and class hierarchy played a major part in the conflict. Furthermore, it was by adopting intersectionality into the framework of genocide that the fact rape was employed as an integral part of genocide made its course into international law.

More Responses to Feminist Analysis of Genocide

Analyses on gender and genocide was criticized for its specific focus on women victims and survivors. Some scholars such as Adam Jones (2008), wanted to put the gender neutral meaning of gender back into the term “gender”, which means acknowledging the fact that men are also victims of gender-specific acts of genocide. For example, male gender selection is common in genocide. In cases such as the Holocaust, the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, and the Yazidi genocide, men and boys within the combatant age group were picked out and killed, making this a male-specific experience. In fact, young educated rich Tutsi men were hunted down by the Hutus in the Rwandan genocide. The Tribunal of Yugoslavia also received reports of rape and other sexual violence experienced by men in Bosnian and Serbian detention (Ashraph, 2017).  

Feminist analysis of genocide was also criticized for its lack of acknowledgement of women as perpetrators or supporters of mass violence (Joeden-Forgery, 2012: 90) This is found in the case of Nazi concentration camps, where female SS officers were involved in the mass killings of Jews. A more recent case is the Rwandan genocide where for the first time, a woman, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, former Minister for Family and Women’s Development, was indicted before an international tribunal for genocide based on accounts of her ordering the rape of Tutsi women by Hutu men.

 

The SS female auxiliaries

The women-specific focus in earlier literature of feminist analysis of genocide was a response to the invisibility of women’s experience in wartime in most part of history. The reason for this invisibility, particularly in genocide studies, is that most scholars are blind to the fact that ethnicity and nationalism are gendered. Thus, it was not only until more recently that women’s testimonies became a major part of investigations on genocide. Furthermore, the classic attitude that rape or other sexual violence during war or armed conflict is a byproduct of war contributes to the lack of understanding of the relation between sexual violence and policies carried out in regard to genocide.

Rape in Strategies of Genocide

Genocidal rape involves the understanding of how gender operates in the context of policies and strategies administered to carry out the agenda of genocide. As part of the strategies, sexual violence is commonly used as a tool to achieve the goal of the destruction of a people. The traditional gender roles of a community, the construction of masculinity, and how the destruction of women’s dignity through the invasion of their body is interpreted as the fall of a nation are among the important factors that make up the strategies employed in genocide. Thus, key to feminist analysis of genocide is the view that genocide is gendered and that the sexual violence which occurs as a result needs to be recognize as an integral part of planned strategies carried out as an act of genocide by state or nonstate actors.

Seen in this light, rape as genocide differs from rape as a byproduct of war or a sex crime indirectly related to the conflict. It is not about the “uncontrollable sexual desire” of men, it is about systematic rape. Rape and other sexual violence committed in cases of genocide have been observed as part of a grand design for destroying a group.

Furthermore, it should be recognized that genocide does not at all times involve the mass killings of both gender. In some cases, women are kept alive to carry on the agenda of the genocide, such as the Muslim and Croatian women and girls who were victims of forced impregnation, the Yazidi women who are sexually enslaved, and the Tutsi women rape survivors living with HIV/AIDS. Many of these women are rejected by their family and community, they are unwanted because of the shame they represent. These women and the next generation born out of the atrocities continue to remind community members of how they were humiliated and torn down. Sexual violence employed in genocide sometimes aims for the slow death of women, but at same time rapidly operates to systematically cause destruction of a life, a people, an identity, a nation.

 

Sources

Ashraph, Sareta (2017) ‘Acts of Annihilation’ thecairoreview.com. https://www.thecairoreview.com/essays/gender-and-genocide/ [December 8, 2018].

Askin, Kelly (2003) ‘Prosecuting Wartime Rape and Other Gender-Related Crimes under International Law: Extraordinary Advances, Enduring Obstacles.’ Berkeley Journal of International Law, 21(2). https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bjil/vol21/iss2/4 [December 31, 2018].

Joeden-Forgery, Elsa von (2012) ‘Gender and the Future of Genocide Studies and Prevention.’ Genocide Studies and Prevention 7(1). https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol7/iss1/10 [December 8, 2018].

Jones, Adam (2008) Gender and Genocide. In The Historiography of Genocide. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 228–252. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304638314_Gender_and_Genocide [October 20, 2018].

MacKinnon, Catharine A. (1993) ‘Crimes of War, Crimes of Peace.’ UCLA Women’s Law Journal, UCLA School of Law, UCLA, p.29. https://www.scribd.com/document/202988845/Mackinnon-Crimes-of-War-Crimes-of-Peace [December 31, 2018].

Rafter, Nicole and Kristin A. Bell (n.d.) ‘Gender and Genocide.’ Northeastern University, Boston. [October 20, 2018].

Russell-Brown, Sherrie L. (2003) ‘Rape as an Act of Genocide.’ Berkeley Journal of International Law, 21(2). https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bjil/vol21/iss2/5 [December 31, 2018].

Picture source in order of appearance: intercontinentalcry.org; ushmm.org