The Political Psychology of War Rape

This book provides a conceptual framework for understanding war rape and its
impact, through empirical examination of the case of Bosnia.
Providing a con�textual understanding of sexual viol�ence in war, and situating
Bosnian war rape in relation to subÂ�sequent conflicts, the book offers a methodo­
logical outline of how sexual viol�ence in war can be studied from a political-�
psychological per�spect�ive. It presents empirical findings from the field that show
what war rape can entail in the aftermath of armed conflict for vic�tims and their
communities.
Through its comprehensive approach to Bosnian ex�peri�ences, the volume
expands the conceptualization of vic�timhood and challenges the as�sump�tion that
sexual viol�ence is a par�ticu�larly difficult theme to study because of vic�tim
silence. Rather, the author dem�on�strates there are many voices that can provide
insight and understandings of war rape and its impact without having to compro­
mise the safety and privacy of indi�vidual vic�tims. Finally, the book shows the
ways in which indi�vidual ex�peri�ences of war rape are shaped by national and
inter�na�tional discourses on gender, sexuality and politics.
This book will be of interÂ�est to students of politÂ�ical psychology, war and con­
flict studies, Euro�pean pol�itics, ethnic conflict, pol�itics and IR in general.

Inger Skjelsbæk is Senior Researcher and Deputy Director at the Peace

Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway. She is the co-�editor of Gender, Peace
and Conflict.
Series: War, Politics and Experience
Series Editor: Christine Sylvester

Experiencing War
Edited by Christine Sylvester

The Political Psychology of War Rape

Studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina
Inger Skjelsbæk
The Political Psychology of
War Rape
Studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Inger Skjelsbæk
First published 2012
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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© 2012 Inger Skjelsbæk
The right of Inger Skjelsbæk to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-�in-Publication Data
Skjelsbæk, Inger
â•…The political psychology of war rape: studies from Bosnia and
Herzegovina/Inger Skjelsbæk.
p. cm. – (War, politics and experience)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Yugoslav War, 1991–1995–Atrocities–Bosnia and Hercegovina. 2.
Yugoslav War, 1991–1995–Women–Bosnia and Hercegovina. 3. Rape
as a weapon of war–Bosnia and Hercegovina. 4. Women–Abuse
of–Bosnia and Hercegovina. 5. Yugoslav War,
1991–1995–Psychological aspects. 6. Sex role–Bosnia and
Hercegovina. I. Title.
DR1313.7.A85S59 2012
949.703–dc23
2011015883

ISBN: 978-0-415-67117-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-69561-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
This research could not have been completed without the courage
and commitment of Bosnian women and men who want to make
their experiences, stories and perceptions heard. They are the ones
who have done – and continue to do – the hardest work. By
making their experiences heard they recount painful and traumatic
events for the purpose of generating new knowledge and insights
into a dark chapter in recent European history and war in general.
It is therefore with considerable discomfort that I have had to
conceal people’s names, organizational affiliations and identities:
they all deserve to be named and thanked in full. A common ‘thank
you’ to you all does not do justice to what you have done for me.
And yet that is all I can give, here. My work is dedicated to you.
Contents

List of figures and tables ix

Preface x
Acknowledgements xii
Abbreviations xv

╇ 1 Introduction 1

╇ 2 Designing a study of the aftermath of the war rapes in

Bosnia 11

╇ 3 Victim and survivor: narrated social identities of women

who experienced rape during the war 25

╇ 4 What do we know about war rapes before the 1990s? 47

╇ 5 The turning points in the 1990s which created a new

understanding of war rape 60

╇ 6 The first generation of systematic documentation of sexual

violence in war 1990–1998: naming the unnameable and
understanding the incomprehensible 77

╇ 7 Therapeutic work with victims of sexual violence in war

and post-war 91

╇ 8 Traditions and transitions: perceptions of ‘good

womanhood’ among 20 Bosnian focus group
participants 109
viii╇╇ Contents
╇ 9 Beyond Bosnia: international efforts to move from
accounting to accountability 126

10 The political psychology of war rape 140

Notes 144
References 151
Index 166
Figures and tables

Figures
2.1 Interviewees with different wartime sexual violence
experiences 21
6.1 Number of publications per year 79

Tables
2.1 Interviews with representatives of different organizations and
professions 15
2.2 Interviews with war-trauma sufferers 16
2.3 Focus group interviews 16
6.1 Literature profile 79
6.2 Gender of authors 79
6.3 Three conceptualizations of the relationship between sexual
violence and war 81
9.1 Overview of the United Nations Resolutions 126
Preface

On 30 July 1932, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Sigmund Freud. In this letter
he asked Freud to answer the folÂ�lowÂ�ing question: ‘Is there any way of delivering
mankind from the menace of war?’ Einstein had been encouraged by the League
of Nations and its International Institute of Intellectual Co-�operation in Paris to
initiate a pub�lic discussion amongst intellectuals on themes that were im�port�ant
to the League of Nations. Einstein wanted to understand why wars occur and
which meas�ures could be taken in order to prevent wars from breaking out.
Freud replied in Septem�ber the same year and argued the following:

Conflicts of inter�est between man and man are resolved, in prin�ciple, by the
recourse to viol�ence. It is the same in the animal kingdom, from which man
cannot claim exclusion; never�the�less, [.╛.╛.] the superi�or�ity of one strong man
can be overborne by an alliÂ�ance of many weakÂ�lings, [in] that l’union fait la
force. Brute force is overcome by union.
(Einstein and Freud 2003: 26)1

Freud believed that war was in essence unÂ�avoidÂ�able because of man’s propensity
to viol�ence, but that the pres�ence of a greater polit�ical power, as well as the need
for coopera�tion, could tame these inclinations (Lavik and Sveaas 2005; Einstein
and Freud 2003).
The corres�pond�ence between Einstein and Freud is rel�ev�ant to the topic of
this book on two levels. First, it shows that in the struggle to both understand
violent conflict and find peaceful solutions, psychological know�ledge is central.
It also shows that a psychological answer to the crucial question posed by Ein­
stein involves looking at indiÂ�viduals as well as structures. Second, the corres­
pond�ence unintentionally reveals how conceptions of peace and conflict mat�ters
are based on abÂ�stract notions of ‘man’. This ‘man’ is not a neutral entity, but
represents a polit�ically signi�fic�ant male. Women are not even mentioned in
Freud’s response – presumably because they do not have the same politÂ�ical sig­
nificance as men. This male biased approach puts Freud in the com�pany of many
influ�en�tial thinkers.
The work presented in this book has come into being by my wish to address
some of the issues lacking not just in Freud and Einstein’s corresÂ�pondÂ�ence, but
 Preface╇╇ xi
also in the modern discourse on war and peace. As a psychologist, I wonder
what has happened to the indi�vidual in peace and conflict research, and I long to
see schol�arly discussions and debates where the indi�vidual is placed centre stage
and where indiÂ�vidual voices and exÂ�periÂ�ences are viewed as politÂ�ically signiÂ�fic­
ant. As a peace and conflict scholar, I also want to move beyond the indi�vidual
ex�peri�ence and see discussion and debate on how polit�ical structures enter into
indi�vidual identity construction and self-�perception. As a woman, I think it is
high time to give voice to women’s perceptions and exÂ�periÂ�ences in war and
peace. And, hence, the theme of sexual viol�ence in war brings all these concerns
together. Rape in war cannot be studied or understood without investigating the
psychological pol�itics of gender.
This book thus presents both theor�et�ical and methodo�logical dilemmas and
concerns re�gard�ing the study of rape in war, while also attempting to bring these
theor�et�ical and methodo�logical issues to a par�ticu�lar war rape ex�peri�ence:
namely, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Today, sexual violÂ�ence in armed conflict is being theorized and conceptual­
ized more than ever before. As I argue in the book, the taboo seems to have been
lifted. There are more and more arenas for talking about, discussing and trying
to understand these par�ticu�lar forms of viol�ence. My hope is therefore that this
wealth of studies will beneÂ�fit those who deserve and need our supÂ�port: the coura­
geous survivors who dare to speak out on behalf of not only themselves, but also
those who keep silent.
Acknowledgements

‘Do you know what it is like to have sex with your husband when you don’t
want to?’ The woman looking at me across the table in a cigarette-Â�smoke filled
office in Sarajevo is trying to get a message across by framing her war exÂ�peri­
ences in a setting she as�sumes is recog�niz�able to me. I look at her, completely
taken aback by the question, wondering how to respond. Quickly, and before I
have time to formulate an answer she conÂ�tinues, ‘Being raped in war is like
having sex with your husband when you don’t want to – only you don’t know
the men who are doing it to you.’
The simile the Sarajevo woman used troubles me; is rape in war not all that
different from sex between spouses? Is the horror of war sim�ilar to the horror of
marriage (if marriage is indeed horrible)? Are women equally susceptible to rape
and sexual abuse in peace as well as war, and at home as well as on the street? In
her account of her war-Â�time rape exÂ�periÂ�ences, the Sarajevo woman draws paral­
lels between events that most of us would find much more comfortable to keep
separate: war and peace; lovemaking and viol�ence; husbands and perpetrators.
Does this mean that there is no dif�fer�ence between all these settings, and that
rape in war is in essence a reflection, or perhaps even a con�tinua�tion, of sex and
viol�ence in times of peace?
The Sarajevo woman does not resolve these puzzles for me, but she suggests
something very im�port�ant with her troublesome account: namely that the impact,
meaning and in�ter�pretation of rape in war will always be related to gender rela-
tions in times of peace. It is the basic understanding of what constitutes appropri­
ate, sound and healthy relationships between boys and girls, men and women,
husbands and wives which ultimately shapes the ways in which the stigma,
shame and guilt is felt by the vic�tims. By implication, this means that the
meaning of rape in war will vary greatly in different socio-�cultural settings. This
is imÂ�portÂ�ant to keep in mind when trying to understand sexual violÂ�ence in differ­
ent conflicts, on different continents, at different moments in time.

The research presented in this book has mater�ialized over the course of several
research pro�jects funded by various sources; the Culture and Society Section at
the Research Council of Norway (NRC), the Department of Psychology at the
 Acknowledgements╇╇ xiii
Norwegian University for Science and Technology (NTNU), the Norwegian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), the Fulbright Foundation and, most imÂ�port­
antly, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) where I have my daily work.
Many people have commented on and edited the numerous manuscripts
leading up to this book and some deserve special mentioning. Professor Hjørdis
Kaul at the Department of Psychology at NTNU has put me through skilful aca­
demic challenges, insisted on communicating through difficult theor�et�ical points
in order to create order out of chaos and inconsistency, and has compas�sion�ately
asserted that taking time off is as im�port�ant as putting time into long research
pro�jects. She has taught me how to think and live as an aca�demic whose focus is
on painful and traumatic events and for that I am most grateful. I also want to
express my thanks to: Professor Berit Schei at the Department of Community
Medicine at NTNU, Professor Barbara Voytek, dir�ector of the Institute of Slavic,
Eurasian and Eastern Euro�pean Studies (ISEEES) University of California at
Berkeley, and the PRIO administration and leadership for all their support.
Former and current PRIO dirÂ�ectors, Dan Smith, Stein Tønnesson and Kristian
Berg Harpviken, have all sup�ported me and have given me funding and space to
finish this book. PRIO’s librarians Odvar Leine and Olga Baeva have provided
excellent help in locating ob�scure books and pub�lications, and informing me
about new pub�lications that might be rel�ev�ant for my work. John Carville and
Lynn P. Nygaard have attempted to transform my language into compre�hens�ible
English. Halvor Berggrav, Kaja Borchgrevink, Ane Sydnes Egeland and Hilde
Wallacher have provided excellent research assistance. Finally, the gender
research team at PRIO, Helga Hernes, Torunn Tryggestad and Suk Chun have
been wonderful and inspiring conversation partners. Thank you all.
I also wish to express a warm thank you to Routledge and in par�ticu�lar
Andrew Humphreys and Christine Sylvester and the anonym�ous readers who
provided extremely use�ful input to the editing pro�cess of the book manuscript.
My parents, Kjell and Kari Skjelsbæk, taught me the value of empathetic and
systematic reasoning: two modes of thinking that have been in�valu�able in my
private and professional life, and in the research pro�jects presented in this book
in par�ticu�lar. Thank you.
Last, but not least, thanks to my inner circle: the three most im�port�ant men in
my life – John Erik and our sons Daniel and Markus. Thank you for your dis­
tractions and love and for being the wonderful people you are.

The author would like to thank the fol�low�ing for per�mis�sion to reprint her
work:
Sage Publications for per�mis�sion to reprint in Chapter 3, mater�ial from Inger
Skjelsbæk (2006) ‘Victim and Survivor: Narrated Social Identities of Women
Who Experienced Rape During the War in Bosnia-Â�Herzegovina’, Feminism and
Psychology, 16(4): 373–403 (http://fap.sagepub.com). Taylor and Francis Ltd
for perÂ�misÂ�sion to reprint as Chapter 7, materÂ�ial from Inger Skjelsbæk (2006)
‘Therapeutic Work with Victims of Sexual Violence in War and Postwar: A
xiv╇╇ Acknowledgements
Discourse Analysis of Bosnian Experiences’, Peace and Conflict: Journal of
Peace Psychology, 12(2): 93–118, and Routledge for perÂ�misÂ�sion to reprint
materÂ�ial in Chapter 8 from Inger Skjelsbæk (2009) ‘Traditions and Transitions:
Perceptions of “Good Womanhood” among Twenty Bosnian Focus Group Parti­
cipants’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 11(3): 392–411 (Taylor &
Francis Ltd, www.informaworld.com). Sage Publications, Inc. for per�mis�sion to
reprint in Chapter 6, extracts from Inger Skjelsbæk (2001) ‘Sexual Violence and
War: Mapping Out a Complex Relationship’, EuroÂ�pean Journal of International
Relations, 7(2): 211–237. All rights reserved. © Sage Publications 2001.
Endowment of the United States Institute of Peace for per�mis�sion to reprint in
Chapter 5, pages 118–121 on Kosovo and 127–130 on International Criminal
Prosecution, from Inger Skjelsbaek, ‘Sexual Violence in the Post-Â�Yugoslav
Wars’, in Kathleen Kuehnast, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Helga Heroes
(editors) Women and War: Power and Protection in the 21st Century (Washing­
ton, DC: Endowment of the United States Institute of Peace, 2011.
Inger Skjelsbæk
Abbreviations

CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination

Against Women
CEH Historical Clarification Commission (Comisión para el
Esclarecimiento Histórico) [in Guatemala]
CHT Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh
DAW (United Nations) Division for the Advancement of Women
DCAF Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces
DDR Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration
DPKO (United Nations) Department of Peacekeeping Operations
DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam
EUFOR Althea European Union Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina
EUPM European Union Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina
FBiH Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
FMLN Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (Frente
Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) [in El
Salvador]
FRELIMO The Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frente de Libertação
de Moçambique)
FRY Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
GFAP General Framework Agreement for Peace (‘The Dayton
Agreement’)
HRA Human Rights Advocates, Inc.
HRW Human Rights Watch
ICC International Criminal Court
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
ICTR International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
ICVA International Council of Voluntary Agencies
IDP Internally Displaced Person
IFOR (NATO) Implementation Force [in Bosnia and Herzegovina]
INSTRAW (United Nations) International Research and Training Institute
for the Advancement of Women
IPTF (United Nations) International Police Task Force
xvi╇╇ Abbreviations
IRBC Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
IWPR Institute for War and Peace Reporting
JNA Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija)
KLA/UCK Kosovo Liberation Army (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Kosovës)
MPLA People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Movimento
Popular de Libertação de Angola)
MSF Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières)
NGO Non-�Governmental Organization
NLF National Liberation Front of South Vietnam
OSAGI (United Nations) Office of the Special Adviser on Gender
Issues and Advancement of Women
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
OHR Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina
PLAF People’s Liberation Armed Forces [in Vietnam]
PTSD Post-�Traumatic Stress Disorder
RENAMO Mozambican National Resistance (Resistência Nacional
Moçambicana)
RPF Rwandan Patriotic Front
SFOR NATO Stabilization Force [in Bosnia and Herzegovina]
SFRY Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
SRV Socialist Republic of Vietnam
SSRC Social Science Research Council
STOP (United Nations) Special Trafficking Operation Program
UNAMIR United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda
UNFPA United Nations Population Fund
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women
UNITA National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (União
Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola)
UNMIBH United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina
UNMISET United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor
UNOTIL United Nations Office in Timor-�Leste
UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force [in Bosnia and Herzegovina]
UNSC(R) United Nations Security Council (Resolution)
UNTAET United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor
1 Introduction

My inter�est in sexual viol�ence in war grew out of a research pro�ject that looked
at how living in a highly masculine setting – namely war – shaped women’s
sense of identity. That par�ticu�lar pro�ject focused on how a group of women
de�scribed their war ex�peri�ences in Vietnam, El Salvador and Croatia. The one
common factor that lurked in the background of all their stories was the fear of
being raped or other�wise sexually abused. These women instinctively knew that
the war-�zone was a place where they were rendered vulner�able in par�ticu�lar
ways and where lawlessness ruled. Had they been raped, the perpetrators would
most likely remain at large, unpunished.
The research for that pro�ject was carried out in 1995. As I was finalizing my
findings and writing up my work, the Bosnian war was coming to an end. The
peace agreement negotiated in Dayton, Ohio, was signed by the warring par�ties
in Paris on 14 Decem�ber 1995. This war had been marked by numerous accounts
of rape and sexual viol�ence. I therefore became very curious about this par�ticu�lar
aspect of war and started looking for studies, books and theories which could
enlighten me on the subject. To my great surprise, or perhaps this was a reflec-
tion of my own naïveté, there was not much to be found. The words ‘rape’ and
‘sexual violÂ�ence’ were seldom seen in the subject index of war accounts or
theor�et�ical works on peace and conflict. You might find it used in metaphorical
ways as a means to deÂ�scribe parÂ�ticuÂ�larly horrific battles, such as the ‘rape of
Nanking’ in 1937 or the ‘rape of Berlin’ in 1945, but it was seldom noted that
these metaphors reflect a cruel reality.
I decided that I would like to study this war phenomenon in more detail and
applied for research funding, only to find that the funders were initially reluct�ant
to sup�port studies on this theme. They were concerned that it might be too trau-
matic to ask vic�tims and others affected by this par�ticu�lar form of viol�ence about
these war ex�peri�ences. While I believe the funders were genu�inely concerned
about the research subjects, choosing to not fund research this topic on the basis
of these ethical concerns had the detrimental effect of rendering these ex�peri�
ences in�vis�ible and insufficiently studied, once again. I therefore went to visit
some women’s NGOs in the former Yugoslavia to see whether they thought it
would be pos�sible to study the effects of sexual viol�ence during the Bosnian war,
and whether they thought that those who had worked with the sexual viol�ence
2╇╇ Introduction
vic�tims, or those who had ex�peri�enced sexual viol�ence themselves, would be
willing to talk about it. The response was clear: these women wanted to let
others know. I reapplied to the rel�ev�ant funding sources and presented the argu-
ments from the NGOs I had visited in the former Yugoslav region and managed
to convince various funders that studying sexual viol�ence in armed conflict,
including talking to the vic�tims of these forms of viol�ence, was not only pos�sible
but also feasible. In addition, this was a timely theme to study and extremely
im�port�ant to hear the accounts of those affected by these acts of viol�ence. The
result of these efforts is what constitutes this book.
With secure funding and a network of people I could contact, I was still faced
with numerous difÂ�ficultÂ�ies to resolve. In this book, therefore, I devote conÂ�sider­
able time discussing not only the them�atic issue of sexual viol�ence in armed con-
flict, but also the theor�et�ical, methodo�logical and polit�ical concerns which I have
had to grapple with and which might be rel�ev�ant to other studies on the issue of
sexual viol�ence in war.

Political psychology
The increasing focus on sexual viol�ence in war has resulted in an emerging psy-
chological trauma liter�at�ure, which has paid par�ticu�lar attention to the Bosnian
war rapes. These studies have focused on measuring and providing frequency
descriptions of various forms of trauma and post-�traumatic stress dis�order
(PTSD) among Bosnian women (Basoglu et al. 2005; Dahl et al. 1998;
Folnegovic-�Smalc 1994; Momartin et al. 2004; Kozaric-�Kovacic et al. 2004;
Popovic and Bravo-�Mehmedbasic 2000; Schnurr et al. 2004) and the use of
psycho�social help and therapy methods (Dahl and Schei 1996; Dybdahl 2001;
Agger et al. 1999;1 Arcel 1995, 1998; Kostantinovic-�Vilic 2000). What unites
these different psychological pub�lications is that they are all narrowly focused
on the indi�vidual and indi�vidual coping mech�an�isms. This psychological liter�at�
ure is aimed at an audience of therapists from the psychological and medical
field and is both im�port�ant and impressive.
In this book, how�ever, I aim to speak to a different kind of scholar, namely
researchers in the field of peace and conflict studies. The field of peace and con-
flict studies, although multidisciplinary in nature, is dominated by scholars from
polit�ical science; my aim is to draw from the field of psychology and bring an
understanding of indi�vidual ex�peri�ences in a sociopolit�ical setting, and thereby
make indi�vidual ex�peri�ences rel�ev�ant for polit�ical ana�lysis. This approach thus
places this book within the broader field of polit�ical psychology. What unites
various forms of research under the banner of polit�ical psychology is a topical
inter�est in the interrelationships between psychological and polit�ical processes.
Over the past decade, polit�ical psychology has gained increasing momentum
within both psychology and polit�ical science. A number of book pub�lications
since 2000 (e.g. Ascher and Hirschfelder-�Ascher 2005; Hermann 2004; Jost and
Sidanius 2004; Kuklinski 2002; Lavik and Sveaas 2005; McDermott 2004;
Monroe 2002; Roazen 2003; Sears et al. 2003) clearly testify to this, and the
 Introduction╇╇ 3
main journal in this field, Political Psychology, which was first published in
1980, has a wide audience in diverse aca�demic fields. The subtexts in many of
the above pub�lications represent attempts to consolidate and map out new
avenues for the field of polit�ical psychology. These attempts to set the status quo
for the field must be understood as the result of the increasing influence and
re�cog�ni�tion of the polit�ical nature of psychological pro�cesses, and, likewise, the
psychological nature of polit�ical pro�cesses. While there is much to be said about
the trans�forma�tion pro�cess within polit�ical psychology at large, I will limit my
focus in the fol�low�ing section to the sub-�field of polit�ical psychology that
addresses peace and conflict.
As opposed to mainstream polit�ical psychology, which has adhered to the
demands of positivistic methodo�logical ideals, it has not been pos�sible to study
the sub-�field of peace and conflict in the laboratory for ethical and prac�tical
reasons (Jost and Sidanius 2004: 12). Rather, the field of peace and conflict psy-
chology forces researchers to use more qualit�at�ive and innov�at�ive use of meth-
odology than most conventional textbooks in polit�ical psychology would
re�com�mend, and this sets peace and conflict psychology apart from mainstream
polit�ical psychology in distinct ways.
First, as was suggested above, peace and conflict psychology is characterized
by methodo�logical challenges. The infamous Milgram experiment on obedience
from 1965 that was triggered by the Nazi death camps during World War II pro-
vided valu�able data but has been deemed unethical. Other attempts at bringing
war, peace and terrorism to the laboratory have been made (Beer et al. 2004;
McDermott 2004), but these kinds of experiments do not represent the gen�eral
methodo�logical tend�ency. In one edited volume on polit�ical psychology (Jost
and Sidanius 2004), the entire section on conflict, violÂ�ence and politÂ�ical trans­
forma�tion is comprised of conceptual studies, and the same is true for the section
on inter�na�tional relations in Sears et al. (2003).
Second, peace and conflict psychology is characterized by a common focus
on them�atic issues. A closer look at the book pub�lications mentioned above, as
well as others, reveals that there are certain themes falling under the peace and
conflict heading that run through many pub�lications. The common denominator
within these pub�lications is the aim to understand, and conceptualize, the impact
that peace and conflict have on psychological pro�cesses at the indi�vidual, inter-
personal and societal levels, as well as vice versa.
Finally, Rosenberg (2002) argues that there is an urgent need within polit�ical
psychology to open the field to new epistemologies and approaches. This need is
based in part, she argues, on an inÂ�ternal reÂ�cogÂ�niÂ�tion that ‘most of what can be
done within these [positivistic] frameworks has indeed been accomplished’
(Rosenberg 2002: 329). There is a need to improve conceptualizations of the
psychological im�plica�tions of polit�ical vari�ations and change, and to find meth-
odologies that can map these pro�cesses, rather than as�sume static relations
between psychological and polit�ical phenomena. In addition, there is also a
greater challenge coming from without the field itself, namely the post-�
structuralist and post-�modern turn within the social sciences. Rosenberg argues
4╇╇ Introduction
in favour of an integ�rat�ive social/polit�ical psychology that is characterized by
intellectual plur�al�ism, with an eclectic approach to methodologies and subjects:

[I]n order to move beyond the lim�ita�tions of con�tempor�ary social and polit�
ical psychological approaches, a funda�mentally new theor�et�ical orientation
is required. Such an orientation must recog�nize that social life is dually
structured, by both thinking, feeling indi�viduals and by socially structured
discursively constituted groups and that both indi�viduals and groups are at
least quasi-�independent sources of meaning and value.
(Rosenberg 2002: 335)

In other words, polit�ical psychology appears to be at a crossroads in terms of its

them�atic and epistemological outlook. New themes and methodo�logical
approaches coupled within ‘new’ – that is, structuralist and post-Â�structuralist –
ontologies and epistemologies are welcomed. It is at this new juncture that this
book finds its place. In the polit�ical psychological liter�at�ure referred to above,
none of the studies focus on gender in the con�text of war, peace and conflict.
One im�port�ant con�tri�bu�tion of this book, therefore, is to bring gender issues, and
sexual viol�ence in par�ticu�lar, to the polit�ical psychological field of peace and
conflict issues.
The book aims to conÂ�tribÂ�ute to the field of politÂ�ical psychology in two imÂ�port­
ant ways: first, by examining the impact that different sociopolit�ical con�texts
(pre-�war, wartime and post-�war Bosnia) have on therapy methods and social
identity construction for vic�tims of sexual viol�ence; second, by bringing a social
constructionist per�spect�ive to a field of study that has predominantly been char-
acterized by positivist and post-�positivist research paradigms.

Putting gender centre stage

In addition to its polit�ical psychological angle, this book is also written from the
per�spect�ive that the use of rape and sexual viol�ence during a conflict, as well as
their impact in the aftermath of conflict, is framed by sociopolit�ical constructions
of gender. The overarching argument in the book is that we cannot fully under-
stand the im�plica�tions of rape and sexual viol�ence in war and its aftermath
without understanding how gender relations – that is, notions of femininity and
masculinity – are socially constructed in direct and symbolic social interÂ�actions
in various settings. The ana�lyses in the different chapters thus emerge from the
intersection between gender and the pol�itics of identity.

Gender and social constructionist psychology

In the search for know�ledge about human nature and inter�action, early psycho-
logical researchers did not sufficiently ac�know�ledge their own impact on their
research and research questions; nor were uniqueness and peculiarity con�sidered
to be valid sci�ent�ific findings, because the overall aim was to look for and
 Introduction╇╇ 5
identi�fy stable patterns of beha�vi�our. The ontological uni�versal�ism on which this
conceptualization of sci�ent�ific work was based produced essentialist theories
about human inter�action and indi�viduals that were at times benign, at other times
potentially demeaning, racist and sexist.
It seemed inev�it�able that social groups who were not part of the aca�demic
estab�lishment would react, as indeed they did. With the increase in female aca�
demics, people of colour and cit�izens not belonging to the upper classes graduat-
ing and taking seats at aca�demic estab�lishments, the legacy of the nat�ural
sci�ent�ific mode of inquiry became increasingly criticized during the 1970s and
1980s. The critique came from fem�in�ist studies, Marxist studies, and polit�ically
driven research movements which argued that social sci�ent�ific know�ledge served
to uphold certain polit�ical structures (e.g. capit�al�ism and pat�ri�archy), and that the
role of research was to generate know�ledge that con�trib�uted to generating
sociopolit�ical change.
This conceptual shift also had an impact in the field of psychology. While tra-
ditional psychology has tended to identi�fy psychological phenomena within the
indi�vidual, social constructionist thought locates the psychological within the
social (Hibberd 2005). Social constructionism, argues Hibberd,

emphas�izes the historicity, the context-�dependence and the socio-�

linguistically constituted character of all mater�ials involving human activity.
The psychological pro�cesses of human beings are .╛.╛. essentially social and
are acquired through the pub�lic practice of conversation.
(Hibberd 2005: viii)

The im�port�ant qualit�at�ive change that social constructionism represents is the

trans�ition from re�gard�ing the person as a perceiver to re�gard�ing the person as a
conceiver and constructor (Ashworth 2003: 15). The implication for psychologi-
cal research, according to Ashworth (2003: 22), is that ‘psychology should not
pretend to reveal pro�gressively true, uni�ver�sal human nature, but should make us
aware of the implicit asÂ�sumpÂ�tions (about ‘human nature’ and kinds of human
ex�peri�ences) that are avail�able to the members of a social group for the time
being’. The focus of anaÂ�lysis, in other words, is on the person as sense-Â�maker.
The research goal is to find ways of understanding psychological pro�cesses of
social life rather than psychological being in and of itself. While Hibberd focuses
her pre�senta�tion and discussion on social constructionism on the epistemological
level, this line of thinking can also be found in the conceptualization of psycho-
logical therapy (Hare-�Mustin 1997; Marecek 1997; McNamee and Gergen
1992). This line of thinking thus not only represents a shift in how psychological
theories de�velop, but also influences the ways in which psychologists carry out
their thera�peutic work.
The social constructionist mode of ana�lysis, and conceptualization of indi�
vidual identities, has had a major impact on the ways in which gender is under-
stood within psychological research. Historically, conceptualizations of gender
and gender dif�fer�ence have followed much the same turns as other de�velopments
6╇╇ Introduction
within the larger psychological field. The status quo is one of mul�tiple models of
fem�in�ist research, in which the conceptualizations of gender and research aims
vary. Haavind (2000) argues that gender dif�fer�ences are not innate but serve to
construct inter�actions between people within a power relation. The research aim,
therefore, is to investigate what forms of power are associated with masculinity
and femininity. Hare-�Mustin and Marecek (1990) conceptualized the workings
of these forms of social differ�enti�ation by examining the ways in which men and
women come to be seen as representing, and constituting, dif�fer�ence in language,
signs and symbols. More specifically, their pri�mary research inter�est was to look
at the ‘proÂ�cesses by which gender, like other catÂ�egorÂ�ies of social reality is con-
structed and given meaning through social interÂ�actions’ (Hare-Â�Mustin and
Marecek 1990: 6).
Social constructionist psychology locates its ana�lyt�ical understanding of
gender dif�fer�ences on transaction pro�cesses between the sex of the given person
(i.e. the biological consti�tu�tion of him or her) and the sociopolit�ical con�text in
which the indi�vidual is situated. Social constructionist approaches to gender
stretch from a rad�ical post-�structuralist approach that debates whether biological
dif�fer�ence has any significance at all (e.g. Butler 1990) and other approaches that
take the biological dif�fer�ences between men and women as their basis for under-
standing (e.g. Gilligan [1982] 1993). Social constructionist approaches discuss
the distinction between sex and gender, and look at how gender relations are
produced through actions, inactions and perceptions of what we do as men and
women, boys and girls. Male and female identities are negotiated in�ter�pretations
of what it means to be a man or a woman, which exist in perpetual and contested
power relationships. The methodo�logical approaches within this par�ticu�lar field
of study are qualit�at�ive, transactional, and based on dialogue with the research
subjects. The path to know�ledge goes through generating understanding of
ex�peri�ences, perceptions and actions.

Gender in peace and conflict studies

Since the mid-�1980s, the works of Boulding (1981), Elshtain ([1987] 1995),
Enloe (1983, 1990, 1993, 2000), Tickner (1992) and many others have been
instrumental in placing the role of gender on the agenda within peace and con-
flict studies. These, and other, early writings achieved three major things: they
voiced a sharp and forceful critique of the narrow focus within peace and con-
flict research; they did so in a way that could not be dismissed as mere polemic;
and, they estab�lished a challenging new agenda to be assessed and ex�plored. In
addition to – or perhaps because of – the theorÂ�etÂ�ical shift within the thinking,
writing and reporting of war during the 1990s, there has been more aware�ness of
gender issues than ever before. This increased attention led to a new wave of
empirical studies of women’s various exÂ�periÂ�ences during war (Bennett et al.
1995; Cockburn 1998; Giles et al. 2003; Manchanda 2001; Skjelsbæk and Smith
2001; Waller and Rycenga 2000; West 1997; Wilford and Miller 1998). These
studies focus on women as vic�tims, polit�ical agitators, soldiers, mothers and
 Introduction╇╇ 7
care-�givers, and have differing aims and polit�ical agendas. Some confirm and
uphold gendered stereoÂ�types by focusing on the differing forms of women’s vicÂ�
timization during war, while others challenge conventional understandings of
male and female relations. Whatever the theor�et�ical or polit�ical aim of the
various studies the increase in empirical aca�demic work has led to a growth in
qualitÂ�atÂ�ive (e.g. Bloom 2010; Olsson 2009; Sjoberg and Gentry 2007; Väyrynen
2004; Wood 2009) as well as quantitative studies (e.g. Cohen 2010; Leiby 2009,
Nordås and Cohen, 2011) focusing on women’s diverse exÂ�periÂ�ences in war. In
addition a new liter�at�ure on the role of masculinity in war has emerged where it
is the socialization of the man into becoming a soldier which is the core (e.g.
Braudy [2003] 2005; Higate 2006, 2007). Hutchings (2008) has examined the
ways in which this first generation of scholars have conceptualized how gender
intersects with war and peace and what this means for the role of masculinity in
relation to the so-�called new wars. Her main argument is that

[T]he link between masculinity and war made in [.╛.╛.] these liter�at�ures has
nothing to do with the substantive meaning of either masculinity or war, or
with a straight�forward causal or constitutive relation between the two;
rather, war is linked to masculinity because the formal, relational properties
of masculinity as a concept provide a framework through which war can be
rendered intel�li�gible and accept�able as a social practice and institution.
(Hutchings 2008: 389)

The question Hutchings (2008) debates in her art�icle is whether war provides an
arena for hege�monic masculinities to be played out in the inter�est of state power
where alÂ�ternÂ�ative masculinities and feminized ‘others’ are defined out. Or, could
it be that the so-Â�called new wars force us to focus on the ‘formal, relational prop-
erties of masculinity as a concept’ (Hutching 2008: 390)? In her preÂ�sentaÂ�tion of
Kaldor’s (1999) conceptualizations of new wars, Hutchings (2008: 399) argues
that Kaldor diaÂ�gnoses the ‘masculinity of the new warrior as pathological, some-
thing that takes a recog�niz�able form of human beha�vi�our to new and extreme
limits and that needs to be countered by respons�ible and auto�nom�ous action on
the part of the cosmoÂ�polÂ�itan law enforcer’. It is these patterns of warfare
de�scribed by Kaldor which are observed in, for instance, Bosnia, Kosovo,
Rwanda, the DRC and the Sudan. The nature of the wars has changed, the
display of hege�monic (and militarized masculinity) is seen as pathological, and
the response is not a privileged status but potential inter�na�tional criminal pro�
secu�tion. Which effects might this have for the use of sexual viol�ence in war?
What does this new para�digm of war mean for perpetrators of sexual viol�ence
crimes and for our conceptualization of gender, war and peace more broadly?
These questions will form the core of the research agenda for years to come.
This study of wartime sexual viol�ence and its aftermath in Bosnia, how�ever,
brings two im�port�ant aspects to the field of and peace and conflict studies. First,
as has been stated above, we cannot understand the polit�ical im�port�ance of
sexual viol�ence in an armed-�conflict situ�ation if we do not have an appreciation
8╇╇ Introduction
of the ways in which gender dif�fer�ences shape, and are shaped by, war. It is the
ways in which gender identities and relations become politicized that create the
basis for sexual viol�ence to be an effect�ive tool of war. Studying wartime sexual
viol�ence and its aftermath therefore highlights the necessity of integrating gender
dimensions in conceptualizations of armed conflicts. Second, studying wartime
sexual viol�ence also allows us to nuance the far too common misconception that
women are passive vic�tims in war. In much of the pop�ular understanding of war,
in journ�al�istic reports, within national and inter�na�tional nongov�ern�mental organ�
iza�tions, and in aca�demic writing (fem�in�ist writings included), women are over�
whelmÂ�ingly portrayed as belonging to the ‘women, chilÂ�dren and the elderly’
group who are vulner�able and in need of protection. While this situ�ation is a
clear reality for many women around the world, it is also clear that by placing
women in this group they become silenced and overlooked: they are polit�ically
signi�fic�ant only insofar as they need protection. This kind of reasoning has also
guided much of the reporting, understanding and writing on women’s suffering
from wartime rape. Sexual viol�ence in war represents one out of many ways in
which women are vic�timized, and one im�port�ant con�tri�bu�tion that this book
brings to the field of peace and conflict studies is a nuancing of conceptualiza-
tions of female vic�timization, at both the indi�vidual and societal level.

