Conflict-related sexual violence and the policy implications of recent research.

 

In light of recent research on conflict-related sexual violence, particularly its variation in repertoire, targeting and frequency across armed organizations, what are the implications for more effective policy to address it? 

The question is all the more urgent for the fact that a wide range of political, religious and social actors are implementing policies, many of which are not well informed by recent research. The discussion below lays out principles to guide policy rather than recommendations for specific policies (which must be tailored; see principles 4 and 5) It focuses on policies to prevent sexual violence by armed organizations (not by civilians), and not on those to address the many needs of victims. While some of these principles apply specifically to conflict-related sexual violence, some may also apply to other types of violence against civilians by armed organizations.

1. The observed variation in conflict-related sexual violence strengthens the case for holding commanders accountable for sexual violence by their combatants if the usual criteria for effective command are met. The demonstrated fact that armed actors can build institutions that inculcate and enforce norms against rape and other forms of sexual violence of civilians if they care to do so should strengthen efforts to hold accountable those who do engage in rape. Commanders exercising effective command should be held responsible, whatever analytical category best describes the organization’s pattern of violence, whether strategic (including institutionalized forms of sexual violence), opportunistic or as a practice.

 2. Policy-makers and practitioners can learn from those organizations that do not engage in conflict-related sexual violence. In the case of an armed organization seeking to minimize sexual violence by its members, strengthening its institutions for the socialization of combatants against sexual violence, including the reasons for its prohibition (rather than only emphasizing disciplinary institutions), would contribute to its effective prevention. However, it may not be easy to “graft” specific institutions (for example, ongoing training for officers that emphasizes the organization’s respect for and dependence on civilians) onto the armed organization if there is little resonance with its existing organizational culture. 

3. Policies should be informed by a sophisticated understanding of gender rather than treating conflict-related sexual violence as a women’s issue. In particular, policymakers should seek to analyze how combatants understand their engagement in sexual violence, exploring, for example, how conceptions of failed or compensatory masculinity may drive the social dynamics of rape of girls and women as a practice. Moreover, such an understanding would also illuminate the conditions under which an armed organization targets men and boys with sexual torture and rape, those under which female combatants perpetrate sexual violence, and those under which organizations target members of sexual minorities. Efforts should be made to adopt a gender-neutral definition of rape, such as that used by the International Criminal Court.

4. Policy will be more effective if tailored to the organization’s particular pattern of violence, taking into account its repertoire and targeting. Policies designed to address rape are unlikely to address forced abortion; policies to address forced abortion are unlikely to address the sexual torture of men. Moreover, documenting the organization’s complete pattern of violence – the repertoire of each sub-organization (including sexual violence) and the targeting of each element of the repertoire – may strengthen efforts to pressure commanders to limit violence against civilians. 

5. Policy will be more effective if informed by whether conflict-related sexual violence occurs as a practice, as a strategy, or opportunistically. If rape (or other forms of sexual violence such as institutionalized sexual slavery) occurs as a strategy, then persuading or forcing organization leaders to countermand the strategy may be sufficient to end it. In the case of opportunistic sexual violence or sexual violence as a practice, policy faces the challenge of persuading individual commanders to no longer tolerate practices that are already formally prohibited, and doing so without counterproductive consequences. In both cases, the armed organization’s cultural dynamics – its informal forms of initiation, ostracism and punishment – may prove quite resilient to change. 

6. Policy-makers can learn from policies that succeed in combating sexual violence in peacetime. Examples include social norms marketing campaigns and some male-tomale peer counselling programmes. However, such policies may need to be radically adapted to the armed organization’s structure, its culture and its particular pattern of sexual violence. 

7. Policy-makers can learn from successful campaigns against violence during conflict. As many have pointed out, the campaign against conflict-related rape that began in the 1990s was very successful in that it led to the international criminalization of sexual crimes and the adoption of a series of UN Security Council resolutions. Yet implementation is at best uneven, and consequences may include unintended ones such as the conditioning of health services to women in conflict areas on a claim to have been raped. What can analysis of the successes and failures of other campaigns (such as those against land mines, child soldiers and “blood diamonds”) teach us about policy design and implementation? 

8. Policy-makers should be aware of settings that are at high risk for conflict-related sexual violence. Recent research identifies a number of such settings, where indicative factors include recruitment by abduction or press-ganging,85 the torture of detainees (which often takes sexual form), refusal to give International Committee of the Red Cross delegates access to detainees, the separation of female and male detainees during ethnic violence, and inadequate provisioning of troops, particularly if it makes having a family impossible.

9. After war, policy should be informed by the risk of increased sexual violence but also by the potential for enduring change. Sexual violence may increase after conflict because norms proscribing it have weakened over the course of the war, because potential victims are denied status in their community and may therefore be further targeted with impunity, or because protective family, religious and gendered networks have disappeared. And if some armed organizations re-mobilize, they may return to their wartime patterns of sexual violence. Nonetheless, the changes wrought by war may make possible more just gender relations, as when women have assumed new roles in the economy and in the leadership of displaced communities, victims’ associations and political organizations.

10. Policy-makers should beware the unintended consequences of their efforts, including an over-emphasis on gathering and publicizing statistics that are inaccurate or that stigmatize victims. For example, in preliminary results from a project to assess the impact of international prosecution on levels of conflict-related sexual violence, Michael Broache finds that prosecution may not have a deterring effect and, under some conditions, may even be followed by increased levels of conflict-related sexual violence.