Women and Genocide: Ending Impunity for Sexual Violence

Abstract

Women and girls are the heart of a culture and a society and hence are targeted and victimized during genocides and mass atrocities. Such strikes provoke fear and intimidation; prevent the possibility of retaliation; break up families; destroy communities; and change the ethnic identity of subsequent generations. This chapter explores epidemics of violence against women during some of the major genocides of the twentieth century, including the Armenian genocide during World War I; the Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp during the Holocaust; the ‘rape camps’ in Bosnia in the 1990s war; the rape of more than 500,000 Rwandan women during the 1994 genocide; and sexual slavery of Yazidi women and girls in Syria and Iraq by ISIS. This investigation examines prosecutions for these crimes as part of a profound legal shift towards ending impunity for perpetrators of violence against women and girls. This change is influenced, in part, by the increased numbers of women prosecutors and judges in national and international tribunals, an increased attention to ‘gender justice’ on a global scale, and clarity of the penalties of such crimes, all of which provide deterrence for future sexual violence against women, and promote some measure of justice and the alleviation of suffering.