Overview of the book

The book aims to present a set of studies focused on the polit�ical psychology of
the Bosnian war rape ex�peri�ences and to con�textualize these studies in a larger
polit�ical and theor�et�ical con�text. Chapter 2 focuses on the methodo�logical chal-
lenges involved in studying the aftermath of the war rapes in Bosnia. It outlines
the research design and selection of inter�viewees, the inter�view methodology
and ana�lysis, use of in�ter�preters and ethical considerations.
Chapter 3 presents a nar�rat�ive ana�lysis of inter�views with five women who
were vic�tims of war rape during the Bosnian War. It is commonly believed that,
when utilized in ethnic conflicts, viol�ence is employed as a weapon of demorali-
zation against entire soci�eties. Such demoralization is characterized by a violent
invasion of the interior of the vicÂ�tim’s body, which thereby constitutes an attack
upon the intimate self and dignity of the indi�vidual human being. By giving a
voice to women who have ex�peri�enced such an ordeal and letting them position
their ex�peri�ences, we gain insight into the diverse impacts that war rapes have on
different vic�tims, their fam�il�ies and their relationships. The nar�rat�ive ana�lysis
makes it pos�sible to ana�lyse the war rape ex�peri�ences of these women as unique
and different from other war-�trauma ex�peri�ences, while simul�tan�eously recog-
nizing the totality in which the war rapes occurred.
Chapter 4 maps out what kind of docu�mentation of sexual viol�ence crimes in
war exist from World War II and up until the 1990s. This approach does not
suggest that sexual viol�ence in war did not exist prior to World War II, but it has
proven difficult to find docu�mentation from before 1940. The chapter shows that
the phenomenon of sexual viol�ence before the 1990s was perhaps not as hidden
 Introduction╇╇ 9
as one might have thought. Rather, it is the polit�ical ana�lysis of these events
which has been largely absent.
Chapter 5 presents the turning points in the new conceptualizations of sexual
viol�ence in war, i.e. the events that forced a more polit�ical approach linked to an
overall understanding of the gendered nature of armed conflicts. What the
chapter shows is that during the 1990s there was more attention and more docu�
mentation of sexual viol�ence in war and as a con�sequence the inter�na�tional
response, ranging from the ways in which peacekeeping opera�tions, as well as
inter�na�tional criminal pro�secu�tion was mandated, changed accordingly. Along-
side these de�velopments a new schol�arly liter�at�ure emerged in the 1990s which
provided new and sys�tematic ana�lyses of sexual viol�ence in war. How this liter�
at�ure conceptualized sexual viol�ence in different ways is the theme of the next
chapter.
Chapter 6 maps out how the 1990s schol�arly liter�at�ure on sexual viol�ence in
war argued that sexual viol�ence is a weapon directed against (a) all women, in
order to reaffirm militaristic masculinity; (b) targeted women, in order to attack
the ethnic/religious/polit�ical identity that the woman is seen to embody; and (c)
targeted men and women, in order to masculinize the perpetrators and feminize
the victim.
The fol�low�ing chapter, Chapter 7 presents a discourse ana�lysis of 23 inter�
views with local Bosnian health workers at two different psycho�social centres.
The main premise for the study is based on an ac�know�ledgement that many vic�
tims of war rape will choose to remain silent about their ordeals, and that studies
of this par�ticu�lar war phenomenon must therefore be based, in part, on other
local voices in the field. The main focus is on the ways in which the inter�viewed
health workers de�scribe their work with vic�tims of sexual viol�ence in war and
post-�war settings in Bosnia. Through their descriptions, we gain unique insight
into how the issue of war rape was addressed and dealt with at the local level.
Further, on a gen�eral level, the study shows that the impact of sexual viol�ence in
war varies according to con�text, an insight that has im�plica�tions not only for our
gen�eral understanding of the phenomenon, but also in the use of par�ticu�lar
therapy methods. These therapy methods must balance between the as�sump�tion
that there are uni�ver�sal effects of sexual viol�ence that cut across various con�texts
on the one hand, and cultural relativism, which as�sumes the opposite.
Chapter 8 examines the relationships between sociopolit�ical change and
social constructions of gender by examining the concept of ‘good womanhood’.
More specifically, the chapter examines how gender relations are constructed
within different sociopolit�ical con�texts, and how sociopolit�ical con�texts are con-
structed through nar�rat�ives of changing gender relations. The study is based on
an ana�lysis of focus-�group inter�views with six ethnically homogenous (Serb,
Croat and Bosniak), gender-�mixed focus groups whose parti�cip�ants were all
between the ages of 20 and 40. The focus-�group parti�cip�ants were asked to char-
acterize and discuss changes in gender relations, beha�vi�ours, roles and expecta-
tions in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the years of com�mun�ism, through the war
years, and up until the present time. Through its ana�lysis, the chapter provides
10╇╇ Introduction
new understandings of the gendered sociopolit�ical founda�tion for, and im�plica�
tions of, the war rapes committed during the Bosnian War.
Chapter 9 is an attempt to summar�ize the status quo and what the main
achievement and challenges are for the understanding of sexual viol�ence in war
since 2000 and the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325
on women, peace and security.
Chapter 10 summar�izes the findings of the study by arguing that war rape
must be understood as a violent relationship in which the perpetrator is masculi-
nized and the vic�tim feminized. In this pro�cess, other identities linked to the
masculinized perpetrators and the feminized vic�tims are sexualized in a hierar-
chical fashion, where power follows masculinization and powerlessness follows
feminization. This means that the use of rape in war not only represents a violent
hierarchical relationship between the male perpetrator and the female vic�tim, but
also situates other identities in the polit�ical power struggle in a sim�ilar way. The
chapter concludes with proposals for a way forward for aca�demic and pol�icy
related work in this field.
2 Designing a study of the
aftermath of the war rapes in
Bosnia

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a deeply divided sociÂ�ety where the future is unÂ�cer­
tain, the past is unresolved, and the current state of affairs is unsettling. The
General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP; hereafter Dayton Agreement),
negotiated in Dayton, Ohio and signed in Paris on 14 Decem�ber 1995, laid out
how Bosnia Herzegovina was to be rebuilt as a new state after the war, and how
different inter�na�tional organ�iza�tions and agencies were to play different parts in
the puzzle.
This peace agreement has resulted in a highly bur�eau�cratic state which has
two parallel sysÂ�tems of govÂ�ernÂ�ment, police and education, with federal institu­
tions over and above the two entity levels. The civilian com�pon�ents of the 11
Annexes to the Dayton Agreement were to be overseen by interÂ�naÂ�tional organ­
iza�tions within the United Nations sys�tem as well as others. In effect, Bosnia and
Herzegovina became an interÂ�naÂ�tional proÂ�tectorate where the state’s militÂ�ary was
monitored by the NATO-�led SFOR forces, the police was monitored by the UN
International Police Task Force (IPTF↜), and elections and demo�cratic institutions
were monitored by the Organization for Security and Coopera�tion in Europe
(OSCE) and the Office of the High Representative (OHR). In combination, these
different organ�iza�tions made the inter�na�tional inter�ven�tion in Bosnia the largest
opera�tion ever seen.
These different opera�tions have gone through changes of different kinds over
the years. The United Nations Mission in Bosnia Herzegovina (UNMIBH) ter­
minated its engagement at the end of 2002 and its former respons�ibil�ities were
taken over by the Euro�pean Union. The clearest example of this trans�ition is the
fact that the IPTF has been replaced by the EU Police Mission (EUPM), which
has a slightly different mandate than the IPTF (it will focus more specifically on
returning refu�gees and fighting or�gan�ized crime in the region). The trans�ition to
the Euro�pean Union has also been in the milit�ary sector and a trans�fer of
respons�ib�ility and personnel took place in Decem�ber 2004 under the name of the
Euro�pean Union Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR). The gen�eral aim
of these pro�cesses of trans�forma�tion is to make the respons�ib�ility for
de�velopment a distinctly Euro�pean issue and ensure that the de�velopment in the
coun�try can lead up to mem�ber�ship in the Euro�pean Union. In addition to the
many inter�na�tional bodies present in the coun�try, there has also been a blooming
12╇╇ Designing a study of the aftermath
non-Â�governmental sector. In 2000, the International Council of Voluntary Agen­
cies (ICVA) listed 182 interÂ�naÂ�tional non-Â�governmental organÂ�izaÂ�tions; in addi­
tion, there are 325 local non-�governmental organ�iza�tions that are also mostly
funded by foreign organ�iza�tions. Over the past years, how�ever, many of these
organ�iza�tions have found inter�na�tional funders to be much less inter�ested in the
situ�ation in Bosnia Herzegovina than in other areas of the world. Consequently,
many NGOs have been forced to cut their ac�tiv�ities and number of em�ployees,
and even shut down.
In the midst of all these de�velopments, efforts have been made to help the
vicÂ�tims of sexual violÂ�ence with a combination of interÂ�naÂ�tional supÂ�port, local ini­
tiatives and inter�na�tional as well as local legal pro�secu�tion. However, an
Amnesty International report from 2009 clearly states that despite many efforts
there is still a long way to go in terms of reaching a sense of justice for the vic­
tims of sexual violÂ�ence crimes during the war. What they are parÂ�ticuÂ�larly con­
cerned with is the lack of legal proÂ�gress when it comes to war crimes – including
sexual violÂ�ence crimes: ‘As a result of the administrative organÂ�izaÂ�tion of the
coun�try, war crimes pro�secu�tion can take place before 10 cantonal courts in
FBiH [Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina], five district courts in RS [Repub­
lika Srpska] and the Basic Court of the Brčko District’ (Amnesty International
2009: 18). This results in differing conceptualizations and pun�ishment of sexual
viol�ence crimes, as well as witness protection, within the same country.
Against this backdrop I intended to try to map out the aftermath of the war-�
rapes by talking to people who were affected in various ways by these crimes. In
other words, I entered into a highly complex foreign setting as an outsider
attempting to study a theme that is difficult to talk about, hidden and shame-�
ridden. Talking about silence appears to be a contra�dic�tion in terms; how�ever,
with different qualit�at�ive data-�gathering techniques and ana�lyt�ical approaches, I
found that it was pos�sible to come close to an understanding of the aftermath of
sexual viol�ence, and to give voice to ex�peri�ences that have not been subject to
extensive ana�lysis in the past. This chapter maps out the major challenges in the
process.

Research design
Qualitative research design, argues Janesick (2000: 379) is much like choreogra­
phy: a good choreographer captures the complexity of the dance/story by using
rigorous and tested pro�ced�ures, and in fact refuses to be limited to one approach
to choreography. The research design of this study has been a choreographical
challenge that rests on three pillars.
First, the social constructionist premise of this study, i.e. that ex�peri�ence is
conceived and constructed, rather than perceived, calls for multi-�sited, multi-�
topical or multi-�level approaches. This does not mean that all studies under the
social constructionist heading are neces�sar�ily all of these approaches at once, but
in this par�ticu�lar study I found it neces�sary to address the issue of war rape from
a multi-�topical and multi-�level approach. Because my aim was to understand the
 Designing a study of the aftermath╇╇ 13
indi�vidual war rape ex�peri�ence in a cultural and linguistic setting different from
my own, it was im�port�ant to create a research design through which I could
approach the indi�vidual ex�peri�ence in a step-�by-step (them�atically and level-�
wise) fashion. This step-�by-step approach to the indi�vidual ex�peri�ence mapped
out the con�text in which the war rape sufferer is positioned by others, and where
she situates herself.
Second, from an ethical per�spect�ive it was im�port�ant for me as a nov�ice to the
Bosnian sociopolit�ical con�text, and to the war rape trauma in par�ticu�lar, to find a
pragmatic way of educating myself on the theme at hand. Talking to war rape
sufferers about their war traumas without having an appreciation of the larger
post-Â�war conÂ�text in which they lived seemed disrespectful to a degree that bor­
dered on unethical. I needed to learn how to talk to women who have endured
severe trauma in ways that would not aggravate their suffering, while also
having enough contacts in the field so that I had a safety network that I could
turn to in case the informants needed help I could not provide. Therefore, talking
to and getting to know health workers, therapists, and workers in different
nongov�ern�mental organ�iza�tions (NGOs) who work with Bosnian women at large
and war rape sufferers in par�ticu�lar was crucial.
Finally, the need to be innov�at�ive and rely on different methodologies and
modes of ana�lysis is also a reflection of the fact that sexual viol�ence in war is a
theme that has not been the subject of extensive and sys�tematic research in the
past. There were, in other words, few author�itat�ive studies from which I could
adopt methodologies or in relation to which I could draw comparisons and
discuss approaches. In this new-�trodden territory, the study has had to grapple
with polit�ical, prac�tical and ethical challenges in many shapes and forms.

Contextualizing sexual violence in war

While the aim of the study has been to look at the aftermath of sexual viol�ence
in the Bosnian con�text, it was im�port�ant to see the Bosnian setting in comparison
to other conflicts. The first step in this regard was what is presented in Chapters
4, 5 and 6, where in�forma�tion and data from not only the Bosnian conflict but
also other conflict areas are presented. This exercise before going to field to
collect data was im�port�ant for three reasons.
First, through the gath�er�ing of these schol�arly texts, it became clear that the
Bosnian war rape phenomenon is by far the best docu�mented, most ana�lysed,
and most discussed episode among all the pub�lications on sexual viol�ence in
war. Through these efforts, I found sup�port for the claim that it was the Bosnian
War that lifted, at least to a certain extent, the taboo that had made it im�pos�sible
to study the phenomenon of wartime rape.
Second, by conÂ�textualizing sexual violÂ�ence in war it became clear that differ­
ent approaches to sexual viol�ence in war are pos�sible. As is shown in Chapter 6,
there was a distinction between the groups of vic�tims (all women in the war zone,
targeted women in the war zone, and targeted men and women in the war zone) to
which authors of the schol�arly pub�lications related their theor�et�ical arguments.
14╇╇ Designing a study of the aftermath
Finally, the cre�ation of the overview Chapters 4, 5 and 6 was part of an
im�port�ant sensitizing pro�cess for me. The art�icles, books and journ�al�istic
accounts presented numerous first-�hand accounts of war rapes, prim�arily by
women (but also some by men), all of which were shocking and gruesome in
different ways. In working with this par�ticu�lar theme, I saw a methodo�logical
need to be sufficiently affected and moved by these stories to be empathetic
towards the indi�vidual stories I would hear in the field inter�views, while also
being so familiar with the traumas that I would be able to ana�lyt�ically dissect
signi�fic�ant points when hearing indi�vidual accounts. In other words, I had to
strike a balance between my own emotions and my structural thinking, and this
was an im�port�ant part of the initial reading process.

Collecting empirical data

The greatest methodoÂ�logical challenge in this study was how to collect and ana­
lyse inter�view data from the Bosnian field. This was a challenge not only in
terms of recruitment (whom to inter�view, when and where, and by what means?),
but also in terms of research design (which informants would provide the richest
and most inform�at�ive insights?).1
Conducting interÂ�views in the field was imÂ�portÂ�ant in order to estabÂ�lish an under­
standing of the post-�war sociopolit�ical con�text in Bosnia. It should, how�ever, be
noted that the duration of these field trips was fairly short, and these field inter�
views should therefore not be thought of as constituting fieldwork in the classic
ethnographic sense of the term. Classical ethnographic research entails parti�cip�ant
observation to such an extent that it is ‘imÂ�posÂ�sible to disenÂ�tangle the method of
study from either the theory employed or the person employing it’ (Vidich and
Lyman 2000: 51). My aim, how�ever, was to adopt what Reason (2003) terms a
cooperative inquiry, in which the inter�viewees con�trib�ute in forming the research
pro�cess. The pro�cess of cooperative inquiry is laid out in the fol�low�ing way:

The methodology of cooperative inquiry draws on a fourfold extended epi­

stemo�logy: experiential knowing is through direct face-�to-face encounter
with a person .╛.╛. it is knowing through empathy and reson�ance, that kind of
in-Â�depth knowing which is almost imÂ�posÂ�sible to put into words; preÂ�senta­
tional knowing grows out of experiential knowing, and provides the first
form of expression through story .â•›.â•›. proÂ�posiÂ�tional knowing draws on con­
cepts and ideas; and prac�tical knowing consummates the other form of
knowing in action in the world.
(Reason 2003: 207)

While this study has not approached an understanding of the aftermath of the
Bosnian war rapes expli�citly in the manner suggested by Reason, it does share
some of the same goals, in that the aim was to produce know�ledge that is use�ful
to a group of people and to empower people through the pro�cess of constructing
and using their own know�ledge (Reason 2003: 207).
 Designing a study of the aftermath╇╇ 15
My spin on Reason’s outline was to deÂ�velop a research stratÂ�egy in coopera­
tion with central people and institutions in the field, and to let them inform me
about how they thought I should best approach an understanding of the after­
math of the war rape phenomenon on a societal and indi�vidual level. I came in
contact with local partners through indi�viduals and NGOs in Norway who were,
or had been, involved in psycho�social work in Bosnia during and imme�diately
after the war. These Norwegian contacts introduced me to local organ�iza�tions,
which in turn invited me to Bosnia and provided logistical help and further
contacts.
Basing my inter�views on five different field trips to different geographical
locations within Bosnia proved to be a viable method for de�veloping a research
strat�egy in coopera�tion with local partners. In the gaps between trips, I was able
to transcribe and evaluÂ�ate interÂ�views, which gave me ideas for conceptualiza­
tions, in�ter�pretations and early ana�lyses that could form the basis for questions
and discussions in sub�sequent trips. In this snowball fashion, the field trips took
shape.
The inter�views were carried out first with representatives from different local
organ�iza�tions and people of various professions, as shown in Table 2.1.
These inter�views were in�valu�able because they helped me understand the
local perception of the sociopolitÂ�ical dyÂ�namics of the war rape trauma vis-Â�à-vis
current – that is, post-Â�conflict – probÂ�lems related to violÂ�ence against women in
Bosnia. In addition, these inter�views provided me with a network of local experts
able to guide me to war-�trauma sufferers who they thought would be willing to
talk to me. It was crucial, the health workers argued, that I also talk to sufferers
of other kinds of war trauma, not just rape vic�tims, in order to see the totality of
the suffering that so many Bosnians had endured. On the basis of their reÂ�com­
mendations, then, in addition to war raped women, I also inter�viewed women
who had ex�peri�enced loss of family members in the most violent circumstances
and/or had themselves been concentration camp inmates (see Table 2.2).
The women who had ex�peri�enced dramatic family loss had lost their loved
ones in the Srebrenica mas�sacre in July 1995. At the time of the inter�views, these
women were living as in�ternally displaced persons (IDPs) in other regions of
Bosnia. I visited these women in their current homes, which were all houses that
had been deserted by their previous owners. In addition, I was an ob�ser�ver at two

Table 2.1╇ Interviews with representatives of different organizations and professions

Profession Female interviewees Male interviewees

Health worker* 23
NGO worker ╇ 2 1
Medical doctor ╇ 1
Academic professor ╇ 4

Note
* This term refers to people of different backgrounds and professions working at a psychosocial
centre. Chapter 7 is based on these 23 interviews.
16╇╇ Designing a study of the aftermath
Table 2.2╇ Interviews with war-trauma sufferers

War Trauma Female interviewees

Family loss 5
Torture in concentration camp 3
War rape 7*

Note
* This number reflects the number of interviews, not the number of interviewees. Two interviewees
were interviewed twice, meaning that the total number of interviewees was five. Chapter 3 is based
on these seven interviews.

therapy sessions at a col�lect�ive centre (a euphemism for a refu�gee settlement) for

IDPs. The concentration camp vic�tims had all been subject to severe torture, but
not rape, and had been detained for several months each. All 15 of these women
had received a limited amount of fin�an�cial and psycho�social help, but at the time
of the inter�views faced con�sider�able un�cer�tainties in their living con�ditions (fear
that the previous owners might reclaim the house/apartment) and their eco�nomic
situ�ation (irregu�lar fin�an�cial sup�port and fear of losing fin�an�cial aid al�to�gether),
along with severe phys�ical and psychological pain. These issues, in addition to
the war traumas, were central in the inter�views with these women.
The inter�views in all three inter�view cat�egor�ies lasted approximately one and
a half hours each, and they were all reÂ�corded and transcribed by me. The tran­
scriptions contain descriptions of the interÂ�view setting (the location, the atmo­
sphere, other people present, and more); transcriptions of the actual
conversations between me (the researcher) and the inter�viewee as conveyed by
the in�ter�preter; and parenthetical remarks on non-�linguistic features (such as the
in�ter�preter, the inter�viewee, or me crying, interruptions, and more). The result
was close to 800 pages of transcribed text that have served as the basis for the
anaÂ�lyses in the three empirical chapters (3, 7 and 8). In addition to these tran­
scribed inter�view texts, personal observations, informal conversations, field
notes, and observation of the phys�ical reality in which the inter�viewees found

Table 2.3╇ Focus group interviews

Focus groups Female participants Male participants

Sarajevo, 20–29 years 2 2

Sarajevo, 30–40 years
Mostar, 20–29 years
Mostar, 30–40 years
Banja Luka, 20–29 years
Banja Luka, 30–40 years
2 2
1* 1
1 1
2 2
2 2

Note
* The fact that there was only one man and one woman in each of the two focus groups in Mostar
was due to miscommunication between the organizers in Mostar and me. I had, however, no other
choice than to carry out the interviews with the people available, because I was only in Mostar for
one day. Chapter 8 is based on all the focus-group interviews.
 Designing a study of the aftermath╇╇ 17
themselves were im�port�ant factors in estab�lishing the con�text from which the
ana�lyses could emerge.
With the exception of the focus groups and two of the indi�vidual inter�views,
all interÂ�views were carried out with an inÂ�terÂ�preter and in English (the two inter­
views without the in�ter�preter were also in English). For prac�tical reasons, I was
unable to use the same in�ter�preter throughout the entire inter�view stage, but
instead had to rely on three different in�ter�preters. I made sure, how�ever, that the
in�ter�preters were all women and that they had previously worked with war raped
women or torture vic�tims. I used local contacts in order to identi�fy in�ter�preters
who would match these needs, and the in�ter�preters I worked with were all deeply
engaged and involved in the inter�view process.

Interview methodology and analysis

The main empirical data-Â�gathering methodology in the study was open inter­
views. Kvale (1996) argues that there are two main types of epistemologies in
inter�views and de�scribes them in terms of two different metaphors: that of a
miner versus that of a traveller. The miner ‘picÂ�tures a common understanding on
modern social science of know�ledge as given .╛.╛. while the traveller metaphor
refers to a post-�modern constructive understanding that involves a conversational
approach to social research’ (Kvale 1996: 5). This study has approached the
inter�views from the vantage point of the traveller.
All inter�views were carried out using an inter�view guide. The guide helped
me structure the conversations and ensure that inter�viewees would relate their
talk to the war rape phenomenon at rel�ev�ant points during the conversation. As
discussed at length in the three empirical chapters (3, 7 and 8), maintaining a
war rape focus proved a demanding task in many of the inter�views, for various
reasons. In these ana�lyses, therefore, it has been equally im�port�ant to reflect on
how and why the war rape phenomenon has not been an expli�cit theme in some
of the inter�views, and how and why it has been talked about expli�citly in others.
Mapping silence, as well as talk, turned out to be the major methodo�logical and
ethical challenge in the inter�view situ�ations, as well as in the ana�lyses that
followed.

Ethical considerations
The ethical demands to which a researcher needs to adhere in an inter�view
setting are well spelled out in the methodo�logical liter�at�ure. In order to do
research on and in coopera�tion with human beings, researchers must avoid harm,
obtain informed consent, and maintain the right to privacy (Fontana and Frey
2000: 662). For the inter�view methodology, in par�ticu�lar, Kvale (1996) argues
that ethical issues must be conÂ�sidered and evaluÂ�ated at every step of the inter­
view pro�cess.2
In the interÂ�view proÂ�cess, I attempted to adhere to the ethical standÂ�ards out­
lined by Kvale in the fol�low�ing way. The choice of research theme is in itself an
18╇╇ Designing a study of the aftermath
ethical one in that the goal – beyond mere knowÂ�ledge production – has been to
generate awareÂ�ness about war rape in the hope that its sufferers will be more vis­
ible to rel�ev�ant institutions and agencies that can provide help and sup�port during
and after violent conflict. Further, all inter�views were based on volunteer parti�
cipaÂ�tion and informed consent. All interÂ�viewees were provided with an inÂ�forma­
tion letter before the inter�views took place, which briefly de�scribed the study, its
aims, and how the inter�view mater�ial would be treated. This letter was made
avail�able in both English and Bosnian. It was also made clear to the inter�viewees
that their identities and institutional af�fili�ations would be concealed in the ana�
lyses. This was a premise for the talks for some, though a source of disappoint­
ment to others.
The ethical con�sidera�tion in the actual inter�view situ�ation varied according to
the type of interÂ�view that was being carried out. In the interÂ�views with represent­
atives from different organ�iza�tions and professions, the ethical con�sidera�tions
were fairly straight�forward. These inter�viewees were inter�viewed at their work
premises, and the questions revolved around their daily professional tasks. For
the group of war-�trauma sufferers, how�ever, the pic�ture was very different.
These were inter�viewed about severely traumatic events in their lives, and the
mere talking about these events could trigger re-Â�traumatization. In all these inter­
views, it was therefore crucial for me to have a network of professionals that I
could contact should the need arise. Those inter�viewees who had ex�peri�enced
family loss were all interÂ�viewed in their homes. It was their therapists who con­
tacted them and asked them if they wanted to talk to me. While most of these
inter�views were carried out with only the inter�viewee, the in�ter�preter and myself
present, it was not always pos�sible to arrange for the inter�view to be completely
private. Sometimes a child would come running in, and at other times other
family members might pass by. This meant that some questions could prove
more difficult to ask and were therefore omitted in order to spare the inter�viewee
additional discomfort. The inter�views with the war raped women and the women
who had ex�peri�enced torture in concentration camps were all carried out in the
neutral confines of local organ�iza�tions. This meant that inter�viewees could talk
about their ex�peri�ences without fear of being overheard by other family
members, and, again, there was a network of assistance avail�able outside the
door in case of need. In addition, they were all told that they could stop the inter­
view at any time and were free to refuse to answer difficult questions. No one
made use of this pos�sib�il�ity. In the focus group inter�views presented in Chapter
8, the ethical limÂ�itaÂ�tions were first and foremost based on how personal the ques­
tions could be. Asking questions about changing gender relations also involves
questions about changing sexual relations. The main concern in the focus groups
was therefore to balance questions in a way that did not lead to disclosure of
in�forma�tion that the inter�viewee might con�sider too personal.
In addition to these concerns, I also had to con�sider the ethical im�plica�tions of
using an in�ter�preter, espe�cially in the inter�views with the war-�trauma sufferers.
 Designing a study of the aftermath╇╇ 19
Interpreting interpreters
The use of in�ter�preters in inter�views is a methodo�logical, ana�lyt�ical and ethical
challenge. Before discussing the ethical im�plica�tions, I will briefly discuss the
methodo�logical and ana�lyt�ical con�sidera�tions entailed by the pres�ence of an
interpreter.
Standard textbook approaches to inter�viewing tend to ignore the pos�sible use
of in�ter�preters in inter�views. In the avail�able liter�at�ure on the use of in�ter�preters,
most of which focuses on ethnographic field work, they are seen as a prob�lem
rather than a resource, and inÂ�terÂ�preters are often ignored or renamed ‘field assist­
ants’ or ‘research assistants’ so that the need for further anaÂ�lytÂ�ical conÂ�sideraÂ�tion
might be avoided (Berreman 1962; Borchgrevink 2003). In the field of psycho­
logical qualitÂ�atÂ�ive interÂ�viewing, discussion of the use of inÂ�terÂ�preters is conspicu­
ously ab�sent, perhaps because psychological inter�viewing has not tradi�tion�ally
been done in foreign-�language settings, nor have ethnographic data been
regarded as par�ticu�larly rel�ev�ant to psychological theory de�velopment. The
social constructionist turn within social and politÂ�ical psychology makes ques­
tions of language com�pet�ency, translation and social inter�action more acute,
because here research data are gen�er�ated through a cooperative inquiry between
researcher and inter�viewee. Ultimately, the main question for this study related
to how the transcribed ana�lyt�ical text is to be ana�lysed when it contains at least
three different voices.
While it is clear that I did not have direct access to the interÂ�viewees’ speech
during the inter�views, I was able to com�munic�ate with most of them both prior
to and after the actual inter�views without needing to rely on an in�ter�preter. The
majority of the inter�viewees had a modest command of English, German or
French – languages that I also speak – but opted for conducting the actual inter­
view in Bosnian with an inÂ�terÂ�preter. The small talk before and after the inter­
views was im�port�ant, how�ever, because it created a sense of rapport between me
and the inter�viewees. In addition, those who had a fairly good command of
English were able to evalu�ate, and at times correct, translations made by the
in�ter�preter during the actual inter�view. At times an inter�viewee would stop the
in�ter�preter and ask her to nuance the translation to better fit what the inter�viewee
meant. For many of the inter�viewees, this meant that they had some control over
the inÂ�terÂ�preter’s translations.
Can one design and create an interÂ�view situÂ�ation with an inÂ�terÂ�preter that safe­
guards the confidentiality of inter�viewees and creates an inter�view inter�action
that does not have negat�ive con�sequences for the inter�viewee or the in�ter�preter?
It was clear to me that it would be im�port�ant to recruit in�ter�preters who were,
first and foremost, actively interÂ�ested in the theme of study. Because of the sen­
sitive nature of the research theme, it was imperative that the in�ter�preters be
female. The inter�view setting, therefore, became a small com�mun�ity of women
(me, the inÂ�terÂ�preter and the interÂ�viewee). Before working with each of the inÂ�ter­
preters, I had a meeting to discuss the research I was doing and how I would like
them to behave and translate during the inter�view. I was also keen to hear about
20╇╇ Designing a study of the aftermath
their own inter�est in the research theme and to learn about how they had been
involved with war raped women in their current or previous work. Because I
regarded the inter�view as a cooperative inquiry, and because the in�ter�preters
were par�ticu�larly inter�ested in the research theme, I encouraged them to give
feedback on non-�verbal aspects of the inter�view. This feedback consisted of
observations on the actual inter�view (such as whether the inter�viewee talked
freely, whether she seemed nerv�ous, specific use of core terms, and more) and
the inÂ�terÂ�preter’s own evaluÂ�ation of her translation (Had she managed to translate
as well as she could? Were there things that made it difficult to break into the
stream of talk and translate? Were there questions that I asked that had to be
reformulated?). This feedback was reÂ�corded and made part of the textual com­
mentaries to the actual transcribed interÂ�view texts. In addition, after all the inter­
view sessions, the in�ter�preter and I would go out for dinner and debrief and talk
about the day. The in�ter�preters therefore served not only as in�valu�able linguistic
translators, but also as cultural ones.
The actual translations were in the form of summaries rather than simultane­
ous word-�by-word translations. This mode of in�ter�pretation inev�it�ably leads to
much in�forma�tion being lost and made in�access�ible to the researcher. While this
was less of a prob�lem in the inter�views with those who had command of English
and who could verify the major points being translated, it was more of a prob�lem
in the cases where the interÂ�viewees had no command of a common foreign lan­
guage. This was the case for all of the inter�views with war raped women. This
issue had to be weighed against the ethical con�sidera�tions guiding the them�atic
choice in the study, namely, giving a voice to war raped women; the methodo­
logical dis�advant�age the use in�ter�preters might create had to be seen in relation
to the wish to make the war raped women’s voices heard.
My dilemma was as follows: Would it be unethical to ask women who had
gone through tre�mend�ous pain to recount their ex�peri�ences not only to me but
also to an inÂ�terÂ�preter, or would it be unethical to refrain from doing so? My sub­
sequent reasoning was based on an acÂ�knowÂ�ledgement that by not using inÂ�ter­
preters in a foreign-�language inter�view setting, research would by default be
limited to cultural and linguistic areas that are familiar to the researcher. While I
do not mean to suggest that in-�depth know�ledge of a given sociocultural setting is
in any way negatÂ�ive – on the contrary – there is, howÂ�ever, a danger in the ways in
which discourse ana�lyses are presented in textbooks that we will end up with
research strongly limited to certain cultural settings, most often in English-�
speaking areas. However, as social science researchers, we must ask whether the
limits of our ethical research training only stretch as far as our methodo�logical
toolbox, or whether they should be extended to include the questions we ask, in
the settings that we ask them. It seems clear that, through the use of an in�ter�preter,
the perceptions and viewpoints of the war rape sufferers could be put into words
for a linguistic com�mun�ity larger than that of Bosnia. This goal outweighed the
methodo�logical challenges that using an in�ter�preter posed. The challenge was
then to position these interÂ�views in a methodoÂ�logical and epistemological frame­
work that would be as true to the speech of the inter�viewees as possible.
 Designing a study of the aftermath╇╇ 21
Mode of analysis
In a qualit�at�ive inter�view study such as this, the pro�cesses of data-�gathering and
ana�lysis are intertwined to such a point that they appear indistinguishable. It is clear,
how�ever, that any given qualit�at�ive research pro�ject will move from being more
data-�gathering to being more data ana�lysis over the duration of the pro�ject, but it is
hard to determine the parÂ�ticuÂ�lar point at which the data-Â�gathering stops and the ana­
lysis takes over. This section, how�ever, will attempt to clarify both the choices and
the ana�lyt�ical im�plica�tions of the choices and pro�cesses involved in the empirical
inter�view data ana�lysis on which the three empirical chapters (3, 7 and 8) are based.
The selection of inter�viewees is crucial in any given inter�view study, and in
this study it was im�port�ant to create an understanding of sociopolit�ical con�text in
order to understand the ex�peri�ences of the indi�vidual war raped women. The
selection of interÂ�viewees was therefore based on the asÂ�sumpÂ�tion that the inter­
viewees would have different relations to the war rape phenomenon, as schema­
tized in Figure 2.1.
These different modes of interÂ�views and groups of interÂ�viewees required dif­
ferent modes of ana�lyses. One should, therefore, con�sider the three different
groups of inter�views as three different sub-�studies of the major theme at hand:
the aftermath of the war rapes.
There are several ways of recording and managing qualit�at�ive data, ranging
from the descriptive to the explanÂ�atÂ�ory (Miles and Huberman 1994: 245–246).
These techniques include noting patterns, seeing plausibility, clustering, making
metaphors, counting, making contrasts/comparisons, subsuming par�ticu�lars
under the gen�eral, factoring, noting relations between vari�ables, and finding
intervening vari�ables. The points below de�scribe how I made use of these
various techniques aiming to lead to conceptual and theor�et�ical coher�ence (Miles
and Huberman 1994).

Symbolic experience Indirect experience

Focus group Dyadic interviews

interviews with men with female health
and women workers

Direct experience

Dyadic interviews
with female war-rape
sufferers

Figure 2.1╇ Interviewees with different wartime sexual violence experiences.

22╇╇ Designing a study of the aftermath
(a) Interviews with people with indirect experience of war rape
These were the first step in the fieldwork inter�view pro�cess. The de�cision to start
with this par�ticu�lar group of informants was based on two factors. First, on a
pragmatic level, through connections in the field I was introduced to psycho�social
centre A in central Bosnia and invited to stay at the centre for two weeks to get
acquainted with its work and inter�view its em�ployees. Through other contacts in
Norway I was able to repeat this mode of working (except that I could not actu­
ally reside at psychoÂ�social centre B) at a different psychoÂ�social centre in a differ­
ent part of Bosnia. These inter�views had two pragmatic bene�fits: contacts with
local health workers led to direct contacts with war rape sufferers who could be
interÂ�viewed at a later stage; also, interÂ�views with these local health workers pro­
vided an imÂ�portÂ�ant way for me to educate myself on how to conduct other inter­
views with war rape sufferers – that is, women with direct war rape exÂ�periÂ�ence.
What would happen if I were to cry during an inter�view? How would that make a
war rape sufferer feel? Were there ways of asking questions about war rape in a
sensitive and conducive way that the health workers could re�com�mend?3
Second, on a theor�et�ical level, the inter�views with the local health workers
enabled me to ask very concrete questions about their daily work, and through this
to create a pic�ture of how the war raped women were situated in the local Bosnian
con�text. The way in which the local health workers managed their work both with
war raped women and with female vic�tims of viol�ence (both war- and non-�war-
related) in the post-�war era painted a telling pic�ture of how war raped women and
violÂ�ence against women were positioned in the local Bosnian conÂ�text. In Kvale’s
terminology, the aim of this sub-�study was to ask what characterized the health
workers’ work with sufferers of war violÂ�ence versus post-Â�war violÂ�ence, and why
did they see the need to have different approaches to these different groups of suf­
ferers of viol�ence? My ana�lysis of their discussions was based on how they
answered these questions from their subject positions as li�aisons between their
clients and the Bosnian com�mun�ity at large. The theor�et�ical aim of these inter�views
was to find out (1) which in�ter�pretive repertoires were applied by the health workers
when they de�scribed their work with vic�tims of war rape, and (2) which in�ter�pretive
repertoires were applied when the health workers deÂ�scribed their work with suffer­
ers of war rape vis-Â�à-vis their work with vicÂ�tims of post-Â�war rape. The anaÂ�lysis
shows that the social status, therapy methods and modes of talking about war rape
sufferers differ from those related to the post-�war rape sufferers. The ways in which
war rape and post-�war rape sufferers are seen as different is outlined in Chapter 7.
The gen�eral conclusion one can draw, how�ever, is that the different con�texts (war
versus post-�war) create different thera�peutic approaches to the traumas involved
and different modes of understanding the needs of the rape sufferer.

