Jean de Dieu Sikulibo

For centuries, rape and other forms of sexual violence have always been an integral aspect of warfare. Even so, it is rather recently that these practices have been recognized as crimes and prosecutions undertaken by international criminal tribunals. Whilst the ad hoc international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda did not take an integrative approach to victims in the criminal justice process, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) took a victim-centred approach by setting out some provisions allowing victims to actively participate in proceedings beyond their traditional role of witnesses. This chapter sets out to critically examine the effectiveness of the ICC victims’ rights framework in achieving this objective in sexual violence cases. Drawing on the complex nature of experiences of victims of such crimes, this chapter engages with the various aspects of the relatively recent approach of victims’ participation in international criminal justice ...

This chapter presents an analysis of the scale and various forms of sexual violence in modern warfare, including the context in which they are committed, in order to understand the extent of the challenge posed by the systematic use of sexual violence in modern warfare. It highlights how the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is distinctively destructive, as these crimes are often intended to tear apart the fabric of families and affected communities. For instance, in some contexts, the systematic use of rape and other forms of sexual violence was characterised by an explicit ethnic targeting as a weapon of genocide. In other conflicts, cruel acts of sexual violence are often indiscriminately used as part of military strategies aimed at civilian population to spread terror and inflict public humiliation. This destroys the social fabric of affected communities and adds a new component to the social disruption with devastating impact on victims even after the conflict has ended.