Building the Base: Local Accountability for Conflict-Period Sexual Violence

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Sexual violence during periods of armed conflict occurs in many forms. On one hand, it may be committed strategically as a war crime, crime against humanity, or act of genocide – as when tens of thousands of men and women were raped or sexually tortured during the war in Bosnia twenty years ago,1 or during Rwanda's 100-day genocide in 1994, when thousands of women were raped or had their genitals mutilated.

On the other hand, sexual violence during wartime may also happen for nonstrategic, non-military reasons – as in ‘opportunistic’ violations committed by fellow civilians, intimate partners, or errant armed actors. In this sense, it may be rooted in localised gender norms that preceded the conflict and which will, in all likelihood, persist after it.

The pursuit of legal accountability for different kinds of conflict-period sexual violence has traditionally implicated different actors. For the past twenty years, the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence as a war crime, crime against humanity, or act of genocide, have typically been taken up by actors linked to international tribunals. On the other hand, local actors responsible for addressing day-to-day crimes of sexual violence during peacetime – healthcare providers, police officers, prosecutors, community leaders and civil society organisations – become the frontline responders when these basic crimes occur during conflict periods as well.

What bears new and deeper consideration is the extent to which these local actors may hold the key to accountability for international crimes of sexual violence, as well. The truThis, local nurses in a rural health clinic and police officers on routine duty in the streets of the capital have a fundamental role in the documentation, investigation, and prosecution of sexual violence committed as a war crime, crime against humanity, and act of genocide.

This may provoke scepticism in some. It is true that basic response to sexual and gender-based crimes is limited in many areas of the world, where medical care providers and police officers are not always sensitive to, or skilled in addressing sexual offences or gender-based violence generally. It is also true that acute insecurity, collapse of infrastructure, lack of mobility, and heightened resource constraints during conflict periods can cripple even the most functional healthcare and law enforcement systems.