War: Rape As A Weapon Of War

Rape as a Weapon of War

Military conflicts are envisioned to be a conflict between two armies of soldiers, yet, in reality, most casualties of war are civilians, most of whom are women and children. These women and children are left vulnerable during times of war and are frequently victims of rape and other forms of sexual assault. Throughout history rape has been used as a tool to dehumanize and terrorize the enemy population. When carried out in systematic fashion during periods of conflict, rape becomes much more complicated than an individual act to satisfy sexual urges and exert power over another person. Rape as a weapon of war can be more destructive to communities and family structures than the conflict itself. The effects of rape
in postwar societies can be seen for generations and creates a culture that tolerates violence and rape and accepts them as the norm.
Rape as an orchestrated combat tool, throughout history, has been viewed as an attack against individual women and not as a strategy of war (Barstow, 2000). These rapes, however, are carried out with a specific purpose in mind and are far more devastating than the “opportunistic pillaging” that they have been painted as in the past. Rapes in war are often committed to terrorize the population, break up families, destroy communities, alter the ethnic make-up of future generations, deliberately infect women with HIV or other STIs, or render them incapable of bearing children (Brouwer, 1998). Ethnic clashes, in particular, appear to have an abundance of rape in order to perpetuate social control and redraw ethnic boundaries. Women are viewed as the reproducers and caretakers of the community. By controlling and impregnating this part of the population, another group is able to maintain authority (Neier, 1998).
Some feminists argue that rape has almost always been a party to armed conflict, evidence of this can be seen in classic literature as well as contemporary conflicts. In The Histories, Herodotus writes of the abduction and rape of Io and other women by the Phoenicians and of the abduction and rape of Helen fifty year later that resulted in the Trojan wars. In World War I, the Axis powers forced prostitution and other forms of sexual violence onto the French and Belgium women. World War II saw rape as a weapon of war frequently with the “Rape of Nanjing”, the kidnapping of Korean women to force them to become comfort women, and the rapes that the German and Russian armies carried out on a massive scale against the occupied civilian populations.
Rape as a weapon of war caught the international community’s attention with two instances of genocide that used rape as a tool to carry out ethnic cleansing: the Yugoslavian Civil War and the Rwandan Genocide.
The civil war that occurred in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s saw the rape of tens of thousands of women, an accurate estimate has not been established. Serbian men attempted to impregnate Bosnian Muslim women in order to force them to have Serbian children while attempting to annihilate the entire Bosnian male population. The Rwandan genocide also used rape as a weapon of war. From April to July in 1994, 250,000 to 500,000 Rwandan women were raped (Brouwer, 1998). The conflict in Rwanda was between two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi, who had historically been pitted against each other by their European colonizers. In 1994, the Hutu president was assassinated and the Tutsis were promptly blamed, beginning 100 days of slaughter and rape. Hutu propaganda and orders from army commanders encouraged the rape of Tutsi women and sympathetic or moderate Hutu women. No one was spared based on age, gender and ethnicity were the only determining factors. Women were gang raped, forced into sexual slavery, made to commit incest, forced into marriage, and had their breasts, vaginas, buttocks, or features that were considered Tutsi, such as a small nose or long fingers, mutilated or amputated (). These rapes were usually committed publicly and many times the women were killed afterwards and left spread-eagle in plain view as a reminder of the brutality of the genocide’s perpetrators. The Hutu militia committed the majority of the rapes in Rwanda but a culture of rape was created and Rwandan police and civilians, as well as international soldiers, namely the French, also raped Rwandan women and girls (Brouwer,
1998).
Rape in Rwanda is highly stigmatized and as a result leads to further victimization of rape survivors by excluding them from everyday society. Often married rape victims experience their husbands leaving them because of the shame that their culture puts upon the victim. There are thousands of women who became pregnant as a result of rape, some of whom underwent illegal, dangerous abortions or killed their child at birth. The children of rape that did live are often ostracized from their families and also have stigma place upon them. Twenty-five percent of Rwandans are living with HIV and many women who have the disease contracted it through rape. Medical issues, such as HIV/AIDS or genital mutilation or internal damage due to rape are rarely taken care of due to a lack of resources and embarrassment (Brouwer, 1998). The stigmatization of rape only creates more problems for the women who have already been victimized.
Today Rwanda has a population that is 70 percent women, the majority of whom have experienced rape personally or been touched by it in some form. These survivors live in a culture whose tolerance to violence has been drastically increased, leading to violence becoming an accepted form of expressing anger and resolving issues (Brouwer, 1998). Rape as a weapon of war not only devastates during times of conflicts but leaves a legacy that further puts women at risk of sexual assault. The lasting effects of rape as a weapon of war can be seen in modern day Rwanda and the acceptance of rape as a part of life and as a woman’s burden to bear.
Rape has been in the international spotlight before but the instances in Yugoslavia and Rwanda lead to intensified efforts to bring rape as a weapon of war to the forefront of world issues. The word “rape” does not appear explicitly in the Geneva Convention but the International Criminal Court that was established in 1998 clearly dictates that rape on a mass and systematic scale is a crime against humanity and is taken seriously in the eyes of the international community (Smith-Spark, 2004). These measures have been put in place to attempt to prevent the atrocities committed against women worldwide and the decay of society that follows the use of rape as a weapon of war. However, the rapes and culture of violence that occur after a conflict have been given no attention in the international arena and no attempt to find a remedy has been made.
Rape as a weapon of war is not only damaging to the women whose bodies and lives are shattered by the heinous tactic but it ruins the communities and families of those affected. Societies that suffer through rape as a weapon of war are left crippled by the legacy of sexual violence and continue that trend in later generations. International efforts to punish perpetrators harshly will hopefully end this tragedy of war but attempts to rid rape from postwar communities must be made to fully end the mindset that this tactic creates. Rape used as a weapon of war is truly devastating and the most saddening element is that these women who already have experienced so much hardship are forced to be reminded of that atrocity every day when their communities place stigma upon them and ostracize them.

Bibliography
1. Barstow, Anne Llewellyn. War 's Dirty Secret: Rape, Prostitution, and Other Crimes against Women. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2000.
2. Brouwer, Anne-Marie De, Sandra Chu, and Samer Muscati. The Men Who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual Violence. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2009.
3. Neier, Aryeh. War Crimes. New York: Times, 1998.
4. Smith-Spark, Laura. "How Did Rape Become a Weapon of War?" BBC News. BBC, 12 Aug. 2004. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.