The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict: Feminist Interventions in International Law

by Karen Engle

Overview

Contemporary feminist advocacy in human rights, international criminal law, and peace and security is gripped by the issue of sexual violence in conflict. But it hasn't always been this way. Analyzing feminist international legal and political work over the past three decades, Karen Engle argues that it was not inevitable that sexual violence in conflict would become such a prominent issue.

Engle reveals that as feminists from around the world began to pay an enormous amount of attention to sexual violence in conflict, they often did so at the cost of attention to other issues, including the anti-militarism of the women's peace movement; critiques of economic maldistribution, imperialism, and cultural essentialism by feminists from the global South; and the sex-positive positions of many feminists involved in debates about sex work and pornography. The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict offers a detailed examination of how these feminist commitments were not merely deprioritized, but undermined, by efforts to address the issue of sexual violence in conflict. Engle's analysis reinvigorates vital debates about feminist goals and priorities, and spurs readers to question much of today's common sense about the causes, effects, and proper responses to sexual violence in conflict.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503607941
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	04/07/2020
Series:	Stanford Studies in Human Rights
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Karen Engle is the Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law at the University of Texas at Austin, where she founded and co-directs the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. She is the author of The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development: Rights, Culture, Strategy (2010), which received the APSA Human Rights Section Best Book Award.

Table of Contents

Foreword xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

I The Common Sense: An Illustration 3

II Unpacking the Common-Sense Narrative 7

A The "Worst Crimes" 7

B Perpetrated by Male Monsters against "Innocent" (Female) Victims 10

C Criminal Law Will End Sexual Violence in Conflict 12

D Sexual Violence Prevents Peace 15

III Countering the Common Sense: A Preview 15

1 Sexual Violence in Conflict and Women's Human Rights: A Genealogy 18

I Mainstream Responses to Wartime Rape in the Former Yugoslavia 20

II Early Feminist Engagement with Human Rights 21

A Liberal Inclusion Approaches 23

B Structural-Bias Critiques 23

C Third World Feminist Critiques 26

III "Women's Rights Are Human Rights" at Vienna 28

A Culturally Sensitive Universalism 32

B Violence against Women 34

C Sexual Violence in Conflict 37

IV The Turn to Criminal Law 44

V Unintended Consequences: A Prelude 48

2 Calling in the Troops 50

I Military Humanitarian Intervention after the End of the Cold War 51

II Feminist Debates over the Meaning of Rape in the Yugoslavian Conflict 55

A Genocidal Rape versus Rape on All Sides 56

B Genocidal Rape and Ethnic Essentialism 62

C Shared Assumption: The Force of Shame 67

III The Military Stakes of Finding Rape: The Case of Libya 70

IV The Continuation of Crisis Governance 77

3 Calling in the judges: The Former Yugoslavia 80

I Feminist Engagement with the ICTY Statute and Rules 83

II The Mediation of Feminist Disagreements 86

III Solidifying the Common Sense: Jurisprudence on Rape and Sexual Violence 90

A The Worst Harm 90

B Sexual Agency and Ethnic Difference 94

IV Adding to the Common Sense: Male Victims 98

4 Calling in the Judges; Rwanda 101

1 The Doctrinal Function of Shame 104

A The ICTR Charges against Akayesu 105

B The ICTR's Reasoning in Akayesu 107

C Feminist Reasoning and Akayesu 110

D The Legacy of Akayesu in Subsequent Jurisprudence 112

II Shame as Prosecutorial Alibi 116

III The Redistribution of Shame 120

5 Calling in the Security Council for Women, Peace, and Security 122

I Overview: Human Security, the WPS Agenda, and Beyond 125

II Naming the Victims and Types of Violence 132

A Victims: Gender Specificity versus Gender Neutrality 132

B From "Gender-Based Violence" to "Conflict-Related Sexual Violence" 134

III The Shame of Sexual Violence in Conflict 136

IV The Carceral Turn: Calling in the Judges 140

v Counterterrorism: Calling in the Troops 147

Epilogue: Beyond Social Death 151

I Women at War 155

II Women and Sex at War 160

III The Force of Shame Revisited 162

IV The Context of War Foregrounded 168

V The Redistribution of Shame Reconsidered 170

VI Conclusion 171

Notes 173

Bibliography 233

Index 255

Editorial Reviews

"The Grip of Sexual Violence is required reading for understanding how some powerful feminist approaches to international criminal law have produced more problems than solutions. Engle's brilliant and nuanced critique asks us to urgently reconsider the colonial, racial, and cultural assumptions and erasures of such feminism and offers a different path for feminist legal internationalism."—Inderpal Grewal, Yale University

