Rwanda - Rape as a weapon of war

1. Lisa Sharlach, Rape as Genocide: Bangladesh, the Former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda (from
New Political Science, 2000)
In less than three months, Rwandan soldiers, militia, and civilians slaughtered approximately a million
Tutsi. The genocide left over 250,000 women widowed and between 300,000 and 400,000 children
orphaned. Men, primarily Hutu, used rape of women, primarily Tutsi, as a political weapon during
the Rwandan genocide. Rape of Tutsi girls and women took place in every part of Rwanda between
April 6 and July 12, 1994. Especially after mid-May, the Hutu leaders ordered the militia known as the
Interahamwe (those who stand together) not to spare Tutsi women and children in the genocide.
Some of the rape victims were Hutu, attacked either because of their association with Tutsi or because
they had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The UNs Special Rapporteur on
Rwanda estimates that in this tiny country there were between 250,000 and 500,000 rapes. In some
areas, almost all women who survived had been raped. Most women between the ages of 13 and 50
who survived in Kigali are reputed to be rape victims. There are reports of rape of old women and very
young girls.(...)
Just as the policy of forced impregnation was a distinctive characteristic of rape as genocide in the
former Yugoslavia, the deliberate transmission of HIV was a unique component of rape as
genocide in Rwanda. Survivors report that Hutu men diagnosed with HIV raped Tutsi women during
the civil war, then told the women that they would die slowly and gruelingly from AIDS. Attempts at
transmission through rape are likely to be successful because the use of force by a rapist may create
tears and micro-cuts in a womans skin and membranes through which the virus can enter her
bloodstream. (...) Leaders planned the genocide carefully, but it is not certain whether they planned the
mass rapes. Dr. Bonnet of Doctors Without Borders believes that rape in Rwanda was systematic,
premeditated, and used intentionally as a weapon of ethnic conict to destroy the Tutsi community
and to render any survivors silent.
2. Background Information on Sexual Violence used as a Tool of War (from UN.org)
Rape committed during war is often intended to terrorize the population, break up families, destroy
communities, and, in some instances, change the ethnic make-up of the next generation.
Sometimes it is also used to deliberately infect women with HIV or render women from the
targeted community incapable of bearing children.
In Rwanda, between 100,000 and 250,000 women were raped during the three months of genocide in
1994. UN agencies estimate that more than 60,000 women were raped during the civil war in Sierra
Leone (1991-2002), more than 40,000 in Liberia (1989-2003), up to 60,000 in the former Yugoslavia
(1992-1995), and at least 200,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1998. Even after
conflict has ended, the impacts of sexual violence persist, including unwanted pregnancies, sexually
transmitted infections and stigmatization. Widespread sexual violence itself may continue or even
increase in the aftermath of conflict, as a consequence of insecurity and impunity. And meeting the
needs of survivors including medical care, HIV treatment, psychological support, economic
assistance and legal redress requires resources that most postconflict countries do not have.
Recognizing sexual violence as an international crime
For centuries, sexual violence in conflict was tacitly accepted as unavoidable. A 1998 UN report on
sexual violence and armed conflict notes that historically, armies considered rape one of the
legitimate spoils of war. During World War II, all sides of the conflict were accused of mass rapes,
yet neither of the two courts set up by the victorious allied countries to prosecute suspected war crimes
in Tokyo and Nuremberg recognized the crime of sexual violence.
It was not until 1992, in the face of widespread rapes of women in the former Yugoslavia, that the
issue came to the attention of the UN Security Council. On 18 December 1992, the Council declared
the "massive, organized and systematic detention and rape of women, in particular Muslim women, in
Bosnia and Herzegovina" an international crime that must be addressed. Subsequently, the Statute of
the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, 1993) included rape as a crime
against humanity, alongside other crimes such as torture and extermination, when committed in armed

conflict and directed against a civilian population. In 2001, the ICTY became the first international
court to find an accused person guilty of rape as a crime against humanity. Furthermore, the Court
expanded the definition of slavery as a crime against humanity to include sexual slavery. Previously,
forced labor was the only type of slavery to be viewed as a crime against humanity. The International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR, 1994) also declared rape to be a war crime and a crime against
humanity. In 1998, the ICTR became the first international court to find an accused person guilty of
rape as a crime of genocide (used to perpetrate genocide). The judgment against a former mayor, JeanPaul Akayesu, held that rape and sexual assault constituted acts of genocide insofar as they were
committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Tutsi ethnic group.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, in force since July 2002, includes rape, sexual
slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or "any other form of sexual
violence of comparable gravity" as a crime against humanity when it is committed in a widespread or
systematic way. Arrest warrants issued by the ICC include several counts of rape as both a war crime
and a crime against humanity. Although changing international and national laws are major steps
towards punishing and ending sexual violence, they cannot be successful without a fundamental
change in peoples attitudes towards the sexual abuse of women.
"Right now, the woman who gets raped is the one who is stigmatized and excluded for it," says Dr.
Denis Mukwege Mukengere, director of Panzi hospital in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. "Beyond laws, we have to get social sanction on the side of the woman. We need to get to a
point where the victim receives the support of the community, and the man who rapes is the one who
is stigmatized and excluded and penalized by the whole community."
3. Merril D. Smith, Encyclopedia of Rape, Greenwood Press, 2004
Some of the rules and objectives:
Mass rape as a cultural and/or genocidal weapon. These rapes are well organized, systematic, and
often public. The early and mid-1990s rapes in Bosnia were, according to some observers, committed
as a matter of deliberate policy. Similar arguments have been made about the rapes committed by
Japanese soldiers in Nanking, China, in 1937, during World War II.
Rape to wound the honor of the enemy. These rapes are aimed at the male relatives and friends of
the victims. The message is clearthey are wounds to the masculinity, honor, and competence of the
enemy soldiers who are unable to protect their women.
Rape as part of military culture. Historically, the military has an unusual configuration of norms
about masculinity, sexuality, and women. The confluence of these factors may very well be conducive
to rape as witnessed by various sexual assault scandals within the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force
between the 1980s and 2004.
Rape, revenge, and elevated masculinity. Sport and war literature abound with accounts of male
behavior that confirm and elevate masculinity. The uniform, an essential element in war, symbolizes
membership as well as the range of expected and approved behavior. Powerful military group
expectations and indoctrination of masculinity may use rape as a gesture of group solidarity. This
explanation of wartime rape has often been applied to the behavior of some American soldiers in the
Vietnam War.
Rape as part of the rules of warpay and pillage. Before armies were created with regularized
pay, soldiers were often recruited with the promise of bootyincluding sexual bootyas their
reward. This form of payment, including rape, was nonetheless regulated because uncontrolled pillage
meant, in effect, the control of the army had been lost.
Rape as gratuitous/random behavior. All modern armies have regulations prohibiting rape.
Nonetheless, under certain social conditions, individual soldiers violate such rules despite the threat of
severe punishment and victimize civilian female colleagues. Official military records from the U.S.
Army for the European Theater of Operation (19421945) indicate that individuals and gangs of
soldiers raped civilian females in England, France, and especially Germany, where the enemys
women were considered to be fair game. Some of the soldiers found guilty of rape were executed, and
most of the executed soldiers were black.