(b) Interviews with people with direct experience of war rape

On the basis of my interÂ�views with the health workers and through their net­
works and contacts, I was able to estab�lish contact with five women who had
 Designing a study of the aftermath╇╇ 23
been subjected to mass rape during the war. These women were members of an
organ�iza�tion, and inter�views with these women were all carried out at the
offices of that organ�iza�tion. I inter�viewed two of the women twice, and the
remaining three women were inter�viewed only once. The fact that two of the
women were inter�viewed twice occurred because of a miscommunication with
the local facilitators, but this proved to be a blessing in disguise because it
allowed me to go deeper into some of the talking points from the first inter�
views, as well as to compare the two transcribed inter�views and clarify certain
points. It is hard to find the right words to de�scribe these inter�views. The inter�
viewees were nerv�ous, my in�ter�preters were uncomfortable, and I was afraid
that I was occasioning more pain to people (including my in�ter�preters) who had
already ex�peri�enced so much suffering before. Therefore, the way in which the
inter�views were carried out became as much a part of the ana�lysis (theor�et�ically
and ethically) as the actual words spoken. The greatest challenge was to come
to a point of disclosure of the war rape ex�peri�ence so that I could ask questions
about how this exÂ�periÂ�ence had affected the interÂ�viewees’ societal, interpersonal
and intrapersonal lives.
The study asked what the war rape sufferers would choose to tell about their
war rape ex�peri�ences, and why they would tell the story in the ways they did.
Ultimately, the aim was to investigate how indiÂ�viduals narrated their social iden­
tities as war rape sufferers in the post-�war setting. In this study, it was im�port�ant
to ana�lyse how arguments, ideas and perceptions were linked to the war rape
event. But, as discussed in Chapter 3, the rapes took place in the midst of many
other severely traumatizing events that the inter�viewees also wanted to talk
about. My research challenge was therefore to find a way to map out the rape
story within all the other war-�trauma stories. Approaching this challenge from a
vantage point of nar�rat�ive ana�lysis proved fruitful. By looking at their stories
from a plot perÂ�spectÂ�ive – that is, asking how X led up to, explained or rational­
ized the war rapes, or how X is a con�sequence of the war rapes, and presenting
this in a ‘beginning, middle and end’ format – it became posÂ�sible to link argu­
ment, ideas and perceptions to the war rape event. The major conclusion that
emerged through these nar�rat�ive efforts was that since war rape attacks both the
ethnic and the gendered identity of its vic�tims, this creates an oppor�tun�ity for the
construction of a dual social identity in the aftermath.

(c) Interviews with people who had symbolic experience with war
rape
The term ‘symbolic’ rape exÂ�periÂ�ence may not be as self-Â�explanatory as the two
previous interÂ�view catÂ�egorÂ�ies. In the writings on the Bosnian war rape phenome­
non, there is over�whelm�ing evid�ence that the majority of the war rape vic�tims
were female Bosniaks4 and the perpetrators male Serbs. While the ethnic Serb
male perpetrator–Bosniak female vicÂ�tim relationship has been the most docu­
mented, it is also clear that other ethnic male perpetrator–female vicÂ�tim relation­
ships exist, and that no ethnic groups were exempt from repres�enta�tion among
24╇╇ Designing a study of the aftermath
the male perpetrators and female vic�tims. The mo�tiva�tion for the focus-�group
interÂ�views, therefore, was to investigate the extent to which the ethnically con­
structed perpetrator–vicÂ�tim relationship would enter into the focus groups’ dis­
cussions on changes in gender relations in Bosnia. I was inter�ested in finding out
whether the war rapes could be said to have had any symbolic impact on gender
relations in the aftermath of the war – and, if so, how?
In order approach an answer to the above questions, I carried out six focus-�
group inter�views in three different places in Bosnia: Sarajevo, Mostar (both in
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Banja Luka (Republika Srpska).
The focus groups consisted of men and women between the ages of 20 and 40.
In fact, talking about the war rape issue in the focus-�group setting turned out to
be difficult, but gen�eral conversations about changing gender relations was not.
While the focus-�group inter�views proved to be an in�valu�able inter�view format
for discussing gender relations, they also served as a great way of mapping out
local sociopolitÂ�ical perceptions on voiced and silenced constructions of feminin­
ity and masculinity. These themes are discussed in Chapter 8.

Summary
The aim of the ana�lyses in the coming chapters is to create an understanding of a
given phenomenon: the aftermath of the Bosnian war rapes based on local
Bosnian voices con�textualized in a global setting. In this attempt, different
groups of people have been inter�viewed, and different inter�view techniques and
modes of ana�lyses have been employed. The premise for this research design
was that in order to understand the indi�vidual ex�peri�ence of a given person who
had suffered wartime rape, it is vital to understand the societal con�text in which
that person lives. My way of getting to this understanding, therefore, was to find
ways of encircling the indi�vidual ex�peri�ences. I needed to talk to people with
direct ex�peri�ence of war rape, people with indirect ex�peri�ence of war rape, and,
finally, people with symbolic exÂ�periÂ�ence of war rape. This meant that the inter­
viewees were talking from different subject positions within the post-�war
Bosnian sociopolit�ical context.
The claim to know�ledge is based on the cre�ation of mul�tiple descriptions (or
‘interrelated proÂ�posiÂ�tions’; see Mosciovici 1989: 416–428) emerging from
people situated in mul�tiple subject positions. Descriptions are seen as a set of
interconnected concepts, or discourses. For this reason I have quoted the inter­
viewee’s perceptions, disÂ�agreeÂ�ment and arguments in the anaÂ�lytÂ�ical text to make
the basis for the anaÂ�lysis visÂ�ible and transparent. The guiding social construc­
tionist as�sump�tion in this study is that in order to understand the social identity
impact of a war rape ex�peri�ence, one must look at the ex�peri�ence from the
vantage point of those who have endured these crimes while simul�tan�eously
taking into account the sociopolit�ical con�text in which they find themselves. By
listening to the voices of war rape sufferers, local health workers and focus-�
group interÂ�viewees, I hope to deÂ�velop an understanding of the mutual depend­
ency between the social and indi�vidual levels of war rape suffering.
3 Victim and survivor1
Narrated social identities of women
who experienced rape during the war

It is commonly believed that, when utilized in ethnic conflicts, as in the Bosnian

case, sexual viol�ence is employed as a weapon of demoralization against entire
soci�eties (Coneth-�Morgan 2004: 22). The demoralization is characterized by a
violent invasion of the interior of the vicÂ�tim’s body, which thereby constitutes an
attack upon the intimate self and dignity of the indi�vidual human being (Gold-
stein 2001: 362–363). By giving a voice to women who have exÂ�periÂ�enced such
an ordeal and letting them position their ex�peri�ences, we gain insight into the
diverse impacts that war rapes have on different vic�tims, their fam�il�ies and rela-
tionships. This chapter therefore presents inter�views with five women who were
vic�tims of war rape during the Bosnian war.
Research liter�at�ure on these crimes emphas�izes that sexual viol�ence was
carried out in order to humiliate, or destroy, the identity of the vic�tim, and that
this was the way in which the viol�ence constituted a weapon of war (see, for
instance, Gutman 1993; Stiglmayer 1994b; Allen 1996; Nikolic-�Ristanovic
2000). Inherent in this argument is the notion that the female body constitutes
yet another battlefield where ethnic conflict can be fought, where a woman’s
sexual identity – in conjunction with her politÂ�ical and religious national identity
– is the main target for the actions being carried out. Consequently the ways in
which women’s vicÂ�timization takes form is crucial in order to understand the
ways in which sexual viol�ence has polit�ical impact during and after a conflict.
On the scholÂ�arly literÂ�atÂ�ure of battered women Hydén argues that there is a risk of
confining abused women to their sufferings and thereby constructing a homo-
genous and monolithic conceptualization of female vicÂ�timhood (Hydén 2005:
172). The literÂ�atÂ�ure on sexual violÂ�ence in war clearly runs this risk. Hydén
(2005:173) argues that in each story of oppression and suffering there runs a par-
allel his�tory of opposi�tion. The aim of this chapter therefore, is to ana�lyse lived
ex�peri�ences as narrated by five protagonists and also show how they employ dif-
ferent strat�egies for war rape survival and identity construction.
Because the war rapes happened under extra�ordinary violent and potentially
fatal circumstances, it has been im�port�ant to find an ana�lyt�ical format that makes
it pos�sible to ana�lyse the war rapes separately from other horrific events that
happened to these women during the war. By structuring the anaÂ�lysis as a narÂ�rat­
ive and analysing the inter�views with the vic�tims as nar�rat�ives, we come closer
26╇╇ Victim and survivor
to an understanding of how the war rapes have affected the vic�tims in unique
ways. In this scen�ario, it is the war rapes that serve as the valued endpoint, and
other events and accounts are selected and ordered as they are seen as rel�ev�ant to
these experiences.
The nar�rat�ive ana�lysis that follows is based on seven inter�views with five dif-
ferent women eight years after the conflict ended. Names have been changed and
details withheld to protect the anonymity of the inter�viewees. Three of these
women – ‘Azra’, ‘Ceca’ and ‘Danira’ – were in their mid 40s at the time of the
inter�view, and were married and had chil�dren before the war. They had remained
married to their husbands after the war. ‘Berina’ was in her mid 20s at the time
of the interÂ�view; she is a widow and has one child. ‘Emila’ was also in her mid
20s at the time of the inter�view and has no chil�dren. These women all identi�fy
themselves as Bosniak. While it is a well estab�lished fact that Serb and Croat
women were also vic�tims of sim�ilar forms of sexual viol�ence during the war, this
study draws its empirical findings from inter�views with Bosniak women. There
are pragmatic reasons for this choice. Though many of the local organ�iza�tions I
contacted aim to be multi-�ethnic, there are simply more Bosniak women
members of such organ�iza�tions than members from other nationalities. It was
therefore easier to get in touch with Bosniak women who were willing to talk
than to contact women with sim�ilar ex�peri�ences from other nationalities. Further,
the study does not aim to compare the impact of sexual viol�ence in a cross-�
national per�spect�ive, but rather focuses on im�plica�tions for notions of the self as
vic�tim and survivor. The inter�viewees are therefore not prim�arily regarded as
ethnic/national subjects. Each of the inter�views lasted about one and a half hours,
and they were all structured along them�atic lines.2 However, the inter�view format
was sufficiently open to permit a great deal of flex�ib�il�ity and changes of topic
and focus according to the wishes of the interviewees.
In order to estab�lish a common point of ref�er�ence, it was im�port�ant to ask the
inter�viewees to talk about their rape ex�peri�ences. However, this was nat�urally a
very delicate endeavour. Both the inter�viewees and I knew that the reason I
wanted to talk to them was because of their war rape ex�peri�ences, but at the
same time it seemed highly inappropriate to begin the inter�views with questions
about those par�ticu�lar events. It had been made clear to the inter�viewees that
they should not feel obliged to recount details of their ordeals, yet some sort of
ac�know�ledgement of their ex�peri�ences had to be estab�lished in the inter�view
situ�ation in order to be able to link the traumatic events they had ex�peri�enced to
their accounts of post-�conflict life. I therefore began each inter�view with factual
questions on such issues as the interÂ�viewee’s age, educational background,
where they had lived before the war, and what their family situ�ation had been
like. Gradually, the inter�views would move toward the rape issue through ques-
tions about their current relationships (does your husband/mother know what
happened to you during the war?), their mater�ial life con�ditions in the past
(would you mind telling me what happened to you when your village was
destroyed/your house was burned?), pos�sible bodily pains (do you sometimes
have dif�ficult�ies sleeping/remembering things?). It was hoped that this would
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 27
estab�lish a degree of rapport between the in�ter�preter, the inter�viewee and myself,
which in turn would make the inter�viewee feel more comfortable talking about
her traumas. Nevertheless, despite my careful pre�para�tions, the ways in which
the rape issue was disclosed was surprising and very different in each case, as
will be shown below.

Creating narratives
According to Ricoeur (cited in White 1987: 51), ‘every narÂ�ratÂ�ive combines two
dimensions in various proportions, one chronological and one non-�chronological.
The first may be called the episodic dimension, which characterizes the story
made out of events. The second is the configurational dimension, according to
which the plot construes signiÂ�ficÂ�ant wholes out of scattered events.’ The stories
to be told over the fol�low�ing pages are characterized by the same chronological
outline, which takes the fol�low�ing format:

• Beginning: Accounts of pre-Â�war life. This was characterized by materÂ�ial and

social secur�ity, multi-�ethnic coexist�ence and peace. It is a story of a har�
moniÂ�ous life and is a near-Â�blissful account compared to interÂ�viewees’
accounts of their current life situations.
• Middle: Accounts of war rapes. A major part of the stories are centred on
the outbreak of war and the sudden and extreme viol�ence the inter�viewees
ex�peri�enced. Their accounts of war rapes are told along with other stories of
extreme life-�changing events, such as loss of homes, family and friends.
• End: Accounts of post-Â�conflict life. An equally major part of the stories
focuses on the aftermath of war; how and where the inter�viewees live, their
family relationships, pov�erty and un�cer�tain future prospects.

Within this main chronological structure, two different plots emerge – namely,
that of being an ethnic survivor versus gendered vic�tim. The ways in which these
plots come out depend on how the protagonists position themselves within their
stories. The different ways of positioning do not simply result from an arbit�rary
de�cision on the part of the narrators, but rather depend on the actual and antici-
pated actions and beha�vi�ours of the other characters in their stories. In addition,
it is im�port�ant to point out that the inter�viewees do not simply position them-
selves as either ethnic survivor, or gendered vicÂ�tim. As Hydén (2005: 178)
points out, it is common for inter�viewees to talk from conflicting, parallel and
opposing subject positions within the same story. The plot structures I identi�fy in
the fol�low�ing ana�lysis suggest that the inter�viewees emphas�ize one structure
over the other, but they should not be con�sidered as mutually exclusive plots.
Furthermore, as Murray (2003: 116) argues, nar�rat�ive accounts are not told in a
vacuum, but are shaped and encouraged by specific con�texts. In other words,
there is a layer outside the story – that is, the sociopolitÂ�ical conÂ�text in which it is
told – which influences what, how and why elements within the story are seen as
im�port�ant and rel�ev�ant. Within this line of thought, the narrator is regarded as a
28╇╇ Victim and survivor
complex psycho�social subject who is an active agent in a social world, and it is
through the nar�rat�ive ana�lysis that we can understand both narrators and their
worlds (Murray 2003: 116).

Narratives of ethnicity and survival

Ethnicity is by far the most dominant discourse informing the liter�at�ure on the
Bosnian conflict. At the start of the war, a common perception among US politi-
cians – US presÂ�idÂ�ent Bill Clinton in parÂ�ticuÂ�lar – was that the reason for the con-
flict was the age-�old hatred between the different ethnic groups in the region,
and therefore that inter�na�tional inter�ven�tion would be futile (Holbrooke 1999:
22). Witnessing the Bosnian nightmare unfold eventually forced the inter�na�tional
com�mun�ity to recon�sider its passivity. However, even when the inter�na�tional
com�mun�ity did finally intervene, its belief that the root cause of the conflict was
ethnic hatred remained unchanged. The mere division of Bosnia into a Serb
Repub�lic and a Croat/Muslim federation after the Dayton Agreement in 1995
clearly attests to this.
Domestically, how�ever, the pic�ture is more complex. While ethnic hostili-
ties became stronger throughout the conflict years, accounts of pre-�war life in
Bosnia were characterized by multi-�ethnic coexist�ence (Bringa 1995). Indeed,
most of the interÂ�viewees in my study provide a ‘blissful’ account of the pre-Â�
war years, in which multi-Â�ethnicity is a core factor. The outbreak of war –
along with the ethnic hatred that came with it – is conÂ�sequently seen as a
sudden and completely unexpected break with the kind of life and ethnic tol-
erance they had become accustomed to during the Yugoslav years, which
were characterized by ‘brotherÂ�hood and unity’, in the words of Tito’s infa-
mous slogan.
While it is clear that ‘something’ must have caused the outbreak of the con-
flict, and we can strive to identiÂ�fy what that ‘something’ consists of, it is clear
that through the conflict ethnic dif�fer�ences came to define friend and foe,
compat�riots and enemies, perpetrators and vic�tims. War rapes were also
defined and understood along these lines: ethnic dif�fer�ence between perpetra-
tor and vic�tim made the rapes polit�ical. We as�sume that the intent of such acts
was to destroy and/or severely harm the identity of the vic�tim and those affili-
ated to her, but we know very little about whether it actuÂ�ally did so – or indeed
how this destruction took form. Ultimately, we do not know how it is to be a
vic�tim of ethnically based war rape, nor what this ethnic label might do to the
indiÂ�vidual vicÂ�tim’s understanding of self in the aftermath. The stories
recounted by ‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’ are examples of narÂ�ratÂ�ives in which the
ethnic dimensions of the conflict are central, and their stories will provide
insights on the subject matter.
The first narÂ�ratÂ�ive is that of ‘Danira’. She had been separated from one of
her chil�dren and her husband during the war, because both had been in the
army. Together with her other chil�dren, she spent a year as a refu�gee in a
Western Euro�pean coun�try and was reunited with the other members of her
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 29
family in Bosnia in 1995. ‘Danira’ does not elaborate much on her pre-Â�war
life. She indicates that she was a housewife, that her husband had a good job,
and that her father-�in-law had given them some land where they had built a
house. She characterizes her pre-�war life as very happy, where she had a good
life with her husband and chilÂ�dren. ‘Danira’ is the most upfront about the war
rapes of all the interÂ�viewees. In fact, the interÂ�view starts with ‘Danira’ enter-
ing the room, pulling up her sweater and showing me marks of torture stem-
ming from when she was held in detention and raped. Before I had even
managed to ask her what had happened, she had told me the elementary facts:
where she was imprisoned and how many times she believed she was raped.
There was no time to ‘ease in’, and my inÂ�terÂ�preter started translating
immediately:

I will tell you every�thing and you can ask me. Here you can see what they
did to me. They put cigarettes here [points to her body] and they bit me here
[points to her body]. [She then recounts details of where she came from,
where she was imprisoned, and what happened to her fellow villagers.]
Since I left the concentration camp I take sedatives.

Do you want to tell me what happened to you in the concentration camp?

How would you like to start? From the beginning or only the most im�port�
ant details? Do you want to hear about the attack on the village or only
about the concentration camp?

We can start with what you feel is most important.

They attacked us at 05:00 [she adds the date], and all of us went to a
shelter in the forest and we spent seven days there. Around half the village
was there. They surrounded us and shot from everywhere and two men
were killed. After that, they took us to some barracks and from the first
day they raped us. They asked about my husband and my brother and what
kinds of weapons they had. I said that they had weapons but they [the
enemy] took them away from them, and then they said I should take my
clothes off. I asked them to kill me. I was not supposed to have my men-
struation, but I imme�diately started bleeding all over my pants and clothes
and then they said a bad word for a Muslim woman, that I was dirty. After
that they let me go, but that was just before the real hell started. The
youngest woman who was there was only 14 years old. There were about
60 or 90 people there. I cannot tell exactly because there were not only
people from my village.

Did it happen many times?

It must have happened over 100 times that I was raped. They raped me
everywhere, in burnt-�out houses and in different rooms in the concentration
camp. Once I asked them to kill me, because I could not go back to my kids
after this, but they did not do this. Every day there were different men, and
30╇╇ Victim and survivor
usually they came in groups and they would take out some women and rape
them and bring them back, and after that a new group came.
(Danira)

‘Azra’ has an equally horrific story to tell. ‘Azra’ was also married and had chilÂ�
dren before the war. She was separated from her husband during the war years,
but has since been reunited with her entire family. She is somewhat shy and
timid, but still firm and upfront about the fact that she was raped. She does not
elaborate much on her pre-�war life other than to say that both she and her
husband had good jobs. In the first inter�view [I inter�viewed her twice], she dis-
closes her rape ex�peri�ences in connection with an explanation about her contact
with people from the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia). She also talks extensively about how she wants to see the men who
raped her get punished.

You told me that you have been in contact with the people from the ICTY in
The Hague. Can you tell me how they came in contact with you?
It was in [she says the name of the place] in 1995, where the police – the
federal police – asked me if I wanted to tell them what happened to me.
They knew that I was injured and that I survived the war rapes. You know,
what they [the perpetrators] did to me is something wrong. They committed
a crime against me, and what they did I will never forget. I want them to be
pun�ished for that. They could have killed me, and I do not know why they
did not. Maybe it was God’s will or desÂ�tiny – I do not know – but I want
them to be respons�ible for what they did to me, because those things that
happened to me are criminal things. They are crimes against humanity.

Can you identi�fy the people who did this to you?

Yes. I know them because they were my neighbours.
(Azra)

It is during the second inter�view that she provides details about how and where
the rapes happened. The perpetrators were her young neigh�bours, and she points
to the fact that they had only been boys when she got married. In other words,
these perpetrators had gone from being the young boys next door to becoming
soldiers and her enemies. We started the inter�view by recounting what she had
talked about in the first inter�view. When we reached the rape theme, she
de�scribed the fol�low�ing sequence:

These boys they were my neigh�bours. I remember them as young boys when
I got married. One day he [the rapist] came to my house during the war and
asked me to show him all the rooms in the house, and my son was playing
in the garden when all of a sudden he took a knife and put it under my neck
and asked me if I wanted to do it there by my own will or not, and at that
point I knew exactly what would happen. He beat me so I could not breathe,
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 31
and he kicked me in my stomach. I lost consciousness, and when I regained
consciousness he raped me and there was blood all over. When he saw what
happened, he just left me alone. He went out and asked the two soldiers that
were in front of the house if they wanted to come up and rape me too.

And did they?

No.

Was this man in uniform or civilian clothes?

He was in uniform.
(Azra)

Later in the second inter�view she makes the fol�low�ing comment:

He [the rapist] said ‘halalite’ – in our jargon, that I would forgive him before
God for raping me. But I will never forgive and I will never forget.
(Azra)

They came back to her house two more times before she escaped and fled bare-
foot into the forest, leaving her chil�dren, who had witnessed what happened to
their mother, with another neigh�bour. Despite the fact that she elaborates some-
what more on the rapes in the second interÂ�view, the accounts by ‘Azra’ of what
happened to her during the war are strikingly sim�ilar in both inter�views. In the
second inter�view, she expanded on core themes (such as her relationship with
her family members, her current living situ�ation and her thoughts about the
future). Nevertheless, the story she told was more or less the same on both occa-
sions. This might be indic�at�ive of the fact that she has told her story many times
to various members of the inter�na�tional com�mun�ity, local authorities and health
workers. It appears as though her account has taken on a stringent form of its
own, which she adheres to in a variety of different settings.
At first sight, the ethnic dimensions of these two nar�rat�ives may not appear to
be central. Indeed, stories about other women or the interÂ�viewees’ husbands,
chil�dren and current living con�ditions are given much more room in these two
women’s accounts. Nevertheless, ethÂ�niÂ�city is present in the stories – and at
crucial points. Careful reading reveals that, when describing the war rapes as
they took place, both protagonists make ref�er�ence to their Muslim identities.
‘Danira’ lets us know that her perpetrators ‘said a bad word for a Muslim
woman’ when raping her, while ‘Azra’ explains that her rapists said ‘halalite’,
an Islamic term for forgiveness. In other words, at the valued endpoint in their
narÂ�ratÂ�ives – that is, the turning point in their stories about whom they have
become – they position themselves as Muslim, that is, Bosniak women. My
in�ter�pretation, therefore, is that the ethnic identity of the women is not openly
discussed in their stories because it serves as the basic premise for their entire
nar�rat�ive. This in�ter�pretation can be sub�stanti�ated by looking at how the ethnic
identity is manifest at different levels of their accounts.
32╇╇ Victim and survivor
Before looking at these different levels, how�ever, it is im�port�ant to look at
how ‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’ deÂ�scribe their post-Â�war situÂ�ation. How do they look
upon themselves and their relationships in the aftermath of war? There is one
crucial element in their stories of the aftermath of war which unites ‘Danira’ and
‘Azra’, that sets their stories apart from the other three interÂ�viewees, namely the
fact that they have disclosed to their husbands that they were raped. ‘Danira’
chose to ac�know�ledge it to her husband the first time they met, and he was
supportive.

My husband is very sup�portive. When we met for the first time, he said to
me, ‘Do not tell me. I know everyÂ�thing.’ He knew when they took me to the
concentration camp what would happen to me, and if he had not been so
sup�portive I would have committed sui�cide. I know two women who do not
talk about what happened to them because they are ashamed, and they have
not told their husbands. They do not even want to talk to each other or to
other women because they are so ashamed!

Do you feel shame?

I am not ashamed. It did not happen from my will, and everybody knows it.
It was like having a knife under your cheek and a gun to your head.
(Danira)

Also, ‘Azra’ expresses a great deal of appreciation for the supÂ�port she received
from her husband after the war. But, she admits that she hesitated telling him
what happened:

If I had met my husband imme�diately after what had happened to me, I

could not have stayed married to him prob�ably. I felt disgust at males in
gen�eral. But it was such a long period of time before our reunion, and during
that time I sort of calmed down and stayed married to my husband. When
we had the first coffee we had together [after the war] I told him. I wanted
to tell him instead of somebody else telling him, and then we would have
had mis�under�stand�ings. I said that this is what happened, so it is your
de�cision if we can con�tinue to live together. If you want to live with me, we
can; if not, then you go on with your life and I go on with my life. He has
never made any bad comment about what happened to me, because he is
aware that women who were much older survived the same experience.

If I ask you whether you feel like a vic�tim or a survivor, how would you
answer?
If I survived 1992, I can survive anything! I feel like a survivor, but the situ�
ation in Bosnia now is very un�cer�tain. You know it is very confusing [she
cries]. You can survive something – yes, definitely I survived and therefore
I am a survivor – but I live my life from a distance, without really knowing
where I am going with my life. The envir�on�ment and the life con�ditions here
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 33
are so strange, they are so hard [she cries even more]. You know, I know
that I survived, but I do not know why. I can only thank God that I did, but
what am I going to do with the fact that I am alive? The life con�ditions here
are so hard and so strange.

Do you think it is harder to talk about rape during the war compared to
other crimes that people experienced?
I think so, but it is a new situ�ation now because before nobody talked about
these crimes, and now in The Hague [i.e. the ICTY] they talk about it as a
very specific crime. It is like killing really, in my opinion. You know, I think
sometimes that it would have been better for me if they had killed me
instead of raping me.
(Azra)

However, she does not talk about what happened to her daughter and son who
witnessed her traumas.

My daughter does not like to think about that even now. She does not like to
talk about it, because she does not want to remember.
(Azra)

The quotes above show that on a personal level, ‘Danira’ explains that she does
not feel shame for what happened to her. The rapes did not happen of her own
will, she says, and ‘everybody knows it’. She qualifies this further by stating that
it was like ‘having a knife under your cheek and a gun to your head’. ‘Azra’
de�scribes the rapes as criminal acts and even as crimes against humanity. The
latter characterization places her rape ex�peri�ences alongside other breaches of
the Geneva Conventions – that is, the laws of war – and underlines the politÂ�ical
nature of the acts. Agger and Jensen (1993: 687) have characterized rape in war
as sexual torture, and they argue that ‘the essential part of sexual torture’s trau-
matic and identity damaging effect is the feeling of being an accomplice in an
ambiguous situ�ation which contains both aggressive and libinal elements of a
confusing nature’. This description, howÂ�ever, does not fit the narÂ�ratÂ�ives of
‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’. They do not regard the war rape situÂ�ation as ambiguous,
nor do they see themselves as accomplices to the rel�ev�ant acts. One plaus�ible
explanation for this clear-�cut perception of non-�responsibility (and I do not
suggest that this might be wrong) may be that they are certain they were raped
during the war because of their Bosniak identity. Zarkov (1997) argues that, in
writings on the Bosnian conflict, the perpetrator is more often than not cast as a
Serb male, while the identity of the vic�tim is more often than not that of a
Bosniak female. ‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’ are most likely aware of this dominant
understanding of the conflict, and they therefore have an in�ter�pretive repertoire
avail�able to them through which they can position themselves as ethnic vic�tims.
In addition, their vic�timization places their suffering alongside that of all other
Bosniak vicÂ�tims in the war, both male and female. This ‘side-Â�effect’ impinges on
34╇╇ Victim and survivor
male–female relations in ways contrary to what the perpetrators might have
anticipated.
On the interpersonal level, the most im�port�ant element within the stories of
‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’ is how supÂ�portive their husbands have been after they chose
to tell them that they had been raped during the war. ‘Azra’ lets us know that this
was a difficult choice to make, because she was aware that her husband might
leave her. ‘Danira’ also tells us that she was aware of such a posÂ�sibÂ�ilÂ�ity, because
she knew of other women’s stories where the women had chosen to tell and the
husband had left the wife. Again, the stories of ‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’ contradict
pre�val�ent as�sump�tions about the status of raped women. It is commonly thought
that raped women in traditional pat�ri�archal fam�il�ies will be stigmatized by their
fam�il�ies and thereby further penalized by husbands and/or male family members.
Male honour and women’s sexuality are seen as interconnected, and an affront to
the woman’s body is also an affront to male members of her family. Based on this
logic, and in the con�text of the Bosnian conflict, the argument has frequently been
made that the woman subject to war rape was targeted because the abuse carried
out against her would, by default, also be an attack on the men within the same
ethnic/religious/polit�ical groups she was seen to represent (Brownmiller 1994:
181; Seifert 1994: 65; MacKinnon 1994; Allen 1996; Card 1996). Indeed, the
notion that rape can constitute a weapon of war is, in part, based on this line of
thinking. However, the stories of ‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’ show us that when the
vic�tim positions herself as an ethnic subject, this also creates a pos�sib�il�ity for a
new-�found solid�arity between men and women of the same ethnic belonging, a
solid�arity that supersedes traditional pat�ri�archal relationships within the family.
The husbands of ‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’ did not reject them, but rather supÂ�ported
them. When they were reunited after the war, they met on equal grounds as fellow
ethnic survivors of horrific ordeals. The impact of war rapes within pat�ri�archal
family structures may therefore be quite different from what one might expect.
On a societal level, the stories told by ‘Azra’ and ‘Danira’ show us that when
ethÂ�niÂ�city is the dominant discourse forming our – and their – understanding of
the conflict, other in�ter�pretations of rapes are placed in the background. This
comes out very clearly in the case of ‘Azra’. She deÂ�scribes what happened to her
as war rape, and the organ�iza�tion of which she is a member (and which helped
me get in touch with her) presented her to me as a war rape vic�tim. Unlike the
other women in this study, she knew her perpetrators well because they were her
neigh�bours. We also know that she was raped in her own home. Under different
circumstances, one might have con�sidered these acts to be the result of criminal,
aggressive and abusive beha�vi�our by the two men in question. In the con�text of
war, how�ever, the acts are perceived and defined as polit�ical acts where it is the
eth�ni�city of the male perpetrator which is decisive. The fact that the perpetrators
wore uniforms also reinforces this politÂ�ical inÂ�terÂ�pretation. For ‘Danira’, who was
taken to special facilities, kept imprisoned and repeatedly raped by groups of
men in uniform (who occasionally had Serbian and Montenegrin accents), the
situ�ation is more clear-�cut. There was little doubt in her mind that she was raped
as part of a war strat�egy in which her ethnic/national/religious identity was the
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 35
main target. Since ‘Danira’ does not feel shame, she has taken it upon herself to
speak up, and one of the ways in which she does this is by volunteering to testify
before the International War Crimes Tribunal (ICTY). Once again, her family is
a source of sup�port, and this is how she ex�peri�enced her first trip to the Hague:

I said yes imme�diately, and my husband was very sup�portive. He did not try
to stop me, and he was only worried about how my health would be when I
had gone through all that. But, I took some medicine. I needed that, and I
felt better afterwards [.â•›.â•›.] If they convict more I will go again if they can get
the people who raped and tortured me.
(Danira)

In the Bosnian setting, re�gard�ing rape in war as a war crime has led to an
increased focus on violÂ�ence against women in genÂ�eral. ‘Azra’ explains that the
way in which rape is perceived has changed in Bosnia. She says that ‘it is a new
situ�ation now because before nobody talked about these crimes, and now in The
Hague [i.e. the ICTY] they talk about it as a very specific crime’. This change
has made it easier for these two women to talk, and has made both women eager
to travel to The Hague to testify before the ICTY.
By bringing ethnic dimensions to the forefront of their narÂ�ratÂ�ives – or rather
setting them as a basic premise – ‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’ tell stories in which the main
plot is that of being a survivor. Gergen (2001) might have argued that their stories
are examples of stable/pro�gressive self, i.e. nar�rat�ives with a limited degree of
upward mobility. The two protagonists downplay the stigma normally attached to
rape vic�tims, and they emphas�ize that they are first and foremost survivors. It is
clear that the sup�port of their husbands con�trib�utes to maintaining this understand-
ing. As survivors, the women have taken it upon themselves to testify voluntarily
before the ICTY and thereby show that their rape ex�peri�ences have rendered them
neither passive nor silent. Their bodies have been part of the battlefield, but their
female identities have not been destroyed. They are still mothers of their chil�dren,
wives to their husbands and care-�givers within their fam�il�ies. All these tasks are
performed with difficulty, but never�the�less maintained. The fact that their hus-
bands and chil�dren know what happened to them has not changed this. Positioning
oneself as an ethnic vic�tim of war viol�ence therefore makes pos�sible the construc-
tion of a survivor identity in the post-�conflict aftermath.
It is im�port�ant to underscore, how�ever, that this in�ter�pretation does not
suggest that ‘Danira’ and Azra’ only see themselves as survivors. The rapes they
endured happened in the midst of extra�ordinary violent circumstances and they
also very much situate themselves as vic�tims of war in their accounts. The theme
of constant suffering is central in both ‘Danira’ and ‘Azra’s’ stories. For ‘Danira’
her current living con�ditions are a constant source of worry. Her daughter has a
medical con�dition for which they need to purchase medication and visit the hos�
pital on a regu�lar basis. This is a challenge given their meagre income. Yet she
ac�know�ledges that she is not starving and that, compared to others, they are
doing ok. All the same, life is strenuous.
36╇╇ Victim and survivor
Life today is really hard for me. My husband started working recently, but
before that he was only getting 50 DM because he is an invalid and that is
what they get for that. Now he works for a com�pany that cleans the city, and
his sal�ary is 260 DM. But we live in a Serb house and I expect that we have
to move anytime. But, we are not starving; we have bread and milk, but
nothing special.
(Danira)

Occasionally she gets together with other women from her village who were in
the concentration camp with her. She de�scribes how they imme�diately start
talking about what happened to them: they simply cannot stop talking about the
suffering they went through. Despite the openness she feels in these settings, she
knows that there are women among them who have ex�peri�enced war rapes that
will talk neither with other women nor with their fam�il�ies and husbands about
what happened to them. This is because they are ashamed, explains ‘Danira’.
Most of the interÂ�view with ‘Azra’ centres on her current life and worries. She
is concerned with the future of her chil�dren and the un�cer�tainty of their living
situation.

We do not pay rent because we live in a deserted house, but the owner
applied to get back and get the house, and I will prob�ably be ordered to
move from the house. But where shall I move? I do not know what to do,
because I cannot go back to my village and I do not have the money to pay
the rent in the city. It is too expensive. The food is expensive. To send your
chil�dren to school is expensive. And [.╛.╛.] I mean every�thing is very expen-
sive when you do not have money.
(Azra)

The ways in which ‘Danira’s’ and ‘Azra’s accounts are different from the other
stories will become apparent when compared to the next three stories.

