Wartime sexual violence: women’s human rights and questions of masculinity

This article examines wartime sexual violence, one of the most recurring wartime human rights abuses. It asserts that our theorisations need further development, particularly in regard to the way that masculinities and the intersections with constructions of ethnicity feature in wartime sexual violence. The article also argues that although women and girls are the predominant victims of sexual violence and men and boys the predominant agents, we must also be able to account for the presence of male victims and female agents. This, however, engenders a problem; much of the women’s human rights discourse and existing international mechanisms for addressing wartime sexual violence tend to reify the male-perpetrator/femalevictim paradigm. This is a problem which feminist human rights theorists and activists need to address. This article proceeds from the premise that sexual violence is one of the most recurring wartime abuses of women and girls and remains a critical women’s human rights issue deserving our attention, but that there are certain analytical problems involved. Despite developments in human rights discourse and international law, abuses continue and there remains a certain poverty of explanations. One of the areas in which our theorisations need further development is in regard to the way that masculinities feature in wartime sexual violence and the intersections with constructions of ethnicity. This article attempts to address this intersection, based on the claim that to try and prevent such horrific violations a clearer understanding of the causes is in many ways more important than changes to international law. I begin by examining some of the reasons for and the functions of wartime sexual violence, focusing in particular on issues around masculinity and ethnicity. The reality of wartime sexual violence is then examined, beginning with a critical discussion of the discourse of women’s human rights and going on to revisit some of the theoretical points raised in relation to the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The article concludes by returning to some of the difficulties for the women’s human rights movement that are presented by the problem of male victims and female agents of wartime sexual