Queen Essays

Variation in Sexual Violence during War

ELISABETH JEAN WOOD

Sexual violence during war varies in extent and takes distinct forms. In some con- flicts, sexual violence is widespread, yet in other conflicts—including some cases of ethnic conflict—it is quite limited. In some conflicts, sexual violence takes the form of sexual slavery; in others, torture in detention. I document this variation, particularly its absence in some conflicts and on the part of some groups. In the conclusion, I explore the relationship between strategic choices on the part of armed group leadership, the norms of combatants, dynamics within small units, and the effectiveness of military discipline.

Keywords: sexual violence; rape; political violence; human rights; war

While sexual violence occurs in all wars, it occurs to varying extent and takes distinct forms. During the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the sexual abuse of Bosnian Muslim women by Bosnian Serb forces was so systematic and wide- spread that it comprised a crime against humanity under international law. In Rwanda, the widespread rape of Tutsi women comprised a form of genocide, according to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Yet sexual violence in some conflicts is remarkably limited, despite wide- spread violence against civilians. Sexual violence is relatively limited even in some cases of ethnic conflict that include the forced movement of ethnic popu- lations; the conflicts in Israel/Palestine and Sri Lanka are examples. Some

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I am grateful for research support from the Yale Center for International and Area Studies and the Santa Fe Institute, and for research assistance from Margaret Alexander, Laia Balcells, Karisa Cloward, Kade Finnoff, Amelia Hoover, Michele Leiby, Amara Levy-Moore, Meghan Lynch, Abbey Steele, and Tim Taylor. I also thank the many people who commented on earlier versions, particularly Jeffrey Burds, Christian Davenport, Magali Sarfatti Larson, David Plotke, and Jeremy Weinstein.

POLITICS & SOCIETY, Vol. 34 No. 3, September 2006 307-341 DOI: 10.1177/0032329206290426 © 2006 Sage Publications

armed groups engage in relatively little sexual violence; Sendero Luminoso was deemed responsible for more than half the deaths and disappearances reported to the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission but for only a tenth of the (few) reported cases of rape.

In some conflicts, sexual violence takes the form of sexual slavery, whereby women are abducted to serve as servants and sexual partners of combatants for extended periods; in others, it takes the form of torture in detention. In some wars, women belonging to particular groups are targeted; in others, the violence is indis- criminate. In some wars, only women and girls are targeted; in others, men are as well. Some acts of wartime sexual violence are committed by individuals; many are committed by groups. Some acts occur in private settings; others are public, in front of family or community members. In some conflicts, the pattern of sexual violence is symmetric, with all parties to the war engaging in sexual violence to roughly the same extent; in other conflicts, it is very asymmetric.

Some simple hypotheses do not explain the puzzling variation in the extent and form of sexual violence in war: sexual violence varies in prevalence and form across civil wars as well as inter-state wars, across ethnic wars as well as non-ethnic, and across secessionist conflicts. The variation has not been ade- quately explained in the literature, much of which focuses on single cases rather than comparison across cases.1

Focusing on sexual violence against civilians by combatants, I first show that sexual violence indeed varies in extent and form across several war settings. I focus in particular on the absence of sexual violence in some conflicts and on the part of some groups. I then discuss the methodological challenges to advanc- ing our understanding of this variation and show that, despite these challenges, the subject merits further comparative analysis because sufficiently large varia- tion occurs across well-documented cases. Distinguishing between distinct pat- terns of sexual violence, I then assess the extent to which the arguments advanced in the literature (often implicitly) explain the variation. In the conclu- sion, I focus on the relationship between strategic choices on the part of armed group leadership, the norms of combatants, dynamics within small units, and the effectiveness of military discipline, and suggest some promising explanatory hypotheses.

VARIATIONS IN WARTIME SEXUAL VIOLENCE: SELECTED CASES

Following the definition used by recent international war crimes tribunals,2 by rape I mean the coerced (under physical force or threat of physical force against the victim or a third person) penetration of the anus or vagina by the penis or another object, or of the mouth by the penis. Thus rape can occur against men as well as women. Sexual violence is a broader category that includes rape, coerced undressing, and non-penetrating sexual assault such as sexual mutilation. The

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sexual humiliation and abuse inflicted on prisoners by U.S. troops at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and other prisons is thus a form of sexual violence.3

In this section, I describe the pattern of sexual violence in several wars, including inter-state as well as civil wars, ethnic as well as non-ethnic conflicts, and wars where sexual violence was very prevalent and where it was not. I begin by discussing the patterns of sexual violence during World War II.

World War II

As the Soviet army moved westward onto German territory in early 1945, large numbers of women were raped.4 While the earlier Soviet offensives in Romania and Hungary had seen widespread rape of civilian women (particu- larly after the siege of Budapest), the practice intensified as the army moved into East Prussia and Silesia. Although women of various ethnicities were raped in the course of looting villages and cities, German women were particularly tar- geted. In German villages in East Prussia, “it was not untypical for Soviet troops to rape every female over the age of twelve or thirteen.”5 As the Soviet army occupied Berlin in late April and early May 1945, thousands of women and girls were raped, often by several men in sequence, often in front of family or neigh- borhood, sometimes on more than one occasion. Soldiers sometimes detained a girl or woman for some days in her home or elsewhere and subjected her to repeated rape. Even after occupation became more institutionalized, Soviet sol- diers continued to rape girls and women. Sexual violence gradually subsided as occupation authorities realized the harm being done to the Soviet postwar polit- ical project and gradually instituted stronger rules against fraternization in gen- eral and rape in particular.

The pattern of sexual violence during the Soviet offensive varied in different settings. Naimark notes the contrast between the “exemplary” behavior of Soviet troops in Bulgaria and the generally better behavior toward Polish and other Slavs, with the looting and rape that occurred in Germany and Hungary, both non-Slavic groups.6 However, sexual violence in Berlin and Budapest sug- gests as well another pattern: in European history there appears to be a pattern of rape (and looting) following prolonged sieges as a form of punishment for holding out rather than surrendering.7 Moreover, throughout the offensive, frontline troops were less prone to rape than troops that came through later.8

During the occupation, women and girls were more vulnerable in border towns, naval centers, and transportation centers than elsewhere. Local variations also emerged as some commanders enforced the regulations and others did not.9

This is a relatively well-documented case: historians draw on a wide range of sources including Soviet military and secret police reports, military reports, wartime memoirs and diaries, and German hospital and police records (many women did report the incidents). Even in this case, however, the frequency of

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rape—even in Berlin itself—is difficult to establish.10 The best estimate appears to come from the two main Berlin hospitals: staff members estimated the number of rape victims as between 95,000 and 130,000.11 Taking 100,000 as a rough estimate of the number of victims and 1,500,000 as the number of women in Berlin at the time implies a prevalence (victims/female population) of roughly 6 percent.12

As the Soviet army moved westward toward Germany, propaganda posted and distributed along the way as well as official military orders encouraged sol- diers to take revenge on and punish Germans broadly speaking, not just soldiers. On the eve of the offensive into Poland, the orders to the First Belorussian Front included, “Woe to the land of the murders. We will get our terrible revenge for everything.” On the eve of crossing into East Prussia, the orders included,

[O]n German soil there is only one master—the Soviet soldier, that he is both the judge and the punisher for the torments of his fathers and mothers, for the destroyed cities and villages . . . remember your friends are not there, there is the next of kin of the killers and oppressors.13

Soldiers were instructed not to forget the violence wrought by the German mil- itary against both family and country. Naimark documents the tolerance of sex- ual violence against civilians on the part of the Soviet command structure, from field officers to Stalin himself, who responded to complaints from East Prussia with “We lecture our soldiers too much. Let them have some initiative,” and to those from German socialists with “In every family there is a black sheep. . . . I will not allow anyone to drag the reputation of the Red Army in the mud.”14

Did the Soviet troops engage in such widespread sexual violence in retalia- tion for sexual violence by German troops? The extent of sexual violence by German troops occupying Eastern Europe is not well documented; it appears to have been widespread in some areas.15 According to Wendy Jo Gertjejanssen,16

German soldiers raped girls and women of various ethnicities, including Jews, despite regulations against sexual relations with non-German women.17 Much sexual violence appears to have taken the form of forced prostitution as many girls and women were forced to serve in military brothels in cities and field camps. While some volunteered to serve in the brothels as a way to survive in the dire circumstances of the occupation, others were forced to serve under threat of death or internment. Gertjejanssen estimates that at least 50,000 women and girls served in military brothels throughout the Reich.18 German military authorities also organized brothels in labor and concentration camps, which were visited by favored prisoners, guards, and occasionally officers. Some girls and women were forced to serve in these brothels; others, when offered the choice of internment or service in the brothels, chose the latter. The scale of sexual violence in the camps (aside from the sexual humiliation of

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forced undressing and the violence against homosexuals, which often took the form of medical experiments) appears to have been limited, as the number of women in the brothels appears to be a small fraction of the number interned in the camps.19

Massive sexual violence also occurred in the Pacific theater. The “rape of Nanking,” the widespread violence by Japanese soldiers in the environs of the Chinese city of Nanjing for eight weeks beginning December 13, 1937, included extensive sexual violence. According to Iris Chang, 20,000 to 80,000 women and girls were raped and then executed, that is, 8 to 32 percent of the approximately 250,000 female civilians present in the city at the time of the takeover.20 Among them were pre-pubescent girls, pregnant and elderly women, and Buddhist nuns; most were summarily executed afterward. Sexual violence in Nanjing also included various forms of sexual abuse of men, including rape, the forcing of men to have intercourse with family members or the dead, and the forcing of celibate men to have intercourse.

One result of the negative international publicity in the wake of the violence in Nanjing was the widespread implementation of the so-called “comfort women” system of military-organized brothels that accompanied Japanese forces.21

According to a 1993 study by the Japanese government that included a review of wartime archives and interviews with both military personnel and former “comfort women,” more than 200,000 women from across East and Southeast Asia were recruited by force and deception to serve as on-call prostitutes sub- ject to immediate violence if they resisted. In establishing the “comfort sta- tions,” Japanese officials sought

to prevent anti-Japanese sentiments from fermenting [sic] as a result of rapes and other unlawful acts by Japanese military personnel against local residents in the areas occupied by the then Japanese military, the need to prevent loss of troop strength by venereal and other diseases, and the need to prevent espionage.22

Most of the comfort women were between fourteen and eighteen years old, and most were Korean. According to the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan,23 perhaps a third of them died in the course of the war.

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Sexual slavery was also a prominent form of sexual violence in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. According to a European Union investigation, approximately 20,000 girls and women suffered rape in 1992 in Bosnia-Herzegovina alone, many of them while held in detention facilities of various types.24 According to the UN Commission of Experts to investigate vio- lence in the former Yugoslavia, the “vast majority of the victims are Bosnian

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Muslims and the great majority of the alleged perpetrators are Bosnian Serbs.”25

The history of violence in the district of Foça illustrates a common pattern in this conflict.26 Before the conflict began, Muslims comprised 58 percent of the residents.27 From March to September 1992, Muslim girls and women were sub- jected to rape in the forests, in their homes, in detention centers, and in private flats. Of the sixty-three cases of rape and sexual assault in Foça compiled by the commission, about 55 percent took place in detention centers, including the local high school, a gym, and the workers’ barracks of a hydroelectric plant under construction. In such centers, members of the various Bosnian Serb forces walked in, chose from among the girls and women there, and raped them either on the premises or in nearby flats. Many of the women and girls endured gang rapes, repeated over days or weeks.28

The most authoritative investigation of sexual violence in the former Yugoslavia was carried out by a UN commission.29 The commission drew on two sources of evidence. The first was their analysis of tens of thousands of alle- gations contained in documents from a wide variety of sources from which the commission distilled 1,100 reported cases of rape and sexual assault (elimi- nating duplicate and unspecific allegations), including 800 identifiable victims, 700 named alleged perpetrators with another 750 identifiable, and 162 deten- tion sites.30 Representatives of the commission also carried out interviews with 223 people who were victims of or witnesses to sexual violence in Bosnia- Herzegovina.31

The commission identified several distinct patterns of sexual violence: (1) by individuals and small groups in conjunction with looting and intimidation of the targeted group; (2) in conjunction with fighting, often including the public rape of selected women in front of the assembled population after the takeover of a village; (3) against some women and girls held in detention or collection centers for refugees; (4) in sites for the purpose of rape and assault where all women were assaulted frequently, apparently for the purpose of forced impregnation (women were told that was the case, and pregnant women were sometimes held past the point when an abortion was possible); and (5) in detention sites for the purpose of providing sex. Sexual violence against men of various ethnicities (castration, being forced to perform fellatio or to have intercourse in front of guards), while much less frequent than that against women, also occurred in camps and detention centers (examples given include camps run by Serbs, Muslims, and Croats).

Among the characteristics stressed by the commission were an emphasis on shame and humiliation (many assaults occurred in front of family or in public), the targeting of young girls and virgins along with educated and prominent female community members, and sexual assault with objects. Moreover,

In both custodial and noncustodial settings, many victims report that the alleged perpe- trators stated that they were ordered to rape and sexually assault the victims, or that they

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were doing it so that the victims and their families would never want to return to the area. Also, every reported case occurred in conjunction with an effort to displace the civilian population of a targeted ethnic group from a given region.32

For example, the commission interviewed nineteen women from Kotor Varos, of whom six had been raped, most gang-raped by guards in a sawmill, which had served as a temporary collection center. One woman was told by a rapist that he wanted to try a Muslim woman and that she should be honored; a second woman was told that he would make “Cetnik babies” in Muslim and Croat women; a third woman was told by a rapist that he had been ordered to do so.33

The commission concluded that while some cases were the result of the actions of individuals or small groups acting without orders, “many more cases seem to be part of an overall pattern. These patterns strongly suggest that a sys- tematic rape and sexual assault policy exists, but this remains to be proved.”34 In drawing this conclusion, the commission relied on the fact that a majority of the cases (600 of the 1,100) occurred against people in detention, that similar pat- terns of sexual violence occurred in non-contiguous areas, and that sexual vio- lence was often simultaneous with military action or activity to displace certain civilian populations.

While not explicitly stated in the report, the inference is clear that the com- mission believed it probable that a policy of systematic ethnic cleansing includ- ing rape existed on the part of the Bosnian Serb forces.35 Direct evidence that Bosnian Serb and possibly Serbian forces planned a campaign of sexual vio- lence as part of the ethnic cleansing of Serbian areas of the former Yugoslavia is lacking, but may emerge as the various trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia continue.

Sri Lanka

Like Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sri Lanka is also a case of a secessionist ethnic conflict, but in Sri Lanka the level of sexual violence appears to be dramatically less. It has generally been wielded by government forces against women associ- ated with the insurgency. Police, soldiers, or security forces occasionally subject displaced Tamil women and girls to various forms of sexual assault, including gang rape and rape with foreign objects, after their arrest or detention at check- points on the grounds that they or family members are suspected members of the Tamil insurgency.36 I could not find estimates of the prevalence of sexual vio- lence in this case, but it does not appear to be either widespread or systematic.37

Sexual violence against Tamil women by government forces is one reason girls and women volunteer to fight with the insurgents.38 I am not aware of any alle- gations of sexual violence by insurgent combatants against civilians, despite their frequent targeting of civilians with other forms of violence, including their

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deployment of suicide bombers and forcing non-Tamil populations to leave areas of their control. Despite the frequent recruitment by force of girls as combatants, the group does not appear to engage in sexual abuse within its own ranks.39

Israel/Palestine

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also an ethnic conflict characterized by the increasing separation of ethnically defined populations, sexual violence appears to be extremely limited. While the forced movement of Palestinians out of some areas in 1948 was accompanied by a few documented cases of rape,40 at present neither Israelis nor Palestinians carry out sexual assaults despite the killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinian groups and of Palestinian civilians by Israeli security forces. In December 2003, I asked representatives of three human rights organizations (two Israeli and one Palestinian) whether they believed sexual assault was occurring but was not reported, or was not in fact taking place. They independently and unanimously stated that they received information for almost no cases of sexual assault and that they believed they would hear of it occurring as they did receive reports of lesser instances of sexual harassment (for example, during pat-down searches at checkpoints). It could be the case that the intensive international monitoring of the conflict deters the practice of sexual violence, but both sides do not appear much deterred in their other practices by their frequent condemnation by international actors.

Sierra Leone

Sexual violence during the war in Sierra Leone, in contrast to Bosnia- Herzegovina, did not involve explicit ethnic targeting.41 According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, sexual violence was carried out “indiscriminately on women of all ages, of every ethnic group and from all social classes.”42 Some women suffered rape by members of several armed groups. The commission noted two particular patterns: armed groups targeted young women and girls and also those girls and women associated with other armed groups. Young women and girls were targeted particularly because they were presumed to be virgins; female rebels occasionally checked the virginity of detained young women.43 Less frequently, older women also suffered sexual assault, including post-menopausal women for whom it broke a particular cul- tural taboo against sexual activity among this group. On occasion, rebels broke other taboos as well, forcing male family members to rape female family mem- bers or to watch them dance naked or be raped by others.44

Sexual violence was widespread among those internally displaced by the war, which comprised approximately a quarter of the population by 2001. According to a survey of 991 internally displaced women carried out by Physicians for

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Human Rights, 9 percent of the respondents had suffered sexual assault during the ten years of the war.45 Of the respondents who were sexually assaulted, 89 percent reported being raped and 33 percent reported being gang-raped.46 Of the human rights abuses suffered by household members, 40 percent were alleged to have been carried out by the rebel group Revolutionary United Front (RUF), 34 percent by unknown groups, 16 percent by unspecified rebels, and 4 percent by mixed groups.47

Sexual violence in Sierra Leone was also extremely brutal.48 Gang rapes often took the form of very young victims enduring gang rapes, with rebel com- batants lining up to take turns. Many of those who suffered sexual assault did so on multiple occasions. The extreme violence with which girls and women were raped often resulted in severe initial bleeding; tears in the vagina, anus, and sur- rounding tissue; long-term bleeding and incontinence; and sometimes death.49

A particular form of sexual violence in Sierra Leone was the detention of girls and women, often for long periods of time, as slaves serving and sexually servicing a rebel camp or a particular rebel.50 In some cases, they underwent forced marriage with a particular person. Of the internally displaced women who suffered sexual assault, 33 percent of the respondents were abducted, 15 percent were forced to serve initial as sexual slaves, and 9 percent were forced to marry a captor.51 Escape was reportedly very difficult, and attempts were severely punished. At war’s end, some “wives” were not willing or able to leave their spouses.52

The Commission found

that all of the armed factions, in particular the RUF and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, embarked on a systematic and deliberate strategy to rape women and girls, espe- cially those between the ages of ten and 18 years of age, with the intention of sowing terror amongst the population, violating women and girls and breaking down every norm and custom of traditional society.53

However, the commission did not analyze patterns of sexual violence in detail and therefore makes a less compelling case for sexual violence as a systematic strategy than that advanced by the commission on the former Yugoslavia, which laid out specific patterns not easily accounted for except by such a strategy.

U.S. Troops in Vietnam

In contrast to the absence of ethnic targeting in Sierra Leone, US troops carried out an unknown number of ethnically targeted acts of sexual violence during the Vietnam War. The best documented is that which occurred in March 1968, when nine helicopters dropped soldiers of Charlie Company near the hamlet My Lai.54 By the end of the day, 128 to 500 civilians had been executed. Approximately twenty girls and women were raped, some by groups of soldiers,

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and then murdered. The orders for the operation, according to the Peers Report, an internal investigation of the subsequent cover-up, included the destruction of all infrastructure and food; soldiers claimed they understood the order to include the elimination of all residents, civilian or not.

To my knowledge there has not been a scholarly study of sexual violence during the Vietnam War and many documents remain classified. The massacre at My Lai only became public knowledge because of the insistence of two heli- copter pilots, one who witnessed the killings and another who flew over the area a few days later. The publication in Life magazine of photographs of victims also undermined the feasibility of the initial cover-up efforts. However, it is well documented that another platoon, the Tiger Force of the 101st Airborne, also carried out acts of sexual violence, mutilation, and execution of civilians over a seven-month period in the same province the year before the events at My Lai. According to an investigative report published in 2003,55 the first incidents were sexual abuse of both male and female prisoners held by the platoon. The vio- lence dramatically increased after two members of the Tiger Force were killed and many wounded in an ambush.

Much of the literature on My Lai attributes the violence against civilians to poor leadership and morale. Despite their many differences (Charlie Company was an ordinary “grunt” unit, while the Tiger Force was an elite one), both fac- tors may have played a role in Tiger Force violence as well. Setting aside the difficulty of empirically establishing issues of leadership and morale without tautologically inferring their absence by the presence of violence, whether poor morale comprises an adequate explanation is difficult to judge in the absence of studies of other U.S. military units that also engaged in sexual violence and studies of those that did not.

El Salvador

Sexual violence during the civil war in El Salvador, a non-ethnic conflict pit- ting a leftist insurgency against an authoritarian government, was one-sided, and very low in comparison to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sierra Leone. Government soldiers and security forces occasionally engaged in sexual violence, including gang and multiple rapes, against some suspected insurgent supporters (includ- ing some men) detained in both official and secret detention sites. There are also isolated reports of government forces carrying out sexual violence while on operations early in the war. For example, according to Mark Danner, some of the nearly 1,000 people killed by the Salvadoran military at El Mozote in 1981 were raped.56 And two of the four U.S. churchwomen detained and killed by National Guardsmen in 1980 were raped. The final report of the UN-sponsored Truth Commission mentions only one incident of rape, carried out by government forces in a village in eastern El Salvador in 1981.57 However, the unpublished

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annex to the commission’s report discussed sexual violence in some detail.58

Sexual violence (alone or in conjunction with some other abuse) comprised 4 percent of human rights violations reported to the commission. The majority of incidents reported took place in the first few years of the war; all were reported to have been carried out by state forces or agents. Sexual violence appears gen- erally to have varied over time with other forms of violence against civilians, steeply decreasing after 1983 in response to the U.S. conditioning its military aid to the government on improved human rights performance. No incidents of sexual violence in the annex were attributed to the insurgent force. In the human rights and ethnographic literature analyzing the conflict, there are very few reports of sexual violence by insurgent forces.59 Sexual violence in the Salvadoran con- flict was thus asymmetric, distinctly low compared to other cases, and declined over the years of the war.

