Wartime Sexual Violence is Not Just a Weapon of War

Assignment Task

Introduction

Wartime sexual violence is a common weapon carried out by Putin’s forces (KERRY CRAWFORD HOOVER GREEN SARAH PARKINSON,2014). Women are being sexually exploited in the war. The town of Bucha is now associated with this war crime (2022, The Guardian). Russian troops are using rape to bring out the fear to the opposition (Psychological Warfare) as they weaponized rape in war with Kyiv. The 2014 Russo-Ukrainian War, often known as the War in Donbas or the East, is a long-running conflict between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatist groups in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The war began in 2014, when Russia illegally took Crimea, with the initial goal of establishing a new separatist state analogous to South Ossetia in the Donbas region. Following the first stages of the war, the Minsk agreements and a ceasefire agreement failed to put the conflict to an end. The ongoing confrontation between Russia and Ukraine has resulted in mass killings and both sides committing war crimes (2022, BBC) Throughout the ongoing conflict, Ukraine's military has been accused of employing chemical weapons, a claim Russia has consistently denied.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Polish Prime minister Morawieeki called Russia’s action in the Bucha as genocide. And president Biden said the evidence emerging from Bucha showed that he was right when he previously called the Russian president Vladimir Putin a war criminal. Putin has denied this war crime. In recent days Russia has been accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine, which Putin has totally disagreed and said that he launched a special military operation to protect the Russians from Ukrainians.

Due to the conflict, over 10,000 people have been killed, over 12million have been displaced. Additionally, it has resulted in infrastructural damage and the theft of public and private property. This dissertation researches in detail about the sexual violence; that the Russian forces did in Bucha and investigates the rape as a weapon of war in Yugoslavia and Ukraine and to analyse a case study on International Responses to Rape as a weapon of war in Yugoslavia and Ukraine, and finally compare the two case studies and get to an understanding on how the understandings and reactions in the global level changed in response to rape as a war crime(Taiyler simone mitchell,2022)

This dissertation research in detail the ‘’Bucha Massacre’’ Incident as Russian forces are using rape as a weapon of war. Here I also take up two case studies Yugoslavia and Ukraine and retrieve the international community response (Amnesty International, Red cross) regarding to rape being used as a rape as weapon of war. Thirdly this dissertation paper compares the two

case studies and analyses has the international response changed from Yugoslavia to Ukraine war crimes.

What led to the war in Ukraine: A background history?

By air, land, and sea, Russia has launched a devastating attack on Ukraine. Its forces are bombing city centres and closing in on the capital, Kyiv, prompting a mass exodus of refugees. For months, President Vladimir Putin denied he would invade his neighbour, but then he tore up a peace deal and unleashed what Germany calls “Putin’s war,” pouring forces into Ukraine’s north, east, and south talk about the background and the numerous factors which led to war-like situations. Russia and Ukraine were part of the USSR since its formation. But various factors, like Gorbachev’s policies and internal nationalising conflicts, led to the disintegration of the USSR in the year 1991 and hence, Ukraine and Russia broke apart in this dissolution of the USSR only. This was looked upon as a wonderful opportunity by NATO, as headed by the US, to include the members of the earlier existing USSR into NATO, hence giving a boost to its support and power.

Putin has claimed that the West had promised that it will not expand its territory and has betrayed. Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union countries, the West has invited the countries in joining the NATO. Putin claim that his countries security will be at risk if the neighbouring state like Ukraine becomes a NATO state.

Russia and Ukraine had a stable and flourishing relationship even after disintegration. Russia helped Ukraine to flourish especially in economic and military terms. All the fighter airplanes like the MIG-21 and military tanks and equipment were manufactured in Ukraine by Russia. Russia helped Ukraine to flourish especially in economic and military terms. All the fighter airplanes like the MIG-21 and military tanks and equipment were manufactured in Ukraine by Russia. The Chernobyl plant, where a nuclear accident happened in the year 1986, was set up by Russia in the city of Pripyat, near Ukraine’s capital Kyiv. There are still strong cultural ties between the people of Russia and Eastern Ukraine. After signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty in XY, Ukraine gave all its nuclear bombs and supplies to Russia, which would have changed the current position of Ukraine in the current issue if those implements were still under its control. (Vladimir Kozlov,2014) Things were stable in Ukraine until 2014. In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych became the president. During Yanukovich’s presidentship, the cultural ties with Russia consolidated. But the decision to not let Ukraine become a member of the EU fuelled widespread opposition against the pro-Russian president and hence, he lost the presidential elections of 2014. But the newly formed government was strongly in favour of getting Ukraine membership of the EU which antagonized Russia, who wanted Ukraine to stay aloof from the