"Karen Engle provides a masterful critical account of the politics of 'common sense' that informs feminist interventions in international law. Her incisive analysis of how the discourse on sexual violence in conflict has come to be based on negative images of sex and sexuality and troubling assumptions about gender, war, and peace marks an invaluable and timely contribution to the field."—Ratna Kapur, Queen Mary University of London, School of Law

"Engle's brilliant book shows how concern with sexual violence displaced and undermined feminist movements for geopolitical peace and equality, risking a regulatory vision for female bodies instead of a 'sex positive' one. Engle reopens fateful choices and closes with an inspiring vision of a different feminism and a different international law."—Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World

"Karen Engle has long been a perceptive critic of the ways in which feminists call on international institutions to support feminist causes. Here, she offers a remarkable case study of how ideas and concepts travel and transform, making a powerful argument for a more nuanced account of gender, sex and conflict, which takes the complexity of human experience into account."—Hilary Charlesworth, Melbourne Law School and The Australian National University

"Engle critiques the pattern of focusing on wartime sexual violence in order to call for more violence through military intervention.[This] book is well researched, creative, and provocative. Recommended."—D. P. Forsythe, CHOICE

"Karen Engle is one of the most remarkable scholars of human rights movements today. Her work has long questioned what are generally perceived [as] some of the greatest successes of human rights and international law, not least in relation to indigenous rights, feminist advocacy and international criminal law....For its potential to inspire new activism and fresh research, The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict is doubtless a pivotal contribution to critical scholarship on human rights and feminism."—Mattia Pinto, London Review of International Law

"Engle's work is an inspiring and groundbreaking analysis that deserves further in-depth discussions... [The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict] is a provocative analysis of the most controversial issues related to feminism, gender, and war that have preoccupied feminist scholars and legal practitioners alike over the past three decades. Engle touches sensitive issues relating to the essence of the book's central argument, and provides convincing answers to many questions, while sometimes leaving the door ajar on issues that were, and still are, under discussion."—Hilmi M. Zawati, Journal of International Criminal Justice

From the Publisher

"Engle's brilliant book shows how concern with sexual violence displaced and undermined feminist movements for geopolitical peace and equality, risking a regulatory vision for female bodies instead of a 'sex positive' one. Engle reopens fateful choices and closes with an inspiring vision of a different feminism and a different international law."

author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World - Samuel Moyn

"Engle's work is an inspiring and groundbreaking analysis that deserves further in-depth discussions... [The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict] is a provocative analysis of the most controversial issues related to feminism, gender, and war that have preoccupied feminist scholars and legal practitioners alike over the past three decades. Engle touches sensitive issues relating to the essence of the book's central argument, and provides convincing answers to many questions, while sometimes leaving the door ajar on issues that were, and still are, under discussion."

Journal of International Criminal Justice - Hilmi M. Zawati

"The Grip of Sexual Violence is required reading for understanding how some powerful feminist approaches to international criminal law have produced more problems than solutions. Engle's brilliant and nuanced critique asks us to urgently reconsider the colonial, racial, and cultural assumptions and erasures of such feminism and offers a different path for feminist legal internationalism."

Yale University - Inderpal Grewal

"Karen Engle is one of the most remarkable scholars of human rights movements today. Her work has long questioned what are generally perceived [as] some of the greatest successes of human rights and international law, not least in relation to indigenous rights, feminist advocacy and international criminal law....For its potential to inspire new activism and fresh research, The Grip of Sexual Violence in Conflict is doubtless a pivotal contribution to critical scholarship on human rights and feminism."

London Review of International Law - Mattia Pinto

"Karen Engle provides a masterful critical account of the politics of 'common sense' that informs feminist interventions in international law. Her incisive analysis of how the discourse on sexual violence in conflict has come to be based on negative images of sex and sexuality and troubling assumptions about gender, war, and peace marks an invaluable and timely contribution to the field."

School of Law - Ratna Kapur

"Karen Engle has long been a perceptive critic of the ways in which feminists call on international institutions to support feminist causes. Here, she offers a remarkable case study of how ideas and concepts travel and transform, making a powerful argument for a more nuanced account of gender, sex and conflict, which takes the complexity of human experience into account."

Melbourne Law School and The Australian National University - Hilary Charlesworth