Peru

Sexual violence appears to have been relatively infrequent in the Peruvian conflict, comprising about 2 percent of the human rights violations reported to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Aggregate sexual violence against civilians in Peru’s civil war generally co-varied with other forms of violence against civilians: the frequency of different forms of violence varies similarly across time and space, according to the data compiled by the commission.60 As with other forms of violence, sexual violence was concentrated in the indige- nous highlands of Peru. However, the pattern of responsibility for sexual vio- lence diverged sharply from the pattern for other forms of violence, according to commission data. While Sendero Luminoso, the Maoist insurgent group, was responsible for more than half of the reported deaths and disappearances, they were responsible for only 11 percent of the (few) reported cases of reported rape.61 In contrast, state agents were responsible for about a third of the deaths and disappearances but about 85 percent of the reported rapes.

Summary of Observed Patterns

Sexual violence in these cases appears to vary substantially in prevalence; in form; in who is targeted (all women, girls and men as well as women, or par- ticular persons, perhaps members of an ethnic out-group); in whether it is exer- cised by combatants from a single party or more generally; whether it is pursued as a strategy of war; where it occurs (in detention, at home, or in public); in duration; whether it is carried out by a single perpetrator or by a group; whether victims are killed afterward; and whether its incidence varies with other forms of violence against civilians or occurs in a distinct pattern. In some wars, armed groups “mirror” the use of sexual violence by committing their own; in other

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wars, such tit-for-tat retaliation does not occur. In some conflicts, sexual vio- lence increases over time; in others, it declines.

The type of war (at the broadest level) does not explain the variation even among these few cases. Sexual violence varies in prevalence and form among civil wars as well as inter-state wars, among ethnic wars as well as non-ethnic, among genocides and ethnic-cleansing cases, and among secessionist conflicts.

CHALLENGES TO DOCUMENTING WARTIME SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Before continuing, however, a preemptive concern must be addressed. Perhaps the variation described above is merely an artifact of inadequate knowl- edge about the empirical patterns present in each case. The reported variation may reflect different intensities of domestic and international monitoring of conflicts rather than different prevalence rates: violence in some regions appears to garner more international attention than others.

Even in peacetime and even in countries with well-developed infrastructure and liberal norms, the methodological challenges to gathering data concerning sexual violence are serious. For example, what counts legally as “rape” varies significantly among U.S. states depending on whether it is narrowly defined as forced penetration of the vagina by a penis or more broadly to include anal pen- etration and vaginal penetration by other objects, and whether rape requires forcible compulsion or merely lack of consent.62 The definitional ambiguity is still greater across societies; for example, societies differ in whether rape is con- sidered possible between husband and wife. In some cultures, coerced vaginal penetration may be socially condoned in particular situations, with the result that an incident that would count as rape in other societies would not be con- sidered as such.63

Whether persons who have suffered some form of sexual violence are will- ing to report it, whether to health workers, to police, to ethnographers, or in sur- veys, also varies substantially across societies. One reason that many do not do so, even in societies with liberal sexual norms, is that they feel shame and fear stigmatization. In most societies, male victims of sexual violence appear to be particularly reluctant to report it. And in societies where abortion is illegal, female victims of rape who abort may be particularly reluctant to report rape.

These challenges are, of course, compounded during war when surveys are generally absent, police and health services are disrupted, and families and social groups are displaced and dispersed. The fear of reprisal for reporting sexual violence is likely greater in war settings, particularly if the perpetrator or his group is still present. Increased political polarization may intensify partisan bias in the reporting of human rights violations—even by non-partisan organizations—as violence and displacement may isolate some populations from services and inten- sify the counting of incidents in others. The destruction of rural infrastructure

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may reinforce urban bias. International organizations that document human rights violations tend to have limited resources and as a result focus their investiga- tions on particular cases. And because many of the physical injuries sustained during sexual assault are to soft tissue, sexual violence does not always leave an observable trace in the long-run forensic record. As a result, the exhumation of massacre sites may not document sexual violence unless it took the form of mutilation or dismemberment, or other tissue damage likely to remain evident for many years.

However, the disruption of war may also increase reporting. Sexual violence in the context of political conflict may be more likely to be reported as the stigma felt by its victims may be less, and displacement from home communi- ties may loosen traditional norms and lessen the likelihood of reprisal. Health services may be more available, not less, to populations that fled to urban areas or in some refugee camps, compared to their place of origin.64 Human rights groups, women’s organizations, and medical service groups may emerge or command more resources in wartime, enabling the compiling of reports and pat- terns and facilitating investigation by international commissions and human rights groups. Perhaps due to the strengthening of international norms against sexual violence during war, recent truth commissions tend to document sexual violence more carefully than earlier commissions.

Another challenge to analyzing variation in wartime sexual violence is the fact that levels of sexual violence vary across countries in peacetime, making more difficult the interpretation of the wartime variation. Evidence for peace- time variation comes from studies that draw on two very different methodolo- gies. The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) uses crime victimization surveys in many countries to compile cross- national data on rates of sexual assault. In developing country capital cities, five-year prevalence rates in the mid-1990s for sexual assault varied between 0.83 percent, the average for the three cities at the low end (Manila, Gaborone, and La Paz), and 6.60 percent for the three cities at the high end (Rio de Janeiro, Tirana, and Buenos Aires), about eight times as high.65 In industrialized coun- tries, estimated annual rates of sexual assault also vary, between 0.13 at the low end (the annual average for Japan, Ireland, and Scotland) and 1.03 at the high end (for Sweden, Finland, and England), with the high rate again about eight times as high as the low rates.66

Evidence for cross-cultural differences in the social regulation of sexual aggression also comes from analysis of ethnographic reports of practices in band and tribal societies before significant contact with modern societies.67 In her analysis of a subset of ninety-five societies of a standard sample of such soci- eties, Peggy Sanday found that the rate of rape of women differed significantly: in nearly half of the sample rape was rare or absent, while in about a fifth of them, rape was moderately to highly frequent against women of that or other societies

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or it was an accepted way to punish women or occurred as part of ceremonies.68

(Sanday is not precise about what counts as moderately to highly frequent.) The significant correlates of rape among these societies were war, inter-personal violence (excluding rape), and ideologies of male dominance (women exercise little power or authority and do not participate in political decision making).

Working with a different sample of thirty-five societies (randomly drawn), Patricia Rozee classified as rape patterns of sexual intercourse in which a woman would be punished or harmed if she refused to participate, and distin- guished between normative rape (rape that occurs in circumstances condoned by that society) and non-normative rape (rape in situations not condoned).69 Based on her examination of 200 ethnographic sources, Rozee found that non-normative rape occurred in 63 percent of the societies.70 She also argued that the preva- lence and form of normative rape varied among societies: marital rape occurred in 40 percent, exchange rape (in which women or girls are lent or given to guests or brothers, perhaps in the course of gambling or negotiations) in 71 percent, punitive rape (generally for transgressing gender norms) in 14 percent, ceremo- nial rape (such as ritual defloration) in 49 percent, and status rape (such as the right of chiefs to women) in 29 percent.71

Despite these empirical challenges, the variation in sexual violence is suffi- ciently well documented across enough wars and armed groups to suggest that it is real and not solely an artifact of bias in reporting and observation or a reflection of variation in peacetime levels. The variation in frequency among conflicts and among groups within a conflict appears to be large, with well-documented cases at both ends of the frequency spectrum. At the high end of the variation are some of the best documented cases, for example, Serbian forces in Bosnia- Herzegovina, for which it is also difficult to imagine a significantly lower rate given the numerous and mutually corroborating reports from dozens of investi- gations. And at the low end of the spectrum, it is difficult to imagine a high rate of sexual violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict going unreported, given the density of non-governmental human rights organizations and the intensity of international scrutiny of both parties’ behavior. Not only does the prevalence vary significantly, but the particular pattern of sexual violence does as well, which gives additional analytical traction. Finally, for some of the cases (World War II and Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example) it is evident that sexual violence was much more prevalent during the war than before. And in cases where it is unclear whether it was more prevalent during peacetime, the form of sexual violence changed during war, as in the case of sexual slavery in Sierra Leone.

EXPLAINING VARIATION IN WARTIME SEXUAL VIOLENCE

To address the central puzzle—why the frequency and form of sexual vio- lence vary across conflicts and across groups in a given conflict—it is helpful

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to consider a prior question as well, namely, why sexual violence is often higher in wartime than in peacetime. The following framework will help orga- nize potential explanations for variation in wartime sexual violence. First, indi- viduals in peacetime differ in their interest in sexual violence, with some so interested in sexual gratification that they use violence to attain it, others asso- ciating sexual gratification with domination and perhaps violence, others seek- ing to engage in sexual violence as a form of control and power, and still others not interested at all in sexual violence. The expression of sexual aggression by individuals is regulated by a variety of social mechanisms that differ among countries, and often among within-country groups, with the result that the peacetime rate of sexual violence differs among countries and groups (as dis- cussed above). (Societies vary, of course, in the extent to which their regula- tory mechanisms in fact constrain illegitimate aggression.) Second, these regulatory mechanisms are often weaker during war, resulting in higher levels of sexual violence as the opportunity and/or incentive to engage in sexual vio- lence increases. Third, the extent to which these regulatory mechanisms break down (and opportunity and incentive increase) varies across conflicts and groups. In some cases, regulation of sexual violence may be replaced by pro- motion of sexual violence as a strategy of war. In other cases, armed groups enforce effective sanctions against their combatants engaging in sexual vio- lence, potentially even leading to reduced levels of sexual violence compared to peacetime levels.

Opportunity

War sometimes increases the opportunity for sexual violence. There are sev- eral possible reasons. Wars tend to be fought by armed young men in groups far from the normal social controls of their village or neighborhood. In these cir- cumstances, sexual aggression is less regulated (the costs are lower) with the result that higher levels of sexual violence occur. Social controls may also be weaker among displaced civilians, particularly if communities are not displaced together. The dependence of some armed factions on the looting of civilian assets for combatant supplies may increase opportunity: entry into individuals’ homes to seize food (and often liquor) is an opportunity for sexual violence.

Data to systematically test the hypothesis that sexual violence increases dur- ing war is limited. Neil Mitchell and Tali Gluch found that sexual violence was predicted by the presence of war in a statistical analysis that correlated a mea- sure of sexual violence and the presence or absence of armed conflict.72

However, their finding was based on data for only one year and relied on a crude coding of limited human rights sources, principally U.S. State Department human rights reports. More adequate longitudinal data does not exist except for particular cases.73 Evidence that rates of sexual violence by U.S. troops in Europe

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increased during World War II comes from a study by Madeline Morris using data on “founded investigations” (meaning reported crimes that were not dis- missed as unfounded by investigators) from the FBI and US military services.74

She found that the rates of rape by male U.S. military personnel during war were three to four times higher than the rate by male civilians of the same age (in con- trast, military rates during peacetime were significantly lower than civilian rates). The increase in rape rates occurred as U.S. troops moved quickly through France in August and September 1944 and Germany in March and April 1945.75

Her interpretation is (in part) based on opportunity: such “breakout” periods are the relevant period of study, she argues, because it is then that soldiers have significant contact with civilians, as opposed to periods of intense fighting.

It should be noted that opportunity arguments differ in the implied perpe- trators of sexual violence. Some versions of the argument appear to assume that given the opportunity, all men will rape for sexual gratification. For example, evolutionary psychologists Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer argue that men inherit a genetically transmitted propensity for rape, which was selected for because men with poor chances of reproductive success would have a better chance of reproducing if they raped vulnerable females than if they did not.76 However, there are several reasons to doubt this claim.77 For at least for the 100,000 or so years of (biologically modern) human history, it seems likely that the expected fitness gains to rape were offset by the cost, including lethal punishment by group members related to the victim. Adultery is a principal cause of homicide of males in some hunter-gatherer societies;78

the penalty for rape is presumably at least as severe. (However, an inherited propensity for rape of female outsiders would not be as vulnerable to the lethal punishment objection.) A universal male propensity for rape based on reproductive success does not easily account for the raping of girls under reproductive age (20 to 30 percent of rape victims in the United States)79 and elderly women, the excessive violence of many rapes, or the prevalence of gang rape.80 In any case, modern biology views genes as expressed only if environmental conditions are propitious, so the mapping from genotype to phenotype is much weaker than this theory presumes. Other versions of the opportunity argument assume merely that with an increase in opportunity men with a propensity to rape will do so more frequently or that more men (but not necessarily all) will rape.81

If sexual violence should vary with opportunity, as this reasoning suggests, there are two additional implications. The first is that if we assume a narrow notion of opportunity as access to civilians, such that opportunity for sexual vio- lence against a civilian is also an opportunity to rob or kill that civilian, then sexual violence by that group should vary with other forms of violence. Groups that supply themselves by looting civilian homes have more opportunity for various forms of violence than groups that do not. The second is that sexual

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violence should not be targeted toward members of particular groups (unless opportunity varies systematically with groups).

However, these predicted patterns based on opportunity as access to civilians are not sustained by the cases considered here. Co-variation in forms of violence sometimes occurs, but is often not the case: some armed factions such as the Sri Lankan and Peruvian insurgencies appear to strictly limit sexual violence but carry out other violence against civilians. Opportunity more broadly understood depends on armed group strategy as well as access to civilians. If an armed group strongly punishes combatants who engage in sexual violence, the oppor- tunity to do so is less as the likely costs exceed the benefits. Opportunity broadly speaking also depends on the norms and practices of small units: if some mem- bers of a particular small group frequently carry out sexual violence, the social costs of sexual violence for other members may be lowered by conformity effects, with the result that individuals not particularly inclined to sexual vio- lence may participate out of concern for his or her status within the group (a process similar to sexual violence on the part of some youth gangs).

Moreover, in many conflicts, armed groups do not target all women with rape, but women (and sometimes men and children) of particular ethnicities or other social characteristics.82 While some sexual violence seems to be oppor- tunistic (as in the rape of British and French as well as German women by U.S. troops in World War II), in other conflicts it is highly targeted, for example, on women of a particular ethnicity or ideology, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina where Serbs directed sexual violence exclusively at Bosnian Muslims and Croatians. It does not seem likely that differences in opportunity narrowly understood account for such ethnic targeting in societies where populations were very mixed before the war.

Incentive

A distinct approach is that war leads to an increase of sexual violence because wartime experience increases the incentive to engage in sexual vio- lence, not merely the opportunity to do so.

It is sometimes proposed that wartime increase in sexual violence is rooted in biology: wartime sexual violence is higher because of a putative link between the aggression necessary for combat and male sex drive (via testosterone). But the relationship between aggression, testosterone, and sexual drive is complex and, to the extent that it is understood, what we know gives little support for this proposal. Research in this area is difficult because testosterone levels in males vary over the course of the day, some findings in animals do not generalize to humans, social processes affect testosterone levels as well as vice versa, and the design of experimental studies is often inadequate.83 The salient findings to date appear to be the following.

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Testosterone appears to affect aggression in three ways. Before birth, high testosterone levels in fetuses with both an X and Y chromosome cause fetuses to become male and also organize the brain in a distinct way. Second, testos- terone levels vary among males (and also over the lifespan of each) and there is evidence of a positive but weak relationship between aggression and testos- terone levels among normal men. (One careful analysis of thirty-five studies of the relationship found an average correlation of 0.08 between testosterone levels and observed aggression.)84 Third, the relationship is apparently recipro- cal: in male (but not female) individuals, testosterone levels increase in antici- pation of physical competition such as sports and status contests such as chess games.85 Afterward, the winner’s level tends to remain high but the loser’s decreases. And the response to challenges to status appears to depend on cul- ture: male experimental subjects from the U.S. South exhibited increased testos- terone after being insulted, but males from the North did not.86

Thus an armed group might be particularly aggressive if its members had high testosterone levels or if combat had effects similar to physical competition and status contests, particularly among the winners. For aggression to take a sexual form, it would seem either that members of the armed group must also feel increased sexual desire or that they hold cultural beliefs rendering sexual violence a favored form of aggression even in the absence of desire (e.g., sexual attacks with weapons rather than the penis). Focusing on the former for now, the relationship between testosterone, sexual desire, and sexual activity appears to exhibit a threshold effect: if testosterone is below the threshold, an increase in testosterone has no effect on desire or activity.87 Above the threshold, in normal men an increase in testosterone increases sexual desire and to some extent sex- ual activity, which depends on social norms, status, and structure as well as on desire.88 Among convicted sex offenders, high testosterone levels were associ- ated with more violent attacks and also with higher rates of recidivism (but only among those who did not complete an intensive treatment program).89

The fact that armed groups often engage in sexual violence during or after a successful engagement (for example, after the fall of a besieged city or in the course of forcing a civilian population to flee) might seem consistent with the proposed relationship between competition, increased testosterone, and engage- ment in sexual violence. And given that much sexual violence takes the form of rape of women by men using erect penises, it seems reasonable to suppose that sexual desire plays some role in sexual violence. But, not surprisingly, the pro- posed argument on its own cannot easily explain the observed variation in sex- ual violence, as it would presume (if it were true) significantly higher levels of testosterone in male combatants fighting for armed groups that engage exten- sively in sexual violence for no articulated reason. The burgeoning literature on the role of social processes in mediating the relationship between testosterone and aggression suggests that an explanation for the observed variation in sexual

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violence may lie in variation among armed groups in the social processes that regulate aggression. I return to this below.

A very different explanation for increased incentive for sexual violence in wartime begins with an understanding of peacetime gender relations as patriar- chal, in which women’s inferior social status is maintained by the state and other institutions and by violence, including sexual violence.90 In wartime, the enforcement of gender relations by the state and other institutions tends to break down as their presence in war zones is weaker; in their absence, men resort more frequently to violence to enforce gender roles. The argument is similar to that often given to the rise in lynching after the Civil War in the U.S. South: with the outlawing of slavery, violence such as lynching of African Americans increased. Cynthia Enloe advanced a variation of this argument: sexual violence increases during war because gender roles become more polarized.91

Arguments based on patriarchal social relations imply that sexual violence should be more prevalent in wars in which traditional gender norms are more dis- rupted. In many civil wars, gender roles become less polarized because village hierarchies break down as the population disperses and women take on tasks nor- mally carried out by men. It does not appear to be the case that sexual violence is higher when traditional norms are more disrupted. Contrary to the patriarchal thesis, in some conflicts patriarchal relations are so disrupted that there are sig- nificant numbers of female combatants in insurgent factions. Rather than the pre- dicted high rates of sexual violence, rates appear to have been very low in two such cases, the insurgencies in El Salvador and Sri Lanka. And women some- times participate in sexual violence as in Rwanda, where women sometimes incited men to rape, and in Iraq, Guantánamo, and Afghanistan, where U.S. ser- vicewomen played key roles in the sexual humiliation of prisoners.

Moreover, neither of these two explanations appears to account for the explicit targeting of certain people for sexual violence. A victory-driven increase in testosterone does not explain why enemy women and sometimes men, rather than women of one’s own group, are often singled out for sexual violence. And based on the second argument, we would expect that women who broke tradi- tional gender roles would be particularly targeted, but that does not appear to be the case.

One reason often advanced for sexual violence based on increased wartime incentives that does account for targeting of enemy civilians is that of revenge. During war, combatants target enemy civilians with violence in revenge for the violence suffered by themselves, their family, or community members. However, why revenge takes the form of sexual violence rather than other vio- lence should also be addressed. Sexual violence is sometimes said to occur in retaliation for sexual violence previously suffered (or rumored to suffer) by co-ethnics, but as our cases showed, sexual violence is often exercised by only one party to the war.

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Joshua Goldstein advances an argument for increased sexual violence during war that also accounts for the targeting of enemy women and men, and with specifically sexual violence.92 He argues that in order to persuade men to fight and endure all the terrors and hardships of war, societies need members willing to stand fast under fire. An extremely common way in which that is accom- plished relies on the development of sharp distinctions between genders: to become men, boys must become warriors. Societies’ need for warriors therefore results in universal rituals of manhood that include tests of physical courage, endurance, strength, self-control, and obedience. The gendered formation of soldiers thus rests on particular ideas about manhood: leaders persuade soldiers that to be a real man is to assert a militaristic masculinity. One result of such practices is that soldiers then represent domination of the enemy in a gendered way, leading to the use of specifically sexual violence against enemy women and, occasionally, against enemy men who are dominated through male rape and castration.93

Goldstein also argues that it is loyalty to the small unit, not the army or the nation, that enables men to fight under the terrifying conditions of war; the bonding among members of the unit is therefore essential and usually takes gen- dered forms, reinforcing the militaristic masculinity advanced by military train- ing. In her analysis of violence by the U.S. military, Morris similarly emphasizes the particular practices of the primary groups to which soldiers belong. A pri- mary group is a small number of people who share a common ideology and among whom personal, affective bonding takes place; other bonds are under- mined through initiation rituals.94 The sexual and gender norms imparted to recruits in their primary groups are “inadvertently comprised largely of the sort associated with rape propensity,” such as an understanding of masculinity as dominance, aggressiveness, and risk taking; adversarial sexual beliefs (both sexes manipulate and exploit the other); promiscuity; and general hostility toward women (including erroneous beliefs about rape, such as that women enjoy it).95 After documenting particular practices in the U.S. military in support of her argument, she reasons, like Goldstein, that this pattern is shared among military organizations generally.

This argument emphasizing norms of militarized masculinity that rely on gendered representations of domination of the enemy accounts both for the tar- geting of enemy women and men and for the use of specifically sexual violence. Together with their emphasis on the importance of the bonding between men of the same unit, this might also account for gang rapes in wartime (as a form of male bonding among primary groups).

However, if the militarized masculinity argument is to explain variation in wartime sexual violence, it would have to be the case that armies promote dif- ferent notions of masculinity, with the armies that emphasize more militaristic notions of manhood responsible for higher levels of sexual violence. I am not

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aware of systematic comparisons of military training, norms, and practices across armed groups, but the variation in sexual violence among state militaries appears significantly greater than the variation in their training, which appears surprisingly similar; nor does training appear to vary much among insurgent groups. Moreover, there are obvious exceptions to the claimed relationship: the Salvadoran insurgency, one of the two most militarily effective guerrilla armies in Latin America, had little record of sexual violence despite their highly mili- tarized notion of masculinity.