influence of the US. As a result, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, it happened when pro-Putin separatists captured major swaths of eastern Ukraine. Russia also annexed Crimea at that time, which helped Russia to increase its influence in the Black Sea region. Russia was removed from the G8 group because of this annexation, thus forming G7 (Ragini Seghal, 2022). Russia and Ukraine signed the Minsk peace accord in the year 2015, to stop the lethal military war which was going on in east Ukraine at that time. As the military war continued, Russia announced that it will send “peacekeepers” to the region. According to Ukraine, Moscow exploited it as a pretext to annex Ukraine’s sovereign territory (Andrew Feinberg, 2022). In the year 2017, Ukraine pressed a policy decision stating its willingness to join NATO. Article 5 of NATO Treaty states, “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”( Ales Finnis, 2022), which meant that the armies of all the members, majorly that of US could enter Ukraine, Thus, Russia would have become highly vulnerable to attacks by the US, if Ukraine joined NATO and it would have costed a great deal to the National Security of Russia. Russia sent its separatist protestants in Donetsk and Luhansk of the Eastern region of Ukraine and deployed its armies in these two regions, thus deploying its army at major borders of Ukraine. On 21 February 2022, Russia recognized two breakaway rebel regions – Donetsk and Luhansk – in eastern Ukraine as independent States. Putin said 'the true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia'

This was a very clever step as giving these two regions the status of independent nation-states gave Russia full authority to attack Ukraine in the name of helping the two independent nations to fight against the persecution of Ukraine, which is supported by the provisions in the UN charter, which allows the neighbouring states to intervene if an independent state faces some oppression from its enemy if the oppressed nation asks for such help (Ragini Sengal, 2022)

Background

The On – going to Russia – Ukraine Crisis that began in 2014 is one of the cruellest wars in modern history. The Armed Russian forces that were stationed at the war were indulged in various war related crimes. Rape is the used as a weapon of war by the forces; as using terrorizing the human civilisation and forcing a physiological advantage against the Ukrainian people. Looking back at the history of war that are held; the forces have used female bodies as a weapon of war in Congo, former Yugoslavia etc. Most Particularly the war in eastern Ukraine

where Putin started with the war. He said that Ukraine President was the main target and would have been in their control in the first few weeks of the conflict.

With the war moving around the 200th day since the invasion in 2022, the Ukrainian forces have conquered Kherson in a weeklong offensive attack in which 350 Russian Soldiers have been killed. The Russian President Putin has lost the support of his own people as Moscow looks to recruit more solders. As the war goes on, more of Putin’s Close aides are getting killed. One such instance is that Putin’s close aids daughter was killed in the plot kept for his father. Rape as war crime is largely used by the Russian forces against the Ukrainian civilian people in an act of terrorization of the minds of the people.

The topic that I am going explore in this study is Rape as a War crime in the State of Bucha

The importance of the topic is that the current topic suits well in the area of research as the State of Bucha is experiencing such horrible incidents by the Russian forces; thus, weaponizing rape as a weapon of war. Young girls and women are abducted in broad day light are raped sometimes with the presence of the family member. The male companion is often shot dead when opposed the crime as such crimes are carried out daily and the burial grounds in Bucha are digged in advance.

Literature Review

Gender Based Violence  

A violent act against a woman is defined as ‘‘one that causes or is likely to harm or suffer women physically, sexually, or psychologically, including threats, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, regardless of whether it occurs in public or private life" (United Nations, 1995, Platform for Action D.112). definition emerged from the 1995 United Nations Conference on Women, Beijing, represents an international consensus on how to conceptualize the dynamics of gender-based violence and encompasses child sexual abuse, coercive sex, rape, stalking, and intimate partner violence. "Gender-based violence" refers to violence shaped by gender roles and status in society. Gender-based violence against women does not encompass every violent act a woman may happen to experience (being Terrorized with a weapon during a robbery, for example). Gender roles and expectations, male entitlement, sexual objectification, and discrepancies in power and status have legitimized, rendered invisible, sexualized, and helped to perpetuate violence against women.

O’Toole and Schiffman (1997) offer a broad definition to include “any interpersonal, organisational or politically orientated violation perpetrated against people due to their gender identity, sexual orientation, or location in the hierarchy of male-dominated social systems such as family, military, organisations, or the labour force”. ‘‘Gender-based violence includes a broad spectrum of interactions, from verbal harassment and institutional discrimination to enslavement and murder. This continuum includes but is not limited to: acts of physical, sexual, emotional, verbal, economic and psychological violence by intimate partners or family members; sexual assault (including sexual assaults on children, stranger rape, acquaintance rape, marital rape and any unwanted touching, kissing or other sexual acts); sexual harassment and intimidation, and forced prostitution’’ (Russell, 1984).