Narratives of gender and victimization

While it is clear that the women who suffered war rapes in Bosnia were targeted
on the basis of their eth�ni�city, it is also clear that they were targeted with this
par�ticu�lar form of viol�ence by men because they were women. In other words, it
was the combination of their gender identity and their ethnic identity that made
them ‘eliÂ�gible’ for war rape.
The war zone, in gen�eral, is a place of increased gender polarization. Men are
called to fight and/or be killed, whereas women, in the words of Enloe (1983:
46), are set to keep the home fires burning. Through this division of labour,
women come to represent stability, future pro�spects and peace. The image of
women taking care of the home and family while men are called to fight serves
to legitimize the war as such: he is fighting to protect his family and to secure
the (peaceful) future for his chil�dren. The Bosnian conflict was no exception to
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 37
this norm: ‘In genÂ�eral [.â•›.â•›.] gender roles have become more polarized by nation-
alism and war’, says Benderly (1997: 60) in her description of the Bosnian con-
flict. Rape against women in the war zone can therefore be regarded as an attack
on current, and future, family formations – in other words, rape can be seen as
an attack on the mere legitimization for the male fight because it dem�on�strates
the man’s inÂ�abilÂ�ity to protect his family and home.
How, then, do the vic�tims of war rape regard their ex�peri�ences from a gen-
dered per�spect�ive? In other words, which self-�narratives are made pos�sible when
gender aspects serve as the core theme in their accounts? The first nar�rat�ive
comes from ‘Ceca’ who was married and had chilÂ�dren before the war. She was
separated from her entire family, but was reunited with them all after the war.
She is very timid, and she tells me that she has taken tranquilizers before the
interÂ�view. ‘Ceca’ says very little about her pre-Â�war life. She simply states where
she lived, where she and her husband come from, and what kind of house they
had. ‘Ceca’ is the only one in this sample who admits to having become preg-
nant from the rapes, and she starts the inter�view by talking about her phys�ical
and psychological pains. She explains that she does not have a job because it is
psychologically very difficult and says that she cannot do basic work at home.
She tells of how she suffers from insomnia and has nightmares when she occa-
sionally sleeps. She also has occasional stomach pains. The way she starts
talking specifically about having been raped is through a description of her
youngest son (born after the war) and the negat�ive feelings she has towards him.
She is afraid that, since he is a man, he can commit the same crimes she has
experienced.

Sometimes I think that since he is a man he can do the things that others
have done to me. I never told my husband that I have been raped and that
my daughter was as well. He does not know what happened to us, and I find
excuses all the time to avoid having sex. I also worry about my daughter.

Do you and your daughter ever talk about this together?

I tried, but my daughter does not want to. She refuses to talk to me about
this and has asked me to keep it a secret. She does not want anyone to know
about it, and when I suggested that she could join this organ�iza�tion she did
not want to. She said it would bring back memoriesâ•›.â•›.â•›.

Were you raped many times?

I was raped more than a hundred times, I think. I was so destroyed I had to
have an operation.

Were you in a camp?

Yes.

Were there many other women there?

About 150, I think.
38╇╇ Victim and survivor
And they were all raped?
I do not know. I stayed there for two and a half months, and they came and
took women and some never came back. They were killed.

And your daughter was in the same camp?

Yes. We were together the whole time.

You told me that after the rapes you fled and were hiding in different places.
Did you tell anyone then what had happened to you during that time?
I only told my mother. She helped me get an abor�tion. It was not a proper
aborÂ�tion. I took medicines and different teas – I mean different herbs – and
one night I went to the toilet and felt that I lost the baby. I could not bear to
have a baby whose father I didn’t know, a baby made during those
circumstances.
(Ceca)

‘Emila’ was in her early teens when the war broke out. She had had no sexual
exÂ�periÂ�ences prior to the war rapes. ‘Emila’ talks quietly and jumps from theme
to theme. She excuses herself for being inconsistent, but she has suffered from
insomnia for long periods of time and has prob�lems focusing on one issue at a
time. She lost many of her imme�diate and extended family members. In the
aftermath of war, she acts as a parent for her younger siblings because her
mother is inÂ�capÂ�able of taking care of them. Her father is dead. We start the inter­
view by talking about her pre-�war life. She explains that she was one of several
siblings living in the same house along with their grandparents and parents. She
characterizes her life as ‘normal’ in that her father worked and her mother was at
home. It takes a long time before we start talking about the rape issue. Halfway
into the inter�view, she starts talking about what happened to her in order to
explain why she has trouble working and going to school to get an education.

I used to work in a shop for 200 DM per month, but now I clean people’s
houses during the weekend. But the memories of the war are always there,
and it is hard to work, but I just have to do something to live.
(Emila)

The inÂ�terÂ�preter tells me that ‘Emila’ is ashamed that she has that kind of work,
and we take a break in the inter�view, during which the in�ter�preter as�sures
‘Emila’ that cleaning people’s houses is a decent job.

Do you, or anyone in your family, receive any form of pension from the
government?
My mother gets some money after my brother who died, and she is also
trying to get some money from my father. But there are many prob�lems,
because they were civilian vic�tims of war.
(Emila)
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 39
She goes on to de�scribe details about what happened to her family members
during the war.

Can you tell me what happened to you during the war?

At the very beginning I was locked up at home, and after that I was taken to
a school in [she says the name of the place]. Would you like me to start
from the very beginning?
(Emila)

She goes on to provide details of the first attack on her village; how she became
separated from her family; how she saw family members, rel�at�ives and neigh�
bours killed; and how she was taken to a house where she was kept prisoner.

How long were you imprisoned?

Altogether, one month. First, we were together in a house, and they moved
us to a concentration camp. Everybody who tortured me I knew. It was only
during the weekends that they came from Serbia, but on the other days it
was the local guys.

What did they do to you in the concentration camp?

They raped me. Sometimes they were old and sometimes they were young,
and it happened more than 50 times. I was only 16 years old, and every day
I asked them to kill me, because I did not know anything about my family
and all this was happening.

Can I ask you a difficult question, which you only need to answer if you
want to? Did you have any sexual ex�peri�ences before the rapes?
No, that was the first. I was raised in that kind of family.
(Emila)

‘Berina’ was the youngest interÂ�viewee in the group and she is very withdrawn in
her way of communicating. She has a child who was born during the early stages
of the war, and the father of her child was killed during the same time period.
Before we start the first interÂ�view, ‘Berina’ laughs and tells me she has taken
tranquilizers before meeting me. ‘Berina’ needs a lot time before she talks about
being raped. I inter�viewed her twice, and during the first inter�view she only
hinted at what happened to her and ac�know�ledged being raped only in passing
while describing a series of events during the first weeks of the war. She said
that she could tell me what happened to her during the war, but she did not wish
to tell ‘all the details’. She answered all questions with no more than one or two
sentences and was very shy and timid.

The enemy came and then they took my husband and my father to prison,
and we still do not know anything about them, and they were chasing us all
the time. First in our apartment, and then we moved from that apartment and
40╇╇ Victim and survivor
into another house. Then they would find us and chase us there too. At
night, they would take us away to be raped, and then one night I escaped
during the night through the woods.
(Berina)

In the second inter�view, how�ever, she talks more freely, but is still very short
and matter-�of-fact in her various descriptions of what happened to her during the
war. She does not use the word ‘rape’ herself, but says that her perpetrators ‘tor-
tured’ her. It was only when I asked her specifically if she was raped that she
ac�know�ledged it.

They came and they took me to the prison. But it was not really a prison. It
was more like they locked us up at home. In the beginning, they were
coming to our apartment and they tortured us, and then they came to take us
to another house.

Did they rape you in that house?

Yes.
(Berina)

She starts crying and does not elaborate on details about the rapes, but changes
her focus and talks about how she escaped from her apartment, fled and hid in
the forest until she was found by a Serb woman, who took her in and let her live
with her for one year.
In the above nar�rat�ives, the stories about the war rapes are told to explain dif�
ficult�ies and complications the women ex�peri�ence in their every�day lives. In
other words, the war rapes have damaged these three women in ways that affect
how they view themselves and their relationships. The ways in which their
female bodies were made part of the battlefield have altered their female identi-
ties and gendered relationships. This destruction is narrated on different levels.
On the personal level, the war rapes are narrated as having destroyed the core
of their female identities: their sexual and procreative abil�it�ies. They talk about
how the war rapes have damaged them by describing bodily pains, and they
thereby position themselves as (female) biological subjects within their stories.
‘Ceca’ lets us know that she suffers from insomnia, takes tranquilizers and some-
times cannot do basic work at home. She goes on to say that she has prob�lems with
men in genÂ�eral, and that when a man approaches her she ‘immeÂ�diately has pains in
her stomach’. The mass rapes she exÂ�periÂ�enced damaged her to such an extent that
she had to have a gynaeco�lo�gical opera�tion after the war. In addition, she is the
only woman in this study who admits to having become pregnant as a result of the
rapes, but she had an abor�tion carried out with non-�professional assistance. Since
the war, she has given birth to a son and, as shown in the first quotes from her
inter�view, it was her feelings about this son that triggered her accounts of being
raped. Throughout the entire inter�view, her vic�timization is narrated through
accounts of her body. For ‘Emila’, the war rapes were her first sexual exÂ�periÂ�ences.
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 41
She says that simply the sight of men in uniform can be a trauma trigger, and can
cause her physÂ�ical discomfort when she is premenstrual. ‘Berina’ is not as expliÂ�cit
as ‘Ceca’ and ‘Emila’, but she indicates that she has had to take tranquilizers
before talking to me about her war ex�peri�ences, thereby suggesting that being
reminded of her war trauma triggers bodily pains. Experiencing bodily pains in the
aftermath of severe trauma is not unusual. Post-�Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),
for which these women have received thera�peutic treatment, is characterized by a
combination of gen�eralized anxiety symptoms and specific fears and an elevated
level of arousal, i.e. their bodies are always on the alert for danger (Herman [1992]
1997: 36). What makes the stories of ‘Ceca’, ‘Emila’ and ‘Berina’ special cases of
PTSD3 is that their trauma triggers are so clearly gendered, through sexual contact,
the birth of a son, seeing men in uniform, etc.
On an interpersonal level, the nar�rat�ives of vic�timized female bodies become
stories of dysfunctional womanhood manifest in the women’s social relation-
ships with immeÂ�diate family members. ‘Ceca’ conÂ�siders herself a bad mother to
her son who was born after the war. It is as though her son came out of a differ-
ent body than the body her chil�dren born before the war came out of. Her post-�
war body is presented as foul, as are her feeling towards her son. In addition,
‘Ceca’ has chosen not to let her husband know about the war rapes, because this
is ‘something stronger’ than her other war exÂ�periÂ�ences. The war rapes have
changed the way she looks at herself as a woman, and she fears that it might
affect the way her husband looks at her as a wife.

I told him every�thing except for being raped. That is somehow stronger, and
I cannot tell him. I suffer a lot because of the sexual side of our marriage.
But what can I do? I do not have the feelings, pos�it�ive feelings towards that,
and all the time I find excuses to avoid having sex.
(Ceca)

Her feelings for her youngest son and her daughter are central in the inter�view.
She says that she is often aggressive towards her youngest son, and that she has
many negat�ive feelings towards him. Her daughter was also raped, and she wants
to talk to her about this but her daughter refuses to do so. This is a great concern
for ‘Ceca’. For ‘Emila’ and ‘Berina’, their war raped bodies affect their relation-
ships they have to their respective mothers. Both have chosen not to disclose to
their mothers the fact that they were raped in order to protect their mothers. In
the aftermath of war, ‘Emila’ has only shared her war rape exÂ�periÂ�ences with her
sister (who also was raped). Her mother does not know about the rapes. ‘Emila’
has decided to keep it that way because her mother was also raped and lost many
of her chil�dren, as well as her parents.

My sister knows, because she was also raped. My mother was raped as well,
but I cannot tell her because I had a sister who was killed and burnt together
with my grandparents. Also, I was separated from her for six years, so I
cannot tell her.
(Emila)
42╇╇ Victim and survivor
‘Emila’ still suffers from physÂ�ical pains linked to the war rape trauma:

Sometimes, just before I have my period, I have pains and phobias. I cannot
see people in uniform. I do not even like the SFOR people.
(Emila)

‘Emila’ is very concerned about her living situÂ�ation and her family’s ecoÂ�nomic
in�stability. She feels that her mater�ial living con�ditions are vic�timizing her once
more:

The authorities are deaf and blind to what has happened [there] when they
force us to leave the house we live in now and move back to our houses that
have completely burned. [.╛.╛.] I understand that every�one has a right to prop�
erty and every�thing else, but I cannot understand why I and all the people
who ex�peri�enced all the things I ex�peri�enced still have to suffer. I suffered a
lot and I am still suffering. [.â•›.â•›.] Nobody gave us any form of compensation.
I live a life, but it is not really a life. With all these struggles, it is not easy
to live.
(Emila)

She sees no justice in the ICTY either:

I was not pleased with the verdicts for those who committed sexual crimes
and abuse. They would get 10 to 15 years in prison, and they would use that
time to complete their studies and go to school or other things like that,
while behind them are the women who were tortured. I do not think that
justice in my sense of the word will be done.
(Emila)

Future pro�spects for marriage are also a great concern and source of sorrow for
‘Emila’:

I will never get married. I cannot trust anybody, and even if someone is just
inviting me to have a coffee somewhere I think that maybe he is going to
take me somewhere [.â•›.â•›.]. Sometimes I have an impression that everybody
knows, even though I know that is not possible.
(Emila)

The under�lying argument is that letting their mothers know about the rapes
would be yet another trauma for them. ‘Emila’ argues that her mother has suf-
fered enough. ‘Berina’ makes the same argument, but adds that she also feels
shame about the rapes and is unsure how her mother would react if she knew.
Today, ‘Berina’ lives with her child, her mother and a brother. The fact that she
has been raped is a secret she has shared only with her sister. She does not want
to let her mother know what happened to her:
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 43
I would rather tell everybody else than my mother, because she was hurt
enough. I also have shame and fear for how she would cope with knowing.
Basically, I do not want to hurt my mother more [she is crying].
(Berina)

She fears that her child might ask about her war ex�peri�ences, and she does not
want her to find out either:

My worst fear is that she [the child] will ask me. I do not think that I will
tell, because my worst fear is that she will go through the same. Therefore, I
do not want to let her know what happened to me.
(Berina)

She wants to remarry but fears that this will be difficult because the family of
her child’s father might not approve. In addition, she has difÂ�ficultÂ�ies with rela-
tionships with men:

I had a nice sexual relationship with my husband, and I had a boyfriend after
the war. But, I did not feel anything [in the sexual relationship with the new
boyfriend]. I had no feelings at all.
(Berina)

Although it is not stated expli�citly in the inter�views, one might as�sume that
‘Berina’ and ‘Emila’ know that their mothers would worry about their daugh-
ters’ virginity, and thus their eligibility for marriage later in life. ‘Emila’ has said
that she was a virgin before being raped, and that she was raised in ‘that kind of
family’ – that is, a traditional patÂ�riÂ�archal family. Assuming that women’s sexual-
ity is linked to family honour, telling their mothers about the rapes would poten-
tially vic�timize the mothers further through asso�ci�ation with their daughters, and
‘Berina’ and ‘Emila’ therefore keep silent. If we take Gilligan’s ([1982] 1993)
work on mother�hood and the ethics of care as a point of departure, it is pos�sible
to inÂ�terÂ�pret the deÂ�cisions by ‘Emila’ and ‘Berina’ to keep their war rape stories
secret as a way of letting their mothers maintain a status of ‘good motherÂ�hood’.
According to Gilligan, a woman’s moral career is influenced by ethics of care
and respons�ib�ility for others. Motherhood is the manifestation of this pro�cess,
because it enables the woman to dem�on�strate care and respons�ib�ility through her
connection with others, most notably her chil�dren. The war raped bodies of
‘Emila’ and ‘Berina’, therefore, come to represent failed motherÂ�hood through
the mothers’ ‘failure’ to protect their own chilÂ�dren. ‘Emila’ and ‘Berina’ posi-
tion themselves as good chil�dren by keeping their war rape ex�peri�ences hidden
from their mothers. They do this, how�ever, as a way of protecting their mothers,
and conÂ�sequently it is ‘Emila’ and ‘Berina’ who are ‘mothering’ their mothers.
On a societal level, these three protagonists position themselves as ‘damaged
goods’ within a patÂ�riÂ�archal culture. This perception comes out most clearly
in the story of ‘Emila’ when she talks about her future proÂ�spects for marriage.
44╇╇ Victim and survivor
She thinks that she will never get married, because she has an ‘impression that
everybody knows’. What she fears that ‘everybody’ knows is that she is not an
untouched woman, she is not a virgin. Because she was ‘raised in that kind of
family’ and we can asÂ�sume that she was taught to believe that her virginity was
key in her eligibility for marriage. For ‘Ceca’, who was already married before
the war rapes, her de�cision not to tell her husband what happened to her is
another manifestation of ‘damaged goods’ positioning. Assuming that the rela-
tionship between ‘Ceca’ and her husband is based on patÂ�riÂ�archal values, the vio-
lations against her body might be seen as violations of her husband’s ‘propÂ�erty’.
Her sexuality – and her body – is her husband’s possession. Perhaps this is one
of the reasons why she had another baby after the war: as a way of giving some-
thing back to her husband after those who raped her had taken something – her
body – away from him. ‘Berina’ wants to become re-Â�established with a new
man, i.e. a new husband and ideally someone who can be a good father for her
child. However, this might prove to be difficult, because she is a single mother.
In addition, she lets us know that she has attempted – but found it very difficult
– to start a new sexual relationship.
By bringing stories of their bodies and their gendered relationships to the
forefront of their nar�rat�ives, the three protagonists above construct stories in
which the main plot is that of being a vic�tim. They position themselves as stig-
matized bodily subjects, and this affects their social relationships (as mothers,
daughters and girlfriends/wives) as well as their future pro�spects (eligibility for
marriage). The vic�tim plot structure creates a stable/regressive nar�rat�ive charac-
terized by a downward de�velopment, and the core theme in this story is a vio-
lated, and damaged, gender identity.

Summary
In concluding the ana�lysis above, we need to con�sider what the rape stories have
told us about rape in war; how the con�text in which the stories are told has
affected the storytelling itself; and, finally, why nar�rat�ive ana�lysis has proven to
be a par�ticu�larly viable venue for understanding the impact of rape in war.
First, the five protagonists have taught us that rape in war has an impact upon
and violates the social identity of its vic�tims in at least two distinct ways.
Because rape in war targets both the ethnic and gendered identity of its vic�tims,
this dual identity violation creates a pos�sib�il�ity for dual identity construction in
the aftermath. Through their accounts, the five women have created two dis-
tinctly different nar�rat�ive plots, within which their pri�mary positioning within
the stories varies. As ethnic vic�tims, the elements of their stories create a survi-
vor plot characterized by absence of guilt, sup�port from family members and
active engagement in getting their perpetrators convicted. As female vic�tims,
how�ever, the elements of their stories create a vic�tim plot characterized by feel-
ings of guilt and shame, hiding their stories from imme�diate family members,
and bodily pains and immobility. These observations show: (1) that the vic�tims
have power to redefine their social identities in the post-�conflict socio-�political
 Victim and survivor╇╇ 45
space; (2) that their abil�ity to do so, how�ever, depends on the mater�ial, social
and polit�ical reality in which they find themselves in the post-�conflict setting, as
well as the ways in which their ‘supÂ�porting cast’ plays its part; and, finally, (3)
that positioning oneself mainly as a vic�tim versus survivor (or the other way
around) has different impacts on intrapersonal, interpersonal and societal
relations.
Second, it is im�port�ant to con�sider the con�text in which the stories are told, in
order to better understand the mo�tiva�tions of the protagonists in telling their
stories. This con�textual setting is multi-�faceted. First, it is im�port�ant to recog�nize
that asking questions about wartime rape in Bosnia as a foreign, Western Euro­
pean and female researcher is in itself a polit�ical task. What the inter�viewees tell
me during the inter�views is based on an elaborate understanding of the polit�ical
power relationships that exists between us. As a Western Euro�pean researcher, I
am positioned as inter�na�tional, and the inter�na�tional pres�ence in Bosnia is so
over�whelm�ing that Bose (2002: 6) argues that this constitutes yet another con-
flict line, in addition to the conflicts that exists between the three main ethnic
groups. The inter�na�tional com�mun�ity in Bosnia, furthermore, is an im�port�ant
source of income for the local popu�la�tion, but the taste of the eco�nomic bene�fits
thus provided is bitter-�sweet. The inter�na�tional pres�ence is of such a nature that
it has deprived many Bosnians of a sense of ownership over their own eco�nomic,
demo�cratic and polit�ical de�velopment.4 Asking questions about the war as a
Western Euro�pean researcher therefore means asking from a position as a power-
�holder. This comes out clearly in the opposi�tion between us and them. Although
I am a woman and could be part of a female us, I am more often cast as an inter�
na�tional them.5 As a result, it is highly likely that the stories the inter�viewees told
me were based on an understanding of what they think the inter�na�tional com�
munÂ�ity – that is, the power-Â�holders – ought to know about the ordeals they went
through. Members of the organ�iza�tion through which I came in contact with the
women in this study told me that many of the raped women felt so forgotten by
the world outside that they were very happy to receive a researcher who was
inter�ested in their lives now that the cameras and journ�al�ists had moved on to
other parts of the world. Second, the protagonists are aware that their war rape
stories can be narrated within different genres. In other words, how the stories
are to be told is not a given. As we saw in the inter�views, two of the inter�viewees
(‘Danira’ and ‘Emila’) asked how I would like to have the story told: ‘from the
beginning’ or, alÂ�ternÂ�atively, ‘only the most imÂ�portÂ�ant details’. All the women in
this study had previously told their stories to different people (aid workers, rep-
resentatives for the ICTY and therapists), and in all these con�texts their stories
are told to serve different functions. By asking me how I would like to have the
story told, they are simul�tan�eously asking me what the function of their story
will be for me. In other words, the power relationships between the researcher
and the interÂ�viewee force both of us to find ways of telling the story – that is,
genres – that make them intelÂ�liÂ�gible to us both. The researcher defines the func-
tion of the story, and the inter�viewee adjusts the narration of her ex�peri�ences
accordingly. Finally, it is clear that the polit�ical and eco�nomic power hier�archy
46╇╇ Victim and survivor
that exists between ‘interÂ�naÂ�tionals’ and local Bosnians has created a climate in
which having a war story to tell can be regarded as a potential commodity. On
my field trips to Bosnia, I heard numerous horror stories describing how interÂ�na­
tional journ�al�ists had capitalized on the misery of raped women. Drakulic (1994:
178) de�scribes inter�na�tional journ�al�ists coming off the plane at the airport in
Zagreb, going to the nearest refu�gee settlement in which Bosnian refu�gees were
sheltered, and asking the folÂ�lowÂ�ing infamous question: ‘Anyone here been raped
and speaks English?’ Having a rape story to tell also means having exÂ�periÂ�ences
for sale. Journalists, researchers and NGO workers are all potential ‘buyers’ of
these stories. The journ�al�ist may be able to write an intriguing story; the
researcher (like myself↜) will have data to ana�lyse in order to generate know�ledge
production; and NGO workers might use the stories to apply for funding to initi-
ate different kinds of ac�tiv�ities. This mutual dependency between the one who
has a story to tell and the one who can ‘use’ it is not necesÂ�sarÂ�ily unethical, but in
trying to ‘buy’ stories to help the women involved the ‘buyer’ walks a fine line
in terms of personal bene�fit. For the women who have stories to tell, how�ever,
there is also a potential for empowerment through talking: talking to the ICTY
might get perpetrators convicted; talking to therapists might facilitate recovery;
and talking to inter�na�tional aca�demics and journ�al�ists might bring attention and
understanding to a wider audience.
Lastly, the nar�rat�ive ana�lysis has brought an empirically based understanding
of the diverse impact that Bosnian war rapes had in the local con�text. The many
commentaries and aca�demic pub�lications on the war rape tragedy in Bosnia have
argued almost with one voice that raped Bosniak women would be stigmatized
and ostracized by their fam�il�ies. This ana�lysis has shown that, yes, that did
happen – and presumably also to a large extent – but it does not represent the
complete picÂ�ture. The exÂ�periÂ�ences of ‘Ceca’ and ‘Azra’ must also have a place
in our understanding of the impact of war rapes. In other words, we must not
base our understanding only on the findings that confirm our as�sump�tions, but
must also be open to findings that might contradict and challenge our initial con-
victions. This ana�lysis has shown that, to understand the diverse impact of war
rape, one must look for local findings. The local findings in this study have
shown that the five women intersect mul�tiple social cat�egor�ies in their position-
ing of their war rape ex�peri�ences and in their social identity construction pro�
cesses. These intersectionalities have different strengths and outcomes as diverse
plots (ethnic and survivor versus gendered and vic�timized) in their respective
nar�rat�ives. Assuming that war rape has uni�ver�sal effects on women due to uni�
ver�sal hierarchical relationships between men and women will not help us to see
the complete pic�ture and does not help us see the diverse strat�egies women
employ in living with war rape in its aftermath.
4 What do we know about war
rapes before the 1990s?

While the stories presented in the previous chapter are unique to the five women
inter�viewed, their ex�peri�ences are not. A look back on the his�tory of war rape
shows that sexual viol�ence in war is as old as war itself. History has shown that
the female body is treated as an exten�sion of the battlefield, where victories and
defeats can be manifest in different modes of sexual gratification by the male
soldier. Enloe (2000: 108) writes that ‘rape evokes the nightmarishness of war,
but it becomes just an indistinguishable part of a poisonous wartime stew called
“lootpillageandrape”â•›’. Any attempt to untangle the ‘lootpillageandrape’ nexus to
make the impact of rape clearer and more vis�ible is a polit�ical endeavour, warns
Enloe, who con�tinues by saying that such efforts are both difficult and complex,
but urges us to try anyway. And so we will.
If we look at how war has been depicted in the world of fine arts, liter�at�ure
and poetry, rape in battle has been a leitmotif. The famous painting by the classi-
cist painter Nicolas Poussin (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art) is a case
in point: entitled ‘Abduction of the Sabine Women’, it depicts a battle in which
all the women in the pic�ture are seen attempting to escape the men, who are
holding and grappling with them. There are two chil�dren lying on the ground in
the foreground of the pic�ture and two elder women holding their heads in an
attempt to protect themselves and the chil�dren from the madness sur�round�ing
them.
Nicolas Poussin has depicted a mythologized episode from the early days in
the his�tory of Rome. It is said that criminals and people less law-�abiding than
one would have liked were granted cit�izen�ship in Rome at an early stage because
they were thought to be fearless enough to win battles to expand the territory of
Rome. There was a slight prob�lem, how�ever: there were so few women that the
city would face a ser�ious prob�lem after a couple of generations because far too
few chil�dren would be born, par�ticu�larly boys. On one occasion, it is said that
the neigh�bouring people, the Sabines, were invited to Rome for a religious celeb�
ra�tion of Neptune, and in the midst of the proceedings the Romans stormed the
scene kidnapping and raping the Sabine women, who in turn were forced to
marry their captors. When the Sabine men returned some time later to reclaim
their women, the women had become accustomed to the situ�ation and got
between the warring men to stop the kidnapping. The Sabines and Romans were
48╇╇ War rapes before the 1990s
united in the end and con�tinued their struggle for an empire. According to
legend, this is how Rome was estab�lished (Brownmiller [1975] 1991: 34).
In her seminal work entitled Men, Women and Rape, Brownmiller ([1975]
1991) writes that rape has always accompanied wars of religion and revolu�tion;
it has been a weapon of terror and revenge, as well as a way of relieving
boredom. Unques�tion�ably there will be raping, says Brownmiller in the introduc-
tion to her outline of rape in war, quoting General George S. Patton (Brown-
miller [1975] 1991: 31). Her ana�lysis shows that the function of rape in war is
multifaceted, but in all its forms a definitive charac�ter�istic is that it gen�erally
takes place unanswered: war creates oppor�tun�ities for rape to be carried out with
impunity by the majority of its perpetrators. The power of the perpetrators lies
not just in the fact that the likelihood of conviction for these crimes is lower in
times of war than in times of peace, but also in the fact that the vic�tims tend to
remain silent about the ordeals they have suffered. Sexual taboos, feelings of
shame and guilt and fear of being ostracized by the local com�mun�ity and imme�
diate family members all con�trib�ute to keeping the vic�tims of rape silent both in
war and peace. The fact that women who have ex�peri�enced rape will most likely
admit having suffered these crimes only long after the events have taken place
has made it difficult to study the impact rape has on the sufferers and their sur�
round�ings other than from a his�tor�ical vantage point.

Loot, pillage and rape

War and rape, and rape in war, are concepts strongly interconnected his�tor�ically,
mythologically and culturally. War is a setting in which looting and rape are two
sides of the same coin. Rape in war is a metaphor for the barbarism of war, and a
direct manifestation of the misuse of power and viol�ence unleashed by war. Rape
is a metaphor for polit�ical acts. The attack on the city of Nanking in 1937 is
often referred to as the Rape of Nanking, but as an act in itself rape is often
deÂ�scribed using metaphors such as the biblical formuÂ�laÂ�tion that ‘you may enjoy
the spoil of your enemies’. Rape as a metaphor and metaphors of rape have been
part of historic accounts and other forms of war docu�mentation and depiction for
centuries, yet the way in which rape in war is ana�lysed and understood as a polit�
ical weapon in conflict settings has been characterized by reformu�la�tions and
dismissal.
While there is not much schol�arly docu�mentation of the use of rape in wars
before World War II this does not suggest that it did not exist. In her study of
women in the Viking Age, Jesh (1991: 1–2) asserts that the Vikings would vent
their fury on women and monks by maiming, murdering, robbing, pillaging,
destroying, enslavement and rape. Jesh also notes that this beha�vi�our was
common to the Vikings’ adversaries. The situÂ�ation during the Roman empire
was no different, as Poussin’s painting indicates, as well as in Richlin’s (2010:
353) overview of sexuality in the Roman Empire where she de�scribes how rape
was used against men and women of conquered peoples on a wide scale and that
it was con�sidered an in�teg�ral part of warfare. The same point can be found in
 War rapes before the 1990s╇╇ 49
Vigarello (2001), who traces the his�tory of rape in France from the sixteenth to
the twentieth century and points to the inherent paradox that rape is, on the one
hand, seen as any other viol�ence while, on the other, is not pun�ished as such.
There are certain con�texts, such as wars and revolu�tions, where rape and sexual
viol�ence against women and girls were seen as so inherent that these acts did not
seem worthy of criminal prosecution.
The fact that the ac�tiv�ities of loot, pillage and rape, his�tor�ically as well as lit�
er�ally speaking, constitute the core ac�tiv�ities of war achieves two things. First, it
renders the vic�tim of war rape ex�peri�ences indistinguishable from other crimes
in war. Crimes of sexual viol�ence are signi�fic�ant only insofar as they occur in
conjunction with other crimes and it is the combination of these acts which con-
stitutes warfare. Second, characterizing warfare as acts of loot, pillage and rape
clearly defined the soldier as a male. These beha�vi�ours, and thereby warfare as
such, are seen as masculine actions. As will be shown, with more docu�mentation,
this image does not change much.
Marginalizing war rape and sexual violÂ�ence as a women’s probÂ�lem, a private
prob�lem and/or too shameful to address has kept the vic�tims and their stories and
exÂ�periÂ�ences at arm’s length from polÂ�icy and research anaÂ�lysis. As a conÂ�sequence,
we know very little about the ways in which rape is used in different wars; why
this is the preferred form of viol�ence in certain settings; how the vic�tims and
their soci�eties live with these ex�peri�ences after the war has ended; and what the
polit�ical impact these acts of viol�ence might have during and after a conflict. It is
im�pos�sible to answer all these questions, and in any case this is not the aim of
the chapter; instead, the chapter will map out what was known about war rape
and sexual viol�ence before the Bosnian war broke out.

