End Impunity! Reducing Conflict-Related Sexual Violence to a Problem of Law

Abstract

Whilst sexual violence has been an offence associated both with war‐ and peacetime throughout history, its rise to the tables where international peace and security are negotiated, represents a significant shift. This article continues the scholarly conversation about conflict‐related sexual violence and its emergence as a “hot topic” on academic, political, and activist agendas. Specifically, we ask how and why criminal law constitutes the ultimately meaningful response to such violence. Building on frame analysis, we address how the fight against conflict‐related sexual violence has become the fight against impunity. We examine what imageries of victims and perpetrators, causes and consequences key actors within interstate diplomacy and human rights advocacy evoke to drive this development. We argue that these narratives shape the political discourse on conflict‐related sexual violence, which may in turn influence the perceived political maneuverability in the face of such harms.

Feminism in the Humanitarian Machine. Introduction to the Special Section on ‘The Politics of Intervention Against (Conflict-Related) Sexual and Gender-based Violence’

“…In the following brief remarks, I focus in particular on the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, my observations likely also apply to other contemporary postconflict SGBV interventions, since judicial prosecution and health services have become their standard instruments (Kirby 2015;Houge and Lohne 2017;Tanyag 2018).…”

Imageries of Self: Guilty Plea Statements in Sexual Violence Cases at the ICTY

“…The hierarchy of crimes that the silences are likely to reflect and respond to forms part of the end impunity-campaigning that is particularly strong in advocacy and policy addressing CRSV (Houge & Lohne, 2017). This brings us to the second key emphasis of the analysis; that the defendants' stories do the work of the court in their statements.…”

Penal humanitarianism beyond the nation state: An analysis of international criminal justice

“…Studies in international relations have approached the creation of the ICC as a ‘global civil society achievement’ (Glasius, 2006), the result of concerted efforts by ‘transnational advocacy networks’ (Keck and Sikkink, 1998) in promoting a ‘justice cascade’ (Sikkink, 2011) for the enforcement of human rights worldwide. Indeed, human rights NGOs have been at the forefront of the ‘fight against impunity’ for core international crimes (Engle et al, 2016; Houge and Lohne, 2017), and as such, carry with them particular conceptions of justice and punishment, making it eminently reasonable to approach them as penal actors for a criminology that travels (Aas, 2011).…”

“…Earmarked contributions constitute the bulk of TFV funding: out of approximately 19 million Euros of total donations, over 5 million had been earmarked for sexual and gender-based violence. At the time of my research, the UK was the TFV’s biggest donor (overlapping with the UK’s high-level ‘Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative’, see Houge and Lohne, 2017), with Norway in second place (TFV, 2014). A Norwegian state representative told me that funding to the TFV is earmarked because a consequence of the government having money in the aid sector needing to be channelled.…”