Definition of Sexual assault: illegal sexual contact that usually involves force upon a person without consent or is inflicted upon a person who is incapable of giving consent (as because of age or physical or mental incapacity) or who places the assailant (such as a doctor) in a position of trust or authority. At the time of the Early Modern period, there was a cultural acceptance of women’s sexual pleasure. However, outside marriage the sexually desiring woman very often appeared tainted by ‘whorishness, witchcraft . . . [or] . . . sin’ (Gowing 2003: 85). Sexual violence is rare in Early Modern records, but some women and girls did come to court to protest the personal injury of sexual violence even though the odds were stacked against them, and they could articulate their wrongs only in muted form. This was an era that often -understood emotional states through their social effects and consequences, through religion and the workings of providence, or even through the action of the supernatural, not as in modern society through interiority and the psyche Although there are examples of women suffering emotional hurt following sexual assaults (Macdonald 1981: 87, 106), the chief injury of sexual violence was to reputation, rather than the modern view which prioritises psychological damage. ‘’Women’s reputations were crucial in shaping their social position and depended on sexual chastity even more than on their work and household duties’’ (Walker 1996). Loss of virginity was not the only concern. Married women, who arguably had greater access to the range of metaphor and allusion with which rape could be described in court, made up the majority of the complainants in Laura Gowing’s research, which uses ecclesiastical court records (Gowing 1996, 2003). Given the cultural complexities of sexual violence and the power dynamics in the legal institutions that tried it, courtroom narratives need to be appreciated as multi-layered and allusive texts which, with careful reading, can shed some light, however tangential, on sexual orientations and cultures as well as on legal process. ‘‘Anthropologist Mary Douglas argued that rituals or talk about dirt and pollution sign social and cultural disruptions and things out of

place’’. (Douglas 1991). ‘’Miranda Chaytor has used a psychological approach to read the silences and metaphors in women’s court depositions, which, she proposes, were a narrative means of skirting around the shame and dishonour implicit in a woman’s description of the injury done to her. Although there was no pattern of ‘honour killing’ as can, for example, be identified in mid-twentieth century Greece’’ (Avdela 2010), metaphors of pollution, of disruption, or assertions of honour founded in non-sexual matters provided a way of signalling the sexual violence which,’’ Chaytor argues, might be sufficiently shameful to be repressed in direct memory’’ (Chaytor 1995). However, as Garthine Walker points out, such an approach tends to read modern perceptions of sexual violence back in time (Walker 1998: 1).

Dianne Herman (1984), the first scholar to articulate the definition, posited that rape will continue to be pervasive as long as sexual violence and male dominance are glamorized. In 1993, Buchwald, Fletcher, and Roth defined rape culture as one in which rape is an unpleasant fact, like death or taxes. ‘’Rape culture does not only pertain to women; men, and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals are raped’’ (Ridgway, 2014; Stotzer, 2009). Disabled people are raped at a high rate (80%) as well (Madden, 2014). In the United Kingdom, more than 85,000 women are raped and 400,000 are assaulted each year (Bates, 2014). ‘’Men in nine countries in Asia and the South Pacific reported committing single- and multiple-perpetrator rape, with over 50 percent having raped as young teenagers’’ (Jewkes, Fula, Roselli, & Garcia-Moreno, 2013). ‘’In India, after the gang rape of the student on the bus in New Delhi, activists began to shed light on the widespread problem in that country’’ (Udas, 2013).

Gender-based crimes are the same throughout the world in terms of war and in daily day-to-day life. The war time gender-based crimes are the war crimes that the forces have shown against the female civilians, thus staging a war. The use of rape as a weapon of war has been prominently held in all the wars like the war in Bangladesh, former Yugoslavia, and Ukraine. The Sexual Crimes against women have not changed, even though a lot of international organizations have condemned against these. Amnesty International and the Red cross have their volunteers working in the war crime place and are helping the war victims and they are interviewing them. According to those sources gender-based violence is same through-out and it the international response hasn’t changed.

