Understanding Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Understanding CRSV

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) is any form of sexual violence that is carried out systematically and is deployed as a war tactic or as a strategic tool in armed and violent conflict situations to achieve particular ends. Conflict in itself paves the way for a breakdown of social, political, economic, and security sector machinery, which creates a backdrop for the opportunistic commission of sexual violence. In combination with a strategic campaign, CRSV is often unreported, and as a result, unchecked. Perpetrators often go without being brought to justice. Impunity, miscarriage of justice, and offerings of amnesty in compromises for peace over justice culminate in the dispensation of accountability for the crime.

Women, girls, and non-binary persons are inherently more vulnerable to conflict-related violence in general. Conflict paves the way for gendered vulnerabilities - ranging from an increased burden of care-work and breadwinning, to facing increased domestic violence as a result of the breakdown of the economy and security sector. The CRSV Observatory acknowledges this inherently as a universal, gendered experience of armed conflict. In addition to this, however, sexual violence is enabled by conflict conditions. This violence may be systemic and planned or opportunistic.

The systematic use of CRSV in armed conflict contexts is often in furtherance of particular agendas, war crimes, and large-scale violence. Some of these agendas and war crimes include:

Genocide: Genocide refers to the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. Sexual violence is deployed in order to carry out a campaign of genocide by targeting the reproductive capacity of women. It has been used to further genocide during the East Timor Genocide, the Nanjing Massacre, the Armenian Genocide, the Yazidi Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka, the Bosnian Genocide, and the Holocaust, as well as in Myanmar, Darfur, and Tigray.

Ethnic Erasure: Ethnic erasure refers to the mass expulsion or killing of members of one ethnic or religious group in an area by those of another. Sexual violence is deployed in order to drive out or kill members of particular religious or ethnic groups. It has been used to further ethnic erasure in the Deir Yassin Massacre, the Yazidi Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, the Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka, the Bosnian Genocide, and the Holocaust, and in Myanmar, North Korea, Darfur, Guatemala, Tigray, during the Partition of India, and against the Uyghur Muslims in China. (NB: We use the term "Ethnic Erasure" rather than "Ethnic Cleansing." )

Crimes against Humanity: Crimes against Humanity are deliberate acts, typically as part of a systematic campaign committed by the state or on behalf of the state, that cause human suffering or death on a large scale. Sexual violence is committed as a crime against humanity when it is intended to target particular communities to control, intimidate, threaten, humiliate, or torture individuals. Sexual violence has been used as a crime against humanity in the Deir Yassin Massacre, Kunan Poshpora, Russo-Ukraine conflict, Cabo Delgado, Cameroon, South Africa during Apartheid, Colombia, Vietnam, Marochinate, East Timor, Yemen, Nanjing, Armenia, East Timor, Syria, in the Yazidi and Rwandan Genocide, Tigray, Sri Lanka, DR Congo, Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Nepal, Darfur, Libya, Liberia, Bosnia, Bangladesh, and Egypt during the Arab Spring.

Settler colonialism, occupation of territories, and control of resources: Sexual violence is used against the populations of territories that states strive to occupy, control, or colonize. In pursuit of intimidation of the local population into compliance with the occupying power, or to control resources over a particular territory, sexual violence is used as a means of intimidation, humiliation, and even to drive people out of the territorial space or to bar them from accessing a particular resource. Sexual violence has been used in furtherance of settler colonialism, occupation, and resource and/or territorial control during the Deir Yassin Massacre, Kunan Poshpora incident, the Russo-Ukraine war, and in Cameroon, Colombia, DR Congo, and Afghanistan.

Intimidation, humiliation, and punishment: Sexual violence is used to intimidate individuals for their actual or perceived positionality with respect to the different "sides" in a conflict. It is often used to humiliate the "enemy" and to punish those who take a vociferous stance against the party deploying such violence. Women and non-binary folks are targeted with sexual violence for their activism, in many contexts, and even for just being individuals of their particular gender associated in one way or another with the side targeted. Sexual violence has been used to intimidate, humiliate, and punish in Deir Yassin Massacre, Kunan Poshpora, Russo-Ukraine conflict, Cabo Delgado, Cameroon, South Africa during Apartheid, Colombia, Vietnam, Marochinate, East Timor, Yemen, Nanjing, Armenia, East Timor, Syria, in the Yazidi and Rwandan Genocide, Tigray, Sri Lanka, DR Congo, Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Nepal, Darfur, Libya, Liberia, Bosnia, Bangladesh, and Egypt during the Arab Spring.

Silencing dissent and repressing protest: Sexual violence is also used in authoritarian regimes to silence dissent and to prevent protests that can threaten the continuation of the authoritarian regime and its leadership. Women and non-binary folks as well as men are actively surveilled and targeted for their dissent and activism. Sexual violence has been used to silence dissent in Chile under Augusto Pinochet, North Korea, and Morocco under The Lead Years, and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

Reproduction and aggravation of existing gendered hierarchies: Most societies are arranged into hierarchies drawn based on gendered lines. In several conflict contexts, sexual violence is perpetrated indirectly, where the party deploying it forces an individual from the community targeted to commit the act of sexual violence against women, men, and non-binary people, including children. In some conflict contexts, men are forced to rape their daughters and mothers, and sometimes children are forced to watch. Further, the fear of looming sexual violence forces families to marry off their daughters forcibly, or even when they are just children. Such forms of violence re-entrench gendered hierarchies in the targeted societies with an added layer of stigmatization.