Perhaps variation in sexual violence is better addressed by variation in mili- tary discipline than training and socialization. I return to this issue below.

Sexual Violence as Instrumental for the Group

In the previous explanations for sexual violence based on increased opportu- nity and incentive, sexual violence occurred for reasons of individual gratifica- tion or as a by-product of necessary training. In contrast, in some conflicts sexual violence is promoted or tolerated by (at least local) leaders of some armed groups as an effective means toward its goals. Such instrumental sexual violence may serve as a reward for participation. Or it may be tolerated as a form of small-unit solidarity promoting bonding of its members. Or it may be seen as a form of terror or punishment, as in Berlin and Nanjing, despite its undermining of military effectiveness. In Rwanda, pre-war propaganda deni- grating and sexualizing Tutsi women created a climate in which mass sexual violence appeared to be an appropriate form of retribution for long-standing grievances.96 Or it may be pursued as a form of torture as in the Latin American instances discussed above and in detention sites in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo, where US forces use sexual humiliation to “soften up” suspects for interrogation. In some cases, an armed group engages in sexual violence against civilian members of its own community, or its own combatants, as when such targets are suspected of collaborating with the enemy. However, the most prevalent form of selective violence against collaborators in civil wars is homi- cide, particularly in certain zones of war in which an army is in control but not dominant.97 Why some armies deploy sexual violence to control and punish col- laborators while others do not remains unexplained. The most notorious instru- mental use of widespread sexual violence against civilians occurs (sometimes) as part of “ethnic cleansing,” in which violence is used against entire popula- tions to force their movement from particular regions claimed as the homeland, and as part of some genocides.

The conditions for such instrumental promotion of sexual violence are not well specified in the literature. Several authors suggest that sexual violence is an effective form of wartime violence in particular cultural settings. For example, sexual violence may be an effective form of ethnic cleansing or genocidal violence,

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destroying the social fabric of a society, when used against groups that understand sexual violence against a woman as a violation of the family’s honor as well as hers, and as humiliation of her male relatives.98 Cynthia Enloe suggests a more refined hypothesis along the same lines:

if military strategists . . . imagine that women provide the backbone of the enemy’s cul- ture, if they define women chiefly as breeders, if they define women as men’s property and as the symbols of men’s honor, if they imagine that residential communities rely on women’s work—if any or all of these beliefs about society’s proper gendered division of labor are held by war-waging policy makers—they will be tempted to devise an overall military operation that includes their male soldiers’ sexual assault of women.99

Enloe makes a similar argument concerning sexual torture of suspected insur- gents. It is especially likely, she reasons, when the regime is preoccupied with national security, a majority of civilians understand security as military security; security apparatuses are dominated by masculinist males; the definitions of honor, loyalty, and treason are derived from misogynous military and police cultures; men seen as threats are also seen as vulnerable through their roles as fathers, lovers, and husbands; and some local women are publicly visible as opposition leaders.100

These proposed conditions for the instrumental promotion of sexual violence are hypotheses generated by cases in which instrumental sexual violence occurred and have not been confirmed by careful empirical testing across cases. They appear to predict more sexual violence than is in fact observed: masculin- ist notions of honor are present in many societies that do not see massive sexual violence during conflict, as in El Salvador and Israel/Palestine. In addition, most instrumentalist accounts do not adequately address two issues important for the approach. The first is whether sexual violence as a strategy originated at the top of the command structure or at some lower level (and then may have diffused to other sites or groups). The second is whether the organization has a command and control structure sufficient to enforce a strategy of sexual violence if pro- moted by top leaders. Goals may diverge widely between leaders of an armed group and individual members,101 resulting in a potential gap between measures advocated at the top and priorities among small units on the ground.

Sanctions against Sexual Violence

The effectiveness of an armed group’s command and control structure is also important for the opposite pattern, the effective prohibition of sexual violence by the group’s leaders. Even if leaders were persuaded of the military effective- ness of sexual violence against particular groups, they might decide to prohibit it for normative, strategic, or practical considerations. For example, if an orga- nization aspires to govern the civilian population, leaders will probably attempt

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to restrain combatants’ engagement in sexual violence against those civilians for fear of undermining support for the coming revolution.

Similarly, if an armed group is dependent on civilians, leaders will probably attempt to restrain sexual violence. Jeremy Weinstein holds that an insurgent army whose military capacity depends on the voluntary and ongoing provision of intel- ligence and other services by civilians will only attract highly committed insur- gents and is likely to limit its use of coercion and violence. In contrast, he asserts, armies that attract opportunistic not idealistic recruits, as when members have easy access to resources such as abundant, lootable natural resources, are less likely to constrain their use of violence against civilians.102 These considerations should extend to sexual violence: armies that do not depend on civilian populations will not limit their use of sexual violence. However, the Colombian leftist insurgent groups appear not to follow this pattern: despite their reliance on revenues from coca paste and kidnapping, they engage in relatively little sexual violence.103

Reasons for prohibiting sexual violence may reflect normative concerns as well as practical constraints. Revolutionary groups seeking to carry out a social revolution see themselves as the disciplined bearers of a new, more just, social order for all citizens; sexual violence may conflict with their self-image. For example, the norms and practices of liberation theology informed many of the practices and values of the Salvadoran insurgency;104 it is difficult to imagine the organization embracing liberation theology while violating one of Catholicism’s central norms, the sanctity of womanhood. Similar normative considerations may account for the restraint of the Colombian insurgents. A norm against sex- ual violence may take a distinct form: in some conflicts, sexual violence across ethnic boundaries may be understood by leaders or combatants as polluting the instigator rather than humiliating the victim and the social group.

New social norms against the use of particular forms of violence and in favor of others may also be actively cultivated by an armed group as a matter of strat- egy or principle. The Salvadoran insurgency attempted to shape individual long- ings for revenge toward a more general aspiration for justice because revenge seeking by individuals would undermine insurgent discipline and obedience.105

Despite systematic celebration of martyrdom in pursuit of victory, the insur- gency did not endorse suicide missions and explicitly prohibited sexual vio- lence. The Sri Lankan insurgents, in contrast, carry out suicide bombing and, arguably, shape desires for revenge toward that end, yet also do not engage in sexual violence toward civilians despite their practice of ethnic cleansing.

Dependence on international allies may also constrain sexual violence if those allies have normative concerns about such violence. Even if neither the armed group nor its sponsor is itself normatively concerned, it may seek to avoid criticism by international human rights organizations.

These examples suggest that armed groups may promote selected forms of violence and form able soldiers without tolerating sexual violence. An army for

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whom females comprise a high fraction of combatants may be particularly con- strained in its use of sexual violence. This is suggested by the empirical pattern that female-intensive insurgencies in El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Peru, and Colombia appear to carry out less sexual violence. However, the mechanism is not clear, and these insurgencies share other characteristics as well, such as an unusual degree of internal discipline.

Whether an armed group effectively enforces particular sanctions and norms decided on by leaders generally depends on the group’s military discipline. In particular, prohibition of sexual violence based on practical constraints raises two issues. The first is whether the constraint operates directly on combatants as well as leaders. If soldiers do not themselves feel the direct causal pinch of the constraint, whether the constraint in fact constrains then depends on the degree of discipline within the organization. Many armies probably prohibit sexual violence yet do not in fact discipline soldiers who commit it. The second issue is methodological: independent evidence for the existence of constraints may be difficult to establish beyond the non-observation of the type of violence supposedly constrained. However, if combatants themselves have individual internalized norms against sexual violence or if small units share such a norm, small units may effectively enforce the norm without relying on the hierarchi- cal discipline of the armed group.

CONCLUSION

The literature on sexual violence during war has yet to provide an adequate explanation for its variation across wars and armed groups. While many authors have distinguished between opportunistic and strategic sexual violence, the empirical pattern of variation is wider, including wars where sexual violence is remarkably low on the part of one or more parties to the conflict. In the light of comparative analysis, we do not adequately understand the conditions under which armed groups provide effective sanctions against their combatants engag- ing in sexual violence or those under which groups effectively promote its strate- gic use. In concluding, I identify the contributions of this article, suggest some possible patterns amid the variation, and outline a broader research agenda.

Before proceeding, I should note explicitly that I have used a rhetorical device throughout the paper: I assumed a single, deterministic, causal path to a particu- lar level or form of sexual violence such that a single instance that contradicted that path led to its rejection. It is likely that a range of causal mechanisms interact to create the variation in sexual violence and that a probabilistic rather than deter- ministic approach is necessary to account for the overall pattern of variation.

The first contribution of the article is its emphasis on the neglected category of armed groups that do not engage in sexual violence, widening the variation that needs to be explained.

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A second contribution is the idea that addressing the puzzle of variation in sexual violence requires three levels of analysis, that of the armed group (an insurgent group or a national military), the small unit in which combatants have face-to-face relations, and the individual.106 An initial distinction is whether the armed group provides effective incentives that promote sexual violence or sanc- tions that prohibit it. If there are no effective sanctions either promoting or dis- couraging sexual violence (either because the armed group does not have an explicit policy or because there is no effective enforcement of that policy), the degree of sexual violence engaged in by combatants depends on whether the group has access to civilians (as when it loots kitchens and fields for food) or not, whether small units have norms prohibiting or endorsing sexual violence, and whether individuals have such norms.

Strategic sexual violence appears to occur when an armed group believes it to be an effective form of terror against or punishment of a targeted group. While strategic sexual violence may not be explicitly ordered, it is (at least) tol- erated; if any punishment occurs it is symbolic and limited, clearly for external consumption rather than deterrence. Such violence appears to take two broad forms. The first is sexual torture and/or humiliation of persons detained by an armed group (as in the treatment of persons detained by state agents in El Salvador and by U.S. forces in Iraq and Guantánamo). The second is wide- spread sexual violence against a targeted group, which frequently takes the form of gang (and often public) rape, tends to occur in a variety of settings, and usu- ally occurs over extended periods of time. The latter form appears during some but not all ethnic conflicts; many but not all groups engaged in the forced move- ment of ethnically defined populations perpetuate it.

The extent of opportunistic sexual violence depends on the absence of sanc- tions and norms (on the part of the armed group, the small unit, or the individ- ual) that effectively prohibit it and on proximity to potential victims. Where individual and small-unit norms prohibit sexual violence, perhaps on the grounds that it is polluting to the perpetrator, sexual violence will not occur even if a unit has ready access to civilians and even if the armed group does not pun- ish those who engage in it.

Under what conditions armed groups, small units, and individuals develop sanctions and norms that effectively endorse or constrain combatants’ engage- ment in sexual violence is, of course, key to explaining the observed variation. While an adequate explanation is beyond the scope of this paper, some obser- vations and hypotheses do arise from the analysis.

Hypothesis 1. Where insurgent groups depend on the provision of support (sup- plies, intelligence) from civilians and aspire to govern those civilians, they do not engage in sexual violence against those civilians if they have a reason- ably effective command structure. Suggestive evidence: Leftist insurgencies

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in Latin America, which typically have intensive socialization processes and effective command structures, do not engage in sexual violence.

Hypothesis 2. Where the norms (either condemning or approving sexual vio- lence) held by individual combatants and small units are the same and are also endorsed by the armed group’s leadership, sexual violence by that group will be either very low or very high, respectively. Such alignment of norms may have a complementary rather than a merely additive effect: each norm’s effect is strengthened by the presence of the same norm at the other levels. Specifically, where armed groups reinforce cultural taboos against sexual contact with the potential target populations, sexual violence against that population will be low. And in the absence of such cultural taboos, where armed groups promote a policy of sexual violence against a population, vio- lence will be high. Suggestive evidence: There was relatively little sexual vio- lence (apart from sexual humiliation) in the labor and concentration camps of Nazi Germany. And the high marriage rate among ethnic groups before the conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda, according to this hypothesis, facilitated the widespread sexual violence during the conflicts.

Hypothesis 3. States confronting an armed threat will tolerate (and possibly promote) a degree of sexual violence against suspected insurgent supporters during detention, constrained by the degree of accountability of state agents to civilian authorities and those authorities’ beliefs about the acceptability of sexual violence. Suggestive evidence: State forces engaged in sexual torture against detainees suspected of support for insurgent groups in El Salvador, Peru, and Argentina. And Jennifer Green found that state forces engaged in collective rape in twenty-three of the thirty cases of widespread sexual vio- lence that she identified.107

Hypothesis 4. To the extent that military forces in democracies are more accountable for their practices to civilian authorities, sexual violence will depend on the norms and tactics of civilian leaders, who may endorse some types of sexual violence while effectively sanctioning others. Suggestive evi- dence: Democracies rarely engage in widespread sexual violence and gener- ally punish rape for personal gratification, but limited sexual violence in the form of sexual humiliation against persons in detention by U.S. forces is an ongoing practice reflecting its effective endorsement by civilian leaders.

Hypothesis 5. If an armed group prohibits sexual violence against a particular population, the less effective the military discipline of the group, the more likely it is to engage in sexual violence (unless combatants hold particularly strong norms against it). Thus ill-disciplined militias, ill-trained armies of conscripts, poorly trained military police, and little supervised service troops are more likely to engage in sexual violence than elite frontline troops (in the absence of a policy promoting sexual violence).

Hypotheses 6. Armed groups with a high proportion of female combatants engage less in sexual violence. I am uncertain why this seems to be the case in Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Peru, and Colombia, among others. (The excep- tion is U.S. forces, where women in the military police and military intelligence

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participated in sexual violence against detainees.) The presence of female combatants may disrupt the dynamics of bonding in small units, may dis- place patriarchal role models that support sexual violence, may constrain sexual violence for fear that the enemy could target fellow soldiers in kind, or may put in motion some other mechanism.

However, the documented variation in patterns of sexual violence raises questions that far exceed these hypotheses. To what extent is sexual violence accounted for by a breakdown in command-and-control structure and morale versus a change in norms on the part of combatants? What accounts for the emergence of an organizational structure strong enough to enforce strategic decision by the leadership? How and why do small-unit norms evolve that enable sexual violence by its members? In what conditions do military victory, on the one hand, and military stalemate, on the other, contribute to sexual vio- lence? To what extent do international norms and law constrain the practice of sexual violence? Why are men targeted in some settings but not in others?

In particular, what accounts for the distinct forms of sexual violence? To what extent does the form of sexual violence reflect the type of war in which it occurs, with public gang rape tending to occur during ethnic cleansing, sexual torture in states confronting threats, and so on?

More broadly, the following avenues of research may contribute to address- ing the overall puzzle of variation in sexual violence.

First, more research is needed to better document variation in the patterns of sexual violence across conflicts, including those analyzed here, and to assess whether the hypotheses above make sense in light of more cases. In particular, because the cases were chosen for their variation in sexual violence, additional research is needed to estimate the relative frequency of occurrence of different patterns in the actual universe of cases.108

Second, efforts to gather data on the extent and form of sexual violence should include cases where it appears to have been relatively infrequent. Such research on “negative cases” of groups or conflicts where sexual violence does not occur (or occurs at low levels) should illuminate cases where it does. Of par- ticular interest are those conflicts where one party does not “mirror” the use of sexual violence by another party to the war and conflicts where sexual violence seems anomalously low in the light of high rates in similar conflicts. This arti- cle suggests a key distinction among such negative cases: whether sexual vio- lence does not occur due to effective sanctions against it, individual norms against it, or small-unit norms against it, or because the group has little access to civilians. In particular, a comparison of the working of ideological and reli- gious or other cultural mores against sexual violence might shed light on the character of many insurgencies. However, establishing the operative force of such mores poses a particular methodological challenge, namely, how to establish

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the causal force of a stated norm or sanction independently of the observed pres- ence or absence of sexual violence.

Such research requires access to detailed local sources, which is not always possible during or in the aftermath of war. However, wars differ in the avail- ability of such records and the possibility of extended local field research.109

Fortunately, it is precisely such negative cases for which local research may be possible. Colombia may be a case of particular interest, for it appears that sex- ual violence was fairly frequent during the period of civil violence termed la Violencia (1948-1958), but has not been a significant element in the repertoire of violence of the insurgent groups today.110

Third, to explore the force of potential causal processes, within-case contrasts should be explored as the simplest way to control for many otherwise confound- ing variables. This approach is already proving very rich for the study of violence and participation in civil war, including in Greece,111 Rwanda,112 Peru,113 and El Salvador.114 Ideally, one could compare patterns of sexual (and other) violence not just between factions and over time, but across subunits of the armed factions, thereby clarifying the causal force of factors at different levels.115 The extent to which sexual violence varies with other forms of violence should also be analyzed as a way to identify particular strategies and norms of violence. A particularly interesting case would be that of U.S. forces in Vietnam, assuming that documents exist that report unit behavior and that they are or could be declassified. Comparing patterns of sexual violence in different colonies of the same empire would also be an illuminating variation on this research design.

Fourth, the small-group dynamics that lead to unit norms promoting or con- straining the occurrence of sexual violence appear a promising avenue of research. Relevant factors include recruitment of individuals who endorse the group norm and conformity to the norm once the individual is a member of the group. For example, there may be systematic differences between armed groups that rely on mercenaries, career professionals, and conscripts. In particular, the extent to which military training practices differ among armies in the degree of brutalization of recruits and in the activities to build bonds between members of the small units could be a fruitful avenue for further exploration. Comparison to small-group dynamics in other settings where group sexual violence sometimes occurs, such as fraternities, urban gangs, and sports teams, may prove fruitful.

A fifth, related, issue that would be very illuminating is the study of perpe- trators of wartime sexual violence. Although such research would be difficult to carry out, for human subjects concerns as well as practical reasons, it may not be impossible. Scott Straus was able to interview a particular subset of perpe- trators of the Rwandan genocide, those who had been convicted, had confessed, and had been sentenced.116

A sixth avenue of research would focus more explicitly on dynamic interac- tive mechanisms. For example, patterns of sexual violence might be fruitfully

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analyzed with a model based on positive feedback mechanisms that amplify small initial differences between groups, units, or sites and result in large dif- ferences in the prevalence and form of sexual violence. Such models may illu- minate the diffusion of decentralized norms that condone sexual violence, for example. One such mechanism is escalating revenge: if a member of one party commits sexual violence against a member of another group, a member of the other may retaliate in ways leading to a spiral of sexual violence. Or epidemio- logical models might be productive, in which if some members of a small group commit sexual violence, other members of that small group may do so as well; once that small group does, neighboring units may join in, leading to wide- spread sexual violence by that party to the war. In both cases the dynamic processes explaining the escalation or dampening of violence will be character- ized by tipping points such that seemingly small differences in the causes of vio- lence would account for large differences in the consequences.

The ongoing brutality in Darfur reminds us that sexual violence remains a horrifying aspect of war. Understanding the determinants of its variation may help to define policies better able to curtail this savage form of violence that tar- gets the most vulnerable civilians, often with the intention to ruin them for life.

NOTES

1. This paper joins other recent works that analyze variation in wartime sexual vio- lence but focuses on a wider range of variation. See Lisa Boswell Sharlach, “Sexual Violence as Political Terror” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 2001); J. Robert Lilly and Pam Marshall, “Rape in Wartime,” in The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior, ed. Clifton D. Bryant (London: Brunner-Routledge, 2000), 318-22; and Mia Bloom, “War and the Politics of Rape: Ethnic Versus Non-ethnic Conflicts,” unpublished manuscript.

2. See UNESCO, Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-like Practices during Armed Conflict, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13 (New York: United Nations, 1998); and Human Rights Watch, “We’ll Kill You if You Cry”: Sexual Violence in the Sierra Leone Conflict (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003).

3. Sexual violence differs from the broader category of gender violence in that the latter category includes violence that occurs because of the victim’s gender without the kinds of sexual contact included in sexual violence.

4. Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany. A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Boston: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), 69-140.

5. Ibid., 72; see also 74. 6. Ibid., 106-7. 7. Lilly and Marshall, “Rape in Wartime.” 8. Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2002), 300, 326, 413. 9. Naimark, The Russians in Germany, 88-90.

10. The records of women requesting abortions confirm a high prevalence of rape in Berlin. While abortion was technically illegal, authorities suspended the law in the case of rape by foreigners; permission was granted to nearly all cases in the district whose records were analyzed by Atina Grossman. See Atina Grossman, “A Question of Silence:

ELISABETH JEAN WOOD 335

The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers,” in West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society, and Culture in the Adenauer Era, ed. Robert G. Moeller (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 33-51.

11. Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945, 410. 12. The incidence of rape (incidents/population) would be much higher than the

prevalence (victims/population) given the pattern of gang rapes and multiple incidents suffered by the same person.

13. Quoted in Naimark, The Russians in Germany, 72. 14. Ibid., 71. 15. Jeffrey Burds, personal communication, December 3, 2006. 16. Wendy Jo Gertjejanssen, “Victims, Heroes, Survivors: Sexual Violence on the

Eastern Front during World War II” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2004). 17. Jonathan C. Friedman, Speaking the Unspeakable: Essays on Sexuality, Gender,

and Holocaust Survivor Memory (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002), ch. 2. The German military treated rape of civilians by German soldiers on the eastern front much more leniently than on the western front, where military courts imposed sig- nificantly more severe punishment. See Birgit Beck, “Rape: The Military Trials of Sexual Crimes Committed by Soldiers in the Wehrmach, 1939-1944,” in Home/Front: The Military, War and Gender in 20th Century Germany, ed. Karen Hagerman and Stefanie Schuler-Springorum (New York: Berg, 2002), 255-73.

18. Gertjejanssen, Victims, Heroes, Survivors, 220. 19. Based on Gertjejanssen’s description of the camp brothels, I estimate the number

of women in camp brothels to have been between 1,000 and 10,000. 20. Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New

York: Penguin, 1997). Chang draws on a wide range of documents, including the diaries and reports of international observers who remained in Nanjing throughout the violence, as well as some interviews. It is not clear how Chang arrives at this estimate.

