WMC Women Under Siege

The Index: Justice for Rape in War

Year in which General Andrew Jackson is credited with coining the phrase “booty and beauty” to make clear what kind of “spoils…to the victor go”: 1812

Year in which an international tribunal established that sexualized violence is a crime against humanity and potentially an act of genocide: 1995

Year in which U.N. Resolution 1820 recognized wartime rape as a security issue that warrants a security response: 2008

Months later that the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1888, condemning sexualized violence in war zones: 15

Year in which the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established: 1993

Convictions of individuals at the ICTY since 1993 for crimes of sexualized violence: 30

Percent of total cases at the ICTY that have had convictions for crimes of sexualized violence: ~50

Generally accepted minimum number of women raped in the Bosnian war: 50,000-60,000

Number of women estimated to have been subjected to sexualized violence in Sierra Leone’s civil war: 215,000-257,000

Number of individuals indicted on crimes against humanity including rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, and forced pregnancy in the Special Court for Sierra Leone: 13

Years after Bangladesh’s 1971 war (in which an estimated 200,000 women were raped) that a tribunal to prosecute war crimes was assembled: 40

Number of high-ranking officers of the Imperial Japanese Army who were convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death at the Tokyo tribunal for crimes during the Rape of Nanking: 7

Number of these officers tried with crimes of sexualized violence: 0

Number of cases of rape prosecuted at the 1945-1946 Nuremberg trials: 0

Years since the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC), came into being: 16

Number of U.N. member states that signed the Rome Statute: 139

Number of states that refused to sign: 43

Number of cases at the ICC in which gender-based crimes have been charged: 14

Number of convictions so far: 0

Counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity on which the ICC convicted Congolese warlord Germain Katanga in March: 5

Counts of charges pertaining to sexualized violence of which Katanga was found guilty: 0

Number of gender-based crimes included by the ICC prosecutor in a 2006 arrest warrant for Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga, thought to have overseen widespread rape by his militia: 0

Number of countries that actually enshrine rape in their constitution: 1

Percent of cases not prosecuted out of the 14,200 cases reported in 1998 in the DRC’s South Kivu province: 98

Convictions of individuals on sexual crimes since 2011 in Congolese military court: 187

Number of women raped in Congo in the previous year, according to a study published in 2011: 462,293

Number of people tried for genocide crimes by local courts in Rwanda called “gacaca” between 2001 and 2012: 2 million

Percent of convictions in those cases: 65

Number of cases of rape brought before gacaca courts in just one year: ~7,000
 
Convictions in gacaca rulings on genocide crimes that have not been enforced: 8,000

Number of women convicted at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for incitement to rape: 1

Convictions for crimes of sexualized violence overall at the ICTR: 17

Cases dropped or given not-guilty verdicts: 26

Percent of rape survivors in Liberia’s civil war who reported their cases to police: 40

Percent of Liberian rape survivors who actually went to court: 23

Years since Sri Lanka reformed its laws to better address rape in custody, which is still used as a weapon: 19

Crimes of sexualized violence prosecuted thus far in Syria’s war: 0

 

For our "Index on Sexualized Violence at Home," please click here.

For our "Index on Rape in War," please click here.

For our "Index on the Cost of Violence Against Women," please click here.



More articles by Category: International, Violence against women
More articles by Tag: Rape, War, Sexualized violence
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Lauren Wolfe
Journalist, editor WMC Climate
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