Amnesty International : For Survivors Of Wartime Rape

Imagine for a moment what it would be like if the entire population of Sonoma County, California was killed, and twenty years later not many people knew a great deal about it. When over 500,000 people, primarily Tutsis, were killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, it was a great tragedy. However, no one rushed to the country’s aid. Now it is vital that the horrors of the instance that violated the human rights of so many, is not forgotten. Human rights are the universal actions and objects that all people are entitled to because they are human. Human rights have been violated in numerous ways over time, typically as a result of a person in power having their own best interests in mind rather than the peoples´. Various groups, such as Amnesty

Rape culture extends across the globe. In 2012, a group of men gang-raped a young woman and assaulted her friend aboard a moving bus in New Delhi, India. The crime was horrific. And yet, there were some within the country who chose to blame the victims instead of the perpetrators. Asaram Bapu, a self-realized saint from India with approximately 40 million disciples said, “The victim’s daughter is as guilty as her rapists…She should have called the culprits brothers and begged before them to stop…This could have saved her dignity and life. Can you clap with one hand? I don’t think so” (Herald). Then in 1995, during the Bosnian War and the Bosnian genocide, the violence assumed a gender-targeted form through the use of rape. It is estimated that 50,000 women were raped. A year prior during the Rwandan genocide, known as the 100-day genocide, it is estimated that 500,000 women were raped. During the times when these genocides were taking place, rape and sexual violence was seen as just another part of war, but not seen as a crime. Thousands and thousands of women were raped and will never obtain the justice they deserve for their perpetrators’

Ultimately, however, we are left with few examples of successful intervention in genocide studies, as even the Sinjar intervention failed to lead to sustained international cooperation. In both cases, however, independent or small coalitional action seems to be much easier to produce than international action. While this itself is not surprising, it does once again force us to confront the question whether the International community can enforce human rights in cases of gender based violence and

In the past, groups advocating for civil, human and migrant rights hardly made any meaningful progress courtesy of insufficient legislation and absence of political will. However, sweeping changes coupled by the need to recognize human rights have made it crucial to defend the oppressed in society irrespective of their location. Such civil and human rights groups have constantly set high standards when it comes to reinforcing the rule of law. Such groups ultimately combine forces to expose human rights violations and prosecute perpetrators. It’s undeniable that such groups have significantly ensured the enforcement of the rule

According to ICRtoP, the Democratic Republic of Congo is reported to be the “rape capital of the world” with an estimated 15,000 rape cases in the Congo’s eastern provinces alone. Rape is a tool of war used by the various armed forces in the Congo in order to “create instability in

It is said that, “Delivering justice for mass atrocities is a daunting challenge in any country, and the scale of the Rwandan genocide would have overwhelmed even the best­ equipped judicial system” (Rwanda). Even though there were doubts, the government of Rwanda believed that they would be able to deliver justice through the domestic and community courts. It turned out that Rwanda was able to push through and serve their country justice in less than twenty years. The government took great efforts in order to deliver the justice that they felt was necessary for their people. The justice process did not go without sacrifice. Furthermore, “Some have paid a high price. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, in particular, thousands of people were arbitrarily arrested, and many were charged and tried in the absence of solid evidence against them. Some might have been wrongly convicted. The lack of safeguards against abusive prosecutions in a weak judicial system heightened the risk of unfair trials” (Rwanda). This illustrates the flaws that pushing for justice can create. Although it is important for victims to be awarded with a sense of righteousness, rushing the process can cause even more

The Holocaust is something that we must never forget. Its occurrence relied only “upon the indifference of bystanders in every land” (Zukier). Even today we stand by while innocent lives are taken. The recent conflicts in Rwanda or Bosnia, or past conflicts in Cambodia, are merely three examples. Wherever genocide occurs one thing is sure to happen– individual lives become lost in massive numbers and the tolls are so large