21. Joshua A. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 367. The system was begun in 1932 but expanded extensively in the aftermath of the violence in Nanjing.

22. Japanese Cabinet Councillors’ Office on External Affairs, “On the Issue of Wartime ‘Comfort Women,’” cited in UNESCO, Contemporary Forms of Slavery, appendix, 9(a). The precise number of women forced to serve as military sexual slaves is not well documented, as the Japanese destroyed much of the documentation in 1945.

23. Cited in Chung Hyun-Kyung, “‘Your Comfort versus My Death’: Korean Comfort Women,” in War’s Dirty Secret: Rape, Prostitution, and Other Crimes against Women, ed. Anne Llewellyn Barstow (Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 2000), 17-19.

24. Cited in Goldstein, War and Gender, 363; and Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 140. Twenty thousand girls and women comprise 2.1 percent of female Muslims in pre-war Bosnia-Herzegovina of all ages. The UN Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights initially made a lower estimate of 11,900 rapes, based on 119 pregnancies resulting from rape that were aborted in six major medical centers (the rapporteur assumed a rate of pregnancy after rape of about 1 percent); cited in Todd Salzman, “Rape Camps, Forced Impregnation, and Ethnic Cleansing,” in Barstow, ed., War’s Dirty Secret, 76. However, as Salzman points out, on the one hand many women were raped more than once and others had no access to medical facilities and induced abortion themselves, abandoned the child, or kept the child. On the other hand, many

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pregnant women who sought abortions did not indicate that pregnancy originated in rape. On balance, Salzman argues that the number of pregnancies was likely significantly higher than 119, and he concurs with the 20,000 estimate (Salzman, “Rape Camps,” 76-77, 63).

25. United Nations Security Council (UNSC), “Rape and Sexual Assault,” in Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992), S/1994/674/Add.2, vol. V (New York: United Nations, 1994), annex IX.I.C.

26. This history of Foça draws on UNSC, “Rape and Sexual Assault”; and Joanne Barkan, “As Old as War Itself: Rape in Foça,” Dissent (Winter 2002): 60-66.

27. UNSC, “Rape and Sexual Assault,” annex IX.2.A.20. 28. Eight men from Foça were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the

former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on sixty-two counts of sexual assault and rape as crimes against humanity and grave breaches and violations of the laws and customs of war (see Barkan, “As Old as War Itself,” 65). The three who were tried received sentences of twenty-eight, twenty, and twelve years.

29. UNSC, “Rape and Sexual Assault,” esp. annex IX. 30. Ibid., annex IX.I.A. 31. Ibid., annex IX.A. 32. Ibid., annex IX.I.C. 33. Ibid., annex IX.A III.A.2. 34. Ibid., annex IX, “Conclusions.” 35. Of course, one reason the ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia seemed trou-

bling to many observers was the fact of significant intermarriage before the war: from 1981 to 1991, 18.6 percent of new marriages in Bosnia-Herzegovina were inter-ethnic (1991 census figures cited in Enloe, Maneuvers, 142).

36. See Amnesty International, “Sri Lanka: Torture in Custody,” 1999, http://www .amnestyusa.org/countries/sri_lanka/reports.do; and United Nations Development Fund for Women, “Gender Profile of the Conflict in Sri Lanka,” rev. October 31, 2005, http://www.womenwarpeace.org/sri_lanka/sri_lanka.htm.

37. Amnesty International documented sexual violence by government forces against eleven women between 1999 and 2001. See Amnesty International, “Sri Lanka: Rape in Custody,” 2002, http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/sri_lanka/reports.do.

38. Miranda Alison, “Cogs in a Wheel? Women in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” Civil Wars 6, no. 4 (2003): 34-54.

39. Human Rights Watch, Living in Fear: Child Soldiers and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, vol. 16, no. 13 (C) (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004); and United Nations Development Fund for Women, “Gender Profile.”

40. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

41. In the testimonies compiled by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, victims reported perpetrators wanting sex with a virgin, wanting a new wife, wanting to send a message to the government, and so on, but do not report perpetrators stating a wish to have sex with or to punish a person of particular ethnicity or religion. See Human Rights Watch, We’ll Kill You if You Cry; and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), War-Related Sexual Violence in Sierra Leone (Boston: PHR, 2002).

42. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, Final Report, 2005, http://trcsierraleone.org/drwebsite/publish/index.shtml, ch. 3b, para. 282.

43. Human Rights Watch, We’ll Kill You if You Cry.

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44. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, Final Report, paras. 292-96; and Human Rights Watch, We’ll Kill You if You Cry, 35-42.

45. Lynn L. Amowitz, Chen Reis, Kristina Hare Lyons, Beth Vann, Binta Mansaray, Adyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith, Louise Taylor, and Vincent Iacopino, “Prevalence of War-Related Sexual Violence and Other Human Rights Abuses among Internally Displaced Persons in Sierra Leone,” Journal of the American Medical Association 287, no. 4 (2002): 513-21. The survey design combined systematic random sampling and cluster sampling in four locales representing 91 percent of the internally displaced pop- ulation. The estimated prevalence rate appears to be several times higher than the peacetime rate (the estimated lifetime prevalence of non-war-related sexual violence is 9.0 percent; Amowitz et al., “Prevalence of War-Related Sexual Violence,” 518).

46. Ibid., table 3. 47. Ibid., table 2. 48. Human Rights Watch, We’ll Kill You if You Cry. 49. See Physicians for Human Rights, War-Related Sexual Violence in Sierra Leone,

ch. 4; and Human Rights Watch, We’ll Kill You if You Cry, ch. V. According to Physicians for Human Rights, girls and women who undergo female genital cutting are at increased risk for genital trauma and related complications after rape (War-Related Sexual Violence, 49). Human Rights Watch reports that 90 percent of females in Sierra Leone undergo female genital cutting (We’ll Kill You if You Cry, 24).

50. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, Final Report, ch. 3b, 299-311.

51. Amowitz et al., “Prevalence of War-Related Sexual Violence,” table 3. 52. Forced marriages in the sense of marriages of girls without their consent, often at

a very young age, was common in Sierra Leone before the war but required permission of the girl’s family (Human Rights Watch, We’ll Kill You if You Cry, 17, 23-24).

53. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, Final Report, para. 298. 54. This summary of events at My Lai draws on Michael Bilton, Four Hours in My

Lai (New York: Penguin, 1992); Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (New York: Bantam, 1975); Seymour M. Hersh, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath (New York: Random House, 1970); Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989); William R. Peers, The My Lai Inquiry (New York: Norton, 1979); and James Olson, My Lai: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford, 1998).

55. Mitch Weiss, “Rogue GIs Unleashed Wave of Terror in Central Highlands,” Toledo (Ohio) Blade, October 22, 2003.

56. Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote (New York: Vintage, 1994). 57. Truth Commission for El Salvador, “From Madness to Hope: The 12 Year War in

El Salvador. Report of the Truth Commission for El Salvador,” reprinted in The United Nations and El Salvador, 1990-1995, United Nations Blue Books Series, vol. IV (New York: United Nations, 1993).

58. Truth Commission for El Salvador, “From Madness to Hope,” unpublished annex (Tomo II: 8-10, 15).

59. Elisabeth Jean Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), ch. 4.

60. See the various maps and graphs compiled in Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Peru, Final Report (2003), http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ingles/ifinal/index.php, Statistical Annex.

61. In her analysis of testimonies to the commission, Michele Leiby found that Sendero Luminoso was responsible for nearly 20 percent of reported cases of sexual violence. Her

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finding is based on a wider definition of sexual violence and her coding of reported instances of homicides, torture, or other human rights violations as also sexual violence if they included sexual violence. See Michele L. Leiby, “Sexual Violence as a Strategic Weapon of War: Latin America,” unpublished manuscript.

62. Ethel Tobach and Rachel Reed, “Understanding Rape,” in Evolution Gender and Rape, ed. Cheryl Brown Travis (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), tables 5.1 and 5.2.

63. Patricia D. Rozee, “Forbidden or Forgiven? Rape in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 17 (1993): 499-514. For example, in some societies, sexual access to women is granted to guests, brothers, or other associates of the husband (and the women are beaten or killed if they refuse). And in some societies, female trans- gression of social norms (such as women seeing ceremonial artifacts strictly reserved for males) is punished by rape, sometimes group rape in a public place.

64. Even if all females who were pregnant as a result of rape reported the incident to health authorities and were in fact pregnant as a result of rape, that would not be enough to infer the incidence of rape given the fact that multiple rapes appear to be frequent in wartime settings.

65. World Health Organization, “Sexual Violence,” in World Report on Violence and Health (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2002), table 6.1, 151. For developing coun- tries, the data is compiled from face-to-face surveys in the capital city; there is apparently no correction for possible rural-urban differences other than for variation in household size. Given the challenges to compiling comparable sexual violence data, I average across the lowest and highest three cities.

66. J. N. van Kesteren, P. Mayhew, and P. Nieuwbeerta, Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialised Countries: Key Findings from the 2000 International Crime Victims Survey (The Hague: Ministry of Justice, Research and Documentation Center [WODC], 2000), app. 4, table 6, 188-89. For industrialized countries, the surveys are national samples and done by phone (with the exception of Malta). The high reported rates in Sweden and Finland probably reflect high rates of binge alcoholism, with attendant vio- lence, or higher rates of reporting sexual assault, and a more inclusive definition of “assault.”

67. See Rozee, “Forbidden or Forgiven?” 504. 68. Peggy Sanday, “Socio-cultural Context of Rape: Cross Cultural Study,” Journal

of Social Issues 37, no. 4 (1981): 27. 69. Rozee, “Forbidden or Forgiven?” 70. Ibid., table 1. 71. Ibid., table 1. 72. Neil Mitchell and Tali Gluch, “The Principals and Agents of Political Violence

and the Strategic and Private Benefits of Rape” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 2004).

73. The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute’s (INICRI) crime victimization data for most developing countries goes back only to 1996 or 1997 (and in a few cases to 1992), and only a few countries with recent civil wars are included. Of the cases discussed above, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Israel, and Sierra Leone are not included; while a survey was carried out in Yugoslavia in 1996, it is difficult to see its relevance for Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992.

74. Madeline Morris, “By Force of Arms: Rape, War, and Military Culture,” Duke Law Journal 45, no. 4 (1996): 651-781.

75. Ibid. 76. Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, The Natural History of Rape: Biological Basis

of Social Coercion (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002). 77. See the essays in Brown Travis, Evolution Gender and Rape.

ELISABETH JEAN WOOD 339

78. Richard Borshay Lee, The Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

79. Mary P. Koss, “Evolutionary Models of Why Men Rape: Acknowledging the Complexities,” in Brown Travis, Evolution Gender and Rape, 191-205.

80. Jerry A. Coyne, “Of Vice and Men: A Case Study in Evolutionary Psychology,” in Brown Travis, Evolution Gender and Rape, 171-89. However, see Jonathan A. Gottschall and Tiffani A. Gottschall, “Are Per-Incident Rape-Pregnancy Rates Higher than Per-Incident Consensual Pregnancy Rates?” Human Nature 14, no. 1 (2003): 1-20, for a discussion of the possibility that a conditional rape strategy that accounts for such targeting objections could have evolved.

81. For example, Mitchell and Gluch, in “Principals and Agents,” argue that the principal- agent problem confronting armies is the tendency of combatants to seek to engage in more sexual violence than the leadership deems optimal.

82. Inger Skjelsbaek, “Sexual Violence and War: Mapping out a Complex Relationship,” European Journal of International Relations 7, no. 2 (2001): 218.

83. Allan Mazur and Alan Booth, “Testosterone and Dominance in Men,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1998): 353-97.

84. John Archer, Nicola Graham-Kevan, and Michelle Davies, “Testosterone and Aggression: A Reanalysis of Book, Starzyk, and Quinsey’s 2001 Study,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 10 (2005): 241-61.

85. Mazur and Booth, “Testosterone and Dominance.” 86. Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence

in the South (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996). 87. Mazur and Booth, “Testosterone and Dominance.” 88. Theodore D. Kemper, Social Structure and Testosterone (New Brunswick, N.J.:

Rutgers University Press, 1990); and Theodore D. Kemper, “Fantasy, Females, Sexuality and Testosterone,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1998): 378-79; and Jeremy Freese, Jui-Chung Allen Li, and Lisa D. Wade, “The Potential Relevances of Biology to Social Inquiry,” Annual Review of Sociology 29 (2003): 233-56.

89. Lea H. Studer, A. Scott Aylwin, and John R. Reddon, “Testosterone, Sexual Offense Recidivism and Treatment Effect among Adult Male Sex Offenders,” Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment 17, no. 2 (2005): 171-81.

90. Versions of the argument can be found in many feminist works; the classic work is Brownmiller, Against Our Will.

91. Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

92. Goldstein, War and Gender, 253-300. 93. Ibid., 356-60. 94. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 692. 95. Ibid., 707, 701-6. There appears to be significant consensus among researchers

about the factors at the individual level that are associated with increased likelihood to suffer sexual violence or to perpetrate sexual violence in peacetime. In addition to Morris’s summary, see World Health Organization, “Sexual Violence,” ch. 6.

96. Lisa Sharlach, “Gender and Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Agents and Objects of Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 1, no. 3 (1999): 387-99.

97. Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

98. Lisa Sharlach, “Rape as Genocide: Bangladesh, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda,” New Political Science 22, no. 1 (2000): 89-102; and Bloom, “War and the Politics of Rape.”

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99. Enloe, Maneuvers, 134. 100. Ibid., 124. 101. Stathis Kalyvas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in

Civil Wars,” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 3 (2003): 475-94. 102. Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 103. Human Rights Watch, You’ll Learn Not to Cry: Child Combatants in Colombia

(New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003), 10. 104. Kalvyas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence.’” 105. Wood, Insurgent Collective Action. 106. See Amelia Hoover, “Disaggregating Violence during Armed Conflict: Why and

How,” unpublished manuscript, for an analysis of how different repertoires of violence can be understood via principal agent models in which elites (the principals) have dis- tinct preferences than do combatants (the agents) for different types of violence.

107. Jennifer L. Green, “Uncovering Collective Rape: A Comparative Study of Political Sexual Violence,” International Journal of Sociology 34, no. 1 (2004): 97-116.

108. Green, in “Uncovering Collective Rape,” takes a distinct approach, identifying cases of collective rape via online searches of the New York Times archive. The strength of this approach is that she has tentative findings about the correlates of collective rape; the weakness is the reliance on a single source and the difficulty in coding relative preva- lence of rape based on that source.

109. Elisabeth Jean Wood, “The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in Conflict Zones,” Qualitative Sociology 29, no. 3 (2006).

110. Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín, personal communication, July 2005. 111. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence. 112. Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca,

N.Y.: Cornell University Press, forthcoming). 113. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion. 114. Wood, Insurgent Collective Action. 115. Macartan Humphreys and Jeremy Weinstein intend to carry out such a disag-

gregated analysis of patterns of violence in the Sierra Leone conflict, drawing on a sur- vey they carried out with ex-combatants to document (among other things) patterns of command-and-control and discipline among particular units. However, as yet they do not have adequately disaggregated data on human rights violations. If such data becomes available, they will be able to test how well unit discipline predicts sexual and other vio- lence. See Macartan Humphreys and Jeremy Weinstein, “Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War: Determinants of the Strategies of Armed Factions,” unpublished paper, 2004.

116. Straus, The Order of Genocide.

Elisabeth Jean Wood ([email protected]) is professor of political science at Yale University and research professor at the Santa Fe Institute. She is the author of Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

ELISABETH JEAN WOOD 341

THE ROLE OF MASCULINITIES IN VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz. “The Role of Masculinities in Violence Against Women). In Dina Anselmi and Anne Law, Questions of Gender: Perspectives and Paradoxes. New York: Blackwell, 2008. Choose a form of violence and examine international statistics on the gender of its perpetrators. You will always find a severely unbalanced sex ratio, generally with 90% to 100% of the violence being perpetrated by men and less than 10% being perpetrated by women (Bowker, 1998a, p. xiv).

THE GOOD AND BAD OF MEN Men around the globe are part of virtually all forces for good including a pro-feminist struggle to end violence against women (DeKeseredy, Schwartz, & Alvi, 2000). Still, much if not most of what is bad in the world is the product of men. For example, there is extensive scientific evidence that men perpetrate the bulk of the violence in intimate heterosexual relationships throughout the world (Renzetti, Edleson & Bergen, 2001). Similarly, men have a virtual monopoly on the commission of crimes of the powerful, such as price fixing and the illegal dumping of toxic waste (Messerschmidt, 1997). We would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of women who are involved in acts of state sponsored terrorism and torture. To belabor the obvious, women rarely participate in mass killings like the recent tragedies at Virginia Tech, Columbine High School, or Port Arthur, Australia, or the events of September 11, 2001. There have been occasional female suicide bombers in the Middle East, but in general this is another field dominated by men. At a more common level, men‟s involvement in all types of violent crime, including street violence, greatly exceeds that of women (Kimmel, 2000). What accounts for this glaring sex difference? Of course we could start with the argument that most men are not criminally violent and thus those who beat, rob, kill, torture or rape are deviant members of an otherwise harmonious society. There is some truth here. Serial killers like John Wayne Gacy are very rare, committing less than one percent of all U.S. homicides (Fox & Levin, 1999). Yet overall male violence itself is not particularly rare; it is in fact endemic in our society. In one example, at least 11 percent of North American women in marital/cohabiting relationships are annually physically abused by their male partners. Similar figures have been reported in a variety of other English-speaking countries. In our Canadian national representative sample survey of undergraduate students, about 28 percent of the females said that they had been sexually assaulted in some manner in the past year alone by a male boyfriend or dating partner, while 11 percent of the men admitted to such sexual violence in the past year (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998a). This does not include any violence that is unadmitted, or unreported on the survey, or violence which is physical, economic, or psychological. Are these men truly deviant and “sick”? Of course, some abusive men have clinical pathologies (Aldarondo & Mederos, 2002), but no more than 10 percent, which means that any theory

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stressing mental disorder cannot account for 90 percent of violence. In fact, in another setting we argued that woman abuse on campus is so rampant that an argument might be made that men who do not engage in woman abuse could be seen as the deviants (Godenzi, Schwartz, & DeKeseredy, 2001). Other theories about male violence are too often ideologies “dressed up in…scientific regalia” (Devine & Wright, 1993, p. 125). For example, evolutionary theorists (e.g., Daly & Wilson, 1988) claim that male violence is the result of competition for sexual access to women. Yet, men not only kill men but also beat, rape, or kill female intimates. As Kimmel (2000, p. 244) reminds us, “To murder or assault the person you are trying to inseminate is a particularly unwise reproductive strategy.” Another challenge to evolutionary theory is that many societies have much lower rates of male violence than those of the U.S. So if “boys will be boys,” they “will be so differently” (Kimmel, 2000), depending on where they live, their peer groups, social class position and race, and host of other factors (Messerschmidt, 1993). Men are not naturally aggressive. As Katz and Chambliss (1991, p. 270) discovered in their review of the research on the relationship between biology and crime, “An individual learns to be aggressive in the same manner that he or she learns to inhibit aggression. One is not a natural state, and the other culturally imposed: both are within our biological potential.” Horrocks (1994) further points out that men might not be born aggressive, but there are certain societies that are much more likely to teach violence to men than others. Missing in the above brief review of theories and in most media accounts is any discussion of the role of masculinities (Messerschmidt, 2000). The main objective of this chapter is to review and critique the extant sociological literature on the relationship between this important factor and variations in interpersonal violence across different social class and racial/ethnic backgrounds. UNDERSTANDING INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE: THE CONTRIBUTION OF MASCULINITIES STUDIES Part of the problem in defining interpersonal violence is that there are many behaviors that we or some others may view as extremely violent, but at the same time many others can view that behavior in other ways. Certainly killing the enemy in warfare is violent, but that may be grounds for being awarded a medal. Sports often provide our most ambiguous area, where exceptional levels of very harmful behavior are often seen as just part of the game. It is relatively common for events to “occur in the name of sport, which, if they were perpetrated under any other banner short of open warfare, would be roundly condemned as crimes against humanity” (Atyeo, 1979, p. 11). Professional ice hockey is the source of many of the best examples, but American football, boxing, and other contact sports have the same problems. Even non-contact sports like baseball suffer at times from beanballs or physical attacks. There are many examples outside of sports. One is the spanking of children, which is not only widely condemned in North America, but it has been found to be unacceptable by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. Still, many North Americans not only see nothing wrong with slapping or spanking a child, but may regard such behavior as necessary, normal, and good (Straus, 1991).

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Of course, it is also important to note that while men commit most violent crimes, and that such violence is widespread, this still does not mean that all men are violent (Connell, 2000). For example, homicide is an infrequent violent crime and thus “we are not talking about a tendency that is either universal or inevitable” (Newburn & Stanko, 1994a, p. 4). Further, there is no simple standard of being a man that guides all male behavior, including violence (Polk, 2003). In fact, although society functions in many ways to promote male violence, there remains in any situation other means of expressing one‟s masculinity (Connell, 2000). For example, we noted earlier that professional ice hockey players can be exceptionally violent. They live in an atmosphere heavily influenced by hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1995), and learn through pressure from owners, sportswriters, coaches, teammates, fans and parents to be aggressive; carry the capacity for violence; strive for achievement and status; avoid all things feminine and particularly emotions deemed feminine (e.g., crying); and actively engage in homophobia. Official statistics are kept on penalty minutes, and executives and sports magazines talk approvingly about how teams need to hire “enforcers” who may have no talent for ice skating or hockey but can intimidate others through the use of violence. To pick one isolated but not unusual example, one of Detroit‟s mainstream newspapers “ran a picture of bleeding Colorado goalie Patrick Roy under the huge headline, BLOODY GOOD” (Riley, 2003, p. 24). What this leads to is a sport where fights are very common. Yet, some hockey players will not engage in fighting with an opponent, because they can “do masculinity” in other ways. A prime example is Wayne Gretzky, who recently ended his stellar career holding the record for most goals scored in the NHL. Gretzky rarely fought. His amazing ability to score goals and help his teams win games and championships was a key resource at his disposal to demonstrate that he was “manly.” Those lacking his skills, but under intense pressure from employers, teammates, and spectators to fight those who challenge them, commonly feel that they would be derided as of doubtful moral worth and relatively useless to the team if they walked away from violent honor contests. Thus, although men are encouraged to live up to the ideals of hegemonic masculinity and can be sanctioned for not doing so, violence is just one of many ways of “doing gender” in a culturally specific way. Moreover, masculinities studies shows us that the decision to be violent is affected by class and race relations that structure the resources available to accomplish what men feel provides their masculine identities . Hegemonic masculine discourses and practices, including violence, are learned through personal and impersonal interactions with significant others such as teachers, journalists, parents, entertainers, and politicians (Connell, 1995). However, the all-male patriarchal subculture is one of the most important agents of socialization. As described in the next section, membership in such a peer group, regardless of its social class composition, promotes and legitimates the physical and sexual victimization of female intimates.

