Article Review #2: Sexual Violence against Women in Armed Conflicts

Ali Marnon

Intro to Gender & Sexuality H

T/Th 12:30-1:45

Blog Topic: Sexual Violence Against Women

Article Review #2

Zinsstag, Estelle. "Sexual Violence against Women in Armed Conflicts: Standard Responses and New Ideas." Social Policy and Society 5.1 (2005): 137-48. Print.

            Estelle Zinsstag looks at sexual violence as it pertains to women caught up in armed conflicts in her article “Sexual Violence against Women in Armed Conflicts: Standard Responses and New Ideas”. Throughout her article, Zinsstag looks at the ways that criminal justice, truth and reconciliation commissions, and reparation schemes can help the victims of sexual violence during armed conflict. Zinnstag’s main point is to look at how the victims can gain justice for the crimes committed against them and seek support for themselves.

            The first aspect that Zinsstag has us look at is criminal justice. She states that “After a conflict, the successor state has a duty to reconstruct a justice system that is able to demonstrate a clear break with the past, by publicly condemning war criminality and the abuses perpetrated by the different factions of that conflict” (139). However, in order for this to work, three things have to be in place - accountability, impunity, and deterrence. The first she looks at is accountability. Zinnstag explains that the idea behind this is that those who commit these wrongs have to be held accountable for them. If you do something wrong you need to admit it, not only to yourself but to the victim and to society. The second concept that they look at is impunity. According to Zinsstag, impunity requires “appropriate action be taken so that perpetrators are prosecuted for their acts during the conflict” (139). To make sure that the criminal justice system works to help victims, people need to be properly persecuted. The last idea that Zinsstag looks at is deterrence. This piece explains how if someone is held accountable for their actions and others see that they will be punished, others will be unwilling to commit similar crimes for fear of similar retribution (139). All three aspects are important to make sure victims get justice for their suffering.

           Zinsstag also looks at what kind of criminal justice system we should set up. She suggests international tribunals that aren’t located in the area of the armed conflict.  “A reason for locating international tribunals far from the set of the conflicts is to safeguard the impartiality and objectivity of the procedure and to avoid pressures from the different protagonists of the conflicts” (140). Zinsstag also looks at what the problems are that would make the criminal justice system not work. The problems include that “sentences appear to remain quite scare and lenient” and “prosecutions and especially convictions are still rare for sexual violence” (140). It’s hard to sentence offenders since there is not a lot of evidence that sexual violence occurred and victims don’t want to relive the horrors of the violence.

The next thing that Zinsstag looks at to help victims of sexual abuse during armed conflicts is truth and reconciliation commissions. A truth commission is used to “expose the truth about the past in order for the whole society to understand what happened, seek to acknowledge the traumas of the past and attempt to deal with them” (141). Reconciliation committees are used to reconcile for victims suffering and damages that occurred after they were sexually violated. However, in order to reconcile for wrongs, you have to have a complete list of what happened, by who, and what kind of problems did these wrongs create (141). You need to know how the victims were wronged before you can reconcile for those wrongs. Zinsstag does point out that in order for truth and reconciliation commissions to work “the whole population needs to take part in one way or another” (141). The downsides to these commissions is that by having everyone rehash the violence committed against them, it can create even more tension amongst the victims and their attackers (141). Also, the process that truth commissions go through can “’have inherent limitations for psychosocial healing’” (142). It doesn’t always help a victim to heal just by restating what happened. It may just cause a victim to sink even farther into a sort of depression.

            The last piece that Zinsstag uses to support her argument is reparation schemes. These schemes can be found in two places, “within the truth reconciliation commissions’ results” or they can be found in “a court decision, after a criminal trial” (142). These schemes put the victims suffering out in the open to be “publicly acknowledged” (142). The only way to allow someone to repay for their crimes is to understand what the crime was. They are also used to show “the community wants to somehow redeem itself for the harm it has caused them or has failed to prevent” (142). Reparation schemes can be used to give the victims “financial help, the restitution of their land or the educational or health benefits” that they may need to help them get over their situation (142). Victims can also use these schemes “as an opportunity to rebuild their lives” (143). Since not all victims want monetary restitution for their suffering, reparation schemes have looked at different ways to repay their victims for the suffering they endured. The Inter-American Human Rights Court looked at “financing initiatives for the collective interest, for example schools, community centres or monuments” (143). Financing initiatives can be better since some victims would rather prefer “a public apology or proper social support” instead of money (142).

            Zinnstag believes that we need to set up better systems such as those she suggests so that victims of sexual violence during armed conflicts can get the justice and support that they need to deal with their ordeals. This article relates to my blog topic as it looks at ways to help the women victims of sexual assault during times of armed conflict. It also briefly talks about forms of sexual violence during armed conflicts. This article compares to my first article by talking about forms of sexual violence. However, my last article looked at different types of sexual violence as it pertains to college women while this article looks at sexual violence as it pertains to women sexually violated during armed conflicts. This article also looks at ways to help end the victims suffering and gain justice for the indecency done to them whereas my last article didn’t look at ways to help the victims; it just looked at perpetrators, forms of sexual violence, and the ways alcohol affects everything. This article presented me with a lot of new information to think about. I always thought that victims of armed conflict would come forward and take action to get justice against their attackers or at least that a lot of people knew that it had happened and would advocate for the victims. However, the article said that “few victims have been able to seek redress for the attacks they suffered, or support in order to survive and reconstruct their lives in the aftermath of conflict” (137).  I also never thought that women would be abused as a sort of ‘prisoner of war’. I always thought that it was just men who were used as a prisoner of war. I feel like this article didn’t really talk about whether any of these practices were proven to work and make the victims lives any better. I also wish that they had statements from victims saying what they would have rather had done in reparation for their suffering rather than just making broad statements about what they might want.