The
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, implemented in 1951, is the international doctrine that defines both
the crime of genocide as well as the punishment for such a crime. Article 2 clause
B states that genocide includes: “causing serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group.” It is through this clause that the incitement of mass
rape can be prosecuted as part of genocide. But why is this important?
Genocide,
under the auspices of ethnic cleansing, attempts to remove any trace of a group
from a society. In order to do this, a group must intimidate, terrorize, and
dominate their target group to remove them from their social order. One method
that is utilized to do this is mass rape. Incited by those deemed as ‘authorities,’
members of the population commit rape on a large scale to cause mass panic and
terror in their target group. Through this terror, the target group is broken
or forced to leave in order to protect their women.
Just as
genocide is committed often based on race and ethnic divisions, rape is used
during these times of instability based on these lines. Often the rationale
behind this brutality is that the women of the target group are subhuman.
Therefore the act is justified in the minds of the attackers. These attacks,
thus, are an important dimension of genocide to discuss.
In incidents such as those that occurred
Yugoslavia, Rwanda, The Congo, and the Sudan have given the international
community grizzly images of how rape can be used as an instrument of genocide. This
has led to several actions by the International Criminal Court to try perpetrators
under the crime of ‘rape as genocide.’ The New York Times reports these
actions:
One
essential difference must be made in this discussion. This is between rape in
the context of war, and genocidal rape. The differences come when discussing:
the aim of the aggressors, whether the conflict is one sided or not, knowledge
of the perpetrator, and whether or not an element of control exists. All of
these approaches are discussed in the Center of Law and Globalization’s article
Genocide Rape Is Different Than War Rape.
The article can be found here:
In
conclusion, the discussion of rape in genocide is an important element to be
understood. This knowledge can lead to a better understanding of what factors
lead to a genocide, and how a genocide progresses. This leads to a better
understanding of how strained race relations can devolve into a situation such
as genocide where rape is implemented as a tool of destruction.
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