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VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN INTIMATE HETEROSEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS There is no question that many women are victimized by men within intimate relationships each year, including the physical or sexual assault of about 10 percent of those in marital/cohabiting relationships (DeKeseredy & MacLeod, 1997), and the physical or sexual assault of women when they try to leave or have left their spouses or live-in lovers (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, forthcoming). University/college dating relationships are also marked by high numbers of physical and sexual assaults (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998a). Why do these assaults take place? While there seem to be several key reasons, many quantitative and qualitative studies have found that one of the most important is male peer support, “the attachments to male peers and the resources that these men provide which encourage and legitimate woman abuse” (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997). The relationship between male peer support and various forms of violence against women varies across different social classes and settings. For example, in universities and colleges across North America, the identified sexual abusers are typically white middle-class men, especially if they belong to the “hypererotic” subcultures which exist on most campuses (Godenzi et al., 2001). As Kanin (1985) found, these all-male homosocial cohorts produce high or exaggerated levels of sexual aspiration, and members expect to engage in a very high level of consensual sexual intercourse, or what is to them sexual conquest. Of course, for most men, these goals are impossible to achieve. When they fall short of what they see as their friends‟ high expectations, and perhaps short of what they believe their friends are actually achieving, some of these men experience relative deprivation. This sexual frustration caused by a “reference-group-anchored sex drive” can result in predatory sexual conduct (Kanin, 1967, p. 433). These men are highly frustrated, not because they are deprived of sex in some objective sense, but because they feel inadequate in their attempts to get what their peers have defined as the proper amount of sex to establish their heterosexual masculinity. Hence, sexual assaults committed by socially and economically privileged white male undergraduates are largely functions of a fear of appearing to be a misfit or of being left out. Like the more affluent college students, impoverished men also form “specialized relationships with one another” (Messerschmidt, 1993, p. 110). Such close bonds, under certain conditions, also promote violence against women as a means of meeting “masculinity challenges,” although these challenges are different than those encountered by members of hypererotic subcultures (Messerschmidt, 2000). For example, men in public housing are significantly more likely to physically assault their female partners than those who live in middle- and upper-class communities (DeKeseredy, Alvi, Schwartz, & Perry, 1999). To explain this problem, DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2002) offer an empirically informed Economic Exclusion/Male Peer Support Model described in Figure 1. Briefly, DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2002) contend that recent major economic transformations (e.g., the shift from a manufacturing to a service-based economy) displace working-class men and women who often end up in urban public housing or other “clusters of poverty.” Unable to economically support their families and live up to the culturally defined masculine role as bread winner, socially and economically excluded men experience high levels of life events stress because their “normal paths for personal power and prestige have been cut off” (Raphael, 2001a, p. 703). For example, since they cannot afford to look after both their partners and their children,

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some women evict male intimates or “invert patriarchy” in other ways by making decisions for the household and having the lease and car in their names (Edin, 2000). Such actions are often perceived by patriarchal men as “dramatic assaults” on their “sense of masculine dignity” (Bourgois, 1995, p. 215). ECONOMIC EXCLUSION/MALE PEER SUPPORT MODEL

Some men deal with stress caused by their partners‟ inversions of patriarchy by leaving them, while others use violence as a means of sabotaging women‟s attempts to gain economic independence (Bourgois, 1995; Raphael, 2001b). Other men, however, turn to their male peers for advice and guidance on how to alleviate stress caused by female challenges to patriarchal authority. Large numbers of socially and economically excluded male peers in and around public housing view wife beating as a legitimate means of repairing “damaged patriarchal masculinity” (Messerschmidt, 1993; Raphael, 2001a), and they often serve as role models because many of them beat their own intimate partners (DeKeseredy, Alvi, Schwartz, & Tomaszewski, 2003).

Broader Economic Change

Formal Labor Market Exclusion

Men‟s Inability to Fulfill Bread-Winning Role

Social Isolation in Public Housing

Stress

Patriarchal Male Peer Support

Woman Abuse

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In sum, male physical and sexual violence against women is very much a function of men‟s deep-rooted concern with presenting an image of themselves as men within their social networks, although patriarchal peer groups‟ definitions of what it means to be a man varies across social class categories. Similarly, there are variations in motives for different types of homicide determined by the structure and location of one‟s peer group. HOMICIDE Since men are much more violent to each other than they are to women, this discussion must include some understanding of how men experience violence. Of course we cannot fully explore the role of violence in men‟s lives here, and cannot even fully explore homicide. We will instead look at two sub-themes as identified by Polk (1994): (1) homicide in the context of sexual intimacy and (2) confrontational homicide. Although Polk studied Australian men, many masculinities scholars argue that his findings are just as relevant to the discussion of men in other countries. Male proprietariness is closely related to sexual intimacy homicide, especially during the stages of separation or divorce. Wilson and Daly (1992), define it as “the tendency [of men] to think of women as sexual and reproductive „property‟ they can own and exchange.” More generally, proprietariness refers to “not just the emotional force of [the male‟s] own feelings of entitlement but to a more pervasive attitude [of ownership and control] toward social relationships [with intimate female partners]” (1992, p. 85). Jealousy also plays a major role in a man‟s decision to kill a woman who threatens his power and control by seeking to leave or actually leaving him. As Polk (2003, p. 134) points out, “[T]ime and time again the phrase „if I can‟t have you, no one will‟ echoes through the data” on homicide in the context of sexual intimacy. However, although intimate homicide is a common type of murder, it is a relatively rare crime. If we live in a patriarchal society that promotes male proprietariness, why then do only some men kill their estranged female partners? Certainly there are variations in male proprietariness which means that female challenges, like all single factors, cannot explain all men‟s behavior. This is why it is necessary to simultaneously focus on all-male subcultural dynamics when attempting to link masculinities and homicides. As we have noted, many patriarchal men have male friends with similar beliefs and values and these peers reinforce the notion that women‟s exiting is a threat to a man‟s masculinity (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2002). If a patriarchal man‟s peers see him as a failure with women because his partner wants to leave or has left him, he is likely to be ridiculed because he “can‟t control his woman,” which can motivate him to lash out against her. Peers can also directly or indirectly influence Polk‟s (1994) second type: male-to-male confrontational homicides, which account for over 50 percent of all murders. Such killings are similar to “interpersonal disputes,” which, according to Wallace (1986, p. 155): formed the basis of the majority of killings outside the domestic sphere. A large number of these quarrels were unpremeditated events that erupted between strangers or acquaintances, usually while socializing in or around a club or hotel, or in the home of either victim or offender. The content of the disputes in these circumstances may be less important than the male context in which they occurred. A common variant of confrontational homicide involves a “pub fight,” an event Polk (2003) refers to as an “honor contest.” Typically committed by young working-class men who are under

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the influence of alcohol and who have histories of violence, such murders are triggered by a perceived challenge to their masculinity or honor. This challenge may involve an insult, a “minor jostle,” a comment to a girlfriend or wife, or “challenging eye contact” (Polk, 2003, p. 135). Honor contest participants do not intend to kill each other. Rather, their main goal is to fight and male peers often serve as bystanders in these tragic events. Fights that are about honor can escalate into deadly violence when weapons are involved. Even without peers present, many men and youths commit violent crimes in anticipation of the status they will gain (or lose) from friends (Warr, 2002). YOUTH GANG VIOLENCE Unsurprisingly, many social scientists sharply oppose popular stereotypes of male youth gangs and they do not view all groups of unsupervised young men interacting on the street as members of deviant or criminal cohorts (Short, 1997). While there is much debate among sociologists and criminologists about what constitutes a gang, most researchers agree with Warr‟s (2002, p. 5) assertion that “gangs constitute only a small fraction of delinquent groups, and that a ganglike structure is not a prerequisite for delinquent behavior.” Of course, as much as they engage in these activities most violent gang members spend much of their time engaging in nondeviant activities like listening to music, playing video games or watching television. Most serious crime by young men (e.g., violence) is committed in groups (Bursik & Grasmick, 2001), but the vast majority of young men who flock together do not belong to violent gangs, are not perpetrators of serious crimes, and do not see themselves as part of a gang. Thus, many popular perceptions of male youth street gangs are shaped by stereotypes (Sheldon, Tracy, & Brown, 2001). These observations are hardly trivial because they contribute to an ongoing moral panic about “kids out of control,” and they target and scapegoat visible minorities (Schissel, 1997). For example, newspapers often feature statements such as “Asian gang members responsible for violent attack.” Unfortunately, such racial references are common in the popular media. One is not likely to find headlines referring to “white youth offenders” or “European American gangs”(Schissel, 1997). Racism is part and parcel of much of the popular discourse on violent youth gangs, and the average white citizen responds differently to three or four young men of color mingling together on the street than they do to groups of white youths doing so (Sheldon et al, 2001). To summarize all of the rapidly growing literature on how masculinities influence young mens‟ involvement in violent gang activities in a short section of a chapter is a daunting, if not impossible, task. Instead, we address key themes that emerge from this body of knowledge. The first and perhaps most important one is status frustration caused by economically and socially marginalized young mens‟ inability to accomplish masculinity at school through academic achievement, participation in sports, and involvement in extracurricular activities. This problem plagues both whites and minorities. As Cohen (1955) pointed out decades ago, some youths try to deal with this problem by seeking extra help from their teachers, while others quit school and come into contact with other “dropouts” who share their frustration. A subculture soon emerges that grants members status based on accomplishing gender through violence and other

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illegitimate means. However, some dropouts avoid gang participation because they construct their masculinity through such behaviors as work in the conventional marketplace. Still, for many young men living in inner-city or rural communities damaged by deindustrialization, the frustration spawned by the inability to accomplish masculinity in the school setting is exacerbated by their failure to find a steady well-paying job, which is another important theme that emerges from the extant literature on masculinities and gangs. These young men are hit with a “double whammy” that puts them at even greater risk of teaming up with others to create a subculture that promotes, expresses, and validates masculinity through violent means (Messerschmidt, 1993). Then there are young men who are hit with a “triple whammy.” They are not only failures in school and unable to find a job, but they are also people of color who face institutional racism on a daily basis (Sheldon et al., 2001), especially if they live in public housing complexes. An example of how public housing contributes to social and economic isolation is provided below by a Chicago-based employer interviewed by Wilson (1996, p. 116). He felt that people who lived in public housing would jeopardize his financial status: I necessarily can‟t tell from looking at an address whether someone‟s from Cabrini Green or not, but if I could tell, I don‟t think that I‟d want to hire them. Because it reflects on your credibility. If you came here with this survey, and you were from one of those neighborhoods, I don‟t know if I‟d want to answer your questions. I‟d wonder about your credibility. In sum, then, many inner-city African American young men are denied masculine status in three ways: through the inability to succeed in school; a lack of meaningful jobs, and through racism and stereotypes of their neighborhoods. Many Hispanic and Asian young men experience similar problems. Thus, it is not surprising that members of these socially marginalized ethnic groups compose most of the street gangs in the U.S. (Klein, 2002). Nevertheless, it cannot be emphasized enough that social factors – not skin color or biological makeup – contribute to a higher concentration of these people in violent youth gangs. These are young men who are most likely to go to schools that lack adequate financial and human resources, live in neighborhoods plagued by concentrated urban poverty, and who are unable to find jobs in a society brutalized by major structural transformations, such as the shift from a manufacturing to a service-based economy (DeKeseredy et al., 2003; Wilson, 1996; Zielenbach, 2000). Unfortunately, for many of the young men facing the problems described here, the only way of gaining masculine status, a reputation, and self-respect is through youth gang violence. Meanwhile, future prospects are not encouraging. Major corporations are continuing to cut jobs either to outsourcing or to trim budgets. Not only is work continuing to disappear, schools are facing massive cuts to their budgets, which keeps teachers from effectively reaching out to socially and economically marginalized young men who have special needs. Racial segregation in poor inner-cities is also a major problem . OTHER FORMS OF MALE VIOLENCE Of course, in a short chapter it has only been possible to go into depth in three specific areas of men‟s interpersonal violence. Needless to say, there are many more arenas in which masculinities play a role in facilitating men‟s violence. In fact, In fact, there are various forms of

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masculinities, which helps to explain the wide range of responses to the contemporary crises facing men. Among these other arenas is child discipline. We mentioned earlier that many people see slapping or spanking a child as violent behavior. An entire field of study has arisen around child abuse in terms of the physical abuse of children outside the confines of mild disciplinary actions. Similarly, although we discuss youth violence in the context of gang behavior, there is a great deal of interpersonal violence, especially in the U.S., outside the context of youth gangs. Barbara Perry (2003) has argued that a great deal of racist violence and homophobic violence (“gay bashing”) can be traced to not only the desire of white men to assert their superiority and dominance, but also to “prove the very essence of their masculinity: heterosexuality” (p. 158). She argues that many men do not view such violence as breaking a cultural norm (on violence) as much as affirming “a culturally approved hegemonic masculinity: aggression, domination, and heterosexuality.” Of course, men engage in masculinist discourse to justify and allow their own violence in many other areas. POLICY AND PRACTICE Thus far, there have not been very many programs that have been exceptionally successful in reducing men‟s violence. In fact, as Hearn (1996, p. 22) notes, while there has been tremendous attention from a variety of sources to the development of a new field of men‟s studies, such studies have “generally not explored the question of men‟s violence to any large extent.” However, a broad number of forces in many countries are now working in many different arenas to deal specifically with men‟s interpersonal violence in intimate relationships. Pro-feminist men‟s groups are engaging in a wide variety of practices to protest racism and sexism, and to try to promote men‟s awareness (DeKeseredy, Schwartz, & Alvi, 2000). Unsurprisingly, at least in North America the most active of these are taking place on university campuses. However, there are a wide variety of groups dealing with a very different population, attempting to work with men who batter women. These programs had their beginnings in the U.S., often at the instigation of shelter houses and with the strong support of lower court judges who did not wish to allow batterers to be released on probation without at least sentencing them into “treatment.” Although widely called “treatment” programs, their efforts are most commonly short awareness programs that are more properly termed intervention programs (for extensive discussions, see Aldarondo & Mederos, 2002). Such programs are now found in a variety of European countries and Australia, although the theoretical underpinnings may be very different (Hearn, 1998). Even though male peer support studies have made it clear that men with social support for violence are more likely to be violent (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2002) the hope for such programs is that it is also possible that the right kind of male social support can help a man to stop being violent (Hearn, 1998). CONCLUSIONS There are many theories on which offender characteristics best predict interpersonal violence, but the single best determinant of who commits beatings, homicide, rapes, and so on is whether the offender is male (Schwartz & Hatty, 2003). Why are most violent offenders men? As stated before, it has little to do with their biological makeup or with factors identified by evolutionary psychologists. The best answer is provided by masculinities studies and research on how masculinities conducive to violence are shaped by male subcultural dynamics. Clearly, for many

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men, violence is, under certain situations, the only perceived available technique of expressing and validating masculinity, and male peer support strongly encourages and legitimates such aggression. Broader patriarchal forces alone do not motivate people to kill, rape, or rob others. Still, the accounts of the three harms examined here, like other explanations of the connection between masculinities and violence, require more in-depth analyses of complex factors related to race/ethnicity. For example, systematic studies on how masculinities contribute to date rape within the African American community have been rare. Similarly, Messerschmidt (1997, p. 117) appears to be the only researcher guided by the work of masculinities theorists who has examined “the historical and/or contemporary constructions of varieties of whiteness and their relation to crime.” Further, the contribution of technological developments, such as the Internet, requires in-depth examination. Today, many males are developing friendships via electronic mail, “chat rooms,” and other electronic means. Referred to by Warr (2002) as “virtual peer groups,” it is necessary to determine whether these homosocial cohorts present men with new or reconstituted masculinity challenges that spawn violence. Chances are that virtual peer groups simply reinforce existing hegemonic masculine discourses and practices, but only among males who can afford or have access to computers. However, as Warr (2002, p. 87) points out, there is no evidence that virtual peer groups, regardless of whether they promote violence, have “replaced or supplanted real ones.” Additional new directions in empirical and theoretical work could easily be suggested and will be taken in the near future, because there is a growing interest in the relationship between masculinities and crime as demonstrated by a series of important books published since the early 1990s (Bowker, 1998b; Hatty, 2000; Messerschmidt, 1993, 1997; Newburn and Stanko, 1994b; and Polk, 1994. Even so, as Connell (2000, p. 82) reminds us, “masculinities are not the whole story about violence….” Obviously, there are many other sources of violent crime. Nevertheless, violence and its reduction cannot be adequately understood without an in-depth understanding of masculinities. REFERENCES

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The European Journal of International Law Vol. 18 no. 2 © EJIL 2007; all rights reserved

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EJIL (2007), Vol. 18 No. 2, 253−276 doi: 10.1093/ejil/chm013

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict Sandesh Sivakumaran *

Abstract Reports of sexual violence by men against men emerge from numerous confl icts, ranging in time from Ancient Persia and the Crusades to the confl icts in Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite these accounts, relatively little material exists on the subject and the issue tends to be relegated to a footnote. This article ascertains the extent to which male sexual violence is committed in armed confl ict. It considers factors that explain under-reporting by victims and lack of detection on the part of others. The particular forms of male sexual violence are also examined: namely rape, enforced sterilization and other forms of sexual violence, including enforced nudity, enforced masturbation and genital violence. The dynamics present in these offences are explored, with issues of power and dominance, expressed through emasculation, considered. Thus, attention is paid to ideas of feminization, homosexualization and the prevention of procreation. The symbolic construction of male and female bodies in armed confl ict is also explored.

1 Introduction Sexual violence is committed against men more frequently than is often thought. It is perpetrated at home, in the community and in prison; by men and by women; during confl ict and in time of peace. It has been written that, ‘ [i]n some respects, the situation facing male rape victims today is not so different from that which faced female victims, say, two centuries ago. ’ 1 Not much has changed in the period since that comment was made. Although there has been some positive development in certain areas, 2 there

* Lecturer, School of Law, University of Nottingham. I would like to thank Peter Bartlett and Robert Cryer for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Email: [email protected] .

1 Estrich, ‘ Rape ’ , 95 Yale LJ (1986) 1087, at 1089, fn 1. 2 See, e.g., in the United States, the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, 42 USC § 15601.

254 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

has been little or none in others. One area to which little attention has been paid is sexual violence against men in armed confl ict.

Reports of sexual violence by men against men ( ‘ male sexual violence ’ ) emerge from many confl icts. These reports may be buried under a wealth of other infor- mation but they are there. They are there in the testimonies of survivors and in the reports of commissions and investigative bodies. They may be hard to fi nd, for survivors will often recall what they witnessed rather than express what they themselves experienced; reports of commissions and investigative bodies will often record the atrocities under the rubric of torture and not sexual violence. Neverthe- less, they may be found. Despite these accounts, relatively little material exists on the subject and the numbers remain unclear. We know it exists but we do not know to what extent.

This article examines the issue of male sexual violence in armed confl ict. It draws largely from medical and criminological studies of male victims of sexual violence committed in time of peace and analyses of sexual violence committed against women both in time of peace and in time of confl ict. It does so, in part, as materials are more readily available in these areas, but more importantly because many of the dynamics present in these offences are largely replicated in male sexual violence in armed confl ict. Accordingly, where appropriate, various themes are extracted from these differing situations and applied to male sexual violence in time of confl ict. Sometimes speculative given the sparse nature of the material on the subject, it is still necessary to put these ideas out in order to stimulate discussion and encour- age further analysis. To the limited extent that they exist, this article also draws on medical studies of male victims of sexual violence committed in time of confl ict and reports of non-governmental and intergovernmental agencies that have addressed the issue.

Section 2 of this article considers the extent of male sexual violence committed in armed confl ict. It analyses the evidence of male sexual violence in a number of respects: in terms of the confl icts in which it is found, as regards the particular sources of evidence that document the abuse and with respect to the precise numbers at issue. It also puts forward several reasons that may explain why the numbers remain unknown, from lack of reporting on the part of the victim through to lack of detection on the part of those working with survivors.

Section 3 defi nes the notion of ‘ sexual violence ’ , considering a number of defi ni- tions that have been put forward previously. On the basis of these defi nitions, it distinguishes between various forms of male sexual violence committed in armed confl ict. Focus falls on rape, enforced sterilization and other forms of sexual violence. It is important to distinguish between them in order to consider the different dynamics present in each.

Section 4 explores these dynamics, namely ideas of power and domination, emas- culation, feminization, homosexualization, prevention of procreation and collective domination. All of these, to different extents, are also present in female sexual violence and male sexual violence committed in time of peace. They are analysed here in the particular context of armed confl ict.

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 255

2 The Extent of the Problem Sexual violence against women is an all too common feature of armed confl ict. 3 There is evidence indicating that sexual violence also takes place against men in armed con- fl ict; indeed it takes place in nearly every armed confl ict in which sexual violence is committed. What remains unknown is the precise extent to which this crime occurs. Although the evidence is largely anecdotal, it is likely that male sexual abuse in armed confl ict is more prevalent than we currently think, for the lack of hard numbers is due to the under-reporting of the practice and the fact that it is not picked up by others rather than because the practice itself does not exist.