On October 30th, 2014, over 220 women were raped in less than 36 hours in Tabit. The HRW (Human Rights Watch) had been following the case with caution. Although the Tibet government has been trying to hide this terrible case, a man told the HRW, “They said if I talked about Tabit again that I was going to be finished. They kicked me. Tied me and hanged me up. They beat me with whips and electric wires” (Human Rights Watch). This mass rape was claimed to be a “deliberate attack on Tabit and the mass rape of the town’s women and girls is a new low in the catalog of atrocities in Darfur” (Human Rights Watch). The Sudanese armed forces caused a mass rape of over 200 women as a political statement in war. One of the soldiers told a mother “You killed our man. We are going to show you true hell” (Humans Right

In her article, Juan E. Méndez discusses that the state is obliged to a number of tasks in response to crimes against humanity. two of those include offering the victims adequate reparations, and to separating known perpetrators from law enforcement bodies and other positions of authority (Mendez, 261). This is what I would like to form my criminal prosecution around.

In the article, “Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru,” Jelke Boesten argues that the issues of rape that are addressed in war crime tribunals reinforce the idea of a rape script that survivors should appeal to. This limits the understanding of the gendered dimension of warfare, for it produces a narrow interpretation of rape victimization. This consequently leads to the recognition of a limited number of cases and excludes those who do not fit the script. Similarly, with the discourse produced by TRCs, the amalgamation and narrow interpretation of testifiers’ experiences post-conflict renders the state with a summarized story that they may or may not identify with. This diminishes the process of healing that should be sought for from judicial and non-judicial transitional justice measures.

During the Rwandan genocide, some rapes occurred recurrently throughout a timespan. “Sexual enslavements occurred when a woman was detained, typically in the house of an Interhamwe, and subjected to repeated sexual assaults over a period of days,” (Mullins 727). These kinds of rapes belong in their own category because of the added element of confinement and intent to continually rape and therefore, harm. An Interhamwe soldier named Rafiki, personally sought out one Tutsi woman whom he had

Therefore, the story of a young woman named Debarah sheds light on women lying about being raped to gain access to international aid. Debarah knew that raped women had access to resources, particularly food, and money. Her neighbors knew that she had two brothers for whom she was the sole provided after the deaths of her parents. Debarah neighbors told her to go to the clinic "say you were raped and you will be supported." Warner. The Congo We Listen To. (2017).

In the amnesty process in the TRC, as previously stated to reach reconciliation, the perpetrators were to confront the committee and the victims and discuss, in detail, their crimes. In a strange way, these testimonies, “humanized,” the perpetrators, “For those who watched the amnesty proceedings and for those who participated, the testimony humanized and particularized the perpetrator. As perpetrators gave testimony, they divulged their crimes, but they also revealed themselves as flawed and

Ross details case studies in which women’s experiences with sexual violence result in them being “frozen in time” by the TRC—with the hearings focusing on their sexual abuse as the dominant influence on their quality of life. Take Zanele Zingxondo who appeared before the Commission hoping to clear her name of involvement in a murder, but instead detailed her experience of sexual violence while in detention and never got judgement on her accused crimes. When the council does move beyond the act of state violence, it coincides with the legitimacy of societal customs—such as the paternal rights a man has to a child born from rape, or the semblance of “traditional” marriage rituals. In these cases, the women are expected to move on from the trauma they experienced because of how it fits into the wider norms. This is a repeated betrayal of women’s bodies at state level Ross claims, where

There is a growing awareness that addressing past injustices are crucial for the process of healing and reconciliation. In order to move towards a peaceful future, governments must acknowledge and respond to the wrongs and injustices of the past. While there is an agreement between people that the process of reconciliation must acknowledge the wrongs of the past and the victims, many scholars debate about how such acknowledgments are best communicated, so that they will be sufficiently credible and effective in improving future relations. In fact, many argue that memory is crucially important as a response to past injustices, especially when dealing with human rights violations. Memorializing the past, through memorials, commemorative ceremonies, etc., is widely promoted as a valuable way of redressing the wrongs of the past. But what kind of redress can memorials provide, and how can they advance in transitional justice? Indeed, I consider these symbolic reparations to be a double-edged sword due to the strengths and weaknesses, it presents as a practice for redressing the losses that were suffered by victims.