While rape is often theorized as an act and expression of the rapist's power over the victim, this article seeks to offer a new, victim-centered conceptualization of rape. Focused specifically on war rape, it submits that rape constitutes a crime of identity that attacks the victim's very sense of self. To develop this argument, the article centers on two particular, neglected categories of victims-namely male victims of rape and children who are born as a result of rape. Examining these two categories of victims together is not only original but also enlightening, permitting deeper insights into who is affected by the crime of rape (directly and indirectly) and illuminating the significant identity dynamics that underpin this heinous crime. In short, while male rape often robs the victim of everything that he believes to be the essence of his male identity, thus emasculating him, the child born of rape frequently acquires a superimposed identity-inextricably linked to that of the rapist-that impedes the development of his/her own personal identity. Rape, in other words, is not only a sexual and physical violation but it is also a fundamental violation of the self.
In May 2015, a Women's Court was held in Sarajevo over a four-day period. It was the first such court on European soil for more than 40 years and reflected a growing awareness within the former Yugoslavia of the limitations of criminal trials, both international and national. The author attended the Women's Court, and this article draws on both her experiences as a participant observer and her interviews with some of the organizers and witnesses. While it is too soon to know whether the Court will produce any substantive results or have any lasting impact, this article seeks to offer an early analysis. While the organizers of the Court theorized it as feminist justice, this article regards feminist justice as part of what Haldemann terms 'justice as recognition'. Analyzing and assessing the Court within this conceptual framework, it argues that the Court successfully delivered justice as recognition at a symbolic level. The challenge now is how to translate this symbolic justice as recognition into a more tangible and practical form.
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When the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina (BiH) ended in 1995, there were an estimated 30,000 missing people, of which over 10,000 are still missing. The issue of missing persons, however, is surprisingly under-researched. Particularly understudied, moreover, is the relationship between missing persons and reconciliation, or rather the impact of the former on the latter. This is a gap that this article seeks to address. Based on 21 semi-structured interviews with families of the missing, it aims to demonstrate that missing persons constitute a potentially important obstacle to reconciliation in BiH and, by extension, that some of the main challenges to building reconciliation can be found at the grassroots level. The article's central argument, therefore, is that the view from below is critical to understanding reconciliation and some of the many difficulties that it presents in post-conflict societies such as BiH.
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