It is generally accepted that there is an under-reporting of rape and sexual violence in general, and male rape and male sexual violence in particular. 4 This is due to a combination of shame, confusion, guilt, fear and stigma. 5 Men also may be loath to talk about being victimized, considering this incompatible with their masculinity, particularly in societies in which men are discouraged from talking about their emo- tions. 6 The incompatibility between this understanding of masculinity and victimi- zation occurs both at the level of the attack itself – a man should have been able to prevent himself from being attacked – and in dealing with the consequences of the attack – to be able to cope ‘ like a man ’ . 7 Although these fi ndings relate to male sexual violence committed in time of peace, there is nothing to suggest that it does not also pertain to male sexual violence committed in time of confl ict. Indeed, it may be argued that it would apply a fortiori in an armed confl ict, where men tend to self-identify with masculine stereotypes more strongly.

Even if male survivors did wish to talk about the abuse they suffered, they may fi nd that, as victims also of masculine stereotypes, they do not have the right words to express themselves. 8 Indeed, it has been said that the English language is ‘ bereft of terms

3 For some fi gures and examples, see S. Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1976), at 31; Chinkin, ‘ Rape and Sexual Abuse of Women in International Law ’ , 5 EJIL (1994) 326, at 327; Copelon, ‘ Surfacing Gen- der: Re-engraving Crimes Against Women in Humanitarian Law ’ , 5 Hastings Women’s LJ (1994) 243, at 243 – 4; J.G. Gardam and M.J. Jarvis, Women, Armed Confl ict and International Law (2001), at 27 – 29; Seifert, ‘ The Second Front: The Logic of Sexual Violence in Wars ’ , 19 Women’s Studies International Forum (1996) 35, at 37; K.D. Askin, War Crimes Against Women: Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals (1997), at 1 – 2.

4 On rape and sexual violence see Shanks et al. , ‘ Responding to Rape ’ , 357 The Lancet (2001) 304, at 304; Coxell et al. , ‘ Lifetime Prevalence, Characteristics, and Associated Problems of Non-consensual Sex in Men: Cross Sectional Survey ’ , 318 Brit Medical J (1999) 846, at 846. On male rape and male sexual violence see King, Coxell, and Mezey, ‘ The Prevalence and Characteristics of Male Sexual Assault ’ , in G. Mezey and M.B. King (eds), Male Victims of Sexual Assault (2000), at 1, 5; E. Krug et al., World Report on Violence and Health (2002), at 154.

5 Sivakumaran, ‘ Male/Male Rape and the “ Taint ” of Homosexuality ’ , 27 Human Rts Q (2005) 1274, at 1288. 6 Stanko and Hobdell, ‘ Assault on Men: Masculinity and Male Victimization ’ , 33 Brit J Criminology (1993)

400, at 403 – 4; World Health Organisation, Reproductive Health during Confl ict and Displacement (2000), at 112.

7 Mezey and King, ‘ Treatment for Male Victims of Sexual Assault ’ , in Mezey and King (eds), supra note 4, at 142. 8 Peel et al. , ‘ The Sexual Abuse of Men in Detention in Sri Lanka ’ , 355 The Lancet (2000) 2069, at 2069;

Oosterhoff et al. , ‘ Sexual Torture of Men in Croatia and Other Confl ict Situations: An Open Secret ’ , 12(23) Reproductive Health Matters (2004) 68, at 68.

256 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

and phrases which accurately describe male rape ’ , 9 a point no less true of male sexual violence more broadly. Further, if sexual violence formed but part of the abuse male survivors faced, they may view it as beatings or torture generally rather than sexual violence or sexual torture in particular. 10 This is not to say that sexual violence should be prioritized over other forms of trauma; all should be included, none forgotten.

If male survivors wished to report the abuse and were able to fi nd the words with which to do so, they face the danger of consent being assumed if they are unable to prove the rape. This may lead to a fi nding of the victim engaging in consensual homo- sexual activity, which may in turn be a criminal offence under the law of the relevant state. The danger of this happening may dissuade some victims from reporting the abuse they have suffered. 11

Doctors, counsellors and humanitarian workers present on the ground mirror the responses of survivors, thus not picking up signs of male sexual violence. Men are not seen as being as susceptible to sexual violence as women; hence medical workers may not pay as much attention to detecting signs of sexual violence as they otherwise might. 12 Further, unlike in the case of sexual violence against women, medical work- ers may not be trained to look for signs of sexual abuse of men. 13 Those that are, and do, may focus on male rape to the exclusion of other forms of male sexual violence due to their familiarity with female sexual violence, which often takes the form of rape. 14 Yet forms of male sexual violence other than rape are also frequent in armed confl icts. All this is compounded by the fact that sexual violence against men may not leave any visible scars, whereas the resulting effects of other forms of abuse may jump out at medical workers diverting their attention away from the sexual violence. 15

If the abuse is recognized, it may not always be seen as sexual violence, for the issue is often buried under the rubric of ‘ abuse ’ or ‘ torture ’ . 16 Often times, castration is seen as ‘ mutilation ’ and rape as ‘ torture ’ , a view that becomes apparent when read- ing reports of non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations. This may be due to, and also reinforces, the view that men cannot be subjected to sexual assault. This is almost the reverse of the situation concerning the women’s movement, which wanted, for example, rape to be recognized as torture. There is a need to recognize the

9 R.J. McMullen, Male Rape: Breaking the Silence on the Last Taboo (1990), at 83. 10 Van Tienhoven, ‘ Sexual Torture of Male Victims ’ , 3(4) Torture (1993) 133, at 133. 11 This has a parallel in female victims who have been unable to prove they have been raped being subjected

to charges of adultery. 12 Van Tienhoven, supra note 10, at 134; Oosterhoff, supra note 8, at 75 and 68, citing Donnelly and

Kenyon, ‘ “ Honey, we don’t do men ” : Gender Stereotypes and the Provision of Services to Sexually Assaulted Males ’ , 11 J Interpersonal Violence (1996) 441.

13 Oosterhoff, supra note 8, at 74. The search for signs of abuse in women may sometimes go too far: see Engle, ‘ Feminism and its (Dis)contents: Criminalizing Wartime Rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina ’ , 99 AJIL (2005) 778, at 794 – 5.

14 Carlson, ‘ The Hidden Prevalence of Male Sexual Assault During War: Observations on Blunt Trauma to the Male Genitals ’ , 46 Brit J Criminology (2006) 16, at 18; Van Tienhoven, supra note 10, at 133.

15 Peel, ‘ Men as Perpetrators and Victims ’ , in M. Peel (ed.), Rape as a Method of Torture (2004), at 61, 65 – 66; Peel, supra note 8, at 2069; Oosterhoff, supra note 8, at 71; Burnett and Peel, ‘ The Health of Survivors of Torture and Organised Violence ’ , 322 Brit Medical J (2001) 606, at 608.

16 Carlson, ‘ Sexual Assault on Men in War ’ , 349 The Lancet (1997) 129.

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 257

general – rape as torture, as well as the particular – rape as rape. An accurate clas- sifi cation of abuse is important not just to give victims a voice, not only to break down stereotypes and not merely to accurately record the picture. Language in general and legal language in particular ‘ reinforces certain world views and understandings of events … Through its defi nitions and the way it talks about events, law has the power to silence alternative meanings – to suppress other stories ’ . 17 It is essential that these stories not be suppressed.

Another reason for believing that, were some serious work to be undertaken on the issue, the numbers would unfold before us is the varied nature of the practice. It is not limited to any particular part of the world. It is not confi ned to state forces, armed opposition groups or private contractors. It is not limited in its age of victims, 18 or its place of commission. The range of sexual violence committed against men in armed confl ict crosses the full gamut of possibilities; all permutations and combinations are present.

Sexual violence against men has been documented as taking place in many armed confl icts. 19 The numbers vary: in some confl icts the sexual violence seems sporadic and ad hoc, in others, it is clearly more systematic. The following is no way intended to be an exhaustive list. Sexual violence against men has been chronicled as taking place in confl icts in the more distant past, for example in Ancient Persia, 20 and the Crusades, 21 as well as by the Ancient Greek, Chinese, Amalekite, Egyptian and Norse armies. 22 It has occurred in the confl icts in El Salvador, 23 Chile, 24 Guatemala, 25 and

17 Finley, ‘ Breaking Women’s Silence in Law: The Dilemma of the Gendered Nature of Legal Reasoning ’ , 64 Notre Dame L Rev (1989) 886, at 888. See also Askin, ‘ Sexual Violence in Decisions and Indictments of the Yugoslav and Rwandan Tribunals: Current Status ’ , 93 AJIL (1999) 97, at 101 fn 31.

18 Sexual violence against women is often grouped together with sexual violence against children in the same way as women and children tend to be grouped together. Inherent in this grouping is the danger of infantilising women and encouraging the notion that women are in need of protection by men. Accord- ingly, while appreciating that the dynamics may not be the same in each, this article considers together sexual violence committed against men and boys.

19 For the purposes of this article, I include within the analysis the period immediately prior to the armed confl ict, the period immediately after a confl ict, as well as the duration of the confl ict itself. Periods of internal tensions and disturbances are also included.

20 DelZotto and Jones, ‘ Male-on-Male Sexual Violence in Wartime: Human Rights ’ Last Taboo? ’ , Paper pre- sented to the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association ’ , 23 – 27 Mar. 2002, available at http://adamjones.freeservers.com/malerape.htm ; R.C. Trexler, Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas (1995), at 17 – 18.

21 Jones, ‘ Cultural and Historical Aspects of Male Sexual Assault ’ , in Mezey and King (eds), supra note 4, at 114. 22 J.S. Goldstein, War and Gender (2001), at 357 – 359; Trexler, supra note 20, at 17 – 19. 23 Agger, ‘ Sexual Torture of Political Prisoners: an Overview ’ , 2 Journal of Traumatic Stress (1989) 305, cited

in Oosterhoff, supra note 8, at 68 – 69; Agger and Jensen, ‘ Sexuality as a Tool of Political Repression ’ in H. Riquelme (ed.), Era in Twilight: Pyschocultural Situation under State Terrorism in Latin America (1994), at 46 – 47, cited in Carlson, supra note 16, at 129.

24 Cienfuegos and Monelli, ‘ The Testimony of Political Repression as a Therapeutic Instrument ’ , 54 American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (1983) 43 and Dominguez and Weinstein, ‘ Aiding Victims of Political Repression in Chile: a Psychological and Psychotherapeutic Approach ’ , 24 Tidsskrift for Norsk Psyckolog- forening (1987) 75, cited in Oosterhoff, supra note 8, at 68.

25 Perlin, ‘ The Guatemalan Historical Clarifi cation Commission fi nds Genocide ’ , 6 ILSA J Int’l and Comp L (2000) 389, at 409 fn 70.

258 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

Argentina. 26 It has been perpetrated in the confl icts in Greece, 27 Northern Ireland, 28 Chechnya, 29 Turkey, 30 and the former Yugoslavia. 31 It has been a feature of the con- fl icts in Sri Lanka, 32 Iraq-Kuwait, 33 Coalition-Iraq, 34 and the Sino-Japanese war. 35 It has been present in the confl icts in Liberia, 36 Sierra Leone, 37 Kenya, 38 Sudan, 39 the Central African Republic, 40 Burundi, 41 Uganda, 42 Rwanda, 43 the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 44 Zimbabwe, 45 and South Africa. 46

26 Report of Argentina’s National Commission on Disappeared People, cited in Skjelsbaek, ‘ Sexual Violence in Times of War: A New Challenge for Peace Operations? ’ , 8 Int’l Peacekeeping (2001) 69, at 74.

27 Lindholm et al. , ‘ Gonadal and Sexual Functions in Tortured Greek Men ’ , 27 Danish Medical Bulletin (1980) 243, cited in Carlson, supra note 16, at 129.

28 Adams, ‘ I have been in torture photos too: The Abu Ghraib images are all too familiar to Irish republi- cans ’ , Guardian , 5 June 2004.

29 Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, Rape and Other Torture in the Chechnya Confl ict: Documented Evidence from Asylum Seekers Arriving in the United Kingdom (2004) at 2.

30 Amnesty International, ‘ Turkey: Kurdish Villagers Torture and Extrajudicially Executed by Security Forces and Deliberately Killed by PKK in “ Total Confl ict ” ’ , AI Index: EUR 44/WU 06/93 External, 30 July 1993.

31 Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Res- olution 780 (1992), UN Doc. S/1994/674 and UN Doc. S/1994/674/Add.2, v, Annex IX, Rape and Sexual Assault.

32 Peel, supra note 8, at 2069 – 2070. 33 Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kuwait under Iraqi Occupation , prepared by Mr Walter Kälin,

Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, in accordance with Commission resolution 1991/67, UN Doc. E/CN.4/1992/26, paras 106 – 112.

34 The ‘ Taguba Report ’ on Treatment of Abu Ghraib Prisoners in Iraq, available at: http://news.fi ndlaw. com/hdocs/docs/iraq/tagubarpt.html .

35 I. Chang, The Rape of Nanking (1997) at 88 – 89, 95. 36 BBC News, ‘ UN to probe Liberian sex crimes ’ , 3 Mar. 2004; Dosso, ‘ Liberia’s war rape victims recount

ordeals ’ , Agence France-Presse , 17 Oct. 2006. 37 Human Rights Watch, We’ll Kill You If You Cry: Sexual Violence in the Sierra Leone Confl ict (2003), at 42. 38 Mutua, ‘ Republic of Kenya Report of the Task Force on the Establishment of a Truth, Justice and Recon-

ciliation Commission ’ , 10 Buffalo Human Rts L Rev (2004) 15, at 39. 39 Steidle, ‘ In Darfur, My Camera Was Not Nearly Enough ’ , Washington Post , 20 Mar. 2005, B02. 40 Amnesty International, ‘ Central African Republic: Five Months of War Against Women ’ , AI Index, AFR

19/001/2004, sect. 3. 41 Amnesty International, ‘ Burundi: Rape — the Hidden Human Rights Abuse ’ , AI Index: AFR 16/006/2004, 2. 42 UNICEF, Suffering in Silence: A Study of Sexual and Gender Based Violence in Pabbo Camp, Gulu District,

Northern Uganda (2005), at 10. 43 See, e.g., Prosecutor v Eliézer Niyitegeka , ICTR-96-14-T, paras 462 – 467. 44 Human Rights Watch, ‘ Seeking Justice: The Prosecution of Sexual Violence in the Congo War ’ ,

Vol. 17 No. 1(A), 20-21; Amnesty International, ‘ Democratic Republic of Congo: Mass Rape — Time for Remedies ’ , AI Index: AFR 62/018/2004; Médecins sans Frontières, I Have No Joy, No Peace of Mind: Medical, Psychosocial, and Socio-Economic Consequences of Sexual Violence in Eastern DRC (2004), at 6, 15 – 16; Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo , submitted by the Special Rapporteur, Mr Roberto Garretón, in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2000/15, UN Doc E/CN.4/2001/40, paras 144 and 162 and UN Doc E/CN.4/2000/42, para. 116.

45 Hill, ‘ Male rape, the latest weapon for Mugabe’s men ’ , New Statesman , 9 June 2003. 46 Krog, ‘ Locked into Loss and Silence: Testimonies of Gender and Violence at the South African Truth Com-

mission ’ , in C.O.N. Moser and F.C. Clark (eds), Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Confl ict and Political Violence (2001), at 203, 208.

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 259

Analysis of the documentary sources of these abuses reveals that they consist, almost in their entirety, of studies published in medical literature or reports of non- governmental and intergovernmental organizations with a presence in the fi eld. It is perhaps unsurprising that the subject is best – though largely still under – addressed in these areas, for survivors of sexual violence will turn fi rst to the medical world for treatment, while fi eldworkers are on site to record events and recount stories. Cases have rarely worked their way through the system (if indeed there is a system to work through) to reach the stage at which lawyers traditionally become involved. It must not be forgotten that there will also be an attrition rate even at these early stages, for example in the decision of the survivor to see a doctor or counsellor and in the decision of the doctor or counsellor to record the abuse, either at all or as sexual abuse.

In confl icts in which sexual violence has been properly investigated, male sexual violence has been recognized as regular and unexceptional, pervasive and widespread, although certainly not at the rate of sexual violence committed against women. The most thorough investigation of sexual violence in armed confl ict is that of the atroci- ties committed in the confl ict in the former Yugoslavia. During and after that confl ict, examples of male sexual violence were found at all stages of the investigative pro – cess, from reports of non-governmental organizations, 47 individual states, 48 and United Nations experts, 49 through to pleadings in cases, 50 and indictments and con- victions of individual offenders. 51

In the confl ict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with respect to which reports of sexual violence are increasingly surfacing, reports of sexual violence against men are interspersed with those of sexual violence against women. An Amnesty Inter- national report notes that, ‘ [a] hitherto unreported aspect of sexual violence is the large number of men who are also victims of sexual violence ’ , while one Congolese activist notes that ‘ the rape of men is much more frequent than you might think ’ . 52 Similarly, a report of Human Rights Watch also relating to the confl ict in the Demo- cratic Republic of the Congo records that, ‘ [m]en and boys in increasing numbers are

47 See, e.g., Amnesty International, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Rape and Sexual Assault by Armed Forces (1993), at 5, cited in Jones, ‘ Gender and Ethnic Confl ict in ex-Yugoslavia ’ , 17 Ethnic and Racial Studies (1994) 115, at 132, fn 23.

48 See, e.g., Letter dated 5 Nov. 1992 from the Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary General, UN Doc. S/24791, at 16 (10 Nov. 1992); Letter dated 7 Dec. 1992 from the Deputy Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary General, UN Doc. S/24918, at 12 (8 Dec. 1992).

49 Final Report Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992), supra note 31. 50 Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and

Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro)) , Application of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, paras 44D(c), (h), 62; Oral Proceedings of Bosnia and Herzegovina, CR 2006/6, at 51.

51 See, e.g., Prosecutor v. Du š ko Tadi ć , Opinion and Judgment, IT-94-1-T, paras 193 – 206; Prosecutor v. Milomir Staki ć , Trial Judgment, IT-97-24, para. 241; Prosecutor v. Cesi ć , Sentencing Judgment, IT-95-10/1-S, paras 13 – 14; Prosecutor v. Stevan Todorovic , Sentencing Judgment, IT-95-9/1-S, paras 38 – 40; Prosecutor v. Blagoje Simi ć , Miroslav Tadi ć and Siom Zari ć , Trial Judgment, IT-95-9-T, para. 728. See also Prosecutor v. Radovan Karad ž i ć and Ratko Mladi ć , Review of the Indictments Pursuant to Rule 61 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, IT-95-5-R61 and IT-95-18-R61, para. 13.

52 Amnesty International, supra note 44, at 19.

260 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

also reporting having been raped and otherwise sexually assaulted by combatants ’ and lists as a recommendation to the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, ‘ [a]ddress sexual violence against men ’ . 53 When Medecins Sans Frontieres began treating victims of sexual violence in the eastern part of the Democratic Repub- lic of the Congo, ‘ dozens of women – as well as several men – started appearing by the day for medical consultation ’ . 54

The question of numbers clearly needs further research. It is unlikely that the number of men sexually abused in armed confl ict will ever exceed or even equate to the number of women similarly abused. The argument may thus be made that we should focus our attention on female sexual violence. Three points may be made in relation to such a contention. First, the issue needs to be addressed regardless of the numbers involved. Male survivors of sexual violence have still been sexually abused. As far as sexual violence is concerned, it is not, nor should it be, a matter of num- bers (though perhaps the higher the number the greater the likelihood of attracting the attention of the international community). Second, looking into the issue of male sexual violence will not take away from female sexual violence for ultimately it forms part of the same issue, namely the gender dimension of confl ict. There is a strong link between male sexual violence and sexual violence against women. Male sexual violence should be considered under the same rubric and using similar analyses as sexual violence against women for, as will be seen, the dynamics, the constructions of masculinity and femininity and the stereotypes involved are similar. 55 The two also tend to be considered together in the jurisprudence on the subject. 56 The treatment of male survivors may also lead to their involvement in addressing the causes and consequences of violence against women. 57 Third, attention to the issue may lead to a more nuanced consideration of the roles of men and women in armed confl ict. It may dispel the idea of women solely as victims and men only as perpetrators, resulting in the negation of the idea that women in armed confl ict should be viewed through the lens of victims of sexual crimes and the corresponding notion that male victims of sexual violence are emasculated and feminized as a result of the violence. Addressing the issue may prove an invaluable contribution to the fi ght against sexual violence against women in confl ict; ignoring it may mean missing out on a vital component of the issue.

53 Human Rights Watch, supra note 44, at 20 and 5 respectively. 54 Médecins sans Frontières , supra note 44, at 15. 55 Some commentators are of the view that analysis pertaining to sexual violence against women can be

applied to that against men: see, e.g., Fitzgerald, ‘ Problems of Prosecution and Adjudication of Rape and Other Sexual Assaults under International Law ’ , 8 EJIL (1997) 638, at fn 2; Mitchell, ‘ The Prohibition of Rape in International Humanitarian Law as a Norm of Jus Cogens: Clarifying the Doctrine ’ , 15 Duke J Comp and Int’l L 219, at fn 3. For a note of caution, see Engle, supra note 13, at 814 – 815. Others believe the issues are dissimilar: e.g., Niarchos, ‘ Women, War and Rape: Challenges Facing the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ’ , 17 Human Rts Q (1995) 649, at 653 fn 13.

56 For discussion of the jurisprudence of the ICTY on sexual violence see Viseur Sellers, ‘ Individual(s’) Liability for Collective Sexual Violence ’ , in K. Knop (ed.), Gender and Human Rights (2004), at 153.

57 Carpenter, ‘ Recognizing Gender-Based Violence Against Civilian Men and Boys in Confl ict Situations ’ , 37 Security Dialogue (2006) 83, at 98 – 99.