Rape during World War II

Documentation about war rape and sexual viol�ence during World War II is diffi-
cult to find. Systematic study of this par�ticu�lar form of viol�ence has been diffi-
cult because of the silence of the vic�tims, the unwillingness of milit�ary, polit�ical
and legal authorities to pro�sec�ute offenders, and a gen�eral lack of understanding
of the polit�ical impact of this form of viol�ence. Yet, World War II did represent
some signi�fic�ant changes.
Prior to this war, there had been a movement in the de�velopment of inter�na�
tional law that changed the view of rape as a reward for the victors of war to a
crime against women (De Brouwer 2005: 5). The changes made it pos�sible at
least to attempt inter�na�tional criminal pro�secu�tion of these crimes, and the
Nuremberg and Tokyo trials estab�lished in 1946 were the first. While there was
evid�ence that sexual viol�ence crimes had taken place, and it would have been
pos�sible to pro�sec�ute sexual viol�ence as a war crime and crimes against human-
ity, the will to do so was not very strong (De Brouwer 2005: 7). One reason,
argues Askin (1997: 163), might have been that the Allies’ charges against
German soldiers (who were known to have raped both Jewish and Russian girls
in par�ticu�lar) could have turned back on themselves, and they would have risked
50╇╇ War rapes before the 1990s
being charged with sim�ilar accusations. A comprehensive study by Lilly (2007)
on the use of rape by Amer�ican GIs in Europe during World War II suggests that
the Allies’ fear was well founded. In studying the record of the Judge Advocate
General Branch of the Euro�pean Theater and personal letters, Lilly (2007: 14)
estim�ates that Amer�ican GIs committed more than 17,000 rapes in Ger�many,
France and the UK in the period 1942–1945 (Lilly 2007: 12). The circumstances,
pun�ishments and reasons for committing these crimes varied greatly. Lilly notes
that black GIs ran a greater risk of criminal pro�secu�tion than white, thereby sug-
gesting that there could have been a racist element in the reporting regime (Lilly
2007: 35–36).
Rapes by German forces were also part of the German attack repertoire
according to Brownmiller ([1975] 1991: 50). When villages were invaded, men
would be separated from the women and the German soldiers would ‘have their
way’ with the women, i.e. rape and/or sexually asÂ�sault them. It is interÂ�esting to
note that despite the German pro�hibition of having intimate relations with the
Judenrat, or people in conquered ter�rit�ories in gen�eral, brothels with Jewish
women were set up in many of the German-�occupied areas. The women had
been kidnapped and were kept captive for the sexual pleasure of the German sol-
diers. Similarly, brothels with Russian and Polish women appear to have been
common as well. Wood (2006: 310) estim�ates that 50,000 women and girls were
kept in brothels throughout the German-�occupied ter�rit�ories. Goldstein (2001:
368) notes that the German army would pun�ish soldiers who committed rape on
the Western front, but failed to pun�ish soldiers committing rape on the Eastern
front, presumably because both enemy civilians and soldiers were con�sidered to
be genetically inferior.
Rape by the Russian army is also well docu�mented in the liter�at�ure. When
renowned his�tor�ian Beevor (2002) published his book Berlin: The Downfall
1945, one aspect that received most attention was his docu�mentation of the rape
committed by Russian soldiers in Berlin during the final days of the war. The
Russian ambasÂ�sador to the UK in 2002, Mr. Grigory Karasin, called Beevor’s
descriptions ‘acts of blasphemy’, reÂ�gardÂ�ing them as an affront to the troops that
saved Europe from Nazism (Summers 2002). In his book, Beevor estim�ates that
the Russian soldiers raped as many as two million German women, half of
whom were gang-�raped. The Berlin rapes are thought to have been perpetrated
against about 130,000 women, 10,000 of whom are believed to have committed
sui�cide. Beevor bases his findings on research in German and Soviet archives
and was surprised by what he found. Wood (2006: 309–310) argues that the
rapes of German women in Berlin are among the best docu�mented cases that
exist. Many his�tor�ians have written about this and have had access to a wide
variety of sources – from archives to interÂ�views with vicÂ�tims and former militÂ�ary
officials. Perhaps the most reli�able docu�mentation, how�ever, seems to have been
the two main hos�pitals in Berlin, which give the same numbers as Beevor
presents in his book and suggest a prevalence of about 6 per cent, i.e. that 6 per
cent of the female popu�la�tion in Berlin were raped. The book Eine Frau in
Berlin – Tagebuchaufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945 is based on
 War rapes before the 1990s╇╇ 51
the anonym�ous diary entries of a woman in her thirties who writes about the
Russian takeover and mass rape, which she, too, suffered. Her book confirms
that in her apartment building alone at least 12 women were raped. Beevor, in
the Foreword to the Norwegian translation of the book, claims that based on the
unique characÂ�terÂ�istics of this manuscript he has no reason to doubt the woman’s
accounts of these events. Wood (2006: 310) wonders whether the Russian troops
committed these acts in re�tali�ation for rapes committed by German troops, or as
a form of reward. It is not unlikely that it could very well have been for both
reasons: the Germans did rape women, including Russian women, on the Eastern
front as a way of affirming the victor’s triumph over the Third Reich.
The most docu�mented case of sexual viol�ence during World War II is, how�
ever, what has become known as the ‘rape of Nanking’. The term refers to the
JapÂ�anÂ�ese soldiers’ takeover of the Chinese city of Nanking in DecemÂ�ber 1937
and the brutality with which they moved forward. The rape term is not just a
metaphor for the takeover, it is also an ac�cur�ate description of what actu�ally hap-
pened. Based on the numbers avail�able from a vast array of sources, Wood
(2006: 311) estim�ates that between 8 per cent and 32 per cent of the women (i.e.
20,000 to 80,000) were raped and then ex�ecuted during this attack, which lasted
for a few weeks. An Amer�ican missionary, James M. McCullen, was an eye�wit�
ness to the cruelties from the Nanking Drum Tower Hospital where he worked.
In his diary on 19 Decem�ber 1937 he writes:

Never have I heard or read of such brutality. Rape! Rape! Rape! – we estimÂ�
ate at least 1,000 cases a night, and many by day. In case of resistance or
anything that seems like disapproval there is a bayonet stab or a bullet [.â•›.â•›.]
people are hysterical. [.â•›.â•›.] Women are being carried off every morning and
evening. The whole Jap�an�ese army seems to be free to go and come any-
where it pleases, and to do what it pleases.
(Hu 1992: 20)

What followed was an even more intricate sys�tem of sexual slavery. The Jap�an�
ese militÂ�ary leadership were concerned with the reputation of their soldiers’ bru-
tality and decided to de�velop a sys�tem through which they would have better
control over the as�sumed needs and whereabouts of their men. The solution was
a sysÂ�tem of ‘comfort stations’, where the soldiers could be taken care of by
‘comfort women’. A more precise description of this sysÂ�tem would have been
ab�duction of women into sexual slavery (Chung 1994; Sancho 1997; Soh 1996)
and/or forced prostitution (Hicks 1994). According to Chung’s (1994) figures,
200,000 women were drafted as sex slaves by Jap�an�ese soldiers during World
War II. The great majority were Korean – between 80 per cent and 90 per cent –
but also among the coerced were women from the ter�rit�ories of Manchuria,
Sakhalin, Guangdong, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Sumatra and Papua New Guinea (Chai 1993: 70). Sancho (1997) explains that
the sys�tem was initiated by Jap�an�ese milit�ary personnel not just to prevent rape
by Jap�an�ese soldiers, but also to provide them with free sexual favours and
52╇╇ War rapes before the 1990s
prevent the spread of ve�ner�eal disease. As such, the use, or rather misuse, of
these women was conÂ�sidered a ‘militÂ�ary necessity’ (Blakesley 1997: 201–202).
Indeed, the JapÂ�anÂ�ese militÂ�ary records list these women under the heading ‘militÂ�
ary supplies’ (Chai 1993). This makes it extremely difficult to know how many
women were coerced, where they were during the conflict and where they came
from. The milit�ary records did not even list them individually.
Sancho (1997: 147) argues that the Jap�an�ese milit�ary had a hidden polit�ical
agenda, i.e. to crush the spirit of the occupied popu�la�tion and to subjugate and
annihilate other Asian peoples who the Jap�an�ese felt were racially inferior. The
‘comfort women’ were kidnapped from their famÂ�ilÂ�ies, sometimes under prom-
ises of a better future, but were then detained in brothels where they ex�peri�enced
consecutive rape, lack of food, disease, grave humiliation and phys�ical injury, all
of which are de�scribed in the testimonies from the Executive Committee Inter-
national Public Hearing, 1993. This booklet contains all the reports of the Inter-
national Public Hearing Concerning the Post-�War Compensation of Japan, which
was held in Tokyo on 9 Decem�ber 1992. It was not until the early 1990s that the
‘comfort-Â�woman’ phenomenon became a pubÂ�lic issue. The half-Â�century of
silence was due to factors such as shame, guilt and sui�cide of the vic�tims, as well
as the pat�ri�archal and elitist attitudes of the South Korean gov�ern�ment, explains
Soh (1996). In turn, the Jap�an�ese authorities responded that they had paid for
their misdemeanours through the Tokyo Trials, and had no intention of apologiz-
ing for anything beyond that. Some authors on this theme have attempted to
come to an understanding of how such a sys�tem of sexual slavery could come
into being – and, furthermore, how so many people who knew about it never
raised an eyebrow. Chung (1994) explains that it might have been the her�it�age of
the Jap�an�ese Imperial sys�tem, coupled with a pat�ri�archal social structure that
made it easy for Jap�an�ese soldiers to draft vast numbers of lower-�class Korean
women into sexual slavery. Ueno (1994) claims that Confucian pat�ri�archy,
which urges women not to go pub�lic with stories of rape, must take some blame
for the 50-year-�long silence. To date, women who are still alive have not
received an official apology or monetary compensation for their suffering.

War-�related rape during the 1970s

The 1950s and 1960s passed without much known docu�mentation on war-�related
rapes, but as soon as we hit the 1970s new docu�mentation emerged.
The nine-�month Bangladesh (former East Paki�stan) war of inde�pend�ence
from (West) Paki�stan in 1971 was brutal and violent, and it is estim�ated that
between 200,000 and 400,000 women were raped before Indian forces put down
the rebellion (Sharlach 2000: 94). The majority of these women were Muslim,
Bengali women living traditional lives where the family’s honour was vested in
the sexual honour of their women. The mass use of rape was therefore not only
brutal and humiliating on an indi�vidual level, but had grave social costs for the
women and their fam�il�ies. Prime Minister Mujibur Rahman attempted to coun-
teract the con�sequences by officially declaring the raped women as heroines who
 War rapes before the 1990s╇╇ 53
needed to be protected and rein�teg�rated within their fam�il�ies and com�munit�ies.
Some men responded pos�it�ively, but the majority did not, and required dowry
from the Bengali authorities should they decide to comply with the wishes of the
Prime Minister (Brownmiller [1975] 1991: 83; Sharlach 2000: 95). With such a
high number of raped women, an added prob�lem was the spread of ve�ner�eal
disease and unwanted pregnancies. It is as�sumed that about 25,000 chil�dren were
born through rape, and that many babies were killed or rejected by their birth-�
mothers. In addition, many of the women who became pregnant risked their
health and lives by having primitive abor�tions. What was new about the situ�ation
in Bangladesh, according to Brownmiller ([1975] 1991: 86), was the fact that the
rapes received inter�na�tional attention and were seen as having a polit�ical milit�ary
stra�tegic function. Sharlach (2000: 95) even claims that these events can be seen
as constituting genocide because

the rape forever damages the social standing of the survivor. Bengali girls
and women who endured the geno�cidal rape had to cope not only with their
phys�ical injuries and trauma, but with a soci�ety hostile to violated women.
The blame for loss of honour falls not upon the rapist, but upon the raped.
(Sharlach 2000: 95)

It appears, how�ever, that the Bengali leadership learned that rape and sexual
viol�ence can be effect�ive means of terror against other groups and minor�it�ies in
Bangladesh. It is par�ticu�larly in the southeast region, i.e. the Chittagong Hill
Tracts (CHT) bordering India and Burma/Myanmar, where this has been the case
over several decades. The region is home to more than 13 indi�gen�ous tribes
whose way of life differs from that of the rest of Bangladesh. In the mid 1970s
an armed rebellion began. A peace accord signed in 1997 between the groups
ended the armed conflict, but the human rights violations that triggered the con-
flict con�tinued (Amnesty International 2004a). Numerous sources tell of the use
of rape and sexual viol�ence since the 1970s, including Grech (1993); Amnesty
International (2004a); and IRBC (2005). Guhathakurta (2001: 262) lets us know
that in�forma�tion from one refu�gee camp in India in 1990 indicated that one in
every ten women had been a vic�tim of rape in the CHT, and the Jumma1 women
constituted over 94 per cent of the vic�tims of these rapes. Furthermore, the study
showed that most rapes were committed by Bengali secur�ity forces. The example
of Bangladesh shows that rape and sexual viol�ence can breed more of the same.
While the war in Bangladesh was fierce and brutal, it was mainly the horrors
of the Vietnam wars that formed the col�lect�ive memory of wars in the 1970s. To
prevent the spread of com�mun�ism, the United States, under Lyndon B. Johnson,
sent U.S. combat forces to South Vietnam in 1965. Direct U.S. involvement led
the already on-�going war into a new and more intense phase which lasted until
U.S. milit�ary withdrawal in 1973.2 The Socialist Repub�lic of Vietnam (SRV)
was created in 1975, with the capital estab�lished in Hanoi. Women played a
central role in the Vietnam wars, but in�forma�tion about their parti�cipa�tion is
mostly limited to the war of 1965–1973 against the AmerÂ�icans. The levels of
54╇╇ War rapes before the 1990s
parti�cipa�tion of women were different between the North and South. In the
South, women were not conscripted into the militia, yet in some groups the parti�
cipaÂ�tion of women was high. In the Peoples’ Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF↜),
a subgroup of the NLF, 40 per cent of the regimental commanders were women
(Bergman 1975). In the local guerrilla forces, the parti�cipa�tion of women was
even higher. The situ�ation in the North was different, with nearly all North Viet-
namese women part of the militia and forming the core of self-�defence teams
(Bergman 1975: 171). They operated and managed cooperatives and factories,
and did repair work on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.3 Legislation was also passed to
ensure that where women formed the majority of the work-�force they must be
repres�ented at top management level. During the war, women even had senior
management positions, but after the demobil�iza�tion of a large number of troops,
women returned to the more traditional female jobs.
Documentation about the use of rape during the war, how�ever, is limited to
actions taken by Amer�ican and South Vietnamese forces. Brownmiller (1975]
1991: 86–113) refers to a lengthy conversation with Peter Arnett, Associated
Press cor�res�pondent in Vietnam for eight years, in Paris in 1972 where he stated
that it was commonly understood the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army
rarely committed rape. According to Arnett, the soldiers in the north were
severely reprimanded if they were caught raping and/or looting (beheading,
how�ever, was per�miss�ible!). Furthermore, North Vietnamese women who had
been raped by enemy soldiers were seen as heroines, and the rape was held up as
an example of enemy atro�city. In the South, how�ever, the situ�ation was different.
The use of rape and sexual viol�ence and torture was widely used in interrogation
settings. Brownmiller notes ([1975] 1991: 89), how�ever, that the ways in which
these acts were carried out varied greatly; the South Vietnamese would rape in
silence, while the Amer�icans were more likely to orchestrate gang rape vis�ible to
a larger audience. This observation is vividly, and chillingly, depicted in the
Oliver Stone movie Platoon from 1986, where the main character played by
Charlie Sheen rescues a young Vietnamese girl from a group of Amer�ican sol-
diers raping her on the bare ground under the supervision of their milit�ary com-
mander. There are few, if any, stat�ist�ics about the use of rape by the South
Vietnamese and/or Amer�ican forces. But numerous stories, including docu�
mentation from the My Lai mas�sacre on 16 March 1968, show that rape and
sexual viol�ence appear to have accompanied other forms of viol�ence committed
during the war years. Paradoxically, one reason for its under-�reporting might
have been the sheer magnitude of the instances of rape and sexual viol�ence:
‘that’s an everyÂ�day affair [.â•›.â•›.] you can nail just about everybody on that – at
least once. The guys are human, man’.4 According to this former soldier, men
will be men, and the many, yet unassembled, stories, from Vietnam, do not
prove him wrong. Still, rape in war was not con�sidered ser�ious enough to be part
of polit�ical debates.
 War rapes before the 1990s╇╇ 55
Rape during the wars in the 1980s
Rape was first taken more ser�iously during the 1980s. There is an emergence of
conflict-�related rape and sexual viol�ence docu�mentation which is more geo-
graphically clustered, and there are more overviews and fewer an�ec�dotal stories.
In this section I therefore attempt to reflect this de�velopment by presenting the
liter�at�ure on sexual viol�ence in war geographically by looking at the Amer�icas,
Asia and Africa, respectively.
Starting with the Amer�icas, it can quickly be estab�lished that there are a
number of coun�tries in which rape connected with polit�ical conflict has been
docu�mented. According to Seager (1997: 56), the sys�tematic rape of women and
chil�dren by soldiers has taken place in Chile, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Peru
and Suriname. Bunster-�Burotto (1986) attempts to provide a gen�eral overview of
how various forms of sexual torture have been ex�peri�enced by women in the
region, and makes a distinction between the conflict-�ridden coun�tries in Central
Amer�ica and the Southern Cone. She argues that women in Central Amer�ican
coun�tries have been vic�tims of many forms of viol�ence, including sexual viol�
ence, as part of gen�eralized viol�ence in the various coun�tries, whereas women in
the Southern Cone have been targeted specifically, and sys�tematically identified
for polit�ical interrogation by secur�ity/milit�ary forces. These women have suf-
fered sexual and other forms of torture as a result. Examples of conflict-�ridden
coun�tries in Central Amer�ica are Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. In the
case of Guatemala, the longest civil war in Latin-�American his�tory, which lasted
from 1960 to 1996, the early 1980s was marked by intensified viol�ence due to
more counter-�insurgency cam�paigns against an increasing number of guerrilla
groups (Hauge 2008: 300). The period 1978–1985 has therefore been known as
La Violencia, and the Commission for Historical Clarification has estim�ated that
93 per cent of the viol�ence (more than 200,000 people are thought to have been
killed during the war years) and human rights abuses were committed by state
secur�ity forces during those years. The use of sexual viol�ence was part of the
pattern of viol�ence used by the state forces against counter-�insurgency groups
(Leiby 2009). Sexual viol�ence was used against men and women in detention
centres and in com�mun�ity settings (CEH 1999).
In El Salvador, how�ever, there are rel�at�ively few reports of the sys�tematic use
of rape and sexual viol�ence during the war from 1980 to 1991. Reports that do
exist, how�ever, docu�ment a pattern sim�ilar to the one seen in Guatemala: rape
used by gov�ern�ment secur�ity forces against guerrilla groups (Bastick et al. 2007:
75), but this appears to have been less widespread than was the case in Guate-
mala. During her 26-month fieldwork stay in El Salvador researching sexual
viol�ence abuse, Wood (2006) heard of no sexual viol�ence attacks by FMLN
against civilians − a finding comÂ�patÂ�ible with what Bastick et al. (2007) discov-
ered in their studies docu�menting sexual viol�ence around the globe.
Sexual viol�ence during the Nicaraguan war followed a sim�ilar pattern to the
two previous cases. Ward (2002) reports that sexual viol�ence was an inherent
part of the conflict, and among indi�gen�ous women par�ticu�larly. In all three
56╇╇ War rapes before the 1990s
coun�tries, women were im�port�ant in the guerrilla forces; they constituted about
30 per cent of the FMLN combatants and about 40 per cent of the leadership in
El Salvador; and women constituted 30 per cent of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
This might be one reason why these groups are not reported to have committed
sexual viol�ence on a large scale (some docu�mentation of certain instances does
exist, however).
If we now turn to the coun�tries in the Southern Cone, we can see much clearer
patterns of politÂ�ically targeted forms of sexual violÂ�ence abuse. The ‘dirty war’ in
Argentina (1976–1983), where between 10,000 and 30,000 people are thought to
have been killed, is a case in point. Argentina’s National Commission on Disap-
peared People (1986), commissioned by President Raúl Alfonsín shortly after he
took office in 1983, is an investigation into the fate of the thou�sands of people
who disappeared during the militÂ�ary dicÂ�tatorship 1976–1983. The most heinous
forms of torture and other crimes are de�scribed at length in the words of those
who ex�peri�enced them and survived. Sexual torture and rape are in�teg�ral parts of
these accounts. Several male vic�tims reveal how their genitals were mutilated
and/or tortured during interrogation. The same was true of the female vic�tims,
but in addition they ex�peri�enced rape to a seemingly greater extent than their
fellow male desaparecidos. This report clearly dem�on�strates that rape and sexual
viol�ence go together; they cannot be viewed in isolation from other types of
torture.
Reports from the conflict in Peru are no more uplifting. In a thorough study
comparing truth commission data from Guatemala and Peru, Leiby (2009: 454)
concludes that sexual viol�ence appears four times more frequently in Guatemala
than in Peru. More docu�mentation can be found in Amnesty International (1989)
and Human Rights Watch (HRW 1992) where both organ�iza�tions docu�ment
sexual viol�ence in Peru, albeit in different ways. Amnesty International provides
detailed accounts of human rights abuses in the areas in Peru where a state of
emergency had been declared in 1988. A substantial part of the report devoted to
the situ�ation of women in these areas clearly defines rape as torture, and argues
that women of all ages and social classes were vulner�able to sexual abuse in the
emergency zones. Rape took place after women and chil�dren had been separated
from their men, when they were being held in detention, or when they simply
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Human Rights Watch, on
the other hand, sees rape as a pos�sible weapon of war. Their Peru report investi-
gates how sexual viol�ence was used by the secur�ity forces as well as by the
Shining Path. They seem to have detected a pattern where the secur�ity forces
employed rape as a means of weakening what they con�sidered to be opposi�tional
persons in the conflict. ‘Information collected [.â•›.â•›.] suggests that rape by the
secur�ity forces threatens all women equally, but that four elements characterize
women who are at greater risk of actual attack: race, social class, occupation,
and the explosive mix of gender and armed insurgency par�ticu�lar to the Shining
Path and its female cadre’ (HRW 1992: 16). In other words, women were tar-
geted for stra�tegic reasons. The common denominator is that sexual torture was
carried out by milit�ary personnel during interrogation or in detention cells. The
 War rapes before the 1990s╇╇ 57
vast majority of vic�tims were women who had become polit�ically active or were
related to men who were involved polit�ically, or both (Bunster-�Burotto 1986:
302–303). Sexual torture is intended to instil fear and humiliation. In an artÂ�icle
giving con�sider�able detail on the various means of torture and sexual mutilation,
Bunster-�Burotto offers elaborate ana�lyses of how this par�ticu�lar kind of torture
plays upon the traditional gender roles in Latin Amer�ican cultures. She argues
that the use of sexual viol�ence in pat�ri�archal, macho-�dominated soci�eties rein-
forces the ideo�logical subordination of women in the family and soci�ety at large
(Bunster-�Burotto 1986: 307). She goes on to argue that this was one of the main
goals, in addition to the polit�ical goals, because it would humiliate inde�pend�ent
and intellectual women who could challenge men. Gang rape, repeated rapes,
and rape simul�tan�eously with other forms of cruel and inhumane torture appear
to have been common.
Turning our attention to Asia, Seager (1997: 56) reports the sys�tematic rape
of women and chil�dren by soldiers in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambo-
dia, India, Iraq, Papua New Guinea and in the Philippines during the 1980s and
1990s. Bastick et al. (2007: 89) report that sexual viol�ence was part of the imme�
diate post-�Soviet rule of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and was used to expel
and oppress com�munit�ies. The Taliban rule which followed, how�ever, is thought
to have decreased the level of sexual viol�ence in the mid 1990s.
Looking to Cambodia, we can see patterns of rape dating back to the ‘reign of
terror’ between 1975 and 1979, when the Khmer Rouge did not hold back on
any kind of viol�ence and human rights abuses in their war effort. It was par�ticu�
larly in interrogation settings with women captives that sexual viol�ence appears
to have been committed frequently by Khmer Rouge officials. Throughout the
1980s, the guerrilla warfare also brought reports about rape being committed by
the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces in addition to the viol�ence patterns already
estab�lished by the Khmer Rouge.
Another example of how rape has been employed as a stra�tegic weapon in
making people flee their homes can be found in two reports focusing on the situ�
ation in Kashmir in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Asia Watch 1993, 1994).
This territory, which covers the northern part of India and Paki�stan, is inhabited
by a predominantly Muslim popu�la�tion and has been the site of Indian/Paki�stan
conÂ�troÂ�versy ever since PakiÂ�stan’s indeÂ�pendÂ�ence. According to an Asia Watch
report from 1993, rape by the Indian secur�ity forces has been used as a tactical
weapon to humiliate and pun�ish the entire com�mun�ity to which the indi�vidual
woman belongs (Asia Watch 1993: 1). In addition to identi�fying in detail where
most rape has taken place since 1990, the report includes several personal testi-
monies from vic�tims. The re�com�mendations of the report strongly urge that the
pattern of impunity be stopped; even though rape is pun�ish�able under Indian law,
no police officers or members of the secur�ity forces have been convicted of rape
(Asia Watch 1993: 5–6). It is also suggested that female officers be encouraged
to assist during search opera�tions because this makes it easier to obtain testimo-
nies from rape vic�tims. In its 1994 report, Asia Watch (1994: 1) de�scribes how
the first reports of rape emerged soon after the govÂ�ernÂ�ment’s crackdown on
58╇╇ War rapes before the 1990s
rising viol�ence by armed milit�ant groups began in 1990. Incidents of rape follow
a pattern seen in many other conflicts: soldiers enter the homes of civilians, order
the men to leave or be killed and then rape the women. The report relates numer-
ous case stories exemplifying this pattern. Most are presented together with the
comments/reactions of the Indian authorities, who sys�tematically deny that rape
has taken place. Occasionally, rape has been investigated, but also this report
confirms that no one has been sentenced. Impunity seems to be the norm.
Nor was the African continent spared sexual viol�ence abuses during the
1980s. According to Seager (1997: 56), sys�tematic rape occurred in the conflicts
in Angola, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda in the
1980s and 1990s. In Angola, the conflict leading up to the signing of the cease-
fire in 1989 brought an end to the fighting between the Cuban sup�ported MPLA
and UNITA. Human Rights Watch (HRW 2003) has reported that in the pro�cess
leading up to the cease-�fire in 1989 (and in the conflicts that have followed)
ab�duction, sexual slavery, forced recruitment and forced marriages of women
and girls to combatants on all sides were common.
In Mozambique, after inde�pend�ence in 1975, war erupted between the
FRELIMO and RENAMO in 1977 and lasted until 1992. It was par�ticu�larly
brutal, and all par�ties to the conflict are reported to have used various forms of
sexual viol�ence against civilians. It has been reported in areas held by
RENAMO, that women and girls as young as 8 years of age were raped in front
of their family or com�mun�ity, fathers were forced to commit incest, and women
were forcibly impregnated, ab�ducted and held as sex slaves (Bastick et al. 2007:
51). The high number of child soldiers in the conflict also meant that girl soldiers
were par�ticu�larly vulner�able to rape. Another detrimental misconception was that
if infected with HIV/AIDS one could rid oneself of the disease by raping a
woman who would then ‘take over’ the disease. These notions led to the spread
of HIV/AIDS in alarmingly high numbers. Finally, the concept of ‘survival sex’
emerged in the imme�diate aftermath of the ceasefire and led to an increase in
prostitution, which, not by chance, coincided with the arrival of UN peacekeep-
ers, i.e. a market to which sex could be sold.
The situ�ation is no less grim in Uganda, where a report from 1991 states that
70 per cent of women in the Luwero District reported having been raped by sol-
diers, and a large proportion gang-�raped by groups of up to ten soldiers (Bastick
et al. 2007: 65). Africa Watch (1993) has docuÂ�mented the use of rape in a refu­
gee camp situ�ation in northeastern Kenya, where an estim�ated 200,000 Somali
refu�gees live. Refugee camps are known to be par�ticu�larly unsafe places for
women, many of whom live alone with their chil�dren because their husbands
have been killed or have disappeared. In sociÂ�eties where a woman’s safety is
de�pend�ent on having a male pro�tector, refu�gee camps are far from safe retreats
from the conflict zone, as this report vividly shows. For half of the women in
this par�ticu�lar refu�gee camp who reported being raped in the camp, rape was a
factor that had caused them to flee in the first place (Africa Watch 1993: 8).
Most rape reported within the camp was gang rape, and often repeated rape,
although it was not always the same people committing it (Africa Watch 1993:
 War rapes before the 1990s╇╇ 59
12). The perpetrators were usually deÂ�scribed as Shiftas – Somali Kenyan or
Somali bandits who enter the compound and threaten the refu�gees with looting,
beating and killings in addition to rape. But also Kenyan police, secur�ity officials
and fellow refu�gees were among the rapists (Africa Watch 1993: 7). Allegedly, a
common occurrence is being raped during the night, when herding goats or col-
lecting firewood outside the camp or, sometimes, although this is said to be rel�
atÂ�ively rare, during Kenyan police interrogation (Africa Watch 1993: 10–16).
Some of the women have reported how their ethÂ�niÂ�city – clan identity – became
signi�fic�ant for the perpetrators. Some of the women who have given testimony
say that they were first questioned about their eth�ni�city before being raped. If a
woman was from the same clan as the perpetrator, she might be spared. The
widespread practice of genital mutilation in Somali culture adds to the phys�ical
injuries caused by the rape. For many of these women, being raped has destroyed
the pos�sib�il�ity of having children.

Summary
This overview has shown that rape in war is by no means a new phenomenon.
Rape has been docu�mented in many different conflicts, but the docu�mentation is
diverse and not com�par�able from one case to the next. It is therefore im�pos�sible
to determine whether these new wars which broke out in the 1990s, and the
Bosnian war in par�ticu�lar, repres�ented an increase in sexual viol�ence, or whether
we were witnessing new patterns of sexual viol�ence. It will be long into the new
century before we can argue for or against increasing numbers or new patterns in
sexual viol�ence in war with numeric certainty.
What this chapter has also shown is that the phenomenon of sexual viol�ence
before the 1990s was perhaps not as hidden as one might have thought. Rather, it
is the polit�ical ana�lysis of these events which has been largely ab�sent. Comment-
ators and analysts have not looked into the ways in which sexual viol�ence has
impacted on secur�ity situ�ations beyond the obvious threat to the indi�vidual vic�
tim’s securÂ�ity. What these acts of violÂ�ence have come to mean for the larger con-
flict patterns, and how they affect inter�na�tional peace and stability, were largely
unac�know�ledged questions. The Bosnian war changes this conceptualization.
5 The turning points in the 1990s
which created a new
understanding of war rape

Before the outbreak of the Bosnian war, the 1990s started with a feeling of
enthusiasm and opÂ�timÂ�ism for the future. The Cold War was over, new demoÂ�cra­
cies were booming and some of the long-�lasting conflicts in Latin Amer�ica and
Africa had come to an end. Displays of national pride and symbols in, for
example, post-�communist coun�tries were regarded as pos�it�ive changes. Little did
we know in 1990 that it would be precisely these national signs and symbols that
would give rise to a new kind of war – war within states, and between people in
orÂ�ganÂ�ized groups often with religious or ethnic characÂ�terÂ�istics (Tønnesson 2008:
127). These were wars of identity, where friends and family could turn against
each other simply with the re�cog�ni�tion that the Other was a Serb, Bosniak, Hutu
or Tutsi. These were wars in which civilians were the prime target, and in which
the weapons of war were not the latest in milit�ary tech�no�logy, but knives,
Kalashnikovs and rape. Consequently, it was these wars which changed the ways
in which rape in war has come to be understood. Tompkins (1995: 852) has ele­
gantly summar�ized the essence of this change in the fol�low�ing quote:

Rape, like geno�cide, will not be deterred unless and until the stories are
heard. People must hear the horrifying, think the unthinkable and speak the
unspeakable.

It was hearing of the horrifying, thinking of the unthinkable and speaking of the
unspeakable that brought about new conceptualizations of rape in war and this
chapter outlines the main events and con�sequences of this shift in the 1990s.

Sexual violence conceptualized as a weapon of war

The most imÂ�portÂ�ant conceptual change during the 1990s was that sexual viol­
ence came to be seen as a weapon of war. Within the schol�arly liter�at�ure, how�
ever, it is far from clear what sexual viol�ence is, and whether or not, or how, it is
a weapon of war. There is no consensus as to whether sexual violÂ�ence is a ques­
tion of sex with a violent manifestation, or whether it is the reverse, i.e. viol�ence
with a sexual manifestation. The definition of rape and sexual crimes has
changed over time. In co�lo�nial periods, rape was defined as non-�consensual
 Turning points in the 1990s╇╇ 61
relations with a married woman when the man was someone other than, or infe­
rior to, the husband of the vicÂ�tim (Donat and d’Emilio 1998: 36). PsychoanaÂ�lytÂ�
ical theory, on the other hand, pathologized the perpetrator of this kind of
viol�ence and regarded rape exclusively as deviant and ab�nor�mal beha�vi�our.
Finally, fem�in�ist scholarship has brought an understanding of rape and sexual
viol�ence as instances of viol�ence, dominance and control aimed at maintaining
patÂ�riÂ�archy and women’s subordinate position within this social order (Donat and
d’Emilio 1998: 36–41). To complicate things even further, sexual violÂ�ence man­
ifests in many forms, and is not just a question of rape; forced prostitution/mar­
riage, genital mutilation and forced nakedness are examples in addition to rape.1
If sexual viol�ence is to be regarded as a weapon of war, it has to have certain
charac�ter�istics that distinguish it from other kinds of viol�ence and weapons of
war. The term ‘weapon of war’ has not been made an expliÂ�cit theme in politÂ�ical
philosophical discourse, and it has no agreed-�upon definition. The common use
of the term, howÂ�ever, demÂ�onÂ�strates a practice of shared beliefs and ideas.2 Web­
ster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language defines a
weapon as: (1) any instrument or device for use in attack or defence in combat,
fighting or war, as a sword, rifle, cannon, etc.; (2) anything used against an
op�pon�ent, adversary or vic�tim; or (3) any part or organ serving for attack or
defence, such as claws, horn, teeth, stings, etc. But not all weapons in the con­
ventional sense will be weapons of war, and not all weapons of war will be regu­
lar weapons. The determining features for both regu�lar and non-�regular weapons
to be characterized as weapons of war are that they are used as part of a sys�
tematic polit�ical cam�paign that has stra�tegic milit�ary purposes.
It is not easy to explain why aggressors in a conflict situ�ation resort to the use
of sexual viol�ence. Intuitively, it all seems so wrong. With advanced milit�ary
tech�no�logy, one would think that aggressors preferred to use weapons which
increased the distance between perpetrator and vicÂ�tim. And yet, what Tønnesson
(2008), as well as others (i.e. Kaldor 1999), has called the ‘new wars’ demÂ�onÂ�
strates patterns of increased intimacy between aggressors and vic�tims. How can
we explain this surprising tend�ency of aggressors to involve themselves and their
own bodies as part of the aggression? What do they expect to achieve by this
kind of violence?
Taking the docu�mentation de�scribed in the previous chapter as a starting
point, we can as�sume the fol�low�ing; namely, that aggressors are not aberrant
indi�viduals, but normal people who find themselves in ab�nor�mal situ�ations where
common norms of beha�vi�our no longer apply. In other words, theories about
pathological behaÂ�viÂ�ours would not help us much in understanding the perpetra­
tors. Also, the use of sys�tematic rape in a war situ�ation seems more pre�val�ent in
the conflict patterns of the 1990s (Hernes 2008). It may be concluded from this
that use of sexual violÂ�ence is aimed at targeting the vicÂ�tim’s identity – whether
gender, eth�ni�city, religion or other. Lastly, sexual viol�ence appears to be an
effect�ive way of removing groups of people from a given territory, and as such
is effect�ive deterrence. In addition, it is im�port�ant to realize that sexual viol�ence
does not occur in a vacuum; usually, it is followed by other forms of viol�ence,
62╇╇ Turning points in the 1990s
such as torture or killings, which makes it hard to isolate the con�sequences of
sexual violÂ�ence itself. What we can estabÂ�lish, howÂ�ever, is that use of sexual viol­
ence in addition to other kinds of viol�ence accelerates the effects intended by the
perpetrators. But then, what might the intentions of the perpetrators be?
Seifert (1994: 57–66) has attempted to map this out by formulating five
hypotheses about sexual viol�ence in war. First, she argues that sexual viol�ence
can be seen as an in�teg�ral part of warfare. Throughout his�tory, Seifert says,
there has always been viol�ence against women of the conquered territory. Sexual
violÂ�ence becomes part of a repertoire of actions and behaÂ�viÂ�ours which male sol­
diers are socialized to perform. It does not mean that all male soldiers will do
this, but it is part of a gen�eral conceptualization of warfare.
Second, sexual viol�ence can be seen as an element of male communication,
i.e. as the symbolic humiliation of a male opÂ�ponÂ�ent. This is based on the under­
standing that men protect women and that a woman is a man’s possession.
When, in a conflict situÂ�ation, a man rapes a woman of the ‘other side’, this act
com�munic�ates that the husband/father of the woman is unable to protect not only
the indi�vidual woman, but also his prop�erty, his coun�try, his nation, etc.
Third, sexual violÂ�ence can be seen as a way of reaffirming masculinity. Mili­
tary conduct is de�pend�ent on loy�alty to the cause and loy�alty among soldiers.
Furthermore, milit�ar�ism is based on the reduction of indi�vidual identity. The
militÂ�ary has always felt threatened by idiosyncratic sexual expression (gays/les­
bians) deviÂ�atÂ�ing from the accepted norm. Enloe (1993: 52) explains that ‘the
glue [of militÂ�arÂ�ism] is camaraderie, the base of that glue is masculinity’; and
here one might add heterosexual masculinity. One way of ensuring masculine
solid�arity among soldiers is to exclude women and homosexuals from the milit�
ary. In most coun�tries where women have been accepted in the milit�ary, this pro�
cess has been preceded by intense debate. Militaries need ‘real’ men, and being
a real man in this con�text means being able to suppress feelings of in�secur�ity,
gentleness and other characÂ�terÂ�istics commonly conÂ�sidered femÂ�inÂ�ine. A combina­
tion of these pro�cesses of masculinization might make it easier for men to
commit sexual violÂ�ence in war situÂ�ations. As an example, the majority of testi­
monies of raped women in Bosnia reveal that they were subjected to gang rape
(Bennett et al. 1995: 231–251; Stiglmayer 1994a: 86–147). Group pressure
makes it difficult for an indi�vidual soldier to refuse to rape, because this reveals
‘weakness’. He would deviate from the militaristic heterosexual norm.
Fourth, sexual viol�ence can be seen as a way of destroying the culture of the
op�pon�ent. In the war in Bosnia, the goal was to destroy, or at least deport,
members of other ethnic groups. Rape, for instance by Serbs on Muslim and
Croat women, was a cata�lyst in this forced migration pro�cess. Women are often
seen as the biological bearers of a given culture and/or ethnic group (Sofos 1996:
64). When their procreative abil�it�ies have been manipulated, either by forced
pregnancy or by making it im�pos�sible for girls to have chil�dren in the future, the
biological basis for a given nation is destroyed. Allen (1996: 100) characterizes
this as geno�cidal rape. She says that the identity of the indi�vidual woman is
reduced to her procreative abil�it�ies; the cultural identity of the woman is ignored.
 Turning points in the 1990s╇╇ 63
For the indi�vidual woman, how�ever, the situ�ation may be different. For her, not
only having to bear the enemy’s child (i.e. attributing the ethÂ�niÂ�city of the rapist
to the child), but also nurturing it for years to come, may be life-�long torture.
Fifth, sexual viol�ence can be seen as an outcome of misogyny. Although
sexual viol�ence in the war in Bosnia has been sys�tematically aimed at non-�Serb
groups, Serbian women, too, have been raped. Seifert (1994: 65) explains that
‘women are raped not because they are enemies, but because they are the objects
of fundaÂ�mental hatred that characterizes the cultural unconscious and is actual­
ized in times of crisis’. Studies of refuÂ�gees supÂ�port Seifert’s claim: the use of
sexual violÂ�ence increases among refuÂ�gees, both doÂ�mestic violÂ�ence and ‘pubÂ�lic’
violÂ�ence (Byrne 1996; Comas-Â�Díaz and Jansen 1995), because there is an
increase in the level of frustration which is taken out on the weak. Seifert’s
theses inherently argue that the understandings of sexual viol�ence as a weapon
of war should not be regarded as devi�ations from the heterosexual hege�mony in
which we all live, but rather as stra�tegic manipulations of that same hegemony.

