The Forgotten Frontline: Wartime sexual violence as legal and humanitarian crisis

Abstract

Gender based violence, specifically recorded sexual violence has been a deliberate and systematic weapon of war. This article there of examines legal framework running around the protection of women in armed conflict, highlighting major historical and ongoing instances plus tries to evaluate the mechanisms that have failed to deliver justice. Drawing from international humanitarian and criminal laws and some survivors’ testimonies, it calls for a comprehensive reevaluation of enforcement protocols, survivor centered justice delivery models and the overall amendment around military doctrine to prevent the weaponization of women’s bodies during war.

Introduction

One of the long held ignitor for human sufferings, war, crucible for most of destruction rounding states and the world have had been inflicting its brutality on mankind, however on gender dimension the role has been to dehumanize focusing on how women are uniquely and disproportionately targeted. Rape, sexual slavery even forced prostitution, and many other forms of abuse are still being used repeatedly to fracture communities and break morale.

The aim is to explore on why women get systematically targeted during wartime, how have international legal frameworks responded, what legal gaps are left to be addressed, so by integrative analysis on the legal work i seek for deeper understanding of justice in this issue.

Background

Individual misconduct has not merely been the cause for such violations for oftentimes than not women’s bodies have served as battlegrounds proving the time aliened act as neither incidental nor accidental but rather systematic, well calculated and devastatingly effective military encode. Historically written facts of time, from second world war Japan and south Korea having systems that institutionalized sexual enslavement by term naming in likes of “comfort women” which adore the violation as pleasurable end to genocidal rape campaign in Rwanda and Balkans and many more in between involving current time road marring the history of warfare by sexual subjugation of women.

Several international frameworks such as Geneva Conventions (1949), Rome Statute (1998) along their additional protocols and criminal courts outlawed outrages upon personal dignity and crimes against humanity. Despite these codifications, enforcement has been inconsistent leading social stigma, political reluctance and logistical barriers to continue obscuring justice.

sexual violence as a tool of war

During Rwandan Genocide of 1994 an estimated number of 250,000 to 500,000 women were raped. Oftentimes in public, in front of families, and as part of delivering a collective humiliating punishment to demoralize and collapse the morale of women in the name of ethnical cleanse.

Bosnian conflict of 1992-95 saw major explicit and inhuman crime through mass perpetuating rape as key tactic of terror reign, though accurate numbers are difficult to establish making unreported cases greater than the reported ones, numbered victims had been estimated from 10,000 to 50,000 women.

South Korea’s “comfort women” system where thousands were abducted and forced for subjugation under sexual slavery by Japanese military during the WWII remains one harrowing example. Objectifying women under the pretense of preserving male strength had been the core topic here; all in all, strategizing rape.

Legal Responses – progress and pitfalls

The Rome Statue specifically criminalizes violence tented with sex based attacks and more is the prosecutor v Akayesu case which convicted a mayor for orchestrating mass rapes. Nonetheless the listing numeration of wins most survivors never see justice being served as such placing any attempts to radicalization of sexual crimes in a sea of silence.

In many cases, perpetrators hold powerful political or military positions even well-off societal statues, making as many as possible categories of failing prosecutor either under the veil of money or many social ostracization for case dropping, untimely closing and underreporting. 

Human faces of war crimes – Testimonies

“They told me this was the price i had to pay for peace in my village. I was only 14.”- Rwandan survivor, ICTR archives.

“We were lined up, picked and used like objects. I haven’t seen my family since.”- former Korean comfort woman.

“My name doesn’t matter anymore. What happened to me erased who I was.”-Yazidi survivor, UN commission in Syria.

“They made me watch as they killed my husband and then turned to me. For days, I was passed around like a trophy. When they were done, the laughed and said I was lucky to be spared death. I died that day anyway.”- from a survivor of Rwandan genocide.

“When we were moved to the camp, I thought we would find safety. Instead, I found hell. The guards said they were protecting us.”-displaced woman from a conflict zone in DRC.

“They tied us up. There were so many of them. I was 13 when it happened. I couldn’t scream because they said they would shoot my brother. I still hear the tight silence that hurt my throat in my head.”-survivor of Bosnian war.

These are not statics nor are they mere voices this are layers of pain, unhealed wounds and shame of women who didn’t lose a simple safety of environment against the opposite sex but women who got snatched of their identity and humanly dignity.

Discussion

Revealing a tragic gap between legal theories and lived reality is what this article aimed for, despite robust laws against sexual violence it is still widely used as in constitutional enforcement around the world from Myanmar to Sudan, Ethiopia to Ukraine, German to Gaza. Why? Because enforcement is a jest and everyone is laughing, we have no strong global body to do the consistent prosecting work. Survivors are being denied of reparation, medical support and as little as acknowledgment.

Urgent needs are to:

-include women in law making, peace negotiation and post conflict reconstruction.

-build supportive and open bureaucracy for survivor protection and witness supporting programs.

-make laws real and applicable to hold not only direct perpetrators but also commanders accountable and deliver a sensible justice.

-Reform centers to more preventive that trauma resolving cores.

-reissue judicial systems to focus on informed and uncorrupted practices.

Conclusion

Every war that passed without accountability, every survivor left unheard is a failure of not only international peace keeping bodies but mostly of humanity.

For a men based and fought war women have been targeted in their own bodies, assaulted and objectified and the lasting impression of those wars had imprinted a skin of shame and unworthiness in them and that of pride and strength for the fragile masculinity those men illuded themselves to feel. Hence this violence is not an inevitable byproduct of conflict but a deliberate act of weaponization wielded to obliterate identity and autonomy, we need a real grass root revolution through dismantling the silence, removing stigma, and enforcing accountability around the patriarchal system of this world to make an identifiable change and a driving push of justice beyond tribunals.

A future without impunity is not built on neutrality but rather on intervention, advocacy and memory so yes, we did not need a son who subjectifies glory by abusing the alter he was delivered from with no closing coverage.

Legal Citations

OSCOLA reference

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Secondary sources