Theoretical Analysis of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

The Capability Approach and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

Experts in the field have been working in finding a body of research that would be suitable and identify the most appropriate theoretical framework to explain the use of rape as weapon of war

According to Sen (1999) Capability Approach CP, every individual should have the freedom to achieve their or things they perceive to be important in their lives, Nussbaum (2000) expanded on Sens (1999) CP by incorporating life, bodily integrity, emotions, freedom of affiliation as key capabilities of human development

Nussbaum (2000) defines bodily integrity as security from sexual assault and domestic violence, mobility of all body parts and to have an individual body treated with respect and sovereignty. As a result, these victims lost their jobs, mobility and in some cases, even died due to a loss of blood and fluids. Due to their lose in mobility, some victims lost their jobs and primary source of sustenance, which also meant that victims did not have the resources to access adequate healthcare to treat these conditions. Therefore, the CP encourages us to understand that addressing the negative effects of CRSV is not only about the restoring the destruction made to the victims physical and mental functions, but also about ensuring that the victim has access to their right to health and socioeconomic participation in their communities

Rape as a weapon of war

Sexual violence in warfare has been a recurrent event across centuries of history and can be located at the most extreme reaches of a continuum of violence since it is about inflicting pain and humiliation on communities and nations over and above that which it causes to specific individuals. I shall take up these issues in more detail when reviewing the modern period. However, the historical nuances were equally complex at earlier periods and, as Herzog comments, sexual violence in war has figured in the spectrum of torture, killing and mutilation visited on defeated and often civilian populations ‘‘in quite distinct historically and geographically specific ways’’ (Herzog 2009: 4). The 1641 Irish rebellion arose from native (Catholic) Irish indignation at what they saw as the illegitimacy of the rule of the English king and the threats to their own independence and culture. Narratives of the ordeal of Protestant settlers in Ireland, seeking recognition of losses in the rebellion, included stories of `rape in which the degree of wrong, blame and dishonour was passed on judicially from a community perspective. ‘‘Rape underlined the atrocity but only when a woman’s existing reputation was

good, or the circumstances rendered blame impossible to attribute to her. Even in wartime, sexual violence was in the eye of the commentator’’ (Hall and Malcolm 2010).

There exists a direct connection between masculinized militarization and soldiering, which serves as a catalyst for sexual violence. Feminist discourse on military and sexual violence explains that wartime rapes are not solely the result of male libido and sexual gratification, but also stem from anger towards their respective intersectional identities. It is about the power relations between man and woman in a patriarchal context; it has everything to do with the power relations between state and subject in a context of armed occupation. The referent object is women, and the state is a potential danger to women. The state fails as a security provider for women because it is the state and the military that cause insecurities, violate security, and fail to provide justice to women as well.

Consequently, intersectional identities of sexuality, caste, and class, as well as rural and urban distinctions and hierarchies, play a significant role. The fact that these acts of sexual violence and rape were committed in groups reflects the psychology of' male bonding' and a sense of 'brotherhood,' which are the two distinct characteristics associated with gang rape, especially in war. Particularly in the case of former Yugoslavia, where Bosnian Serbs raped and mutilated women. In such instances, the state is complicit in the commission of such atrocities, and it allows call up soldiers to avoid personal and moral responsibility, because the objective is not merely to obtain sexual fulfilment or satisfy their libido, but also to coerce and conquer the enemy in order to establish control and dominance, both literally and figuratively, through group cohesion.

The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia demonstrated the critical importance of implementing these antiquated international principles.

Rape as weapon of war in Yugoslavia

As a point of reference, the tensions between Croatia and Slovenia, two constituent countries of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 1991, when they both declared their independence. The independence of the latter was violently opposed, both by regular troops and by civilians who unexpectedly opposed living in ethnically mixed areas. In 1991 and 1992, Croat and Serb civilians in both realms engaged in "ethnic cleansing" as Croatian troops fought Yugoslavia's military. Early 1990s dynamics were comparable to those that prevailed during World War II. Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were the principal victims of the ethnic cleansing conducted by Bosnian Serbs. In less than six weeks, the Yugoslav army, paramilitary groups, and local Bosnian Serb troops seized control of approximately two-thirds of Bosnian territory

from the Bosniaks. Although Bosnias were the primary victims and Serbs were the primary perpetrators, Croats were both victims and perpetrators. The first study, the Helsinki Report (1992), detailed multiple instances of sexual assault, primarily against Muslim women from Bosnia. The vast majority of sexual assaults were systematic and pervasive, occurring in tandem with efforts to expel members of a specific ethnic group from a particular location. It has been documented that field commanders and camp leaders ordered subordinates to commit sexual violence. Men, women, girls, and children were violated, tortured, and murdered. The transmission of HIV was used as a weapon against women and their communities. It would not be perfect to say that the Serbian forces turned war into a form of rape, rather than making rape a weapon of war.

The conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina has seen widespread abuses against women, such as rape, committed by all sides, but Muslims women are the main victims and Serbian forces are the main perpetrators. Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina have been subjected to a wide range of abuses, however, due to a number of factors.