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995): mass

documentation
The most lethal conflicts in Europe since World War II took place in the ter�rit�
ories of the former Yugoslavia. After the secession of Croatia and Slovenia in
1991, and of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, Europe witnessed atrocities
which many thought had ended with the Holocaust. The exact number of casual­
ties, refu�gees and in�ternally displaced persons will never be known, but the
pattern of ‘ethnic cleansing’, which many critics have called a euphemism for
geno�cide, has left wounds and scars which will take generations to heal. An
in�teg�ral part of ethnic cleansing was the use of sexual violence.
It was only when Roy Gutman of Newsday reported (as early as July 1992)
that he had visited a concentration camp in Manjaca in northwestern Bosnia that
the use of sexual viol�ence became known inter�na�tionally. Gutman had witnessed
Muslim prisoners being terrorized by Serb captors (Silber and Little 1996: 249).
When he later learned about other concentration camps, among them the noÂ�tori­
ous death camp at Brocko Luka, he discovered that women were being held as
prisoners – witnesses telling him that these women were routinely raped. A new
term was born, ‘rape camps’, which were seen as versions of a concentration
camp. The same was true of the camps in Vogosca, Omarska and Tronopolje
(Gutman 1993: xi). The liter�at�ure is not consistent on how many, or indeed
where, rape camps existed in Bosnia. Smith (1997: 34) identifies six: in Brcko,
Doboj, Foca, Gorazde, Kalinovik and Visegrad, i.e. mostly in the eastern part of
Bosnia. Vranic (1996: 7), on the other hand, also identifies six rape/death camps,
but mostly in the northern part: in Camp, Keraterm, Luka, Manjaca, Omarska
and Tronopolje. Allen (1996: 65) explains that res�taur�ants, hotels, hos�pitals,
schools, factories, peacetime brothels and other buildings served as rape
camps€ and that the aggressors were mostly Serb personnel from the Yugoslav
Army, irreguÂ�lar Serb soldiers, known as Chetniks3 and even civilians. Allen’s
64╇╇ Turning points in the 1990s
description captures only part of the pic�ture, because rape occurred on all sides
of the conflicts. Stiglmayer (1994a: 115) emphas�izes that docu�mentation can be
found of rape camps on the Bosnian, Croat and Serb sides alike. Common to
most of the reports and docu�ments she has reviewed concerning the rape camps
is that they are undocu�mented and vague. As soon as any camp was identified, it
was dissolved and a new one estab�lished in an area in�access�ible to outsiders like
the International Red Cross (Stiglmayer 1994a: 115). This may help explain
some of the vari�ation in the docu�mentation of rape camps in Bosnia. As shown
in the previous chapter, rape and other sexual viol�ence in prison settings are
nothing new to violent conflict. Sexual forms of torture have been all too
common during interrogation, imprisonment and raids. Yet, Bosnian stories of
rape appeared different from what had been seen in previous conflicts; sexual
violÂ�ence was reported to be sysÂ�tematic and targeted against members of differ­
ent ethnic groups on a larger scale than had previously been docu�mented in other
wars.
Salzman (1998: 356) refers to the so-�called RAM plan, which, it is alleged,
was written by Serb army officers in late AuÂ�gust 1991. RAM means ‘loom’ and
is said to characterize the Serb milit�ary pol�icy of weaving its way from many
angles across Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (Allen 1996: 58). The plan
mentions raping women and chil�dren as an efficient and in�teg�ral tool in the pro�
cess of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was the
Yugoslav National Army (JNA) Psychological Operations Department that had
made the folÂ�lowÂ�ing observation about Muslim behaÂ�viÂ�our: ‘[t]heir morale, desire
for battle, and will could be crushed more easily by raping women, espe�cially
minors and even chilÂ�dren’ (Salzman 1998: 356). Salzman therefore concludes
that the or�gan�ized structure of the mass rapes and rape camps was planned as
early as Au�gust 1991. This might well be the case, but it explains only part of
the pic�ture, because it was not just Serbs who raped Muslims during the four-�
year war. The local as well as inter�na�tional criminal pro�secu�tions of perpetrators
show that the Bosniak and Croat militias also engaged in this form of viol�ence
and it is clear that its use spread from one ethnic group to the next throughout
the conflict years.
There are at least three features about war rape reporting from the Bosnian
conflict which set these events apart from rape stories in other conflicts and
suggest a change in the way in which sexual viol�ence in war came to be
understood.
First, the fact that the term ‘rape camp’ was introduced in interÂ�naÂ�tional report­
ing and docu�mentation suggests that these acts were seen as something different
from random acts of viol�ence. It suggests that the intention behind holding
women in detention/prison settings was not prim�arily to get in�forma�tion about
male members of their fam�il�ies or other kinds of in�forma�tion which could
advance the rebel group’s cause, as was the case in many Latin AmerÂ�ican con­
flicts in the 1980s. The men and women who were held in detention and suffered
various forms of sexual torture were picked out because of their ethnic identities,
not to provide in�forma�tion. In other words, rape and sexual viol�ence were seen
 Turning points in the 1990s╇╇ 65
as an in�teg�ral part of ethnic cleansing. These stories were uncovered by both
local and inter�na�tional journ�al�ists only months after the fighting broke out in
April 1992.
Second, as a conÂ�sequence of the organÂ�izaÂ�tional and targeted structure men­
tioned above, the notion of rape being used as a weapon of war in this conflict
caught on, both do�mestically and in the inter�na�tional com�mun�ity. In order to
docu�ment that rape was being used sys�tematically, several fact-�finding missions
were or�gan�ized in late 1992 and early 1993, i.e. within one year of the beginning
of the viol�ence. Amnesty International was one of the first organ�iza�tions to docu�
ment sexual violÂ�ence in an ‘orÂ�ganÂ�ized or sysÂ�tematic way, with the deliberate
detention of women for the purpose of rape and sexual abuse’ as early as 21
Janu�ary 1993 (Amnesty International 1993). In Febru�ary 1993, the Euro�pean
Community delivered its report to Euro�pean Community Foreign Ministers (and
to the United Nations Security Council at the same time) (UNSC 1993), who
estim�ated that the number of women raped was between 10,000 and 60,000, but
later settled on 20,000.4 Alongside these efforts, the United Nations set up its
own commission led by Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human
Rights Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who presented several reports on the human rights
situ�ation in the former Yugoslavia. He concluded that rape and sexual viol�ence
clearly were being used to ‘humiliate, shame, degrade and terrify the entire
ethnic group’ (Mazowiecki 1993: para. 85). In this report, Maszowiecki is hesi­
tant to put a number to how many women were thought to have been raped, but
as the quote shows he confirms that it was seen as sys�tematic, widespread and
intentional. He expressed great concern in Febru�ary 1993 that there were too
many organ�iza�tions engaged in too many fact-�finding missions, thus creating
docu�mentation fatigue among vic�tims. When he was in the initial stages of his
work for the United Nations, the Euro�peans had already delivered their report
alongside Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, and there were groups such as the
Coordinative Group of Women’s Organizations of Bosnia and Herzegovina
claiming that the figure could be as high as 50,000;5 indi�vidual researchers and
NGO networks estim�ate that as many as 60,000 women had been raped.6 The
collection and pub�lication of such figures sparked off a chain reaction of hatred
and hostility in which Muslims, Croats and Serbs all took part, and which, in
turn, most likely led to more rape being committed.7 The true numbers will never
be known.
Third, the conflict took place in Europe between white Euro�peans, and while
this last point has not been discussed thoroughly in the schol�arly liter�at�ure, nor
can it be proved sci�ent�ifically, it is highly likely that reports of rape were taken
more ser�iously because the (white) Western world identified with the vic�tims
they were seeing and hearing about. It was not pos�sible just to dis�regard the
stories as being part of distant cultural traditions or unfamiliar gender relations.
Rather, the massive docu�mentation and the pub�lic exposure of the stories in the
inter�na�tional media were told to us by white Euro�peans, and this made us listen
and ana�lyse these events in ways that had not been done in the past.
66╇╇ Turning points in the 1990s
The genocide in Rwanda (1994): more documentation
In the midst of the Bosnian war, a human cata�strophe was taking place in one of
Africa’s smallest counÂ�tries, Rwanda. Here the horrors of Bosnia were being
relived, only this time in the space of an unima�gin�able few months in 1994.
Extreme viol�ence between the Hutu and Tutsi popu�la�tions erupted in
April€ 1994 after the death of Rwandan presÂ�idÂ�ent Juvénal Habyarimana, whose
plane had been shot down on 6 April by milit�ant forces. The conflict between the
Hutu and Tutsi popu�la�tions was rooted in a long his�tory of unequal power
sharing between two major ethnic groups. Hutus had accounted for 90 per cent
of the popuÂ�laÂ�tion in the past, while the Tutsi minorÂ�ity was conÂ�sidered the aris­
tocracy of Rwanda. For decades while Rwanda was under Belgian rule, the
Tutsis dominated the Hutus. Rwanda gained inde�pend�ence from Belgium in
1962, and has since been led by Hutu leaders, President Juvénal Habyarimana
the longest ruling among them. During these years, as well as during the riots
leading up to the end of Belgian rule in which more than 20,000 Tutsis were
killed, many Tutsis fled the coun�try to neigh�bouring Burundi, Tanzania and
Uganda. Under Hutu rule, the Tutsis were portrayed as the scapegoats of many
different crises, and their response was to or�gan�ize what became known as the
Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF↜), led by Paul Kagame. It was mostly Tutsi refu�
gees in Uganda, sup�ported by some moderate Hutus, who formed the core of this
group and whose aim was to overthrow Habyarimana and secure the right
to€ return to their homeland. Civil unrest and viol�ence followed, and the final
straw was the killing of President Juvénal Habyarimana. Exactly who shot
down€the plane (the pres�id�ent of Burundi was among the pas�sen�gers) has never
been estab�lished, but the Tutsi-�led RPF was blamed. Very soon after the
incident, indeed within hours, the presÂ�idÂ�enÂ�tial guard initiated a camÂ�paign of ret­
ribution targeting Tutsi and moderate Hutus. An unofficial militia group called
the Interahamwe, which means ‘those who attack together’, was mobilized.
Soldiers and police officers, in addition to a strong radio and media cam�paign,
encouraged ordinary cit�izens to take part in the mayhem. The BBC (2008)
reported that in some cases Hutu civilians were being forced by militÂ�ary person­
nel to murder their Tutsi neigh�bours. Participants were often given incentives,
such as money or food; some were even told they could appropriate the land of
the Tutsis they killed. The 100-day geno�cide, which came to an end in June
1994, had produced a death toll of over 800,000, in addition to widespread rape
and sexual violence.
The inter�na�tional pres�ence and inter�ven�tion, or rather lack thereof, during the
100-day geno�cide, also con�trib�uted to the disaster. As the name suggests, the
United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was a sup�porting
mission whose pri�mary aim was implementation of the Arusha Accords8 (signed
on 4 Au�gust 1993) meant to end the Rwandan Civil War. The mission lasted
from Octo�ber 1993 to March 1996, but was severely hampered by its mandate
(which was to sup�port but not to intervene in direct fighting) and by the fact that
violÂ�ence was directed at the soldiers in the mission itself. The lack of interÂ�ven­
 Turning points in the 1990s╇╇ 67
tion on the part of the inter�na�tional com�mun�ity was, and still is, a blemish on the
United Nations sys�tem, its respons�ibil�ities and capabilities.
The Special Rapporteur on Rwanda, René Degni-Â�Segui, concluded in his first
report to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Janu�ary 1996 that it was likely
between 250,000 and 500,000 women and girls had suffered from rape and sexual
violÂ�ence. The report concludes that ‘rape was the rule and its absence the excep­
tion’ (quoted in de Brouwer 2005: 11). Human Rights Watch (HRW 1996) also
presented a report on the use of sexual viol�ence in the same year emphasizing that
in the buildup to the geno�cide polit�ical propaganda played on sexual stereo�types
of Tutsi women. These women were said to be more beautiful than Hutu women,
and could therefore infiltrate Hutu ranks by flirting with Hutu men. Tutsi women
were also portrayed as being more sexually desir�able and daring than Hutu
women (HRW 1996: 16–19). The authors of the report conclude that these stereoÂ�
types, coupled with the view of woman as man’s possession, rendered Tutsi
women parÂ�ticuÂ�larly vulnerÂ�able to sexual violÂ�ence. De Brouwer (2005: 11–14)
confirms this pattern. The politÂ�ical propaganda − predominantly through the
printed media and radio broadcasts − preceding the genoÂ�cide was highly gen­
dered, i.e. in degrading ways portraying Tutsi women as sexual objects. The so-�
called Hutu ten commandments9 show this all too clearly, the first three speaking
directly to the stereo�type of Tutsi women as subversive temptresses to be avoided
at all costs. The Organization of African Unity (2000, para. 16.2) quotes these
points in full in their report on atrocities during the Rwandan genocide:

1. Each Hutu man must know that the Tutsi woman, no mat�ter whom,
works in solid�arity with her Tutsi eth�ni�city. In con�sequence, every Hutu
man is a traitor:
• who marries a Tutsi woman,
• who makes a Tutsi woman his concubine,
• who makes a Tutsi woman his secÂ�retÂ�ary or protégé.
2. Every Hutu man must know that our Hutu girls are more dignified and
more conscientious in their roles as woman, wife, and mother. Aren’t
they pretty, good secretaries, and more honest!
3. Hutu women, be vigilant and bring your husbands, and sons to reason!
(The Organization of African Unity (2000: para. 16.2))

While these paragraphs are not an instruction to rape Tutsi women, the language
suggests that the Hutu cause would be served by the sexual violation of Tutsi
women. Furthermore, Hutu women linked to Tutsi men were seen as treacherous
and thereby targets of sexual viol�ence. De Brouwer (2005: 13) points out that
while there was a clear pattern in the ways in which sexual viol�ence was used,
all women were at risk because of the gen�eral chaotic nature of the conflict. No
one woman was safer than another during these terrifying months.
The ways in which rape and sexual viol�ence were carried out appear to have
been par�ticu�larly violent and pub�lic. Rape, gang rape and so-�called forced
68╇╇ Turning points in the 1990s
marriage (i.e. sexual slavery) were pre�val�ent, along with sexual mutilation. Acid
was used, and the degree of morbidity appears unlimited. Details that have been
docu�mented are of such a nature that the Organization of African Unity (2000,
para. 16.4) suggests: ‘To understand Rwanda after the genoÂ�cide, it is imÂ�portÂ�ant
to have no illusions about the sadism of the perpetrators on the one hand, and the
excruciating suffering of the vicÂ�tims on the other.’ Repeated rape and gang rape
by the Interhamwe appear to have been the norm, while milit�ary and civilian
authorities did nothing to bring an end to it, indeed taking part themselves (HRW
1996: 48). There were exceptions, as the movie Hotel Rwanda from 2004 has
shown the world. The story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who housed
over a thou�sand Tutsi refu�gees, moved the entire world. The film stands in stark
contrast to the genÂ�eral asÂ�sumpÂ�tion that so many men and women were impli­
cated in the viol�ence and shows how there were also people who fiercely
resisted.
The Rwandan rapes and sexual viol�ence reflect a pattern docu�mented and
observed in the Bosnian situ�ation, namely that these acts were clearly seen as an
in�teg�ral part of the geno�cide. The evid�ence was over�whelm�ing and the stra�tegic
use of viol�ence could lead to no other conclusion. It is therefore fitting that the
first his�tor�ical judgment of a perpetrator being sentenced for geno�cidal rape was
in Rwanda. It was the Mayor of Taba commune, Jean Paul Akayesu, who was
convicted on charges of geno�cide and crimes against humanity. According to the
press statement:

[T]he Trial Chamber underscored the fact that rape and sexual viol�ence also
constitute geno�cide in the same way as any other act, as long as they were
committed with intent to destroy a par�ticu�lar group targeted as such. The
court held that sexual violÂ�ence was an ‘inÂ�tegÂ�ral’ part of the proÂ�cess of
destruction of the Tutsi ethnic group. ‘The rape of Tutsi women was sysÂ�
tematic and was perpetrated against all Tutsi women and solely against
them’, the Chamber concluded. Furthermore, these rapes were accompanied
by a proven intent to kill their victims.
(ICTR 1998)

Immediately after the geno�cide and killings, Rwanda was left with a popu�la�tion
of 70 per cent women. This figure is given in many different docu�mented sources,
but the Organization of African Unity (2000, para. 16.7) warns that it might be a
slightly inflated estim�ate. By the year 2000, 57 per cent of the popu�la�tion was
female. In addition, many men were in jail, impaired or unable to take care of
their fam�il�ies, leaving the major burden of reconstruction to Rwandese women.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the Rwandese par�lia�ment has the highest number of
women members in the world. The Interparlia�ment�ary Union (2009) reports that
there is a 56.3 per cent represÂ�entaÂ�tion of women folÂ�lowÂ�ing the parliaÂ�mentÂ�ary elec­
tions in 2008. President Paul Kagame passed a law in 2003 requiring that par�lia�
ment comprise at least 30 per cent women, and there was a strong mobil�iza�tion
among women prior to the parlia�ment�ary elections in Septem�ber 2008.
 Turning points in the 1990s╇╇ 69
The situ�ation in Rwanda, how�ever, is at odds with that of its neigh�bouring
counÂ�tries, both in terms of women’s politÂ�ical represÂ�entaÂ�tion and increasingly
proÂ�gressive approaches to women’s politÂ�ical, legal and social concerns. In Kenya
and in the Democratic Repub�lic of the Congo (DRC), rape and sexual viol�ence
have been, and still are, ways of terrorizing opposing groups. The DRC, or rather
the eastern part of this vast coun�try, has emerged as a new conflict where rape
and sexual violÂ�ence can be construed as genoÂ�cide, and the Interahamwe com­
posed of many Hutu refu�gees from Rwanda are again implicated.

The war in Kosovo (1998–1999): a prepared international

community
In late March 1999, NATO air-�forces bombed milit�ary targets within the Federal
Repub�lic of Yugoslavia (FRY), namely the ter�rit�ories of Serbia, Kosovo and
Montenegro. The bombing came as a response to a Serbian refusal to sign a
peace deal with the Albanian popu�la�tion living in Kosovo. About one year prior
to these events, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA/UCK) had declared its will
to achieve its separatist goal by whatever means were neces�sary. Mass viol�ence
erupted, including mas�sacres and sys�tematic use of sexual viol�ence, and thou�
sands of Albanians fled to neigh�bouring coun�tries. The NATO bombing lasted
until June 1999, after which UN forces took over the administration of Kosovo.
This conflict erupted within 3 years of the end of the Bosnian war, and some
of the people and groups implicated in the viol�ence found themselves again
involved in violent action in Kosovo. It was therefore not surprising that there
was great expectation that sexual viol�ence would be used between ethnic warring
groups once again. This time, how�ever, inter�na�tional organ�iza�tions and NGOs
were prepared to help and address issues of sexual viol�ence. Some experts in this
field who had learned from the Bosnia conflict were sent anew to the Balkans to
build up centres providing rape vic�tims with medical and psycho�social help. One
example was Medica Mondiale, a German-�based organ�iza�tion that had gained a
reputation as a resource and therapy centre for war raped women in central
Bosnia. In 1998 it brought both staff and expertise from Bosnia to Kosovo.
The polit�ical im�plica�tions of sexual viol�ence in the Balkans predate not just
the 1998/1999 conflict in Kosovo, but also the Bosnian conflict. In the late
1980s, stories emerging of Albanian men raping Serbian women brought a
massive response from Serbian women, who took to the streets demonstrating
under the slogans ‘we are mothers of Serbia’ and ‘we are mothers not whores’.
The trigger for this response was a ‘joke’ by Fadil Hoxha, one of the highest
ranking politicians in Kosovo, during a speech at a semi-�official lunch for the
reserve milit�ary commanders of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro in Octo�ber
1987 (Zarkov 2007: 21). Hoxha had said that ‘the probÂ�lem of rapes of Serb
women by Albanian men in Kosovo would be solved if more non-�Albanian
women worked as prostitutes in Kosovo’s taverns’ (Zarkov 2007: 21). Zarkov
noted that these events showed how eth�ni�city and gender had become interlinked
in ways that further polarized ethnic dif�fer�ences in the region. Meznaric (1994:
70╇╇ Turning points in the 1990s
86) has noted, as does Zarkov, that rape has been used as a means of sharpening
the edges between ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia. She points, in par�
ticu�lar, to the fact that the stories of rape against Serbian women led to the
Repub�lic of Serbia modifying its penal code.
As can be seen, the his�tory of inter-�ethnic rape in Kosovo, along with know�
ledge and ex�peri�ence from the Bosnian conflict, alerted an inter�na�tional audience
to polit�ical rape in the conflict. But Kosovo was different from Bosnia, because
it turned out that it was even more difficult to docu�ment and report rape in
Kosovo than it was in Bosnia. Both Human Rights Watch and the United
Nations Population Fund (UNFPA 1999) report having had many dif�ficult�ies in
docuÂ�menting the rape. The Albanian popuÂ�laÂ�tion in Kosovo is seen as more tradi­
tional than in the other post-Â�Yugoslav repubÂ�lics, and this affected women’s
possib�il�ities, and perhaps also courage, to come forward and talk about the
ordeals they had been through. Many of the mis�takes made during the Bosnian
conflict – such as having a male NGO worker using a loudspeaker in a refuÂ�gee
settlement asking whether any raped vic�tims would like to report their stories
(UNFPA 1999: 9) – did not improve the chances of reaching the women who
needed help. When taking into account the traditional gender roles in the Kosovo
region, these and other mis�takes might have aggravated the situ�ation and made it
even harder to reach the women. Despite the dif�ficult�ies, many organ�iza�tions
attempted, more or less successfully, to get the numbers right. A Human Rights
Watch Report (HRW 2000b) docu�ments 96 rapes on Albanian women by Serb
gangs:

Human Rights Watch docuÂ�mented 96 cases of rape by Serbian and Yugo­

slav forces against Kosovar Albanian women imme�diately before and during
the 1999 bombing cam�paign, and believes that many more incidents of rape
have gone unreported. The report said that rapes were not rare and isolated
acts committed by indi�viduals, but rather were used deliberately as an
instrument to terrorize the civilian popu�la�tion, extort money from fam�il�ies,
and push people to flee their homes. Virtually all of the sexual as�saults
Human Rights Watch has docu�mented were gang rapes involving at least
two perpetrators.

In the same report, it is de�scribed how the docu�mented rapes can be subdivided
into three catÂ�egorÂ�ies: rape in women’s homes, rape during fighting and rape
while in detention. In addition, the report comments on findings that KLA sol­
diers had committed rape against Serbian, Albanian and Roma women in
Kosovo after the bombing ended. On the other hand, no rape camps were found,
and the authors of the report are crit�ical of the fact that the inter�na�tional media
had been claiming that such camps existed without having proof. A final, but
im�port�ant, concern voiced in the report is that the rape was presented in the
media, in reports and elsewhere, in a sen�sa�tional manner, which under�mined the
rights of vic�tims to dignity and privacy. This is reiterated in Ward (2002: 93)
and in a report from the Swedish NGO Kvinna til Kvinna (2001: 19) on the
 Turning points in the 1990s╇╇ 71
situÂ�ation of women in Kosovo. In conducting a survey of 1,358 Kosovar Albani­
ans who had been in�ternally displaced in Au�gust and Septem�ber 1999, the Center
for Disease Control and Prevention found that the prevalence of rape was about
4.3 per cent, i.e. that 4.3 per cent of the popu�la�tion had been raped, and 6.1 per
cent had either been raped or had witnessed rape. Based on these numbers, they
suggest that between 23,000 and 45,600 women were raped between Au�gust
1998 and Au�gust 1999 (Bastick et al. 2007: 125).
A conspicuous in�ter�pretation of the Kosovo rape stories is that, after Bosnia
and Rwanda, a large number of inter�na�tional agencies, reporters, NGOs and
others involved in docu�menting and mapping atrocities in conflict were over-�
eager in their attempts to ‘get it right this time’. There was an almost exclusive
focus on rape and sexual violÂ�ence which resulted in failure to see that the situ­
ation in Kosovo was different from the Bosnian setting in regard to both the
actual conflict and gender patterns. Furthermore, the Kosovo situ�ation was
nothing like the situÂ�ation in Rwanda, where rape and sexual violÂ�ence were inÂ�teg­
ral parts of the geno�cide. Rather, the Kosovo situ�ation showed us a new pattern
in the docu�mentation of viol�ence in war zones: sexual viol�ence had become
something that those reporting on war nat�urally included in their records, and
although the ways in which this was done were at times sen�sa�tional, insensitive
and unethical, the issue was clearly put on the agenda.

War and violence in East Timor (1975–2002): peacekeepers

with a mandate
Far from Europe and Africa, towards the very end of the millennium, a new con­
flict (re)emerged, one in which gender-�based viol�ence played a central role, and
in which we were to see a new set of inter�na�tional responses. It was the viol�ence
connected with the inde�pend�ence struggle in East Timor, the fight against the
Indonesian stronghold and ultimate cre�ation of the new state of Timor-�Leste in
which women’s bodies were vested in politÂ�ical struggles.
The Indonesian occupation of East Timor since 1975 (when the Portuguese
col�on�izers withdrew) was put to the test with a referendum on inde�pend�ence in
1999, the outcome of which was an over�whelm�ing vote for inde�pend�ence. Voter
turnout was 98.6 per cent, of which 78.5 per cent voted for inde�pend�ence
(Olsson 2007: 74). The outcome was not viewed favourably by pro-�Indonesian
militia groups backed by the Indonesian authorities, who launched a cam�paign
of violÂ�ence and terror against the pro-Â�independence groups, killing and displac­
ing thou�sands of people. Violence was nothing new to the East Timorese popu�
laÂ�tion, who had lived through numerous attacks and terror during the 1975–1999
occupation. Violence against women and sexual slavery are reported to have
been orchestrated by the Indonesian army to such an extent that women’s rights,
par�ticu�larly to protection from viol�ence, became a debated issue within Timor,
notes Olsson (2007: 66). The Commission for Reception, Truth and Recon�cili�
ation in East Timor, estab�lished in 2002 in order to focus on crimes committed
between 25 April 1974 and 25 Octo�ber 1999, docu�mented widespread use of
72╇╇ Turning points in the 1990s
sexual viol�ence (Bastick et al. 2007: 95). Rape was reported to have occurred
during attacks or in militÂ�ary compounds, and parÂ�ticuÂ�larly women who were sus­
pected of sup�porting inde�pend�ence were targeted (Bastick et al.: 95).
The 1999 crisis reflected a pattern of violÂ�ence simÂ�ilar to that of the 1975–1999
conflict, but according to Olsson (2007: 67) it was more intense. Men in par�ticu�
lar were targeted by the militia forces, and fled in great numbers, leaving the
women and chil�dren behind more vulner�able and susceptible to attacks.
UNHCHR de�scribed the situ�ation like this:

Because the men fled to the mountains, the women were targeted for sexual
as�sault in a cruel and sys�tematic way.╛.╛.╛. While in gen�eral, the militia
refrained from killing women, they were subjected to humiliation and dif­
ferent forms of harassment that included stripping and sexual slavery.
Women and chil�dren were also vic�tims of forced displacement into exile
(Olsson 2007: 67, quoting United Nations General Assembly 2000)

The work of the Truth and Recon�cili�ation Commission confirms this with docu�
mentation of new waves of viol�ence, including sexual viol�ence, both before and
imme�diately after the 1999 referendum. The organ�iza�tion East Timorese Women
Against Violence identified and worked with 232 survivors of sexual abuse per­
petrated by the milit�ary and the militia before and during the siege of 1999
(Bastick et al. 2007: 95). Exact numbers of how many women were raped during
the viol�ence in 1999 is hard to determine, but of all the human rights violations
docu�mented by the Truth and Recon�cili�ation Committee, 863 were cases of
sexual violation (Bastick et al. 2007: 95).
Against this background, and with the situ�ations in Bosnia, Rwanda and
Kosovo in mind, it was clear from the very outset that UN troops to this area
would need to implement measÂ�ures that addressed women’s securÂ�ity needs in
parÂ�ticuÂ�lar. The UN monitored the situÂ�ation in East Timor at the time of the refer­
endum, and the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor
(UNTAET) was in place by the end of Octo�ber 1999. It was succeeded by the
United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET) on 17 May 2002
after the declaration of inde�pend�ence of Timor Leste.10
The UNTAET opera�tion was the first of its kind to have a designated Gender
Unit, which unfortunately was not part of the regu�lar UNTAET until Novem�ber
2000, because it had no budget and had not been included by the General
Assembly in the approved structure of the UNTAET (Olsson 2007: 80). Once in
place, the work of the Gender Unit was twofold, its pri�mary task being to inform
all peacekeeping com�pon�ents of the gender aspects of the mission and gender
sensitivity (Olsson 2007: 80). Its secondary task was to ensure gender main­
streaming of the entire work of the opera�tion in accordance with CEDAW and
other inter�na�tionally estab�lished conventions. In addition:

The key ob�ject�ives and strat�egies of the Gender Unit were to mainstream
issues raised by East Timorese women, reflecting the ideas, ex�peri�ences and
 Turning points in the 1990s╇╇ 73
pri�or�ities of women at the national level in the design, implementation,
monitoring and evalu�ation of all UNTAET programs, pol�icies and ac�tiv�ities.
The Unit focused on five core functions: capa�city building and aware�ness
raising; gender situ�ational ana�lysis and data collection; pol�icy ana�lysis,
implementation and evaluÂ�ation; rule of law and legisÂ�latÂ�ive anaÂ�lysis; net­
working, and outreach.
(Whittington 2002: 4)

The work was over�whelm�ing and slow, with less than enthusiastic people placed
in charge of the Gender Unit. As time passed, how�ever, and more money and
prestige were invested, the work of the Unit began to bear fruit. In a comprehen­
sive study on the different United Nations peace opera�tions in Timor-�Leste,
Olsson (2007) de�scribes how the UN missions impacted power relations between
men and women in the region. In addition, she argues that the UN aware�ness of
unequal secur�ity needs, as well as power distribution between men and women,
led to an un�pre�ced�en�ted focus on do�mestic viol�ence. While viol�ence against
women in the pub�lic sphere decreased, do�mestic viol�ence seemed to increase,
although concerted efforts by UNTAET along with local initiatives helped
women feel secure in their homes.
The efforts of the Gender Unit, how�ever, were severely hampered by the
beha�vi�our of UN mission staff, both civilian and milit�ary. In 2001, stories were
emerging that sexual abuse and child molestation by the inter�na�tional staff had
taken place. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) had to draw
up a list of ‘no go’ zones barring visits by blue-Â�helmeted soldiers and civilian
staff (Deen 2005). Olsson (2007: 107) notes that there was a certain discrepancy
between the beha�vi�our of inter�na�tional staff while on duty as opposed to off
duty, and that this created an impression of double standÂ�ards where UN person­
nel were not obliged by the same norms and rules that they preached to the
Timorese popu�la�tion. A pol�icy of zero-�tolerance for these kinds of crimes and
mis�be�ha�viour has since been implemented for all UN missions.
In Timor-�Leste, the post of Gender Ombudsman was estab�lished in 2010 and
one of the mandates is to pro�sec�ute perpetrators of sexual viol�ence since 1974.
An Amnesty International Report from Au�gust 2009, how�ever, suggests that an
International Criminal Tribunal is needed owing to the lack of criminal proÂ�secu­
tions from the Dili government.
The situ�ation in East Timor/Timor-�Leste reflects yet another im�port�ant change
re�gard�ing crimes of sexual viol�ence in conflicts during the 1990s, namely how
peacekeeping efforts inÂ�tegÂ�rated women’s securÂ�ity concerns and protection needs
within new missions. Olsson (2007) has shown how difficult it was to set this up,
and de�scribes the mis�takes and cata�strophes that followed, but a new pattern was
de facto estab�lished. Women in conflict zones should be, and had the right to be,
protected from viol�ence in pub�lic by fellow-�countrymen, in their homes by male
family members and by inter�na�tional peacekeepers present on their soil. This
was a respons�ib�ility which had to be given pri�or�ity within a peacekeeping
mission, i.e. personnel with senior status, resources and money.
74╇╇ Turning points in the 1990s
International criminal prosecution: steps towards ending
impunity
One of the most im�port�ant responses to the massive amount of docu�mentation on
rape and sexual viol�ence in the conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda, but also in Kosovo
and East Timor, was that these acts of violÂ�ence could not be committed with impu­
nity. The perpetrators had to be brought to justice. The track record for prosecuting
rape and sexual viol�ence offenders in armed conflicts up until the early 1990s was,
to put it mildly, unimpressive. It was therefore imperative that the inter�na�tional
response to these events would not just be in the form of help and assistance to the
vic�tims, but also criminal pro�secu�tion of the perpetrators at inter�na�tional level. The
response from the interÂ�naÂ�tional comÂ�munÂ�ity was therefore an unÂ�preÂ�cedÂ�enÂ�ted, con­
certed, effort to estab�lish an inter�na�tional criminal pro�secu�tion system.
The path to justice, how�ever, can be difficult at times. Early discussions in
legal texts during the Bosnian war addressed some of the dif�ficult�ies by asking
how crimes of sexual viol�ence would be treated in inter�na�tional criminal law
when this law could be seen as gender-Â�biased. For example, should sexual viol­
ence be ana�lysed as a crime of gender, i.e. women targeted because they are
women? While some authors argue that sexual viol�ence in times of war should
be seen as a gender or sex crime (Green et al. 1994), others say that it should be
regarded as a crime of ethÂ�niÂ�city, i.e. women targeted because they belong to spe­
cific ethnic groups (Cleiren and Tijssen 1994). Another prob�lem pointed out was
the archaic language of the legal texts themselves, and several authors have men­
tioned the difficulty in associating crimes of sexual violÂ�ence with the vicÂ�tim’s
(the woman’s) honour. Copelon (1995: 201) explains:

The Geneva Conventions characterize rape as a crime against the honour

and dignity of women. [.â•›.â•›.] Women’s ‘honour’ has tradiÂ�tionÂ�ally been
equated with virginity or chastity. Loss of honour implies the loss of station
or respect, reinforcing the social view – often inÂ�ternalized by women – that
the raped woman is dishonorable.
(Copelon 1995: 201)

The argument is that such a conceptualization shifts the focus away from the
violent acts themselves to the chastity of the women. And, simÂ�ilarly: who ‘owns’
the woman’s honour? Who defines what an ‘honourable woman’ is?
While acknowledging these dif�ficult�ies, the UN Security Council passed res�
olu�tion 827 (on 25 May 1993), which formally estab�lished the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The res�olu�tion contained
the Statute of the ICTY, which determined the Tribunal’s jurisdiction and organÂ�
iza�tional structure, as well as the criminal pro�ced�ure in gen�eral terms. This date
marked the beginning of the end of complete impunity for sexual crimes in war.
It was the first war crimes court estab�lished by the UN and the first inter�na�tional
war crimes tri�bu�nal since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tri�bu�nals. A year later, on 8
Novem�ber 1994, the UN Security Council passed yet another res�olu�tion,
UNSCR 955, which estab�lished the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
 Turning points in the 1990s╇╇ 75
(ICTR). Both tri�bu�nals are temporary, ad hoc, and have limited jurisdiction. The
ICTY covers the entire ter�rit�ories of the former Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia) and the ICTR Rwanda and neigh�bouring
states. The overall aim of both tri�bu�nals is to hold the major perpetrators
account�able for the most ser�ious crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and
Rwanda, although low-Â�level and mid-Â�level perpetrators have also been proÂ�sec­
uted (de Brouwer 2005: 15). The courts were estab�lished in order to address all
atrocities committed in these two coun�tries/regions, but the massive amount of
docu�mentation on rape and sexual viol�ence served as an additional impetus. The
ICTY has indicted 162 people, 58 of whom were inter alia charged with sexual
viol�ence. The ICTR, on the other hand, is as�sumed to have pro�sec�uted between
65 and 70, of which 35 inter alia will be charged with sexual viol�ence by the
end of its mandate in 2010 (de Brouwer 2005: 18). When these ad hoc tri�bu�nals
terminate their work, the criminal pro�secu�tion will be carried out in national
courts in the respective coun�tries that the Tribunals have covered. The trans�ition
from inter�na�tional criminal pro�secu�tion to national level has been going on since
2004 in the case of Bosnia and is underway for Rwanda. Judges and other legal
personnel in the counÂ�tries in question have undergone training on how to proÂ�sec­
ute these crimes, how to pro�sec�ute war crimes, how to provide sufficient witness
protection and how to apportion pri�or�ity in certain cases.
Some years after the two aforementioned ad hoc tri�bu�nals were estab�lished in
1998, the cre�ation of an inter�na�tional criminal court (ICC) became a reality, its
aim to proÂ�secÂ�ute cases that national courts were unable or unwilling to proÂ�sec­
ute. Article 5 of the ICC statute lists the crimes that fall within the jurisdiction of
the ICC. These are only the most ser�ious crimes which are of concern to the
inter�na�tional com�mun�ity as a whole; in other words, geno�cide, crimes against
humanity and crimes of aggression (de Brouwer 2005: 19). The ICC became a
permanent inter�na�tional body on 1 July 2002.
With the ICC up and running, a long legal journey of integrating gender con­
cerns within inter�na�tional criminal law has reached a peak. According to the
Coalition of the ICC (ICCNOW), i.e. a co�ali�tion of over 2,500 organ�iza�tions
aiming to strengthen inter�na�tional coopera�tion with the ICC, the ways in which
gender is in�teg�rated into the work of the ICC can be seen on different levels.
First, on the level of witness protection the ICC ensures that vic�tims of sexual
and gender-�based viol�ence will be safe both phys�ically and psychologically, and
that their dignity will be safeguarded from harassing and intimidating question­
ing in court. In addition, a Trust Fund for vic�tims and their fam�il�ies has been set
up. Second, on the level of rules of evid�ence, the court cannot take into account
the prior sexual his�tory of the vic�tim as part of the case, or speculate about the
consent of the vic�tim due to the co�er�cive circumstances of the acts. Third, ICC
staff comprise legal advisers who special�ize in gender-�based crimes in addition
to ensuring that there is a fair balance between men and women among judges,
pro�secu�tors and registrars. Lastly, the ICC allows women to come forward with
their stories without neces�sar�ily being witnesses, their voices being heard and
regu�lar legal proceedings taking place (ICCNOW 2009).
76╇╇ Turning points in the 1990s
The ICC statute lists parÂ�ticuÂ�lar forms of gender-Â�based crimes within supra­
national criminal law in ways that have never been done before. Rape, sexual
slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization or any
other form of sexual viol�ence of com�par�able gravity can now be pro�sec�uted as a
war crime, as crimes against humanity or genoÂ�cide (de Brouwer 2005: 20–21).
The work carried out in these tri�bu�nals show that the legal conceptualization of
sexual viol�ence crimes in war is evolving and becoming more nuanced with
every new verdict. Hopefully, this will ensure that more perpetrators will be pro�
sec�uted for these crimes.