Combatant Socialization: Recent research has shown that combatant socialization helps explain instances of sexual violence including rape, carried out by both state forces and rebel groups. Researchers (e.g., Cohen, 2016; Cohen and Nordas, 2015) have discovered this pattern. Some studies have found that sexual violence and rape are used as mechanisms to build intragroup cohesion among fighters within armed groups, and suggest that sexual violence is neither opportunistic nor strategic, and this line of thought does not assume that perpetrators commit rape or desire to do so for private reasons, and does not assume that rape and sexual violence are the result of direct orders by commanders.

Transactional Sex (also called Survival Sex): Conflict and post-conflict zones have been known to be sites that enable transactional sex. It refers to the exchange of sex for material means of survival. In conflict zones, everything from the change in household structure owing to male mortality, absence, imprisonment, or participation in war, to the disruption of routines specific to every day life, can serve as enablers of transactional sex. In such situations, there is a very palpable power dynamic where the provider of the means of survival - who may include state and rebel forces, and aid agencies alike - is in a position of dominance given their access to and control over means of survival such as food and medicine. There is no free choice in such situations, as power is wielded to cause harm to anyone who refuses to give in to these demands.

Gendered Impacts of Nuclear Testing and Use of Nuclear Weapons: While the jury is out there on whether such violence can be read into the scope of "conflict-related sexual violence," we make a strong case for it given what is known about the gendered impacts of the testing and deployment of nuclear weapons. The impact of these weapons produces harms that violate sexual and reproductive health rights, and these impacts are palpably felt in a gendered fashion. For example, stillborn birth and children born with deformities from exposure to nuclear radiation, as well as vulnerability to certain kinds of cancer, and the propensity to pass on radioactive elements through breastfeeding onto an infant are some of the gendered impacts. The development and testing of a nuclear weapon is inherently a facet of negative peace and violent conflict, and the fact that the impacts are deeply gendered, inspired by established legal interpretations that have understood sexual violence as a means of carrying out genocide, all qualify nuclear weapons testing and use as a form of conflict-related sexual violence.

Tech-facilitated and Tech-based CRSV: In recent times, CRSV has found an enabler in technology, as tech-facilitated and tech-based conflict related sexual violence (TFCRSV or TBCRSV) have become rampant. Tech-facilitated CRSV refers to CRSV that is committed, assisted, aggravated, or amplified in part or entirely by the use of any form of internet and communication technologies (ICTs). Tech-based CRSV refers to CRSV that is committed, assisted, aggravated, or amplified entirely on an ICT, using that space to inflict violence. Examples of TFCRSV include using ICTs to facilitate tech-facilitated trafficking, forced marriages and sexual slavery, and to facilitate and broadcast other forms of sexual violence. Examples of TBCRSV include doxxing human rights defenders, online hate speech, cyberbullying, broadcasting and showcasing sexual violence, and the proliferation of synetic media, which involves the creation of false images and videos. TFCRSV has been carried out by ISIS, to target Yazidi women to perpetrate sexual violence and rape as part of a larger campaign of ethnic erasure and genocide. TBCRSV has been used in Bangladesh, Kenya, Libya, Myanmar, Palestine, Ukraine, and Yemen.

Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Targeting Women in the Army, Peacekeeping and Other Military Forces: Sexism and patriarchal dominance is common within the armed, military, and peacekeeping forces world over. Several women and non-binary people have experienced systemic discrimination based on their gender, sex, sexual orientation, sex characteristics, and gender identity and expression. Such discrimination stretches across a spectrum ranging from verbal and behavioural violence to outright physical and sexual violence. We consider it a form of conflict-related sexual violence as the background of war, armed conflict, and armed violence, past, current, and anticipated enables and keeps such violence alive.

NOTE: In all conflict contexts, given the breakdown of social, political, judicial, and security sector machinery, there is precious little impunity for those who commit sexual violence. As sexual violence prevails across the peacetime-wartime continuum, and given that armed conflict contexts also provide room for the free flow of weapons and ammunition, women and non-binary individuals face the risk of sexual violence across the personal-political continuum. Where there is mass, systemic, large-scale sexual violence on the one hand, women are equally vulnerable to opportunistic sexual violence as well as sexual violence in their own homes, as well. Neither of these is necessary "strategic" within the terms explained above, but are definitely causes for concern. As is the case during peacetime, these crimes go unreported during conflict, too. The difference between this form of sexual violence and sexual violence in furtherance of the motives listed above is the fact that the former is systematically planned and carried out at a large scale, and the perpetrators do not typically share a nexus to the target. In the latter, the crimes are carried out within personal spaces and personal relationships, and often involve a nexus between the perpetrator and target.