Throughout the conflict, all sides have abused women, including sexually. Although much less frequently, Muslim, and Croatian armed forces have also raped and sexually abused women in Bosnia-Herzegovina Statistics speak of 14 000 up to 50 000 women suffering severe forms of sexual violence during the 1992- 1995-armed conflict. Bosnia-Herzegovina has been the site of about 50,000 reported cases of rapes, attempted rapes, and sexual abuse according to Amnesty International. Military personnel, police officers, paramilitaries, or those in authority, including neighbours, individually or as groups, use their strength and position of authority to exploit women in the areas they have short- or long-term control over. Women in wartime can be temporally shifted to a place in bunches and are physically and sexually assaulted by the armed forces as there are cases recorded in Bosnia - Herzegovina. Children. Children and old age women are being held hostage and are being raped at gunpoint, thus the forces have rape as a weapon of war  in reports or cases, the victims are of various nationalities from the accused, and in most cases, the women have been sexually assaulted by in front of the women's male relative, sometimes the victims are subject to physical abuse by the male relatives. 

In all reported or alleged cases, the victims are of a different nationality than the perpetrator; women have been singled out for humiliation based on their nationality, and sometimes as retribution for the perpetrators' assumptions about the actions or intentions of the women's male relatives. Frequently, the humiliation is exacerbated by performing the acts in front of others, including male relatives of the victims. In numerous instances, perpetrators have been able to

act with impunity or use threats against victims to prevent them from reporting the crimes. In addition to humiliating their victims, male perpetrators have used them to satisfy their sexual desires, sometimes with the apparent encouragement of their superiors. The cases described in this dissertation are conducted by Amnesty International, journalists, and women's and human rights organisations operating in the region. Amnesty International considers these cases significant and indicative of at least a portion of what has occurred, even though they represent only a small fraction of the total number of alleged cases. Mention should also be made that Amnesty International has received allegations that prisoners in detention under the control of both Serbian and Bosnian Government forces were forced to engage in sexual acts. However, compared to the numerous reports and allegations of rape or sexual abuse of women, these are few.

Examining the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia yields a conception of security that differs from the traditional and majoritarian realist notions that confine security to the state and military. Traditionally and simply, security is concerned with protecting the nation from potential threats through militarization and armament.

International Responses to Rape as weapon of war crime – United Nations, Amnesty International Red Cross

United nations Response to Rape as a Weapon of war

In June 2008, the Security Council passed a resolution calling for the prevention and resolution of sexual violence against women and girls in situations of armed conflict, and for the exclusion of crimes of sexual violence from amnesty provisions in the context of conflict-resolution processes. Ms Condoleezza Rice said that there had been a debate about whether sexual violence was a security issue, but that the Council now acknowledged that it was. She also stressed that Member States had a responsibility to punish perpetrators of sexual violence. The Secretary-General called on the UN system, Member States and civil society groups to tackle the problem of sexual violence in armed conflict and said that the credibility of peacekeeping operations ought to be measured in terms of how successful they were in addressing sexual violence and abuse. The UN has established 18 Conduct and Discipline Units around the world to uphold the UN zero-tolerance policy with regard to sexual exploitation and abuse. The Units receive complaints, investigate them, and recommend action to the UN Secretariat and troop-contributing countries.

The UN C&D Units have adopted a three-level strategy to address problems of sexual exploitation, including prevention of misconduct, enforcement measures, and remedial action. These measures include Operation Night Flash, a safe house for survivors, and meetings on women's rights for members of the judiciary and police.

International response to rape as a weapon of war – International Red Cross

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for an end to the "horror and stigma" that affects hundreds of thousands of women and girls. Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), warned that the world faces a grave protection failure amid rising sexual violence in conflict. The United Nations and Red Cross have launched a joint appeal to raise awareness of sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls.

International response

Frida Ghitis: The use of rape as a weapon of war is coming under increasing scrutiny. She speaks

the notion that rapes inevitably accompanies armed conflict and war went unchallenged for thousands of years. Rape has important tactical and strategic dimensions, she says; it can terrorize, intimidate, and control an enemy population. Women are now telling their stories and taking action with the help of legal specialists and women's rights groups. In Rwanda, a U.N. tribunal held that rape formed an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi ethnic group. The verdict set an important precedent, but it did not prevent rapes in other parts of the world. During the civil conflict in Colombia, paramilitary forces deliberately impregnated women. Similar horrors were witnessed during the wars in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Frida Ghitis: In 2008 the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution calling for an end to the use of rape as a weapon of war. She says in some countries, rapists can have charges dropped if they marry their victim; in others, rape victims themselves are considered guilty. Ghitis writes that more needs to be done before rape is relegated to our historical past.

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