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 261

There does fi nally seem to have been a shift in the issue. Whereas, previously, reports of non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations were generally silent on the subject, it is now acknowledged that men and boys are subjected to sexual violence in armed confl ict. 58 However, this recognition has not led to a detailed consideration of the issue and ways in which it may be addressed. Instead, the approach now seems to be recognition that sexual violence in armed confl ict is committed against women, men and children, but in light of the prevalence of the former, the relevant article, comment or discussion will be devoted to sexual violence against women. 59 Another approach is to acknowledge the existence of sexual violence against men in armed confl ict, but to limit consideration of the issue to an observation that the numbers are unclear as a result of under-reporting which is due to the stigma surrounding the issue. 60

The general consensus seems to be that male sexual violence in armed confl ict hap- pens, its frequency is under-reported and more attention could usefully be paid to the subject. These are well-meaning comments and their presence is certainly better than their absence: the issue has been fl agged for further consideration and the silence bro- ken. However, as far as providing constructive suggestions for combating non- and under-reporting, for fi ghting the stigma that attaches to male sexual violence and for dealing with the situation, they are not altogether helpful. This article seeks to aid development of the analysis of male sexual violence and initiate discussion of the issue by exploring some of the dynamics behind the various offences. Before doing so, the next part considers what exactly is meant by ‘ sexual violence ’ and explores the differ- ent forms of sexual violence that are committed against men in time of confl ict.

3 Typology of Abuses In order to assess the number of men that are subjected to sexual violence in armed confl ict and in order to address the problem, it is important to understand exactly what is meant by the term ‘ sexual violence ’ . There is no generally accepted defi nition of the term in international law. Of those that exist, two are particularly useful. The fi rst is that of the Special Rapporteur on systematic rape, sexual slavery and slavery-like practices during armed confl ict, who defi ned sexual violence as ‘ any violence, physical or psy- chological, carried out through sexual means or by targeting sexuality ’ , thus including ‘ both physical and psychological attacks directed at a person’s sexual characteristics, such as forcing a person to strip naked in public, mutilating a person’s genitals, or slic- ing off a woman’s breasts ’ as well as ‘ situations in which two victims are forced to per- form sexual acts on one another or to harm one another in a sexual manner ’ . 61

58 See, e.g., Women, Peace and Security: Study submitted by the Secretary-General pursuant to Security Council resolution 1325 (2000), at 16, para. 59.

59 See, e.g., Amnesty International, supra note 40, sect. 3; WHO, supra note 6, at 109. 60 See, e.g., Amnesty International, ‘ Who’s living in my house? Obstacles to the safe return of refugees and

internally displaced people ’ , AI Index: EUR 63/01/97, at 5. 61 Final report submitted by Ms Gay J McDougall, Special Rapporteur, Contemporary forms of slavery: sys-

tematic rape, sexual slavery and slavery-like practices during armed confl ict, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13, paras 21 – 22.

262 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

The second defi nition is that which relates to the International Criminal Court. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court provides that, ‘ [r]ape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence ’ is a crime against humanity. 62 The Elements of Crimes, which ‘ assist the Court in the interpretation and application ’ of the crimes, 63 lists as one of the elements of the crime against humanity of sexual violence

an act of a sexual nature against one or more persons or caused such person or persons to engage in an act of a sexual nature by force, or by threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power, against such person or persons or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive en – vironment or such person’s or persons ’ incapacity to give genuine consent. 64

The Elements of Crimes does not elaborate on the meaning of ‘ an act of a sexual nature ’ , leading to scope for disagreement as to whether an act was in fact ‘ sex- ual ’ or rather whether it was carried out so as to infl ict the maximum amount of pain on the victim. Reference to domestic law may prove instructive in clarifying any disagreement, with section 78 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 of the United Kingdom, for example, providing that activity is sexual ‘ if a reasonable person would consider that (a) whatever the circumstances or any person’s purpose in relation to it, it is because of its nature sexual, or (b) because of its nature it may be sexual and because of the circumstances or the purpose of any person in relation to it (or both) it is sexual ’ .

It is clear, then, that sexual violence includes but is not limited to rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilization. 65 It is important to differentiate between the various forms of sexual violence that are com- mitted against men in armed confl ict, rather than viewing them all under the rubric of ‘ sexual violence ’ , for different dynamics may be present in the different types of abuse.

In considering the forms of sexual violence committed against men in armed con- fl ict, this article follows the typology of sexual abuse laid down in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Not all will be relevant, forced pregnancy for exam- ple is gender specifi c. Others such as sexual slavery and enforced prostitution, though at fi rst sight seemingly specifi c in practice to women, may well turn out to be infl icted

62 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, art. 7(1)(g). 63 Ibid ., art. 9(1). 64 Elements of Crimes, Art. 7(1)(g) – 6, element 1. See Robinson, ‘ Article 7(1)(g) — Rape, Sexual Slavery,

Enforced Prostitution, Forced Pregnancy, Enforced Sterilization, or Any Other Form of Sexual Violence of Comparable Gravity ’ , in R.S. Lee (ed.), The International Criminal Court: Elements of Crimes and Rules of Procedure and Evidence (2001), at 93; La Haye, ‘ Article 8(2)(b)(xxii)-6-Sexual Violence ’ , in ibid., at 196 – 199; Steains, ‘ Gender Issues ’ , in R.S. Lee (ed.), The International Criminal Court: The Making of the Rome Statute (1999), at 357.

65 Another possible offence under this category may be forced marriage: see Prosecutor v. Brima, Kamara and Kanu , Case SCSL-04-16-PT, Decision on prosecution request for leave to amend the indictment (6 May 2004).

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 263

on men as well were further investigation undertaken. 66 The focus of this part shall be on rape, whether oral or anal, whether involving objects, the perpetrator or two victims; enforced sterilization, such as castration and other forms of sexual mutila- tion; and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity. A number of forms of sexual violence that are committed against men in armed confl ict fall within this latter category. They include enforced nudity, often accompanied by threats or mockery; enforced masturbation; and genital violence, which may include shocks or beatings aimed at the testicles or penis. All have been documented in one confl ict or another; many confl icts will have seen more than one form of abuse carried out. 67

It should be noted here, particularly in light of criticism expressed in some quarters that, 68 that the remainder of this part is explicit and disturbing. Indeed, this may be considered self-evident given the nature of the topic. I have chosen not to temper the language used by survivors or water down that used in the reports of non-govern- mental or intergovernmental organizations or court proceedings, for it is important for academic lawyers to remember exactly what went on and not to try and sani- tize the issues for our sake. These things happened to real people; people had to live through them. The least we can do – even if we wish simply to skim over the relevant parts 69 – is to accurately represent what they had to go through, using their words where possible. 70 This will help to dispel the stigma and break the taboo; to euphemize would be to further the silence.

A Rape A number of different forms of male rape take place in armed confl ict. Victims may be forced to perform fellatio on their perpetrators or on one another; perpetrators may anally rape victims themselves, using objects, or force victims to rape fellow victims. It has been noted that an appropriate name has not even been invented for this latter form of abuse, 71 though it may be termed ‘ enforced rape ’ .

In Sri Lanka, victims have complained of ‘ sticks pushed through the anus, usually with chillies rubbed on the stick fi rst ’ , being ‘ made to masturbate soldiers orally ’ and

66 DelZotto and Jones, supra note 20, observe that ‘ [f]or centuries, men and boys who were captured in, or as a result of, combat became the “ body servants ” (sex slaves) of western warriors, or the “ brides of warriors in Mesoamerica ” ’ ; Askin, supra note 3, at 366 references the ‘ forced prostitution of a male ’ in the context of the confl ict in the former Yugoslavia. Both of these are certainly found in the male prison environment: see, e.g., Human Rights Watch, No Escape: Male Rape in US Prisons (2001); O’Donnell, ‘ Prison Rape in Context ’ , 44 Brit J Criminology (2004) 241, at 244.

67 Also relevant but not considered in this article is the idea that the rape of women may constitute psychological torture of men. See Carpenter, supra note 57, at 96 – 97.

68 Kesic, ‘ A Response to Catharine MacKinnon’s Article “ Turning Rape Into Pornography: Postmodern Genocide ” ’ , 5 Hastings Women’s LJ (1994) 267, at 278.

69 For the reader who does wish to skip over the relevant parts, this consists of the next three pages. 70 I associate myself with similar reasoning put forward by Chinkin, supra note 3, at 329, fn 22;

MacKinnon, ‘ On Torture: A Feminist Perspective on Human Rights ’ , in K.E. Mahoney and P. Mahoney (eds.), Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Challenge (1993), at 21, 22, fn 6 and Askin, supra note 3, pp. xv – xvi.

71 Carpenter, supra note 57, at 95.

264 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

being ‘ forced with … friends to rape each other in front of soldiers for their “ entertain- ment ” ’ , while others have complained of being anally raped by soldiers. 72 In Iraq, the Taguba report, commissioned to investigate the conduct of operations of the 800th Military Police Brigade, contains a fi nding of male detainees being threatened with rape and ‘ [s]odomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick ’ . 73 Before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, male victims testifi ed that they had been sodomized, often through having a metal rod inserted in them. 74 In Nanking, men were sodomized, forced to perform other sexual acts in front of soldiers and forced to commit incest. 75

In the former Yugoslavia, the Report of the UN Commission of Experts recounts numerous instances of rape, oral and anal, by perpetrators and with objects, and enforced rape amongst victims, male and female. 76 This was borne out in judgments handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The Staki ć Trial Chamber heard evidence of a group of male prisoners, half of whom were ‘ naked from the waist-down and standing, and half the group was kneeling. According to Witness B: “ They were positioned in such a way as if engaged in intercourse. ” ’ 77 Before the Cesi ć Trial Chamber, Cesi ć admitted intentionally forc- ing at gunpoint two detained Muslim brothers to perform fellatio on each other in the presence of other people. 78 The Blagoje Simi ć trial judgment notes that, ‘ [s]everal Prosecution witnesses gave evidence that detainees were subjected to sexual assaults. One incident involved ramming a police truncheon in the anus of a detainee. Other incidents involved forcing male prisoners to perform oral sex on each other and on Stevan Todorovic, sometimes in front of other prisoners ’ . 79 The Todorovic sentencing judgment itself notes that Todorovic accepted that he ordered Witness C and Witness D to perform oral sex on each other and ordered Witness E and Witness F to do the same, laughing while it went on. 80

There is also the notion of ‘ rape plus ’ , the ‘ plus ’ being HIV/AIDS, forced pregnancy for women, or another consequence of rape, which may have been the very purpose for the rape in the fi rst place. 81 For example, in Kosovo, the OSCE reported one inter- viewee recounting that, ‘ he saw two male detainees being raped by two policemen who declared that they had AIDS ’ . 82

72 Peel, supra note 8, at 2069. 73 Taguba Report, supra note 34, Part One (Detainee Abuse): Findings, para. 8(ee) and (gg). 74 Krog, supra note 46, at 208. 75 Chang, supra note 35, at 95. 76 Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts supra note 31, UN Doc. S/1994/674, at 56,

para. 235 and UN Doc. S/1994/674/Add. 2, Vol. V, Annex IX, at 11, para. 20, at 40, paras 179 – 180, at 41, para. 183.

77 Prosecutor v. Milomir Staki ć , Trial Judgment, IT-97-24, para. 241. 78 Prosecutor v. Cesi ć , Sentencing Judgment, IT-95-10/1-S, paras 13 – 14 . 79 Prosecutor v. Blagoje Simi ć , Miroslav Tadi ć and Siom Zari ć , Trial Judgment, IT-95-9-T, para. 728. 80 Prosecutor v. Stevan Todorovic , Sentencing Judgment, IT-95-9/1-S, paras 39 – 40. 81 For a list of possible consequences, see WHO, Guidelines for Medico-Legal Care for Victims of Sexual Violence

(2003), at 12 – 16. 82 OSCE, Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told (1999), ch. 7.

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 265

B Enforced Sterilization Enforced sterilization largely comprises castration and other forms of sexual mutila- tion. Indeed, the practice dates back to ancient times with ancient Persian murals showing ‘ triumphant warriors marching along bearing plates piled high with their enemy’s penises ’ . 83 Perhaps the best evidence of genital violence comes from the con- fl ict in the former Yugoslavia, not necessarily because this was the confl ict that had the highest incidence of that practice but because it is the confl ict that has been the most thoroughly investigated in terms of sexual violence.

The Report of the UN Commission of Experts observed that, ‘ [c]astrations are per- formed through crude means such as, forcing one internee to bite off another’s testi- cles, and tying one end of a wire to the testicles and the other end to a motorcycle, then using the motorcycle to yank off the testicles ’ . 84 The Report of the Special Rapporteur on human rights in the territory of the former Yugoslavia noted the account of a wit- ness who ‘ saw the corpses of 15 young men whose genitals had been mutilated ’ . 85 Other witnesses recount having seen Muslims being forced to bite each other’s tes- ticles off and guards cutting off some prisoners ’ hands and penises in an attempt to frighten the other men. 86 The Review of the Indictments in the Karad ž i ć and Mladi ć case also recognized the practice of castration. 87 Probably the most infamous incident comes from the fi rst case to be brought before the ICTY, that of Tadi ć :

After G and Witness H had been forced to pull Jasmin Hrni ć ’s body about the hangar fl oor they were ordered to jump down into the inspection pit, then Fikret Harambasi ć , who was naked and bloody from beating, was made to jump into the pit with them and Witness H was ordered to lick his naked bottom and G to suck his penis and then to bite his testicles. Meanwhile a group of men in uniform stood around the inspection pit watching and shouting to bite harder. All three were then made to get out of the pit onto the hangar fl oor and Witness H was threat- ened with a knife that both his eyes would be cut out if he did not hold Fikret Harambasi ć ’s mouth closed to prevent him from screaming; G was then made to lie between the naked Fikret Harambasi ć ’s legs and, while the latter struggled, hit and bite his genitals. G then bit off one of Fikret Harambasi ć ’s testicles and spat it out and was told he was free to leave. Witness H was ordered to drag Fikret Harambasi ć to a nearby table, where he then stood beside him and was then ordered to return to his room, which he did. Fikret Harambasi ć has not been seen or heard of since. 88

83 DelZotto and Jones, supra note 20. 84 Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts, supra note 31, UN Doc. S/1994/674/Add. 2,

Vol. V, Annex IX, at 11, para. 18(g). See also at 40, paras 179 – 180 and at 41, para. 183. 85 Report on the situation of human rights in the territory of the former Yugoslavia submitted by

Mr Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, pursuant to Com- mission resolution 1992/S-1/1 of 14 Aug. 1992, E/CN.4/1993/50, para. 63.

86 Application of Genocide Convention, supra note 50, Application of Bosnia and Herzegovina, paras 44D(h) and 61.

87 Prosecutor v. Radovan Karad ž i ć and Ratko Mladi ć , Review of the Indictments Pursuant to Rule 61 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, IT-95-5-R61 and IT-95-18-R61, para. 13.

88 Prosecutor v. Du š ko Tadi ć , Opinion and Judgment, IT-94-1-T, para. 206.

266 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

C Other Forms of Sexual Violence A number of other forms of sexual violence are committed in armed confl ict in addi- tion to rape and enforced sterilization. The imagination of perpetrators in this regard knows no bounds. Of particular prevalence are genital violence that does not amount to enforced sterilization, enforced nudity and enforced masturbation.

1 Genital Violence

In Kosovo, the OSCE recorded a man recounting that offi cers ‘ made us take off our clothes and lie down. They beat us with wooden clubs, on every part of the body, back and head. They also put our penises (mine too) on a table and beat them. ’ 89 In Bosnia, witnesses told of being hit in the testicles ‘ using metal hampers, metal bars ’ and being kicked with boots. 90 There are also reports of electric shocks and beatings being administered to the genital area in many other confl icts such as Sri Lanka and Northern Ireland. 91

2 Enforced Nudity

Sexual abuse of prisoners in detention often commences with enforced nudity, accom- panied by verbal sexual threats, which adds to the humiliation. Other more serious forms of sexual violence such as beatings to the genitals and rape then follow. 92

Of Kosovo, it has been noted that, outside situations of detention, the most common way of sexually humiliating men was to force them to strip naked in public. There are reports of men being made to repeatedly undress and dress, undress and stand naked for periods of time and undress in front of a group of women. 93

Another infamous incident involving the forcible nudity of men is that relating to the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The Taguba report found that the inten- tional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included:

… Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; … Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attach- ing wires to his fi ngers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; Writing ‘ I am a Rapest ’ [sic] on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture … 94

3 Enforced Masturbation

The Taguba report also contains a fi nding that groups of male detainees were forced to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped. 95 In other confl icts

89 OSCE, supra note 82, ch. 7. 90 Application of the Convention, supra note 50, para. 44D(c). 91 See, e.g., Peel, supra note 8, at 2069; Adams, supra note 28. 92 Peel, supra note 8, at 2069. 93 OSCE, supra note 82, ch. 7. 94 Taguba Report, supra note 34, Part One (Detainee Abuse): Findings, para. 6. 95 Ibid.

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 267

such as that in Sri Lanka, there are reports of victims having been forced to masturbate their captors. 96 The forced masturbation of the victim and the perpetrator is considered to be one of the most common forms of sexual violence experienced by men. 97

4 Dynamics In any instance of sexual violence, various dynamics are going to be present; rarely will sexual violence be committed for any one sole reason. Different dynamics will also be present depending on whether the violence is infl icted on civilians or combat- ants, against interned people or people in the community. This part does not seek to exhaustively cover the dynamics at play; rather, it seeks to explore some of the dynam- ics present in the commission of sexual atrocities against men in armed confl ict.

A Power and Dominance It has been shown that sexual violence against women is about power and domi- nance. 98 This is also true of sexual violence against men. 99 In this way, power dynamics are established within the sexes as well as between them. These traditional peacetime dynamics are equally applicable in time of confl ict. Thus, sexual violence against women is about power and dominance regardless of whether it is carried out in time of peace or in time of confl ict, 100 and the same is true of sexual violence com- mitted against men. 101 The similarities do not end there.

In time of armed confl ict, the traditional power dynamics are more susceptible to reconfi guration. Law and order has broken down, the balance of power is in the process of being reshaped and there may be room for movement within the pre-existing social hierarchies. As rape and other forms of sexual violence are about maintaining and restoring certain power balances, 102 sexual violence will likely be committed in time of potential imbalance. Indeed, it has been noted that, ‘ [a] comparison of low-rape and rape-prone societies reveals that the occurrence of rape is particularly high where male power has become unstable ’ . 103 But why then the high incidence of male sexual vio- lence? It has been posited, persuasively, that sexual violence against men in war occurs for much the same reason as sexual violence against women striving for equality and

96 Peel, supra note 8, at 2069. 97 WHO, supra note 81, at 16. 98 Brownmiller, supra note 3, at 15; A.N. Groth, Men Who Rape (1979), at 2; MacKinnon, ‘ Refl ections on

Sex Equality Under Law ’ , 100 Yale LJ (1991) 1281, at 1302 – 1303. 99 Groth, supra note 98, at 126 – 130; M. Scarce, Male on Male Rape: The Hidden Toll of Stigma and Shame

(1997), at 10. 100 Mackinnon, ‘ Rape, Genocide, and Women’s Human Rights ’ , in A. Stiglmayer (ed.), Mass Rape: The War

Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1994), at 183, 188 – 189; Seifert, ‘ War and Rape: A Preliminary Analysis ’ , in ibid., at 54, 55; Chinkin, supra note 3, at 328.

101 DelZotto and Jones, supra note 20. 102 MacKinnon, supra note 98, at 1302; Sivakumaran, supra note 5, at 1281 – 1282. 103 Seifert, supra note 3, at 41.

268 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

independence in male-dominated societies, namely that in both situations, there is an attempt to suppress challenges to the social status of the dominant group. 104

Notions of power and dominance are present in constructions of chastity and viril- ity. In some cultures, women are considered to represent the chastity of the family and the community. 105 Accordingly, sexual violence against female members of a commu- nity is intended to suggest that the men of the community have failed in their duty to protect ‘ their ’ women. 106 In this way, female rape is a form of communication between men. 107 It reinforces the ‘ conquered’s status of masculine impotence ’ . 108

The communication and the impotence are arguably more pronounced when it is the men themselves who are the victims of sexual violence. The construction of masculinity is that of the ability to exert power over others, particularly by means of the use of force. 109 Thus, men are considered to represent the virility, strength and power of the family and the community, able to protect not just them but others. 110 Sexual violence against male members of the household and community would thus suggest not only empowerment and masculinity of the offender but disempowerment of the individual victim. The effects of disempowerment do not just take place at the individual level. Sexual violence against male members of the household and community also suggest disempowerment of the family and community in much the same way as the chastity of the family and com- munity is considered lost when female members are sexually violated. Disempowerment thus takes place not just through women’s bodies, but those of the men themselves.

Sexual violence against women in confl ict frequently takes place in public, in front of the victims’ communities and their families. 111 On an individual level, there is the added aspect of public humiliation and shame, an added stigma. 112 There is also little chance that word of the rape will be kept quiet. Public sexual violence is also, then, a

104 Jones, ‘ Straight as a Rule: Heteronormativity, Gendercide, and the Noncombatant Male ’ , 8 Men and Masculinities (2006) 451, at 462.

105 Wing and Merchán, ‘ Rape, Ethnicity, and Culture: Spirit Injury from Bosnia to Black America ’ , 25 Columbia Human Rts L Rev (1994) 1, at 20 – 25.

106 Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Ms Radhika Coomaraswamy, submitted in accordance with Commission resolution 1997/44, UN Doc E/CN.4/1998/54, para. 12.

107 Seifert, supra note 100, at 59. 108 Brownmiller, supra note 3, at 38. 109 Preliminary report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and

consequences, Ms Radhika Coomaraswamy, in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 1994/45, UN Doc. E/CN.4/1995/42, para. 64.

110 Zarkov, ‘ The Body of the Other Man: Sexual Violence and the Construction of Masculinity, Sexuality and Ethnicity in Croatian Media ’ , in Moser and Clark (eds.), supra note 46, at 69, 77.

111 Report on the situation of human rights in the territory of the former Yugoslavia submitted by Mr Tadeusz Mazowiecki, supra note 85, Annex II, para. 48(a); Wagner, ‘ The Systematic Use of Rape as a Tool of War in Darfur: A Blueprint for International War Crimes Prosecutions ’ , 37 Georgetown J Int’l L (2005) 193, at 205; Nowrojee, ‘ Making the Invisible War Crime Visible: Post-Confl ict Justice for Sierra Leone’s Rape Victims ’ , 18 Harvard Human Rts J (2005) 85, at 89.

