Civilians in Africa's conflict zones, particularly women and children, are often vulnerable to sexual violence, including rape, mutilation and sexual slavery, carried out by government security forces and non-state actors. While such abuses are by no means limited to Africa, weak justice systems in many African states can mean that victims have little legal redress. This book examines the issue of sexual violence in African conflicts and reports on the programs Congress seeks to address them through legislation, hearings, and other congressional actions.
Since the 1990s, sexual violence in conflict zones has received much media attention. In large part as a result of grassroots feminist organizing in the 1970s and 1980s, mass rapes in the wars in the former Yugoslavia and during the Rwandan genocide received widespread coverage, and international organizations—from courts to NGOs to the UN—have engaged in systematic efforts to hold perpetrators accountable and to ameliorate the effects of wartime sexual violence. Yet many millennia of conflict preceded these developments, and we know little about the longer-term history of conflict-based sexual violence. Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones helps to fill in the historical gaps. It provides insight into subjects that are of deep concern to the human rights community, such as the aftermath of conflict-based sexual violence, legal strategies for prosecuting it, the economic functions of sexual violence, and the ways perceived religious or racial difference can create or aggravate settings of sexual danger. Essays in the volume span a broad geographic, chronological, and thematic scope, touching on the ancient world, medieval Europe, the American Revolutionary War, precolonial and colonial Africa, Muslim Central Asia, the two world wars, and the Bangladeshi War of Independence. By considering a wide variety of cases, the contributors analyze the factors making sexual violence in conflict zones more or less likely and the resulting trauma more or less devastating. Topics covered range from the experiences of victims and the motivations of perpetrators, to the relationship between wartime and peacetime sexual violence, to the historical background of the contemporary feminist-inflected human rights moment. In bringing together historical and contemporary perspectives, this wide-ranging collection provides historians and human rights activists with tools for understanding long-term consequences of sexual violence as war-ravaged societies struggle to achieve postconflict stability.
This book brings together a unique blend of researchers, civil society and community activists all working on different aspects of conflict sexual violence on the African continent. The contributions included here offer a detailed reading of the social and political climate within which some patterns of sexual violence unfold, and the increased policy and institutional responses shaping post-conflict environments. The chapters are organized around three main themes: the continuities between conflict sexual violence and post-conflict insecurity; the troubling category of "victim" and its representation in post-conflict settings; and the international contexts – such as international programming, aid and justice interventions – that shape how conflict sexual violence is addressed. The authors come to the topic from various academic disciplines - anthropology, gender studies, law, and psychology - and from different non-academic contexts, including civil society organizations in affected regions, and policy and activist organizations in the Global North. Collectively the chapters in this volume offer complex and detailed analysis of some of the debates and dynamics shaping contemporary understandings of conflict sexual violence, highlighting, in turn, new insights and emerging topics on which further research and advocacy is needed.
Civilians in Africa's conflict zones -- particularly women and children, but also men -- are often vulnerable to sexual violence, including rape, mutilation, and sexual slavery. This violence is carried out by gov't. security forces and non-state actors, including rebel groups, militias, and criminal organizations. The issue has been particularly prevalent in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where security forces, rebel organizations, militias, and other armed groups have inflicted sexual violence upon the civilian population on a massive scale. This report provides a detailed case study of DRC and an index of U.S. programs there. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand edition of an important, hard-to-find report.
All too often in conflict situations, rape is referred to as a 'weapon of war', a term presented as self-explanatory through its implied storyline of gender and warring. In this provocative but much-needed book, Eriksson Baaz and Stern challenge the dominant understandings of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Reading with and against feminist analyses of the interconnections between gender, warring, violence and militarization, the authors address many of the thorny issues inherent in the arrival of sexual violence on the global security agenda. Based on original fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as research material from other conflict zones, Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? challenges the recent prominence given to sexual violence, bravely highlighting various problems with isolating sexual violence from other violence in war. A much-anticipated book by two acknowledged experts in the field, on an issue that has become an increasingly important security, legal and gender topic.
Due to the international importance attached to the reporting of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) over the last two decades, scholars have been able to examine the magnitude of the problem across different situations and types of conflict. But what changes to intensity and type of violence occur during different phrases of conflict intensity? Is reporting consistent across different conflicts and different regional experiences of conflict-related SGBV? This book examines different conflict situations in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia over the past decade, 2010–2020. The chapters in the book use a mixed-method approach to explore the patterns of violence in situations of one-sided violence, state-led violence, non-state-led violence, low intensity violence, terrorism and fragility. They investigate the trajectory of international and prevention efforts, and the development of country-level responses to reports of sexual and gender-based violence in these various conflict situations. The book explains how and why these responses were mobilised in response to reports and considers the conditions for effective reporting in real time considering the patterns and the structural root causes of the violence.
Violence affects the economy of production and the ecology of reproduction— the production of economic goods and services and the generational reproduction of workers, the regeneration of the capacity to work and maintenance of workers on a daily basis, and the renewal of culture and society through community relations and the education of children Gender and the Political Economy of Conflict in Africa explores the persistence of violence in conflict zones in Africa using a political economy framework. This framework employs an analysis of violence on both edges of the spectrum—a macro-economic analysis of violence against workers and a micro-political analysis of the violence in women’s reproductive lives. These analyses come together to create a new explanation of why violence persists, a new political economy of violence against women, and a new theoretical understanding of the relation between production and reproduction. Three case studies are discussed: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (violence in an era of conflict), Sierra Leone (violence post-conflict), and Tanzania (which has not seen armed conflict on the mainland). This book fills a significant gap on the political economy of war and women/gender for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers in African Studies, Gender Studies, and Peace and Conflict Studies.
This textbook provides students across Social Sciences, Humanities, Politics, and International Studies with an in-depth understanding of the issues, policies, and strategies for addressing the symptoms and root causes of violence against women (VAW) in sub-Saharan Africa. This text uses the United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on Women, Peace and Security in Eastern and Southern Africa as a framework to present the causes and impacts of VAW and to trace the journey of sub-Saharan African countries toward gender equality. It also provides an overview of the policy and legislative frameworks that underpin the progress, challenges, and achievements of addressing VAW based on four key pillars: prevention, protection, participation, and relief and recovery. Chapters provide a wealth of knowledge, as the book draws on academic literature; national, regional, and international legislations; and data collected from field research, and makes use of end-of-chapter discussion questions and quick study guides. Students will come away equipped with the tools, resources, and knowledge necessary to address and fix VAW in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.
