Using international humanitarian law to prevent tactical sexual violence in conflict: a critical analysis of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative and the ending impunity approach

Schenck, Katherine Philippa R. (2021). Using international humanitarian law to prevent tactical sexual violence in conflict: a critical analysis of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative and the ending impunity approach. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

From the Geneva Conventions to the war crimes tribunals of the 1990s, the use of sexual violence as a military tactic has been recognised as a war crime, and one for which high-ranking political and military leaders can be prosecuted. Despite these significant developments, international efforts have failed to live up to expectations. This thesis evaluates one part of this international campaign, the United Kingdom’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI). I evaluate the PSVI policy and programs to evaluate its impact on the problem of tactical sexual violence in conflict and find it wanting.
I analyse the PSVI from 2012-2017, assessing the impact and effectiveness of policy and programs intended to prevent the grave breach war crime of rape and sexual violence in conflict, with particular attention to the use of sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war. The PSVI has received minimal academic and scholarly attention; yet when analysed carefully the PSVI acts as a microcosm for the international society’s approach to preventing tactical sexual violence in conflict. Using feminist social constructivist theory and applying critical discourse analysis as a methodological tool, I demonstrate how the PSVI produced primarily legal-based solutions and relied only on a narrow legal framing of sexual violence in conflict, focusing upon international prosecutions and convictions. The PSVI programs and policy as the road to achieve deterrence and an end the culture of impunity, fail to address the underlying causes of tactical sexual violence. Nor do they consider gender, which must be at the centre of any approaches. First, I examined the case of tactical rape and sexual violence in Bosnia which impelled international attention and subsequent international action, an international court and subsequently prosecution. I set out the elements that produced and characterised the strategy of tactical rape and sexual violence and genocidal rape to enable investigation of other instances in conflict. Then I turn to the PSVI work in Burma, with the crisis of the Rohingya as a case study. Burma, as a former British colony, has long been identified as a priority focus in UK foreign policy, yet in relation to the situation of the Rohingya minority which has been in the forefront of international attention since 2012, the policy impact of PSVI work shows little beyond nominal success.
Attempting to end impunity through prosecution was a valuable goal and was a notable first step. My research, however, reveals a framing that is too narrow to lead to the long-term change in attitudes, gender roles and gender norms –for both men and women–needed in conflict areas that are driven by ethnonationalism. Nor do the results of prosecution of tactical sexual violence in international courts provide sufficient deterrence to end the practice without other programmatic support. If we are to ameliorate the tactical use of sexual violence, we must focus on root causes and upon ways to alter the gender and cultural norms that make it effective.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):