112 Dutton et al. , ‘ Extreme Mass Homicide: from Military Massacre to Genocide ’ , 10 Aggression and Violent Behaviour (2005) 437, at 464: ‘ [t]he raping of family members in front of their family suggest that knowl- edge of a human social taboo against family sex is part of the consciousness of the rapist. Its function is to generate a human emotion, humiliation ’ .

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 269

way of communicating to the rest of the community, of spreading fear and vulnerabil- ity throughout the area. An entire community may feel compelled to fl ee; 113 indeed this may have been the very purpose of the public nature of the sexual violence in the fi rst place. 114 The power of the perpetrators is vindicated, on show for all to see.

These factors are also at play when male sexual violence is committed in pub- lic. 115 At an individual level, the male is stigmatized as a victim and the community is informed that their male members, their protectors, are unable to protect themselves. And if they are unable to protect themselves, how are they to protect ‘ their ’ women and ‘ their ’ community? In this way, the manliness of the man is lost and the family and community are made to feel vulnerable. Disempowerment of the community is again had through the dominance over its male members.

Ideas of power and dominance are thus largely similar in male and female sexual violence, particularly that of rape. Another form of sexual violence in which the dynamics of power and dominance are particularly evident is that of forced nudity. There are all too frequent reports of women having been forced to strip naked. They have been ‘ subjected to humiliating strip searches, forced to parade or dance naked in front of soldiers or in public, and to perform domestic chores while nude ’ . 116 One particularly infamous incident involved women being forced to take off their clothes and dance naked on a table while being watched by male soldiers. 117 This was sub- sequently held by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to constitute an inhumane act for the purposes of crimes against humanity. 118

Individuals who are forced to strip naked feel exposed, vulnerable and without dignity. These feelings are exacerbated when the forced nudity is accompanied by threats of a sexual nature. Some male survivors state that, ‘ the humiliation of being interrogated while naked was a very drastic event in their lives ’ . 119 Depending on the particular cultural context in which this forced nudity takes place, the effects may be particularly severe. Another survivor thus states that, ‘ [w]e stood nude in front of UPC [Union of Congolese Peoples] offi cials … I was so shocked. I had never seen my father in this way. In our culture, it is not right. First they molested us … then they raped us. ’ 120

113 Askin, supra note 3, at 262 – 263. 114 B. Allen, Rape Warfare (1996), at 62 – 63. 115 For reports of male sexual violence committed in public see Amnesty International, supra note 44, at 19;

Oosterhoff, supra note 8, at 74. 116 Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Ms Radhika

Coomaraswamy, submitted in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2000/45: Violence against women perpetrated and/or condoned by the State during times of armed confl ict (1997 – 2000), UN Doc. E/CN.4/2001/73, para. 44.

117 Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic , IT-96-23-T & IT-96-23-1/T, paras 766 – 774 (22 Feb. 2001).

118 I bid., para. 782. It is likely that before the ICC, similar treatment would fall within the crimes against humanity of ‘ other sexual violence of comparable gravity ’ rather than ‘ other inhumane acts ’ for the Statute of the ICTY was relatively limited in explicitly mentioning crimes of a sexual nature, and hence these were sometimes considered under the heading of ‘ other inhumane acts ’ . The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is more expansive in its consideration of sexual offences.

119 Van Tienhoven, supra note 10, at 134. 120 Human Rights Watch, supra note 44, at 21.

270 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

B Emasculation Male sexual violence is, then, all about notions of power and dominance. Power and dominance are linked with masculinity and in the context of male sexual violence in armed confl ict, power and dominance manifest themselves in the form of emasculation.

Gender stereotyping suggests that men cannot be victims, only perpetrators. Thus, men are not conditioned to think of themselves as potential victims of sexual abuse or potential targets for perpetrators in the same way as women. 121 They see them- selves as being able to resist any potential attack and this is how others see them. For example, sexual violence may be considered to be inconsistent with certain societies’ understandings of masculinity. Victims are considered weak and helpless, while men strong and powerful. Masculinity and victim-hood are thus seemingly inconsistent. 122 On this basis, when sexual violence occurs against men, their masculine attributes are considered to have been taken away from them – they have been emasculated. This is not a new phenomenon for in ancient history, a male who was sexually penetrated was considered to have lost his manhood and could no longer be considered a warrior or a ruler. 123 Today, there is in society the idea that male victims of sexual violence are not ‘ real men ’ for ‘ real men ’ would not have let this happen to them.

This idea of emasculation may have been the very reason for the sexual violence, for, according to the study on women, peace and security by the UN Secretary- General, ‘ [t]he sexual abuse, torture and mutilation of male detainees or prisoners is often carried out to attack and destroy their sense of masculinity or manhood ’ . 124 This loss of masculinity is a constant concern of survivors.

Certain factors signify power and dominance, primary among which is gender; others include sexuality, ethnicity, race and religion. The concept of hegemonic masculinity is that of a heterosexual male; to deviate from this heteronormative male standard is to be ‘ less ’ masculine. 125 Thus, to cast aspersions on the individual’s gender or sexuality would be to subordinate the victim to the perpetrator and to strip him of his masculinity. Accordingly, emasculation may take place in a number of ways. The precise manner in which feelings of loss of masculinity take place will likely depend on the conduct of the perpetrator, the particular disposition of the individual victim and the behaviour of those who fi nd out about the sexual violence, namely the family, the community and society. Either way, the victims are considered to have lost their manhood and made un-manly through the dominant, über -masculine stance of the perpetrator.

121 Sivakumaran, supra note 5, at 1289. 122 Stanko and Hobdell, supra note 6, at 413. 123 Donaldson, ‘ Rape of Males ’ , in W.R. Dynes (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Homosexuality (1990), ii, at 1094,

1094. 124 Women, Peace and Security , supra note 58, at 16, para. 59. 125 Jones, supra note 104, at 453.

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 271

1 Feminization

Regardless of the actual gender of the perpetrator or victim, the characteristic of masculinity is attributed to the perpetrator and femininity to the victim. 126 The idea that male victims have been feminized may stem from the behaviour of perpetrators before, during or after the sexual assault. For example, one male survivor of rape in armed confl ict has stated that, while he was being raped, the perpetrators ‘ kept say- ing “ you’re no longer a man, you are going to become one of our women ” ’ . 127 This is not very different from male rape committed in time of peace. 128 In Algeria, ‘ [i]t was made known unoffi cially by the authorities that men had been raped in detention, and should no longer have the status of adult males in the community ’ . 129

The treatment accorded to survivors of rape, whether male or female, by the com- munity may also be similar. In some communities, female victims of sexual violence are shunned and considered to be outcasts; 130 so too, in others, male victims of sexual violence. Thus, one male survivor of rape stated that, ‘ I feel that people in the com- munity look down on me. When I talk to other men, they look at me as if I’m worth- less now. ’ 131 The added dimension that some women face of being shunned by their families 132 would not seem to be present in the case of male victims, possibly because in many societies, it is the male that is considered the head of the household.

The intention of the rape may be to ‘ lower ’ the social status of the male survivor by ‘ reducing ’ him to a ‘ feminized male ’ , described by one commentator as ‘ [o]ne of the most lethal gender roles in modern times ’ . 133 The same commentator asks, ‘ what greater humiliation can one man impose on another man or boy than to turn him into a de facto “ female ” through sexual cruelty? ’ 134 This is mirrored in the comments of vic- tims, one of whom has noted ‘ [t]hey wanted us to feel as though we were women ’ and ‘ this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman ’ . 135 The feminization idea may be further reinforced through the general view in society, even amongst those working in the fi eld such as medical and aid workers, that only women can be raped. 136 It certainly

126 Allen, supra note 114, at 27 – 28; Skjelsbaek, supra note 26, at 71. 127 Amnesty International, supra note 44, at 19. 128 MacKinnon, supra note 98, at 1307, fn 121. 129 Peel, supra note 15, at 66. 130 Wing and Merchán, supra note 105, at 20 – 25; Fitzgerald, supra note 55, at 650. This should not be

overstated: see Engle, supra note 13, at 807 – 808; Salzman, ‘ Rape Camps as a Means of Ethnic Cleans- ing: Religious, Cultural, and Ethical Reponses to Rape Victims in the Former Yugoslavia ’ , 20 Human Rts Q (1998) 348, at 368.

131 Amnesty International, supra note 44, at 19. 132 Brownmiller, supra note 3, at 79 – 80; Wing and Merchán, supra note 105, at 20 – 25; Askin, supra note

3, at 267 – 270; Wagner, supra note 111, at 205 and 213. Again, cf. Engle, supra note 13, at 807 – 808. This is not new — see T. Meron, Bloody Constraint: War and Chivalry in Shakespeare (1998), at 59 – 60.

133 Jones, supra note 104, at 452. 134 DelZotto and Jones, supra note 20. 135 Iraqi prisoner cited in MacKinnon, ‘ Women’s September 11th: Rethinking the International Law of

Confl ict ’ , 47 Harvard Int’l L J (2006) 1, at 25. 136 Oosterhoff, supra note 8, at 75.

272 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

does not help that, as a matter of law, this may be true in any number of countries and, as regards those in which it is not, the change was relatively recent. 137

2 Homosexualization

Another way in which male victims of sexual violence may feel emasculated is through the process of homosexualization. When reference is made to masculinity, the dominant construct is that of heterosexual masculinity. It is the heterosexual male that is the symbol of power. It is the heterosexual male that fi lls, or at least fi lled, the ranks of the armed forces. 138 The homosexual male is considered less masculine and more effeminate than the heterosexual male. 139 Constructing the male victim of sexual assault as homosexual is thus a means by which to emasculate him, 140 thereby reducing his social status. It is also a means by which to ‘ taint ’ him with homosexual- ity. 141 This implies not only severe consequences on the part of society, but is a means by which the international community can ignore the situation. If homosexuality is involved, even just a ‘ taint ’ , the international community can carry on with business as usual and turn a blind eye to the situation no matter how egregious it may be. 142

Homosexualization is particularly pronounced in the context of male rape. During a rape, it is not uncommon for the victim to experience an erection or ejaculate, causing him to question his sexuality. 143 This may be a particular worry for those victims of enforced rape who were forced to rape a male, as is often the case in time of confl ict. 144 Further, if it is recalled that rape is about power and dominance and not sex, this would explain why the male rapist retains his heterosexual (powerful) status, while the male victim loses his heterosexual status and is considered homosexualized (made weak, effeminate). However, when two male victims are forced to rape one another, the traditional power dynamic no longer applies. Both male victims lose their hetero- sexual status for the power rests with the perpetrator who was behind the rape. In this situation, the enforced rape ‘ “ taints ” both parties with homosexuality, strips them both of their masculinity and with it any power they may have ’ . 145

137 In the UK, this was as late as 1994 with the introduction of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. This is another way in which the traditional stereotypes that (1) men cannot be victims and (2) it is women that are in need of protection are reinforced.

138 On instances of female warriorship see Goldstein, supra note 22, at 59 – 127; B. Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passion of War (1997), at 126. As Ehrenreich later notes, at 230: ‘ [t]he de- gendering of war does not mean that “ masculinity ” will cease to be a desirable attribute; only that it will be an attribute that women as well as men can possess ’ .

139 Seifert, supra note 100, at 60; Goldstein, supra note 22, at 374. 140 Zarkov, supra note 110, at 79. 141 Sivakumaran, supra note 5, at 1293 – 1299. 142 On the status of sexual orientation in international law see Sanders, ‘ Human Rights and Sexual Orienta-

tion in International Law ’ , available at http://www.ilga.org ; E. Heinze, Sexual Orientation: a Human Right (1995); R. Wintemute, Sexual Orientation and Human Rights (1995).

143 Groth, supra note 98, at 138 – 139; American Medical Association, ‘ Strategies for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Assault ’ , at 21; Peel, supra note 8, at 2069 – 2070.

144 Peel, supra note 15, at 67. 145 Sivakumaran, supra note 5, at 1298.

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 273

In questioning their masculinity, male survivors also question their sexuality. They suffer from the dual misconceptions that it is homosexual men who are raped and that heterosexual men do not rape other heterosexual men. 146 This may explain why often times, male victims of sexual assault will not just stay silent but actively deny being sexually abused, or, if it is mentioned at all, it will be in the form of witness- ing other men being sexually abused, but never themselves. Only late in the counsel- ling or therapeutic process may male victims acknowledge that they themselves were sexually abused. 147

3 Prevention of Procreation

Concepts of masculinity also play out in ideas of virility and procreative capacity. As one individual who has worked with victims of sexual violence has noted, survivors of sexual torture ‘ often relate anxiety about the possibility of having children to injury to the sexual organs. Fears of no longer being considered fully a man, or of not being able to function as a man, were often mentioned. ’ 148 This may be due to the large number of castrations that take place in armed confl ict as well as the frequency of violence aimed at male reproductive organs. Indeed, perpetrators themselves, at times, will explicitly express the intention of depriving the victim of their procreating capability, stating in the course of deliberately aiming beatings at testicles that, ‘ you’ll never make Muslim children again ’ , 149 and while raping women that, ‘ they will bear children of the perpe- trator’s ethnicity … they must become pregnant ’ . 150 Even if survivors come through the assault with their reproductive capabilities in tact, they may experience psycho- logical diffi culties leading them to suffer from sexual and relationship diffi culties. 151

This is particularly true of sexual violence against women in armed confl icts of an ethnic, racial or religious dimension in which the prevention of their giving birth to members of the same ethnic, racial or religious group may be a particular focus of perpetrators. This may be prevented or impeded through forcible impregnation, dam- aging the reproductive organs or creating stigma on the part of raped women. This stigma may be such that female rape survivors will be shunned by their community, considered un-marriageable by male members of the same group or lead the women themselves to have negative associations with sexual activity. 152 In addition to being prevented from giving birth to members of the same ethnic, racial or religious group, women are also subject to forcible impregnation in order to give birth to members of

146 WHO, supra note 81, at 16. 147 Van Tienhoven, supra note 10, at 134; Oosterhoff, supra note 8, at 74; Balkan Investigative Reporting

Network, ‘ The Last Taboo ’ , Justice Report, No. 8 (21 Apr. 2006). 148 Van Tienhoven, supra note 10, at 134. 149 Application of the Genocide Convention , supra note 50, para. 44D(c). 150 Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts, supra note 31, UN Doc. S/1994/674, at

59 – 60, para. 250(b). 151 WHO, supra note 81, at 16. 152 See generally Chinkin, supra note 3, at 330; Fisher, ‘ Occupation of the Womb: Forced Impregnation as

Genocide ’ , 46 Duke LJ (1996) 91; Salzman, supra note 130, at 365 – 366.

274 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

the perpetrator’s particular group. 153 This is a separate offence and has severe effects for women. 154 It is also a crime in itself. 155

The linkage between the prevention of procreation on the part of both sexes would seem to be recognized by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which lists enforced sterilization as a crime against humanity, defi ned in the elements of crimes, in part, simply as the deprivation of ‘ biological reproductive capacity ’ . 156 This is wide enough to encompass male sexual violence such as castration or other genital mutilation that leads to the inability to procreate.

C Emasculation of the Group A consideration of sexual violence in confl ict cannot be divorced from the very par- ticular context in which it takes place. In confl icts of an ethnic, racial or religious character, sexual violence is often targeted against individuals belonging to particular ethnic, racial or religious groups rather than being sporadic or opportunistic in nature in order to symbolically dominate that entire group.

An analysis of the ways in which male and female bodies are symbolically con- structed may be useful in considering this proposition. The symbolic construction of the female body tends to be that of the community, for example ‘ Marianne ’ personify- ing France, the Statue of Liberty of the United States, the Bavarian national statute ‘ Bavaria ’ and ‘ Mother India ’ . 157 Accordingly, an attack on the female body is a sym- bolic attack on the personifi cation and culture of the entire community. 158

In much the same way as sexual violence against women may symbolize to offender and victim alike the destruction of the national, racial, religious or ethnic culture as appropriate depending on the context of the confl ict, sexual violence against men symbolizes the disempowerment of the national, racial, religious or ethnic group. The castration of a man is considered to emasculate him, to deprive him of his power. The castration of a man may also represent the symbolic emasculation of the entire community. This is particularly pronounced in an ethnic confl ict where ‘ the castra- tion of a single man of the ethnically defi ned enemy is symbolic appropriation of the masculinity of the whole group. Sexual humiliation of a man from another ethnicity is, thus, a proof not only that he is a lesser man, but also that his ethnicity is a lesser

153 See generally Fisher, supra note 152; Boon, ‘ Rape and Forced Pregnancy Under the ICC Statute: Human Dignity, Autonomy, and Consent ’ , 32 Columbia Human Rts L Rev (2001) 625; Carpenter, ‘ Surfacing Chil- dren: Limitations of Genocidal Rape Discourse ’ , 22 Human Rts Q (2000) 428.

154 Copelon, supra note 3, at 256. 155 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Art. 7(1)(g) lists forced pregnancy as a crime against

humanity. 156 ICC Elements of Crimes, Art. 7(1)(g)-5, element 1. 157 Seifert, supra note 3, at 39; Kapur, ‘ The Tragedy of Victimization Rhetoric: Resurrecting the “ Native ”

Subject in International/Post-Colonial Feminist Legal Politics ’ , 15 Harvard Human Rts J (2002) 1, at 22. On the imagery between the body and the state see Knop, ‘ Re/Statements: Feminism and State Sover- eignty in International Law ’ , 3 Transnational L & Contemporary Problems (1993) 293, at 326.

158 Seifert, supra note 3, at 39.

Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Confl ict ␣ ␣ ␣ 275

ethnicity. ’ 159 This is not particular to castration but is applicable to sexual violence more generally. 160 Sexual violence against individual men of a particular group is thus a means of emasculating that entire group.

Notions of power and dominance are thus interwoven throughout ideas of emas- culation, feminization, homosexualization and the prevention of procreation. It is the loss of power, amongst other things, that is common to all. Power is the essen- tial attribute in all forms of sexual violence, be it rape, enforced sterilization or forced nudity. The heterosexual male is considered the all-powerful; rape and other forms of sexual violence against men and against women serve to reinforce this status.

5 Conclusion There would seem to have been a breakthrough in recognition that men can be, indeed are, victims of sexual violence in armed confl ict. Non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations now include a standard sentence in their reports on sexual atrocities in armed confl ict in which they note that men can be victims of sexual violence. However, recognition of this practice has not translated into detailed consideration of the issue, let alone ideas for prevention. In the longer term, things will only improve if defi nitions of rape that are currently limited to male/female rape are changed and all forms of sexual assault are more fully prosecuted. Pending these changes, a number of defi nite and concrete ideas could usefully be implemented.

Gender stereotyping should be altered and made more nuanced. Men are sexu- ally assaulted by female combatants in armed confl ict, 161 just as women may sexu- ally assault men in time of peace. 162 The events that took place at Abu Ghraib, with women among the perpetrators, are a case in point. This distorts the paradigm of men as perpetrators and women as victims and warrants a more nuanced consideration of the roles of both sexes. Women may be victims of sexual violence in armed confl ict, but armed confl icts affect them disproportionately in other ways too. Similarly, men may be victims of sexual violence in armed confl ict, but armed confl icts affect them in particular ways as well. 163 Further, although men and women may be perpetrators and victims, they are not only perpetrators and victims. Both can play positive roles in confl ict prevention, confl ict termination and during the duration of the confl ict. 164

159 Zarkov, supra note 110, at 78. 160 Jones, supra note 104, at 460. 161 See, e.g., Amnesty International, supra note 40, sect. 3; Helsinki Watch, War Crimes in Bosnia-

Herzegovina: Vol. II (1993), at 339, cited in Jones, supra note 47, at 132, fn 12. 162 King, Coxell and Mezey, supra note 4, at 12; American Medical Association, supra note 143, at 26. 163 On the impact of armed confl ict on women see: Gardam and Charlesworth, ‘ Protection of Women in

Armed Confl ict ’ , 22 Human Rts Q (2000) 148; Gardam, ‘ Women and the Law of Armed Confl ict: Why the Silence? ’ , 46 Int’l & Comp LQ (1997) 55. On men see: Jones, ‘ Gendercide and Genocide ’ , 2 J of Genocide Research (2000) 185; Carpenter, supra note 57.

164 See, e.g., Engle, supra note 13, at 810 – 815; Jones, supra note 163.

276 EJIL 18 (2007), 253−276

As we are still in the very early stages of consideration of the issue, that of trying to identify the precise scope of the problem, the remaining ideas will pertain to the report- ing stage. In this regard, a number of practices that are of little cost but of considerable possible gain could usefully be carried out. If commissions are engaged to investigate the issue of sexual abuse in armed confl ict, consideration should be given to the ques- tion of whether male sexual violence has taken place. Given the hidden nature of the offence, when medical workers are treating male survivors, they should be on the look out for signs of sexual abuse and encourage reporting of such. When documenting abuse, medical workers should consider how they categorize it, whether for example as torture or sexual abuse or both. Fieldworkers, when interviewing victims of sexual assault, should also interview men. Any notions of stigma should be dispelled if at all possible and certainly not used as a reason not to look into the issue. There also needs to be awareness of cultural attitudes and sensitivities.

All workers who may be the fi rst point of contact for survivors should be trained and sensitized to sexual violence against men for fear of accentuating the problem. Counselling services for survivors of sexual assault should be opened up to men and women, though it is likely that different sessions will be required for the two sexes in order to encourage both to talk. Survivors should be able to choose the sex of their medical worker, counsellor and interpreter. Although female survivors of sexual vio- lence will often wish to speak to someone of the same sex, 165 it is not clear that this will be the case for male victims of male sexual violence. As such, persons of both sexes need to have the appropriate training. Mental health support should be made available. As the World Health Organization has observed, ‘ [w]hile some legal and social networks, however rudimentary, may exist for women and girls who have been sexually attacked, there is rarely anything comparable for male victims ’ . 166 This has to change.

165 Gribbin, ‘ Sexual Assault and Rape ’ , 14 Current Obstetrics and Gynaecology (2004) 356, at 357; Nowrojee, supra note 111, at 94; Fitzgerald, supra note 55, at 659.

166 WHO, supra note 6, at 111.