6 Contextualizing Sexual Violence: Selection of Crimes
Laurel Baig, Michelle Jarvis, Elena Martin Salgado, Giulia Pinzauti
From: Prosecuting Conflict-Related Sexual Violence at the ICTY
Edited By: Baron Serge Brammertz, Michelle Jarvis
- Subject(s):
- Right to fair trial — Rape and sexual violence — Armed conflict
This chapter explores strategies for demonstrating connections between sexual violence and the context in which it is committed through the selection of crimes. Accurately contextualizing sexual violence to draw out these important connections can be a challenge for prosecutors because it forces them to confront misconceptions about these crimes. In particular, the failure to see rape and other similar acts as violent crimes and the assumption that sexual violence is an ‘incidental’ by-product of conflict makes one prone to missing connections between these crimes and their context. In addition, this chapter also summarizes the key insights of the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) for developing more advanced strategies to prosecute sexual violence as an international crime.