Summary
This chapter has shown that the ways in which sexual viol�ence in war became
understood, ana�lysed and recog�nized changed markedly during the 1990s. The
first change was the sheer amount of attention given to, and docu�mentation
arising from, the Bosnia and Rwandan wars. While it was difficult for many to
believe that sexual viol�ence in war could be used sys�tematically, as the cases of
Bosnia and Rwanda suggested, it quickly became seen as a weapon of war with
clear polit�ical and deliberate aims in the struggles. When the Kosovo conflict
erupted, this perception had become so well estab�lished that reporters and others
who docuÂ�mented war crimes almost went head over heels to reÂ�gisÂ�ter this parÂ�ticu­
lar form of viol�ence. The conflict in East Timor took this new-�found re�cog�ni�tion
even a step further by institutionalizing responsÂ�ibÂ�ility for women’s securÂ�ity and
protection needed within peacekeeping missions. On top of all these changes
related to par�ticu�lar conflicts, a new inter�na�tional judicial regime was in the
works with the ICTY and the ICT leading up to the estabÂ�lishment of the perma­
nent ICC.
New attention, understanding and the im�plica�tions of sexual viol�ence in war
at the end of the last millennium gave rise to a new kind of schol�arly liter�at�ure
on this topic. The next chapter is an anaÂ�lysis of this ‘first generations’ of scholÂ�
arly pub�lications on sexual viol�ence in war; the fields of science that got
involved, the questions they asked and the answers provided.
6 The first generation of systematic
documentation of sexual violence
in war 1990–19981
Naming the unnameable and
understanding the incomprehensible

As the previous chapter has shown, the 1990s marked a shift in the way in which
sexual viol�ence in war was understood. The change was in large part due to
widespread docu�mentation of this par�ticu�lar form of viol�ence in a number of
conflicts in the 1990s, resulting, in turn, in numerous schol�arly and aca�demic
pub�lications within many different social science and law dis�cip�lines analysing
why sexual viol�ence in war could be such a power�ful weapon. Who were the
main targets, why and for what purpose? This chapter looks at the different
approaches that emerged in the liter�at�ure in the 1990s.

Scholarly publications in the 1990s

The basis of this chapter is a liter�at�ure survey carried out in 1998, the goal of
which was to gather schol�arly liter�at�ure and other forms of pub�lication based on
sys�tematic research dealing specifically with the issue of sexual viol�ence in times
of war.2 The focus in this chapter is on three different epistemological conceptu­
alizations of the interrelationship between sexual violÂ�ence and war − the essen­
tialist, the structuralist and the social constructionist3 approaches − based on an
ana�lysis of 140 schol�arly texts published mainly in the 1990s. The majority of
these texts, at least the ‘canonized’ ones,4 focus on the use of sexual violÂ�ence in
the wars in the Balkans and in the 1994 genoÂ�cide in Rwanda. Although very dif­
ferent in terms of aca�demic dis�cip�line, ana�lysis and goals, together they reinforce
certain im�port�ant points. First, the sheer number of schol�arly texts focusing on
this issue clearly tells us that the taboo which had made it im�pos�sible to make
this war-�time phenomenon a subject of social sci�ent�ific study had, at least to
some extent, been lifted. Second, there is strong consensus that sexual viol�ence
is being used as a weapon of war, the argument being that if sexual viol�ence in
the war zone was carried out only by ab�nor�mal people, then there would simply
be too many psychiatric patients being recruited into regu�lar and paramilit�ary
units. The use of sexual viol�ence in the war zone is too widespread, too frequent
and, it seems, too calculated and effect�ive for it not to be part of a larger polit�ical
scheme and hence a weapon of war. Third, a majority of authors argue that any
convincing anaÂ�lysis of this phenomenon must have a clear gendered understand­
ing of the war zone as its basis, which means that attempting to ana�lyse sexual
78╇╇ First generation of systematic documentation
viol�ence without simul�tan�eously analysing how the course of conflicts is also an
enactment of male and female relations is incomplete.

Overview of the 140 texts

In the initial stages of the search, finding appropriate liter�at�ure was complicated.
In 1998 there were no fields of science specializing in this aspect of warfare.
There were no major sci�ent�ific journals to turn to, and an attempt to sys�
tematically search the literÂ�atÂ�ure ended with very few, if any, hits. The most fruit­
ful approach was therefore the ‘snowball’; refÂ�erÂ�ences in one artÂ�icle leading to
the discovery of new art�icles, and these in turn leading to new art�icles, and so
on. This is how the pro�ject proceeded throughout 1998, ending with a mass of
books, art�icles and pub�lications. When acquisition of a new art�icle did not lead
to new ref�er�ences, this was an in�dica�tion that the study had reached saturation
point. Because the overall goal was to gather as much in�forma�tion as pos�sible on
how sexual viol�ence has been used in times of war, and how it has been
de�scribed, it was neces�sary not to have too strict cri�teria in the selection of
publications.
The art�icles and pub�lications can be divided into four main cat�egor�ies. The
largest group comprises social science books and art�icles; 27 per cent of these
pub�lications are interdisciplinary, while the rest are in fields such as psychology
and psychiatry (17 per cent), polit�ical science (15 per cent), fem�in�ist studies (14
per cent), his�tory (12 per cent) and anthropology (10 per cent). The remaining
art�icles are in soci�ology, theo�logy and social medicine (in total 5 per cent). The
artÂ�icles in this catÂ�egory address questions concerning what sexual violÂ�ence actu­
ally is and how it can be understood in times of war. The second largest group
comprises inter�na�tional law and legal studies art�icles, their main theme being
how rape and sexual viol�ence in war can be pro�sec�uted within the framework of
inter�na�tional law. The third group of pub�lications is human rights reports, where
the main aim has been to docu�ment sys�tematic use of sexual viol�ence in various
conflict settings. The majority of these reports are different pub�lications from
Human Rights Watch (39 per cent). Amnesty International has also published on
this theme (17 per cent), as have different United Nations agencies (22 per cent).
The remaining reports (22 per cent) are not by any of these big organ�iza�tions but
instead special pub�lications by gov�ern�ments and inde�pend�ent NGOs. The final
cat�egory comprises journ�al�istic pub�lications. These are longer than art�icles in
the daily press, and address an audience that is more interÂ�ested in in-Â�depth journ­
al�istic ana�lysis. They appear in weekly and monthly journals published by
human rights organ�iza�tions, research com�munit�ies and gov�ern�mental bodies.
Table 6.1 shows the distribution of the various art�icles and publications.
The initial aim of the pro�ject was to focus on art�icles and pub�lications from
the 1990s, but I soon discovered that some areas could only be covered if pub­
lications from the end of the 1980s were included. This was par�ticu�larly true for
Latin Amer�ica. The distribution of art�icles and pub�lications by year is shown in
Figure 6.1.
 First generation of systematic documentation╇╇ 79
Table 6.1╇ Literature profile

Type of publication %

Social science books and articles 37

International law and legal studies books and articles 29
Human rights reports 17
Journalistic publications 17

Note
n = 140.

40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Before 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999
1990

Figure 6.1╇ Number of publications per year.

As can be seen, there was a peak in the number of pub�lications in 1993 and
1994, when the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the geno�cide in Rwanda
took place.
The gender distribution of the authors of the artÂ�icles and pubÂ�lications is strik­
ing. The vast majority are by women, reinforcing the notion that the theme of
sexual viol�ence is now per�man�ently on the inter�na�tional agenda as a result of the
women’s voice speaking out.
As the Table 6.2 shows, there is a large group under ‘Unknown’. These are
artÂ�icles where the author’s gender cannot be deduced from the name, either

Table 6.2╇ Gender of authors

Gender %

Women 58
Men 14
Men and women ╇ 4
Unknown 24

Note
n = 140.
80╇╇ First generation of systematic documentation
because only initials are given, or because I simply do not know whether the
surname signals a man or a woman. Some pub�lications do not have named
authors, but have an organ�iza�tion listed as the author.

Conceptualizing sexual violence and war in three different

ways
The fol�low�ing conceptualizations are different ways of understanding war-�time
sexual viol�ence as part of gender ana�lysis.5 My mode of ana�lysis was to group
the arguments6 in the texts in accordance with whatever group of vic�tims the
arguments relate to. This gave me three different empirical foci: namely, how
sexual viol�ence was related to all women in the war zone, to targeted women in
the war zone, and finally to targeted men and women in the war zone. The dif­
ferent empirical foci corÂ�resÂ�pond to three different epistemologies, which in con­
tent and outlook reÂ�semble Harding’s tripartite sysÂ�tem of femÂ�inÂ�ist epistemologies.
Harding (1986, 1991) helps us understand how epistemological modes of science
create different ways of doing fem�in�ist research in various fields of social
science. She distinguishes between femÂ�inÂ�ist empiricism (which is seen as inher­
ently conÂ�serÂ�vatÂ�ive and positivist), standpoint femÂ�inÂ�ism (which takes the patÂ�ri­
archal power relationship between men and women as the starting point of
ana�lysis and links this relationship to class, race and culture), and post-�modern
fem�in�ism (which is based on an inherent scep�ti�cism to grand theories and looks
at how acts, beliefs and behaÂ�viÂ�ours become gendered through direct and sym­
bolic transactions).
One group of arguments, what I have called the essentialist, focused mainly
on women in gen�eral as vic�tims in the war zone and attempted to conceptualize
this empirical observation within an essentialist understanding of gender difÂ�fer­
ences. The second conceptualization has at its starting point that there is a difÂ�fer­
ence between the female vic�tims in the war zone. When issues of eth�ni�city,
religion and polit�ical af�fili�ations are in�teg�rated into the ana�lysis of war-�time
sexual violÂ�ence, new patterns of power and dominance occur. Although this con­
ceptualization reÂ�sembles Harding’s standpoint epiÂ�stemoÂ�logy, I have chosen to
call it structuralist in order to emphasÂ�ize that although ‘standpoint’ is still to
focus on women, structural dif�fer�ences such as ethnic, religious, polit�ical (and
other) explain which women are targeted. The last line of arguments focuses on
targeted men and women as vic�tims in the war zone. The conceptualization is
so-�called post-�modern in the sense that the hierarchical power relationship
between the genders is not perceived as fixed and uni�ver�sal. I have chosen to
label this conceptualization ‘social constructionist’ to emphasÂ�ize that the hierar­
chies of power and dominance are constructed through social inter�action and
transaction between gender, ethnic, religious, polit�ical and other identities. This
way of reading the 140 texts has given me the conceptualizations outlined in
Table 6.3.
 First generation of systematic documentation╇╇ 81
Table 6.3╇ Three conceptualizations of the relationship between sexual violence and war

Conceptualization I II III

Epistemologies Essentialism Structuralism Social constructionism

Empirical focus All women Targeted women Targeted men and
women
Argument Women in the war Women in the war Women and men in
zone are victims of zone are victims of the war zone are
sexual violence in sexual violence in victims of sexual
order to assert order to attack the violence in order to
militaristic ethnic, religious, masculinize the
masculinity. political group. identity of perpetrator
and feminize the
identity of the victim.

Essentialism
It is a known fact that using and threatening sexual viol�ence overshadows the
lives of all women world-�wide. This is true of women in times of war and in
times of peace. The effects of sexual viol�ence in the war zone are recog�niz�able
because we have become accustomed to them through times of peace. Recogniz­
ing this, how�ever, potentially entails a danger. In a discussion about geno�cidal
rape, Nordstrom (1996: 156) warns that ‘by distinguishing qualitÂ�atÂ�ively between
“genoÂ�cidal” rape in war and “everyÂ�day” rape, the latter is both “normalized” and
made less signiÂ�ficÂ�ant than wartime rape’, whereas Copelon (1995: 207) says that
placing ‘[e]mphasis on the gender dimension of rape in war is critÂ�ical not only to
surfacing women as full subjects of sexual violÂ�ence in war but also to recogniz­
ing the atroÂ�city of rape in so-Â�called times of peace’.
The essentialist discourse is appealing because it attempts to explain why it
was in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina that women of all ethnic groups
–Serb, Croat and Bosnian7 – were raped, and simÂ�ilarly both Hutu and Tutsi
women during the geno�cide in Rwanda.8 This conceptualization asks: Were all
these women raped simply because many women (i.e. in times of war and peace)
are raped? Or, is it pos�sible that the war zone is a place where women in gen�eral
are at greater risk of being vic�timized through crimes of sexual viol�ence than in
the non-�war zone?
Before exÂ�plorÂ�ing posÂ�sible answers to this question, an understanding of ‘war
zone’ has to be estabÂ�lished. First, it is imÂ�portÂ�ant to recogÂ�nize that the war zone is
a place where distinct rules of beha�vi�our apply. Through for instance the Geneva
Convention, soldiers are taught that certain acts normally non-�permissible in
times of peace may be allowed, given that a set of cri�teria are met. In reality,
how�ever, the war zone is a place where abhor�rent modes of conduct can flourish
– not all of which are in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Second, the
war zone is a place of increased polarization between the genders as de�scribed in
Chapter 2. In the war zone, men are set not only to be men, but to be militaristic
82╇╇ First generation of systematic documentation
men (for a discussion about this, see Enloe 1983, 1990, 1993). An understanding
of militaristic culture is key to understanding the gender dimension of the war
zone. Sexual viol�ence in times of war can therefore be perceived as a way of
men and women reaffirming pat�ri�archal hierarchies. The stra�tegic purpose of the
use of sexual viol�ence is to manifest the militaristic masculine identity of the
male perpetrator. The question is: How can sexual viol�ence be perceived as a
masculinity reaffirming act?
In attempting to answer this question it is use�ful to return to an ana�lysis of the
non-�war zone. Feminist scholarship has argued that the relationship between
men and women is far from equal, and instead pat�ri�archal and hierarchical.
Within this social order it is common to regard women as men’s possession. As
explained above, the war zone is where pre-�existing gender relations become
accentuated, such that if a woman is perceived as men’s possession in times of
peace, this will be even more the case in times of war. Brownmiller’s description
of the war zone may illusÂ�trate: ‘[T]he soldier becomes an adrenaline-Â�rushed
young man with per�mis�sion to kick in the door, to grab, to steal, to give vent to
his submerged rage against all women who belong to other men’ (Brownmiller
1994: 181, italics added). Seifert (1994: 65) has argued that a certain psychology
de�velops from a pat�ri�archal soci�ety. Masculinity is associated with power and
worth, and femininity with the oppos�ite. MacKinnon (1994) argues along the
same lines in her ana�lysis of the por�no�graphy industry and mass rape in Bosnia
and Herzegovina. Through inter�views with former rape-�camp prisoners, she
draws a pic�ture of the camps as places where the perpetrators can live out their
sexual fantasies. According to MacKinnon, rapes have been filmed and shown
on evening news bulletins on TV in Banja Luka and Belgrade (1994: 76), and
according to Allen (1996: 34) some of these films have been distributed on the
interÂ�naÂ�tional porn market. MacKinnon (1994: 77) deÂ�scribes pre-Â�conflict Yugo­
slav sociÂ�ety as ‘the freest counÂ�try in the world’ when it comes to porÂ�noÂ�graphy.
She conÂ�tinues: ‘[w]hen porÂ�noÂ�graphy is this normal, a whole popuÂ�laÂ�tion of men
is primed to dehuÂ�manÂ�ize women and to enjoy inflicting asÂ�sault sexually’ (1994:
77). Card, too, attempts to explain how rape reinforces pat�ri�archal relations
between men and women. She claims that the ultimate goal of rape in war and
peace is ‘[t]o display, comÂ�municÂ�ate, and produce or maintain dominance, which
is both enjoyed for its own sake and used for such ulterior ends as ex�ploita�tion,
expulsion, dispersion, murder’ (Card 1996: 7). Rape is used, she argues, because
women in pat�ri�archal soci�eties are such easy targets both phys�ically and socially
(1997: 11).
With this conceptualization, all women in the war zone are regarded as poten­
tial targets for sexual viol�ence, because the goal appears to be the manifestation
of notions of militaristic masculinity, rather than the targeting of the indi�vidual
woman. In pat�ri�archal soci�eties, crimes of sexual viol�ence are ascribed meaning
because they manifest the hierarchical power relationship between men and
women. However, there are ser�ious shortcomings with this way of in�ter�preting
the stra�tegic use of sexual viol�ence in the war zone. First, sexual viol�ence, often
affecting some women more than others in times of war, cannot be explained.
 First generation of systematic documentation╇╇ 83
In€ other words, the gender com�pon�ent, i.e. the role of militarized masculinity
within pat�ri�archal soci�eties, cannot alone explain which women are subject to
sexual viol�ence. This prob�lem is interconnected with the conceptualization of
pat�ri�archy which is regarded only as supremacy of men over women. This does
not evalu�ate how ethnic, religious and polit�ical power relations interact with
gender relations in an understanding of pat�ri�archy. Second, the conceptualization
does not allow for an understanding that men can also be vic�timized and violated
within a pat�ri�archal sys�tem. Third, the conceptualization suggests an essentialist
understanding of masculinity. The exponents of this theory propose that men are
essentially sexually aggressive and that the social situÂ�ation of war makes it pos­
sible for them to release their suppressed masculine drive. Brownmiller simply
states that when given the pos�sib�il�ity to rape, men will do it, while MacKinnon
seems to argue that men are con�ditioned to rape through por�no�graphy. In both
cases, they present masculine nature as static and unchangeable – a deterministic
view that gives little hope for change. These shortcomings give rise to an alÂ�tern­
ative conception, one I call structuralism.

Structuralism
How can one explain not only that women in the war zone, in gen�eral, are at
greater risk of being vic�tims of sexual viol�ence than in the non-�war zone, but
that some groups of women are at greater risk than others? The epistemological
standpoint of this conceptualization is that identities such as eth�ni�city, religious
belonging and polit�ical af�fili�ation will interact with the gender identity of the
indi�vidual vic�tims and thereby put some women at greater risk than others. The
understanding of pat�ri�archy is thus rendered more complex because it is no
longer seen as simply men having power over women, but as men belonging to
the most powerÂ�ful ethnic, religious or politÂ�ical groups having power over ‘their’
women (in order to protect them) and over the women of the ‘other’ (by poten­
tially attacking them). This conceptualization is therefore crit�ical of the notion
that all women in the war zone are equally subject to this parÂ�ticuÂ�lar kind of viol­
ence and maintains that other identities differentiate the ‘rape-Â�victim-potential’
of women in the war zone.
The Human Rights Watch Global Report on Women’s Human Rights 1995
states that

[r]ape in conflict under repressive regimes is neither in�cid�ental nor private.

It routinely serves a straÂ�tegic function and acts as a tool for achieving spe­
cific milit�ary or polit�ical objectives.
(HRW 1995: 2)

The Human Rights Watch report dem�on�strates the different ways in which rape
has functioned as a stra�tegic weapon against targeted groups of women in the
conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Haiti, Kashmir and Peru. In her
ana�lysis of the status of rape in the Balkan conflicts, Meznaric (1994: 86)
84╇╇ First generation of systematic documentation
summarÂ�izes: ‘Sexual asÂ�sault on citÂ�izens of different nationalities and ethnicities
was conÂ�sidered more aggravating than “reguÂ�lar” rape’. According to Meznaric,
this indicates that rape has become a polit�ical act.
If we follow Meznaric’s line of argument, i.e. that inter-Â�ethnic rape is more
politÂ�ical than other kinds of rape in the war zone, we must also ask why the per­
petrators chose this par�ticu�lar form of viol�ence. Does the use of sexual viol�ence
entail polit�ical effects that are different from those from the use of other forms of
viol�ence? Before ex�plor�ing this question further, it is im�port�ant to state that
much of the liter�at�ure struggles to define the stra�tegic use of sexual viol�ence in
the war zone. Some authors have used the term polit�ical rape (Lusby 1994;
Sharlach 1998) to denote rape that has a purpose connected with polit�ical
agendas other than exclusively the subordination of women (Sharlach 1998: 3).
Cleiren and Tijssen (1994: 474), on the other hand, stress that rape and other
forms of sexual viol�ence must be regarded as crimes of viol�ence with a sexual
nature and thus be pro�sec�uted within existing inter�na�tional law. Copelon (1995)
and Green et al. (1994), how�ever, would like to see sexual viol�ence clas�si�fied as
gendered crimes, but also as violent acts which ought to be con�sidered as grave
breaches of the Geneva Convention. Agger (1989) defines war-�time sexual viol�
ence as sexual torture, while Blatt (1992) emphas�ized that it is simply torture
and should be recog�nized as such. As regards the effects of sexual viol�ence there
is a clearer consensus, and Agger and Jensen’s distinction between ‘reguÂ�lar’
torture and sexual torture serves as an adequate explanation:

The vicÂ�tim’s as well as the torturer’s sexual structures are involved in the
psychody�namics of this inter�action, and the vic�tim ex�peri�ences the torture as
directed against his or her sexual body image and identity with the aim to
destroy it. Thus, the essential part of sexual torture’s traumatic and identity-Â�
damaging effect is the feeling of being an accomplice in an ambiguous situ­
ation which contains both aggressive and libidinal elements of a confusing
nature.
(Agger and Jensen 1993: 687)

Agger and Jensen stress that the effects of sexual viol�ence are related to notions
of identity, which brings us even closer to an understanding of war-�time sexual
violÂ�ence when coupled with Elshtain’s account of war as a ‘cultural propÂ�erty of
peoples, a sys�tem of signs that we read without much effort because they have
become so familiar to us’ (Elshtain [1987] 1995: 167). Within this sysÂ�tem of
signs there are certain myths about male and female identities that become
accentuated: female identity is seen as life-�giving and male identity as life-�
taking.9 If we accept that this is a myth many people of the war zone live by,
then the use of sexual viol�ence against women may be seen as a way of targeting
women’s life-Â�giving capacities: ‘Because women bear the next generation of a
collectivity they are put uniquely at risk’ (Lentin 1997: 2). Forced impregnation
in rape camps, like the ones in Bosnia and Herzegovina (see Allen 1996; Fisher
1996; Goldstein 1993), is perhaps the clearest example of this. Allen (1996: 96)
 First generation of systematic documentation╇╇ 85
argues that the use of rape in the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be seen
as genoÂ�cide: ‘Any rape threatens reproduction because it makes survivors
damaged goods in a patÂ�riÂ�archal sysÂ�tem that defines woman as man’s possession
and virgin woman as his most valuÂ�able asset’. Elsewhere she says:

It is aimed at the destruction of people; it determines that this aim will best
be served by attacking women and chil�dren in par�ticu�lar; it con�siders the
violent crime of rape to be an ideal means to this destruction; it utilizes rape
as one form of torture preceding death; in this case, rape is used against
male and female adults and male and female chil�dren; it utilizes rape as a
means of enforcing pregnancy and eventual birth; in this case, rape is used
against persons capable of gestating pregnancy. In the case of enforced
pregnancy, its il�lo�gical reasoning is founded on the nega�tion of all cultural
identities of its vic�tims, re�du�cing those vic�tims to mere sexual containers.
Although it may occur anywhere, it gen�erally occurs in three locales: (1)
towns and villages, where it is often performed pub�licly, most often on
female women and chil�dren; (2) concentration camps, where it is gen�erally
performed spor�adic�ally on prisoners re�gard�less of age or sex; (3) rape/death
camps, where it is performed sys�tematically on female women and children.
(Allen 1996: 100–101)

The pattern appears to be that in an attempt to ethnically cleanse, or get rid of,
the entire popu�la�tion, manipulating the procreative abil�it�ies of the women in the
target ethnic group has proved to be an effect�ive weapon. The socio-�cultural
identity of a woman, how�ever, is not linked exclusively with her procreative
abil�ity. Since a strict division of men and women is often charac�ter�istic of the
war zone, the majority of the civilian popu�la�tion left when men have gone off to
battle will neces�sar�ily be women, chil�dren and the elderly. If the purpose of the
warfare is to target the civilian popu�la�tion, then women will constitute the prime
target. Much of the literÂ�atÂ�ure suggests that sexual violÂ�ence is effectÂ�ive in dis­
seminating fear and demonstrating control over the civilian popuÂ�laÂ�tion. Exam­
ples can be taken from the war in Bosnia, where several accounts emphas�ize
how women were raped in front of their family members and friends and/or pub­
licly in towns and villages (Allen 1996: 101; Benderly 1997: 65; Bennett et al.
1995: 8; Meznaric 1994: 92; Stiglmayer 1994a: 82). Direct ex�peri�ence and/or
rumours of various kinds of sexual viol�ence may serve as a trigger for flight
from the area. This was observed in Kashmir. An Asia Watch Report (1993)
states that: ‘[t]he fear of rape has reportedly been a factor in the flight of Muslim
famÂ�ilÂ�ies from Kashmir’, as well as in the JapÂ�anÂ�ese use of so-Â�called ‘comfort
women’ (see Chai 1993; Chung 1994; Hicks 1994; Hsu 1993; Hu 1992; Sancho
1997; Soh 1996; Ueno 1994). Both the Chai (1993) and Soh (1996) art�icles
stress how, by luring ‘comfort women’ from JapÂ�anÂ�ese colÂ�onÂ�ized terÂ�ritÂ�ories and
bringing them to occupied ter�rit�ories, the Jap�an�ese forces dem�on�strated complete
control in the occupied region. Examples from Latin Amer�ica reflect a slightly
different pattern. In an attempt to crush opposi�tional elements of the civilian
86╇╇ First generation of systematic documentation
popu�la�tion, women were singled out on the basis of their male af�fili�ation and
their indi�vidual polit�ical ac�tiv�ities. Bunster-�Burotto (1986: 297) explains:
‘[m]ilitary regimes in Latin AmerÂ�ica have deÂ�veloped patterns of punÂ�ishments
specifically designed for women who are perceived as actively fighting against
or in any way resisting the oppression and ex�ploita�tion visited upon their peoples
by dicÂ�tatorial govÂ�ernÂ�ments’. Human rights reports have shown that being a wife,
daughter or even cousin of a male op�pon�ent to the regime may be seen as a way
of ‘resisting the oppression’ (Bunster-Â�Burotto 1986: 303; on the situÂ�ation in
Peru, see Amnesty International 1989: 10; HRW 1995: 92–93; HRW 1992; on
the situ�ation in El Salvador and Guatemala, see Aron et al. 1991: 44). It appears
from this liter�at�ure that it is when the symbolic identity of women is coupled
with their ethnic, religious or polit�ical identity that certain groups of women are
singled out. Bernard (1994: 35–39) has outlined different politÂ�ical purposes that
sexual viol�ence can have: first, it facilitates ethnic cleansing by increasing the
incentive to flee; second, it demoralizes the opÂ�ponÂ�ent; third, it signals an inten­
tion to break up sociÂ�ety; fourth, it inflicts trauma and conÂ�tribÂ�utes to psychologi­
cal damage by the opposing side; fifth, it gives psychological bene�fits to the
perpetrators; and finally sixth, it inflicts a blow against the col�lect�ive enemy by
striking at a group with high symbolic value.
The crucial point emphas�ized in the schol�arly liter�at�ure cited above is that
par�ticu�lar women are targeted for sexual viol�ence for two main reasons: first,
because they are women who find themselves in a situ�ation where pat�ri�archal
gender relations are accentuated and, second, because they are female embodi­
ments of other socio-�cultural identities. This conceptualization challenges the
notion that all women of the war zone are equally prone to sexual viol�ence
because of their gender, and argues that we have to crit�ically ana�lyse gender and
other socio-�cultural structures together if we are to explain why it is that certain
groups of women in the war zone are more targeted than others.
The main ad�vant�age of the structuralist conceptualization is that it sets the
focus on the female vic�tim herself. In other words, moving away from the notion
re�gard�ing sexual viol�ence against the woman as being a result of militarized
masculinity to investigating how this par�ticu�lar kind of viol�ence targets female
cultural identity. Although pos�it�ive in outlook, this point has been of grave
concern in inter�na�tional law liter�at�ure, where it is argued that the law has been
much too preoccupied with the sanctity of women’s honour, and less with her
human rights. A further critique has been that a woman’s honour tradiÂ�tionÂ�ally
has been defined in male terms, i.e. that it is men who give or take her honour
(for discussion on this point, see Aolain 1997; Askin 1997; Blatt 1992; Cleiren
and Tijssen 1994; Copelon 1995; Healey 1995; Meron 1993; Niarchos 1995).
The structuralist conceptualization also sets out to explain why certain women
are targeted more than others, and thereby how the use of sexual viol�ence in the
war zone can be intertwined with the polit�ical purpose of the conflict. The fact
that men, too, can be vic�tims of this kind of viol�ence, how�ever, cannot be
explained by this conceptualization, which is a shortcoming that is addressed by
the social constructivist conceptualization.
 First generation of systematic documentation╇╇ 87
Social constructionism
This conceptualization is an attempt to understand the thinking behind targeting
both men and women with sexual viol�ence in the war zone. Epistemologically, it
is a departure from the two previous conceptualizations in that gender relations
are regarded not as given through patÂ�riÂ�archy, but as constructed through ‘trans­
actions that are understood to be appropriate to one sex’ (Bohan 1997: 33).
Gender relations are perceived as something we do rather than something we
are.10 Bohan (1997: 39) explains further that ‘the factors defining a parÂ�ticuÂ�lar
transaction as femÂ�inÂ�ine or masculine are not the sex of the actors but the situ­
ational paraÂ�meters within which the performance occurs’. Social constructionist
thought is inherently scep�tical of gen�eralized theories of male/female relations
and thereby opens up a way of thinking about sexual viol�ence in war where,
potentially, men and women can be both perpetrators and victims.
A closer look at the social constructionist understanding of sexual viol�ence
committed by men against other men further clarifies this per�spect�ive. The Final
Report of the Commission of Experts estab�lished Pursuant to Security Council
780 (UNSC 1994), docuÂ�ments several incidents of male vicÂ�tims of sexual viol­
ence in the war in Bosnia. Hague (1997), Meznaric (1994), Nordstrom (1996),
Sofos (1996), Thomas and Regan (1994), Zarkov (1997) all stress that in order
fully to understand the empirical reality that both men and women can be vic­
tims, one must investigate how sexual viol�ence both in peace and war is founded
on asÂ�sumpÂ�tions of power domination combined with gender identity construc­
tion. This concern is also reflected in Jones’ artÂ�icle (1994), where he says that
men are the ‘abÂ�sent subjects’ in femÂ�inÂ�ist gender anaÂ�lyses of the conflict in the
former Yugoslavia. This view is sup�ported by Zarkov, who states that:

[T]here is no wonder that interÂ�naÂ�tional legal institutions never acÂ�know­

ledged male vic�tims of sexual viol�ence, there was no wonder, until very
recently, that the female vic�tim of sexual viol�ence was hardly ever a subject
of inter�na�tional legal concerns. Association of femininity and vic�timization
is so natÂ�ural – wars or no wars – that few laws had anything to say about it.
(Zarkov 1997: 146)

Furthermore, Jones points to the fact that men have been the majority of concen­
tration camp vic�tims (1994: 126), and we know from times of both war and
peace that sexual viol�ence is not uncommon in all-�male settings. Jones asks for a
broader and more nuanced approach to an understanding of how the gender
dimension works in the war zone, implying that it must include a conceptualiza­
tion of men as vic�tims and not just women.11 So what does the vic�timization of
men through sexual viol�ence symbolize? Can sexual viol�ence against men in the
war zone only be committed by homosexuals? The social constructionist con­
ceptualization refutes such an understanding. In his ana�lysis of heterosexual men
raping other heterosexual men in a USA peacetime con�text, Scarce (1997: 78)
claims that this kind of rape is ‘largely an exertion of power and control through
feminizing the other by forcing a man into the sexually submissive role of the
88╇╇ First generation of systematic documentation
female’. We can conclude from this that a man who is vicÂ�timized through sexual
viol�ence in the war zone is also feminized. So what happens to the perpetrator?
If the vic�tim is feminized, is the perpetrator masculinized? Hague (1997) argues
that this is the case:

In the crime of [.â•›.â•›.] rape in Bosnia-Â�Herzegovina, traditional gender asÂ�sump­

tions of which persons are ‘masculine’ and which ‘femÂ�inÂ�ine’ came under
attack, and in many cases were asserted, through ascriptions of national
identity. The qual�it�ies of power, domination and violent subjugation often
associated with a hege�monic masculinity accrued, in this con�text, to the
national identities known as ‘Serb’ and ‘Bosnian Serb’.
(Hague 1997: 53)

In the same artÂ�icle, Hague (1997: 52) argues against the notion that ‘all that is
female is femÂ�inÂ�ine and all that is male is masculine’. An anaÂ�lysis of these two
quotes suggests that it is not only ‘all that is male’ that can be masculinized (or
feminized), but that the same is true of national identities (by suggesting that
(Bosnian) Serb identities became masculinized during the conflict in Bosnia).
What does masculinization entail? Zarkov explains that this can only be under­
stood within a heterosexual paradigm:

[I]t is crucial to stress that sexuality, as much as gender, is an organ�izing

prin�ciple, on which all of the cultures that we live in [.╛.╛.] are based, simply
because men and women are presumed to be heterosexual. Heterosexuality
is the norm we live with, whatever our sexual orientation. Construction of
masculinity is thus in�sep�ar�able from the construction of heterosexuality.
(Zarkov 1997: 144)

Zarkov goes on to argue that the key element of masculinity is power. ‘The base
of viol�ence against both men and women is not in hetero- or homo-�sexuality of
an indiÂ�vidual male actor but in an inÂ�sepÂ�arÂ�able construction of masculine = heter­
osexual = power’ (Zarkov 1997: 144). Meznaric (1994) argues ‘that in a situ­
ation of ethnic conflict [g]ender becomes an ethno-�marker in the boundary
maintenance and in conflict groups’. Gendering the ethnic groups thus becomes
a way of ascribing power to the warring par�ties in the war zone. Combining
these two claims gives us the fol�low�ing line of reasoning: the vic�tim of sexual
viol�ence in the war zone is vic�timized by feminization of both the sex and the
ethnic/religious/politÂ�ical identity to which the vicÂ�tim belongs; likewise, the per­
petrator’s sex and ethnic/religious/politÂ�ical identity is empowered by
masculinization.
This conceptualization combines and expands the essentialist and structuralist
conceptualizations. First, it ac�know�ledges that women, irrespective of ethnic,
religious or polit�ical belonging, are more susceptible to sexual viol�ence in war
than men, and thus seems to agree with the essentialist conceptualization.
Second, it also ac�know�ledges that, within the war zone, targeted groups of
 First generation of systematic documentation╇╇ 89
women, depending on their ethnic/religious/polit�ical belonging, are at greater
risk than other groups of women, and this seems to agree with the structuralist
conceptualization. The explanation this conceptualization offers, how�ever, is
very different from the explanations in the other two, mainly because it does not
claim the world to be as static as these others inherently suggest. Rather, the
explanation for why women in gen�eral, and targeted women in par�ticu�lar, are
vic�timized through sexual viol�ence is that these actions feminize the women
through vicÂ�timization. It is precisely this line of thought that allows the concep­
tualization to include the vic�timization of men, and which makes the empirical
focus more complete than the two previous conceptualizations. The dir�ec�tion of
this ana�lysis is more complex than for the two previous conceptualizations.
While the essentialist conceptualization explains war-�time sexual viol�ence from
the per�spect�ive of the perpetrator, and the structuralist conceptualization from
the per�spect�ive of the vic�tims, the social constructionist conceptualization
focuses on how war-�time sexual viol�ence can be regarded as a transaction of
identities between the perpetrator and the vic�tims, i.e. how their social identities
become situated. The line of thought can be summarÂ�ized as follows: the perpe­
trator and his (potentially also her) ethnic/religious/polit�ical identity becomes
masculinized, while the vicÂ�tim’s becomes feminized. Furthermore, the masculi­
nized and feminized identities are situated in a hierarchical power relationship
where masculinized identities are ascribed power and feminized identities are
not.

