Prosecuting Crimes of Rape and Sexual Violence at the Ictr: the Application of Joint Criminal Enterprise Theory

During the 1994 conoict in Rwanda, rape occurred on a massive scale in the genocide that claimed the lives of between 500,000 and one million Rwandans. Réne Degni-Segui, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Rwanda, as appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 rapes occurred in total. He elaborated that “[r]ape was systemic and was used as a ‘weapon’ by the perpetrators of the massacres . . . [and a]ccording to consistent and reliable testimony, . . . rape was the rule and its absence was the exception.” Rape and sexual violence were used during the Rwandan genocide as political and military tools to target female Tutsi civilians; the crimes, instrumentalities of war, often had little or no “sexual” component. Though low-level militia members and soldiers generally perpetrated these crimes, military and political leaders instigated, encouraged, oversaw, and, at times, personally committed rape and acts of sexual violence. Thus, these high level ofacials should be held criminally responsible. After delays in the United Nations’ (UN) post-genocide investigation of crimes of a sexual nature, the Ofacer of the Prosecutor (OTP) at the Inter-