Rape as a weapon of war: Yugoslavian Ethnic Cleansing and Security

Throughout history, we have seen instances of sexual violence being used as a weapon of war and conflict multiple times whether it was the Second World War, the Rwanda genocide, or Guatemala’s silent holocaust amongst countless others. In civil wars in Uganda, Liberia, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, the systematic use of sexual violence as a war weapon was evident. Sexual violence, often, is used to intimidate both the victim and the nation, to break any community bonds that may exist, and to send a clear message of domination, humiliation, and authority to both the victim and family members. Sexual violence in war zones is too common, deliberate, and effective not to be a part of a wider political design, and thus a "weapon of war." Mostly, women are the ones who’re subjected to this gender-based violence due to the systemic heteronormative hierarchal dichotomy between men and women and a patriarchal narrative that portrays women's bodies as rape-able. The international arena has overlooked the role of sexual assault in undermining peace and distorting civilian perceptions of security and we still see instances where the refusal to officially recognize sexual assault as a weapon of war has resulted in impunity, leaving the victims seeking justice even after decades. However, the sexual terrorism and ethnic cleansing carried out in former Yugoslavia against Bosnian, Croatian, Hungarian, and other non-Serbian citizens have been one of the war's most heinous crimes which was the very first-time sexual violence as a weapon of war was criminalized and recognized within the international arena.  

 

To provide context, the tensions between Croatia and Slovenia, two constituent countries of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, began when they declared their independence in June 1991. The latter's independence was brutally resisted, both by regular troops and by civilians who found themselves unexpectedly opposed to living in ethnically mixed areas. Croat and Serb civilians in both realms engaged in acts of "ethnic cleansing" while Croatian troops fought Yugoslavia's military in 1991 and 1992. The dynamics that formed in the early 1990s were like those that existed during World War II. The Bosniak (Bosnian Muslims) population were the primary victims of the ethnic cleansing carried out by Bosnian Serbs. The Bosniaks were forced out of areas and in under six weeks, the Yugoslav army, paramilitary groups, and local Bosnian Serb troops had taken control of approximately two-thirds of Bosnian territory. Croats were both victims and perpetrators, even though Bosniaks were the primary victims and Serbs were the primary perpetrators. The first official study, the Helsinki Report (1992), detailed multiple cases of sexual violence, mainly against Bosnian Muslim women. Some sexual assaults occurred sporadically but the vast majority was systematic and pervasive, occurring in tandem with efforts to expel people of a specific ethnic group from a specific location. Field commanders and camp leaders have been known to deliver explicit commands to their subordinates to commit sexual violence. Women, girls, children, and males were violated, tortured, slaughtered. HIV transmission was utilized as a weapon in the murder of women and their communities. It would not be wrong to say that instead of making rape a weapon of war, the Serbian forces made war a form of rape.  

Examining the Yugoslavian ethnic cleansing brings forth a conceptualization of security that is different from the traditional and majoritarian realist notions of security which confine it to the state and military. Within the academic realm of international relations, the discourse on security and what it entails has been rather ambiguous and contested. Traditionally and simply, security is concerned with the protection of the nation against any possible threats through militarization and weaponization. This respective definition, however, only looks at security from the realist perspective but security can be further characterized and defined through emancipation and the nature of vulnerabilities or threats (external or internal). The use of sexual and gender-based violence as a tool for ethnic cleansing and genocide presents a compelling case for reconsidering peacekeeping and security strategies in high-risk areas. These cases of different atrocities point to the fact that it is extremely necessary for us to go beyond the anarchic state-centric conceptions. Furthermore, in most cases of ethnic or intersectional conflicts, we often see the state and the military itself becoming a threat to women’s security. This also demonstrates how "internal" sources of stress can endanger the peace and security of governments and populations living within state borders.  

There is a direct existing link between masculinized militarization and soldiering which acts as a catalyst for sexual violence. Feminist discourse about military and sexual violence talks about how wartime rapes are not just a result of male libido and sexual gratification, it also stems from a place of anger and aggression towards their respective intersectional identities. It is also about the power relations between man and woman in a patriarchal context; it has everything to do with the relations between state and subject operating within the context of armed occupation. The referent object being women and the state being a very possible threat to women. The state itself fails women as a security provider because it’s the very state and the military that causes insecurities and violates security as well as fails to further provide justice to them as well. 

Hence, intersectional identities of sexuality, caste, and class or rural and urban distinctions and hierarchies also play a huge role. Another analysis was that these acts of sexual violence and rape were not carried out individually but in groups of people which also reflects the psychology of 'male bonding' and a sense of 'brotherhood' which are the two distinct characteristics associated with gang rape, particularly in war. Especially in the case of Yugoslavia where the Bosnian Serbs gang-raped and sexually mutilated women. In such cases, the state is complicit in carrying out such atrocities and it permits conscripted soldiers to avoid personal and moral responsibility because the goal is not just to obtain sexual fulfillment or satisfy their libido, but also to coerce and conquer the adversary to establish control and dominate, both literally and metaphorically, through group cohesion.  

The Hague Convention of 1907, the first international treaty to expressly prohibit sexual violence: after WWII, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg did not expressly prosecute sexual violence, and the Tokyo Tribunal ignored the Japanese army's enslavement of "comfort women." Based on the evidence provided by various organizations and the testimonies of numerous individuals, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) became the first international criminal tribunal to introduce convictions for rape as a form of torture, as well as sexual enslavement and rape as crimes against humanity. The wars in the former Yugoslavia demonstrated the critical importance of putting these ancient international principles into practice.

 

Bibliography 

Maria Eriksson Baaz, Maria Stern, Why Do Soldiers Rape? Masculinity, Violence, and Sexuality in the Armed Forces in the Congo (DRC), International Studies Quarterly, Volume 53, Issue 2, June 2009, Pages 495–518, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2009.00543.x 

Marlise Simons, “U.N. Court, for the First Time, Defines Rape as War Crime,” New York Times, June 28, 1996, Accessed November 12, 2013. 

CARPENTER, R. CHARLI. “Recognizing Gender-Based Violence Against Civilian Men and Boys in Conflict Situations.” Security Dialogue 37, no. 1 (2006): 83–103. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26299474. 

Ioannis Derziotis (Author), 2016, Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/444532