Summary
The above conceptualizations all focus in different ways on the perception of
sexual viol�ence as a weapon of war. It has been argued that sexual viol�ence is a
weapon directed against: (a) women in the war zone, (b) targeted women in the
war zone, and (c) targeted men and women in the war zone. The stra�tegic effect
of this weapon has been defined as: (a) reaffirming militaristic masculinity, and
thereby focusing on the perpetrator, (b) attacking the ethnic/religious/polit�ical
identity that the woman is seen to embody, thereby turning the focus on to the
vic�tim, and (c) masculinizing the perpetrators by empowering his identity, and
feminizing the vic�tim by vic�timizing his/her identity, thereby focusing on the
symbolic interÂ�action between the perpetrator and the vicÂ�tim. Based on these ana­
lyses, we can see that it is only the last conceptualization which helps us under­
stand the most comprehensive empirical reality (the vic�timization of men and
women) and explains why it is that sexual violÂ�ence is the ‘preferred’ form of
violÂ�ence (because this most clearly comÂ�municÂ�ates masculinization and feminiza­
tion). So, why are these insights im�port�ant? Does it really mat�ter whether we
conceptualize sexual violÂ�ence in essentialist, structuralist or social construction­
ist terms?
The premise of future research in this field must be that the con�sequences of
acts of sexual viol�ence are not given. The effects and con�sequences will vary in
accordance with time, culture and the nature of the conflict. It is only through
90╇╇ First generation of systematic documentation
inter�action with the vic�tims/perpetrators, as well as an understanding of the
nature of the conflict and culture in which the acts of sexual viol�ence take place,
that the researcher can explain the effects of war-�time sexual viol�ence. Can it be
claimed that sexual viol�ence is a weapon of war if the effects are so de�pend�ent
on time and circumstance? I believe so, but the challenge of research is to show
how multifaceted the effects are, and this calls on the researcher to be sensitive
to nuances: Is war-�time rape ex�peri�enced in the same way by all vic�tims? As
Chapter 3 has shown this is clearly not the case. When the vic�tim perceives
sexual viol�ence as a weapon of war, does the perpetrator wear a uniform, speak
a different language, or act as part of a group? When does the perpetrator per­
ceive sexual viol�ence as a weapon of war? When is sexual viol�ence in the war
zone not perceived as a weapon of war, and what characterizes this understand­
ing? Such an approach calls for dia�lec�tical methodology and hermeneutic
interpretation.
The pragmatic im�plica�tions of the social constructivist conceptualization are
more difficult to map out than the others. Had war-�time sexual viol�ence been a
result solely of the masculine drive, we could have transformed milit�ary training
and rid ourselves of the prob�lem. In addition, had war-�time sexual viol�ence been
committed only against women representing the ‘other’ identities in the given
conflict, we could have directed all our pol�icy and aid work at these groups. But,
as has been shown, the pic�ture is more complex. While we have to be sensitive
to the issue of war-�time sexual viol�ence in milit�ary training, as well as in aid/
human-�relief pol�icies, far from straight�forward is how best to deal with the issue
in these con�texts. My belief is, and sup�port can be found in the liter�at�ure,12 that
the best ‘coping stratÂ�egy’ is to speak out about the issue. It is only by making
policy�makers, journ�al�ists, lawyers and other analysts aware of the issue that the
tradition of impunity and silence can be ended. The social constructionist con­
ceptualization, how�ever, urges us to ana�lyse the situ�ational para�meters that shape
the symbolic effect of sexual violÂ�ence, and any act of speaking out must there­
fore be sensitive to the difÂ�ferÂ�ences in the vicÂ�tim’s exÂ�periÂ�ences and the intention
behind the crime.
The next chapter shows how a group of health workers in Bosnia have
attempted to do exactly that. It also shows how they have had to deal with vic­
tims of sexual viol�ence in war as well as post-�war and what the impact on their
clients, as well as themselves, has been.
7 Therapeutic work with victims
of sexual violence in war and
post-�war1

Throughout the Bosnian war years from 1992 until 1995 people fled their homes
and towns and ended up as refu�gees outside the coun�try or as in�ternally dis-
placed persons (IDPs) within the coun�try. In response to the needs of the IDPs
several psycho�social centres were set up to facilitate help with their various
needs. Some were more clearly focused on women and chil�dren and geared
towards helping women who had suffered sexual viol�ence crimes. This chapter
focuses on how a group of health workers at two psycho�social centres worked
with vic�tims of sexual viol�ence during the war years and after. More specifically
the chapter focuses on the ways in which the health workers compare and con-
trast their work with vic�tims of war-�related sexual viol�ence versus post-�war
sexual viol�ence and which in�ter�pretive repertoires are applied when the health
workers deÂ�scribe their work with vicÂ�tims of war rape vis-Â�à-vis their work with
vic�tims of post-�war rape. The answers to these questions will ana�lysed by focus-
ing on how the local health workers2 de�scribe their work, and themselves, in
relation to the two different con�texts and which discourses about sexual viol�ence
emerge as a result.

The psychosocial centres

The estab�lishment of both the psycho�social centres followed a sim�ilar pattern.
Local women came together during the war, motiv�ated by a wish to help
in�ternally displaced persons who were coming to the home towns of the health
workers. The formal estab�lishment of the centres came about when foreign indi�
viduals and organ�iza�tions arrived seeking local partners with whom they could
estab�lish psycho�social assistance specifically aimed at Bosnian women. These
inter�na�tional human�itar�ian workers had been appalled by news accounts and
reports of human rights violations in gen�eral, and the situ�ation of women who
had been subjected to mass rapes, in par�ticu�lar. Collaborative efforts between
inter�na�tionals and locals led to the official opening of Centre A in early 1993,
and the opening of Centre B in early 1994, although in both cases unofficial
ac�tiv�ities had been going on since 1992. In prin�ciple, both centres were multi-�
ethnic in outlook and staff, but in reality both staff and clients were predomi-
nantly Bosniak.
92╇╇ Therapeutic work with victims
Centre A, where I inter�viewed 14 health workers, was estab�lished to assist
war raped women and their fam�il�ies. The centre offered medical, thera�peutic,
legal and social help to its clients free of charge. Although their pri�mary goal
was to assist raped women, it was essential to all concerned that the centre
should not become known as ‘the rape centre’. Consequently, they welcomed
women suffering from a vast range of war traumas, along with their fam�il�ies.
Centre A consisted of several houses that served different functions, such as a
day clinic, living accommodation and an in�forma�tion centre. Some clients lived
at the centre for varying amounts of time, while others only visited during the
day. In the beginning, potential clients were identified and approached during
visits to col�lect�ive centres in the town and its imme�diate vicinity. The health
workers presented the work of the psycho�social centre in order to encourage
women who needed help to contact them. For the most part, em�ployees work
full-�time and de�scribe their work as being more than just a job. Their work and
com�mit�ment has offered them safety, education, sal�ar�ies, and even in some cases
food during difficult times. The centre has close contact and a degree of coopera�
tion with local police, health authorities and social ser�vices. In the years since
the war, this coopera�tion has grown closer. The centre, how�ever, has struggled to
stay afloat in the post-�conflict years, because it did not attract the same level of
engagement from interÂ�naÂ�tional donors – on which they were entirely dependent.
Centre B, where I inter�viewed nine health workers, had a broader approach to
war trauma. Unlike Centre A, it did not single out vic�tims of war rape in par�ticu�
lar, but rather included this par�ticu�lar ex�peri�ence within a wider framework. It
was estab�lished as a day centre for women and chil�dren, offering therapy, legal
assistance and social help. Here, too, all ser�vices were provided free of charge.
There was, how�ever, a very different employment pol�icy in Centre B. Health
workers were employed for no more than half-�time for two reasons. First, it was
imÂ�portÂ�ant for the founders not to ‘steal’ emÂ�ployees from their other jobs; they
hoped that local staff would find ways to combine work with the centre and any
previous employment. Second, the fact that the em�ployees had other jobs in the
local com�mun�ity increased the pos�sib�il�ity of identi�fying traumatized people who
might be in need of help. As with Centre A, the health workers carried out – and
conÂ�tinue to carry out – a great deal of outreach work. They were able to reach
people not only in col�lect�ive centres, but in schools, hos�pitals and other places in
the local com�mun�ity where the health workers had their pri�mary work. Although
Centre B has been a centre for women and chil�dren, it has also provided therapy
for men, albeit to a limited extent, and has focused con�sider�able effort on ado�les�
cents. In addition to in-�house work, the health workers also followed up group
therapy in numerous col�lect�ive centres in the vicinity of the town.
In the post-�war setting, both centres focus on sim�ilar themes, such as do�mestic
viol�ence, sui�cide, drug abuse and prostitution, and they have changed their focus
from war trauma to post-Â�war trauma (or ‘civil trauma’, as many of them call it).
Politically, they have taken on slightly different roles in their local com�munit�ies:
one centre has estab�lished an in�forma�tion de�part�ment for disseminating in�forma�
tion about its work, as well as on women’s rights in the larger comÂ�munÂ�ity, while
 Therapeutic work with victims╇╇ 93
the other centre has expanded its ac�tiv�ities with more outreach work to new
groups, such as ado�les�cents, chil�dren and men, and provides help with a vast
array of psycho�social needs. The majority of the health workers remained com-
mitted to their work throughout the war and post-�war years, despite periods of
extreme stress, un�cer�tainty and burnout.

Sexual violence discourses

The ana�lysis in this chapter starts from the premise that the meaning, understand-
ing and reality of sexual viol�ence in war is shaped through discourse (Gergen
1999; Jørgensen and Phillips 1999; Wetherell 2001). Social constructionist
scholarship suggests that the researcher focus the discourse ana�lysis on in�ter�
pretive repertoires made avail�able through talk, descriptions and other manifes-
tations of a given phenomenon. An inÂ�terÂ�pretive repertoire is ‘basically a lexÂ�icon
or re�gis�ter of terms and metaphors drawn upon to characterize and evalu�ate
actions and events’, according to Potter and Wetherell (1987: 138). In other
words, the aim of this ana�lysis is to explain which statements, identities and
modes of practice are made pos�sible within different discourses on sexual viol�
ence. In other words, it is im�port�ant to ana�lyse sexual viol�ence not only in the
con�text of war, but also how this phenomenon is contrasted with sexual viol�ence
in a post-�conflict setting.
The ways in which sexual viol�ence is conceptualized in the inter�views with
the health workers bring out two distinct, yet highly interrelated, discourses of
violÂ�ence against women. On the one hand, sexual violÂ�ence is framed as war viol­
ence and is thereby assigned to a specific time period (the war between 1992 and
1995), altered mater�ial life con�ditions (threat of killings, and destruction of
homes and properties), and an aberrant set of morals and values (ethnic cleans-
ing). Sexual viol�ence in this con�text is contrasted with what is seen as post-�war
viol�ence. This form of viol�ence is euphemistically called do�mestic viol�ence and
is located within fam�il�ies and linked to pat�ri�archal value structures. In the two
main subsections that follow, we will see how in�ter�pretive repertoires and identi-
ties are constructed within discourses of war viol�ence and post-�war viol�ence,
respectively. But, before going deeper into the ana�lysis itself, a few words on
methodology are necessary.

Interviews and interviewees

The pri�mary data on which this chapter is based consist of 23 core inter�views.
Despite great diversity in their backgrounds, there are certain charac�ter�istics that
unite these health workers. They all de�scribe their initial inter�est in doing this
kind of work as a result of feeling paralyzed by the polit�ical situ�ation in the early
war years. The people who got together in order to ‘do something’ were col-
leagues, friends and neigh�bours, and con�sequently it was a close-�knit network
that they estab�lished. The health workers were all women, and their ethnic back-
ground was predominantly Bosniak: 78 per cent of the inter�viewees were
94╇╇ Therapeutic work with victims
Bosniak, 13 per cent were of mixed Croat–Serb background, 4.5 per cent were
of Croat–Bosniak background, and 4.5 per cent were of Croat background. They
ranged in age from 25 to 63 years. The inter�views were conducted at the two
psycho�social centres. In one case, I lived at the centre for the week I was there,
while in the other case I stayed at a nearby hotel and visited the centre each day
of my stay.
All inter�views were semi-�structured and followed an inter�view guide. Within
this guide, a number of core themes were con�sidered par�ticu�larly im�port�ant: the
health workers’ own accounts of the startup of the centre and their involvement
in that pro�cess; descriptions of their work; their perceptions of working in an all-�
woman envir�on�ment; their perceptions of the change of focus from war traumas
to post-�war traumas; their thoughts on how the local com�mun�ity regarded the
psycho�social centres; and their thoughts about and hopes for the future of the
centre.

Discourses of war violence

Women’s sexuality was not a theme for open debate in the Socialist Federal
Repub�lic of Yugoslavia, nor in Bosnia. This does not mean that there was no
re�cog�ni�tion that acts of sexual viol�ence took place, but rather that these were
perceived as being private prob�lems, not an area of pub�lic concern. During
the€ war years, how�ever, sexual viol�ence became a pub�lic theme, as well as a
tool€ in the polit�ical conflict as has been shown in the previous chapters. Not
only€were pub�lic discussions about rape something new in the Bosnian con�text;
it was also new in the inter�na�tional con�text. The United Nations envoy to Bosnia
from 1993 to 1995, Thorvald Stoltenberg (personal communication, 7 Febru�ary
2002), provides another example. He has said that in almost all of the meetings
he had with the leaders of the various warring par�ties (Slobodan Milosevic,
Alija€Izedbegovic and Franjo Tudjman), accusations would be thrown back and
forth about the numbers of women that soldiers from the different sides had
raped.
For the health workers in Bosnia, the challenge was how to deal with this
viol�ence in a thera�peutic setting, when they had no previous ex�peri�ence with this
par�ticu�lar form of viol�ence and no thera�peutic language through which to address
it. Somehow, the issue of sexual viol�ence needed to be made expli�cit and recog�
nized as a unique form of viol�ence in order that it be given as much attention as
pos�sible during the war, and in order to find ways of helping its vic�tims. What
the health workers did was to situate themselves both as vic�tims of war, thereby
focusing on having shared ex�peri�ences with their clients, and as professional
therapists, thereby focusing on being different from their clients. In addition, dis-
courses of survival and shame were central themes in the health workers’
accounts, and in the fol�low�ing we will see how these themes are framed.
 Therapeutic work with victims╇╇ 95
Discourses of victimization
Despite their dif�fer�ence in age, education and working his�tory, many of the
health workers find common ground in their descriptions of how they became
involved in and motiv�ated about working with women vic�tims of viol�ence. They
were all vic�tims of the war. One health worker explains how she perceived the
situation:

We all lived with trauma in our fam�il�ies, fear of dying. If it was not from
the shelling, then we were afraid to die from hunger. For almost two years,
we were in the middle of a blockade, and we could not get anything from
the outside. It is only now that I understand how traumatizing this was for
us.

They de�scribe vic�timization as loss of mobility, phys�ical and emotional secur�ity,

and a predictable future. For the health workers, the war meant a sharp decline in
their stand�ards of living, and this aspect of their vic�timization was hurtful and
humiliating. One health worker deÂ�scribed how she had to clean other people’s
houses to make ends meet after having been accustomed to having help at home
herself. She polished her nails at night so that no one would see how worn her
hands were. Another health worker de�scribed how she used her fur coat, a
symbol of her former wealth and status, to fetch wood for her stove, which had
replaced the electric oven they could no longer use. However, this form of vic�
timization was de�scribed as being very different from the ordeals that the clients
had gone through. The majority of the health workers lived in their own homes
during the war. They were urban and educated, while their clients were predomi-
nantly rural and in many cases uneducated. Despite these dif�fer�ences, situating
themselves as vic�tims created a sense of unity between the health workers and
the clients, and was a prime mo�tiva�tion for initiating psycho�social work. It was
the re�cog�ni�tion that they were all vic�tims in different ways that gave the health
workers the added energy they needed for the kind of work they did.
The first meetings with IDPs – many of whom had been raped, lost their
homes and seen family members killed – were difficult, but rewarding, as this
woman explains:

Working with women at that time and at that stage made it easier for me to
cope with myself and my life in a better way, if you can understand what I
mean. Another thing was that I was happy to be of help [.â•›.â•›.] I was afraid
that something might happen because it was the war, but seeing what the
women had been through and they were still alive gave me the message that
I will have the strength to go through whatever I have to go through, and I
will live because if they do, I will as well.

Another health worker confirms how the psycho�social work was a source of
comfort, stability and solid�arity throughout the war years and in the aftermath of
the conflict:
96╇╇ Therapeutic work with victims
Very often I would feel sup�port from the therapy group members who had
numerous losses in their fam�il�ies. In addition to all their suffering, they
managed to offer me their help, and the therapy sessions were therefore a
mutual exchange of ex�peri�ences, and that was very good.

Discourses of professionalism
The re�cog�ni�tion of shared vic�timization was, according to the health workers,
im�port�ant in motivating them for this par�ticu�lar kind of work. However, it was
also im�port�ant to create a distance between themselves and their clients, in order
to avoid getting burnt out. The health workers had to become professionals in
dealing with war traumas. At the beginning of their work, the mere naming of
sexual viol�ence appeared as a major obs�tacle for the health workers, because
they were then forced to make visÂ�ible a ‘private’ matÂ�ter within a pubÂ�lic (albeit
confidential) space (the psycho�social centre). The challenge was to acquire an
appropriate language and appropriate therapy methods to deal with this issue.
One health worker de�scribes this in�secur�ity in her account of the first group of
clients she had, of which several were rape victims:

I was silent and a little closed in myself and a little bit inhibited, and I was just
looking at them. I could not see them so well because there were just candles
[the electricity was out], but this field officer asked them questions about what
had happened to them. I was afraid that I would hurt them if I asked them too
many questions. In this first group of clients, we did not use the word rape at
all: they talked about when IT happened, and we asked questions about how
and when IT happened, and we always talked about IT. And we tried to do
some relaxation exercises, but we were all so tense: they were tense, and we
were tense, and there was shelling, and sometimes the shelling interrupted the
groups and we had to go into the basement and stop the therapy.

As this quote suggests, the issue of sexual viol�ence was perceived as so taboo
that it was difficult even to name it. Another health worker handled the issue by
avoiding conversations with clients that would bring out the theme. Her solution
was to sing when she was on night shifts:

In the beginning, I was afraid to start talking to them about the things that
had happened to them, because I was not sure that I would be able to cope
with it. So, you know, there were nights when we were singing all night. I
am the last person to sing in pub�lic, but I would rather sing than have one or
two or three start talking about painful issues. So I decided it was better to
sing rather than have such messy questions and messy topics that I did not
know what to do with.

The way the health workers coped with their own insecurities was through educa-
tion. Before the formal opening of the centres, health workers were able to find
 Therapeutic work with victims╇╇ 97
schol�arly liter�at�ure in related fields in either German or English. One or two people
would read these texts and translate them for the others, and through this approach,
highly eclectic thera�peutic models could be modified to fit the needs of their clients.
Midway through the war, the health workers came in contact with inter�na�
tionals who were willing and eager to fund and sup�port local initiatives aimed at
helping women raped during the war. It was these contacts that led to the formal
estab�lishment of the two psycho�social centres. These contacts also led to an
array of courses and seminars offered to the health workers. Sometimes the edu�
cators came to them, and sometimes the health workers travelled abroad.
However, few, if any, of the seminars and courses fitted the situ�ation in Bosnia
at the time, as the fol�low�ing quote suggests:

Everything we learned in those seminars [or�gan�ized by inter�na�tionals] and

from the liter�at�ure [Western psychology] we had to re-�modify because we
worked in very specific con�ditions, and the issue of rape was a topic we had
not faced before [.â•›.â•›.] and perhaps even we as therapists saw it as a kind of
shame of the woman it happened to.

Most courses were or�gan�ized by Western Euro�peans or Amer�icans. The edu�

cators had no direct ex�peri�ence with sexual viol�ence during war, but used their
expertise and ex�peri�ences from other conflicts and trauma theory. The themes
covered stretched from the Vietnam War syndrome and torture methods used in
Chile, to trauma education related to nat�ural disasters and even traffic accidents.
As the above quote suggests, the challenge for the inter�na�tional edu�cators was
not only to try to fit existing theories on sexual viol�ence, trauma and therapy to
the extreme situ�ation of the Bosnian war, but also to help the health workers
overcome their inhibitions and inex�peri�ence in talking and dealing with the issue
of sexual viol�ence. For the health workers, on the other hand, there was a need to
point out that the war in Bosnia was remark�ably gruesome and the acts of sexual
viol�ence were such that it was difficult for even the most ardent psychiatric pro-
fessional to find an appropriate way to respond:

You could be the best psychologist in Europe, but when it comes to war
trauma you become a little toy student.

The statement above could have indicated that the education they received was
useless, but in fact, the health workers express con�sider�able appreciation and
eagerness to learn. The basis for such attitudes was twofold. First, the education
they received made them better quali�fied to deal with the traumas of their clients,
increasing their level of professionalism and their identity as professionals. It
also served as a way of legitimizing their own intuÂ�itÂ�ive – and often pre-Â�education
– responses to the clients, as the folÂ�lowÂ�ing statement illustrates:

I was wondering if my tears were helpful or damaging. Maybe I should not

do what I was doing? And I had my doubts about my beha�vi�our and my
98╇╇ Therapeutic work with victims
empathy in that pro�cess. And later on I met a Dutch woman who helped me
get rid of those doubts, and she said that sort of beha�vi�our had nothing to do
with my know�ledge but was part of my response.

Second, as a side-�effect, the education provided them with a way of coping and
understanding the distress, un�cer�tainty and pain they had all gone through during
the war, and therefore served as a sort of self-�help.
The ways in which the health workers de�veloped identities as professionals in
dealing with war traumas rested on how they contrasted their know�ledge and
ex�peri�ences with those of their clients and edu�cators. The education provided
them with a language and thera�peutic tools to address war traumas, sexuality and
violÂ�ence vis-Â�à-vis their clients. In other words, by adopting a theraÂ�peutic lan-
guage and learning thera�peutic tools, they became better equipped to handle the
traumas of their clients which, in turn, gave them increased authority and
respons�ib�ility. Yet, at the same time, the health workers were the experts on
local perceptions and taboos re�gard�ing sexual viol�ence. This meant that they
acted as professionals in transforming schol�arly know�ledge and thera�peutic tools
related to war trauma to fit the con�text of the Bosnian war. It was the health
workers who knew how to best balance outside know�ledge (i.e. Western psy-
chology) with inside (i.e. Bosnian) cultural taboos. One example of such balanc-
ing was the use of a female Muslim theo�lo�gian and health worker at one of the
centres. She could make religious visits to women who might other�wise have not
been allowed by their fam�il�ies to receive help from a psycho�social centre. By
making religious visits, the theo�lo�gian was able to reach these women and talk
about war traumas in a non-�threatening way, and without creating prob�lems for
the women in their families.

Discourses of survival
The health workers consistently and insistently refused to de�scribe their clients
as vicÂ�tims, referring to them instead as ‘war rape survivors’ or ‘war trauma sur-
vivors’. When I asked why they used the word ‘survivor’ rather than the more
common word ‘vicÂ�tim’, they replied that that they did not wish to vicÂ�timize the
women further and that ‘survivor’ evokes a more posÂ�itÂ�ive, stronger image than
‘victim’.
By insisting on using ‘survivor’, the health workers evoke the image of a
fighting soldier, an image most often associated with men. This use of im�agery
was further affirmed and brought into the pub�lic discourse by the imam3 in Sara-
jevo, who issued a fatwa4 in 1994 in which he declared that Bosniak women who
had been subjected to sexual viol�ence ought to be looked upon as war heroes,
that is, viewed in the same way as soldiers. One of the health workers explains:

The Islamic Association – at that time most of our clients were Muslim
women – issued a proclamation that women who were raped in the war
should have the position of a soldier, of a fighter, you know. They were seen
 Therapeutic work with victims╇╇ 99
like equals, almost like war heroes who got killed, although these women
did not get killed. The religious asso�ci�ation said it was not by their will;
they were misused for war purposes by the enemy. This religious approach
changed the attitude of a lot of men, and they got a better understanding for
what happened to their wives.

Among the health workers I spoke to both in Bosnia and abroad (I also inter�
viewed three Norwegian and two German health workers) this fatwa was men-
tioned as being very im�port�ant. The ex�peri�ences of the raped women were
conceptualized on the same level as those of soldiers involved in the fighting.
The fact that the religious leaders openly addressed the rape issue, and character-
ized the rape vic�tims as war-�heroes, may have shifted the way in which the raped
women were received and perceived within many fam�il�ies. One result was that
the war rape vic�tims were often protected by their fam�il�ies rather than being
ostracized. One health worker provided an example:

Sometimes the husband would come to the centre and say that strange and
brutal things had happened to his wife. And because some men had the
ex�peri�ence of being in prison or in concentration camps, they were aware of
the things that were going on there and they had an understanding of what
their wives were going through.

This scen�ario suggests that the husband knew what had happened to his wife and
wanted her to get help, which is in contrast to the common perception that a raped
woman would be so stigmatized that she would be left by her husband or bring
shame upon her family (Allen 1996; Brownmiller 1994; Card 1996; MacKinnon
1994; Seifert 1994). It is unclear how common the reaction de�scribed above was.
However, for the health workers, the imam’s engagement and pubÂ�lic condemna-
tion of the perpetrators created a pos�sib�il�ity for a new understanding of the vic�
tims, and could have pos�it�ive im�plica�tions for vic�tim/family relations.
The discourse of survival brings out a new identity construction for the clients
at the psycho�social centres. They are cast as ethnic survivors in a con�text in
which different ethnicities are alloc�ated innocence and guilt in a politicized
manner. Since eth�ni�city was seen as the prime reason for the conflict,5 as well as
a key factor in finding a peaceful res�olu�tion to the fighting, discourses of eth�ni�
city dominate sociopolit�ical ana�lyses of Bosnia. The division of Bosnia today
into a Serb RepubÂ�lic and a Croat–Bosniak Federation stands as testimony to how
successful the discourse of eth�ni�city was and con�tinues to be. The health workers
are careful to point out, how�ever, that they do not reserve their help for women
of only one par�ticu�lar eth�ni�city. Both of the psycho�social centres are in prin�ciple
multi-�ethnic. Yet, casting the clients within ethnic bound�ar�ies creates a good
base for therapy – both men and women were attacked, albeit in different ways,
because they belong to the same ethnic group. The violated body of the Bosniak
vicÂ�tim of sexual violÂ�ence ‘belongs’ to her ethnic group, and through these
ex�peri�ences the entire ethnic group is perceived as being attacked.
100╇╇ Therapeutic work with victims
The combination of gender and eth�ni�city has become so power�ful within writ-
ings on the Bosnian war that the image of the raped vic�tim is the image of a
Bosniak woman abused by a Serb male perpetrator, writes Zarkov (1997). Other
vicÂ�tim–perpetrator constellations have been overshadowed, which has hit Serb
vic�tims par�ticu�larly hard, not only in Bosnia but also in the inter�na�tional media.
For the Serb popu�la�tion, the survivor image of the rape vic�tim might therefore
have been a more difficult image to evoke, since the Serbian eth�ni�city has been
conceptualized as the identity of the perpetrator. Mixed identities complicate this
discourse even further, although this was not a theme in our interÂ�views – most
likely because the majority of the clients were Bosniak.

Discourses of stigmatization
While the Muslim leaders in Bosnia, through the fatwa de�scribed above, lifted
some of the stigma normally attached to vic�tims of sexual viol�ence, the threat of
stigmatization remained throughout the war years. The health workers had to
deal with this threat in different ways. They emphas�ized the im�port�ance of creat-
ing a safe envir�on�ment for their clients. The thought was that it would be easier
for vic�tims of sexual viol�ence to come to the centres if they had an all-�female
profile. However, in adopting such an approach, it was im�port�ant to make sure
that the centres did not become known as ‘rape centres’, because a ‘rape centre
would have no clients’, as one health worker pointed out. It would simply be too
stigmatizing for the vic�tims to approach such a centre. They portrayed the
centres as places where women with different war traumas could receive help,
underscored by one health worker who explained that ‘all our clients were
women with war traumas, physÂ�ical and psychological’. If the clients’ reasons for
coming to the centre were multi-�faceted, then the help the centres offered needed
to be equally diverse. One of the health workers at Centre A explained:

We did several things to make the whole pro�ced�ure easier. First of all, our
ser�vices were always free of charge for our clients. Secondly, all the
em�ployees and professionals were women, and the centre was able to cover
all segments of their need like accommodation, clothes, psychological
assistance, etc.

At Centre A, there was an additional reason for emphasizing treatment of differ-

ent kinds of war ex�peri�ences: the structure of the building in which the centre
was located. The waiting room at the front of the building had a glass door
through which passers-�by could get a glimpse of the clients. If passers-�by know
that the centre treats women with different war traumas, it is not pos�sible for
them to know exactly why any one par�ticu�lar client is there.
While Centre A emphas�izes the pos�it�ive sides of describing sexual viol�ence
as one of several war traumas that women vic�tims of war suffer from, inter�views
with health workers at Centre B reveal how this con�textualization can also be
prob�lematic. They argue that describing sexual viol�ence as one of several war
 Therapeutic work with victims╇╇ 101
traumas becomes a way of hiding – and thereby maintaining – the stigma
attached to vic�tims of sexual viol�ence. They make extensive use of group
therapy, and within such groups, every�thing that is said is confidential and does
not leave the room. Still, the health workers at Centre B explain that only rarely
have they had cases where a client openly admitted to having been subjected to
sexual viol�ence. The al�tern�ative of having specific groups for vic�tims of sexual
viol�ence, how�ever, is ruled out as impossible:

It would never have been pos�sible to form a [therapy] group of women who
had that kind of trauma [rape], but it happened that amongst the groups’
members there were women who had that ex�peri�ence, but very rarely would
they speak of it in the groups. I figured that the reason might be that these
groups consisted of women who knew each other before they became group
members [.╛.╛.] blood relations [.╛.╛.] and [.╛.╛.] neigh�bours. What happened was
that some women in a secret manner would give me a sign that they wanted
to talk to me about something they could not tell in front of the group.

When neces�sary, these secret signs were then followed by indi�vidual therapy.
Apparently, it was easier for the health workers at Centre A to single out vic�tims
of sexual viol�ence, and they even had therapy groups with this par�ticu�lar group
of war-�trauma vic�tims. Both centres, how�ever, appear to have succeeded in
attracting women vic�tims of sexual viol�ence through their female war-�trauma
focus, but the ways in which this approach succeeded in providing the vic�tims
with psychological therapy varied.
Framing sexual viol�ence as one among many war traumas women suffered
was also im�port�ant for the health workers and their relationships with the larger
com�munit�ies. Some of the health workers at Centre A were born and raised in
the city in which the psycho�social centre is located. They revealed that this was
slightly prob�lematic since their workplace was known as the rape centre in the
city. It was as though the stigma that was attached to the rape vic�tims had spread
to them. But when they could explain to their neigh�bours and fam�il�ies that they
worked with women who were traumatized in different ways – in this way creat-
ing a unity among women suffering from different traumas during the war – they
felt it was easier for them vis-Â�à-vis outsiders.
What I have de�scribed above are ways in which the stigma attached to vic�tims
of sexual viol�ence were managed within the psycho�social centres. By making vic�
tims of sexual violÂ�ence ‘inÂ�visÂ�ible’, the centres removed the stigma that attached
not only to the vic�tims but also to the health workers and their other clients.
Hiding the clients’ war rape exÂ�periÂ�ences is largely explained as a pragmatic solu-
tion in response to a damaging identity. This way of arguing for and organ�izing
psycho�social work shows that, despite the unexpected sup�port that Bosniak vic�
tims of wartime sexual viol�ence got from their religious leaders, the most pre�val�
ent way of conceptualizing vic�tims of sexual viol�ence was through stigmatization.
At Centre B, where sexual viol�ence was less vis�ible in the thera�peutic work
than at Centre A, those inter�viewed were clear about why women they suspected
102╇╇ Therapeutic work with victims
had been raped would not ac�know�ledge this in group sessions, or even in private
conversations with the therapists. One concern could be the pro�spect of getting
married in the future:

If they [potential partners] find out that they are with a girl who was raped,
they would find it difficult. And if you think that you cannot live without a
husband, and you have all those war trauma ex�peri�ences, you need fin�an�cial
sup�port, then you do not tell.

Another concern would be traditional male roles within families:

It [rape] was a weapon of war to destroy the family through the woman [.â•›.â•›.]
A husband cannot see the woman in the same way as he did before, because
of the traditional way of education and raising boys. People think that
women could often prevent those acts.

Discourses of post-�war violence

The post-Â�war years have been – and conÂ�tinue to involve – a struggle to recon-
struct and create normal lives in the midst of extra�ordinary destruction and social
probÂ�lems. A ‘normal life’ for many Bosnians was deÂ�scribed as a combination of
the life they enjoyed in the pre-�war years and the current Western Euro�pean
mode of living. With high unemployment,6 young people fleeing the coun�try to
seek better futures elsewhere, and the scars and wounds of war still overshadow-
ing the lives of most people, it is hard to patch together a normal life.
In the post-�war period, the psycho�social centres have adapted their focus to
address new social prob�lems. Sexual viol�ence con�tinues to be a pri�mary concern,
but the para�meters for this par�ticu�lar form of viol�ence have changed. The fol�
low�ing section focuses on how the new post-�war con�text brings out new dis-
courses of sexual viol�ence, and ana�lyses how these discourses are understood
and de�scribed as linked to the war.

Discourses of transitions
Domestic viol�ence, drug abuse, high sui�cide rates, and prostitution are among the
new areas of concern the health workers have to deal with in the aftermath of the
war. The ways in which these prob�lems are understood and talked about is
twofold: on the one hand, there is a perception that sexual viol�ence has increased
as a result of the social unrest caused by the war, while on the other hand, there is
the contrasting perception that more attention is given to these issues prim�arily
because of all the aid workers who have come to the region and initiated psycho�
social ac�tiv�ities. In both cases, the war is seen as instrumental in making gendered
viol�ence a theme of pub�lic debate and concern. The question, then, is how and
why the health workers argue that there has been an increase in sexual viol�ence in
post-�war Bosnia and what im�plica�tions this escalation has for their work?
 Therapeutic work with victims╇╇ 103
The fact that the war was marked by a collapse in morality, which has
created€ an increase in viol�ence within Bosnian fam�il�ies, is a core argument
within the sexual-�violence-on-�the-increase line of thinking. One health worker
explains:

I think war trauma made a lot of prob�lems for do�mestic viol�ence. We had
do�mestic viol�ence before the war but it was much more of a secret, very
secret. For example, now our soldiers say that they are more aggressive.
They think it is better to be violent against women than against chil�dren.
And women have also changed during the war, they accepted to work and
make some money for their fam�il�ies, but when the husbands came from the
frontline they were lost and had many war traumas and nightmares and a lot
of mixed troubles. But every�thing is connected with the war. I used to say
that we had war trauma and post-�war trauma, because many people after the
war had trauma with money, how to survive, how to get by, and this is just a
new prob�lem in Bosnia.

This health worker focuses on the changing identities of demobilized male sol-
diers in Bosnia. They are, she says, more aggressive; they suffer from a range of
war traumas and nightmares. In addition, they have come home to women who
have taken up roles as breadwinners and caretakers of the family in ways nor-
mally afforded men. In other words, women have entered male arenas, which
pos�sibly add to the aggression and frustration of many men. On top of all this
come the eco�nomic frustration and mater�ial in�secur�ity under which every�one
lives. This frustration and in�secur�ity is a classic post-�war, gendered con�sequence.
For many men, the distress of post-�conflict life, coupled with the changing roles
of women, may have led to what Friedman (1992) has de�scribed as a heightened
male vul�ner�abil�ity. Feelings of helplessness and despair result from their in�abil�
ity to take care of their fam�il�ies and from having witnessed family members
being raped, tortured or killed. For some men, this vul�ner�abil�ity may lead to the
use of do�mestic viol�ence as a way of re-�establishing control and power. For
others, it may mean passivity and deep depression.
Another argument is that the symbolic value of women within Bosnian soci�
ety changed after the war.

After the war came, we learned that people had been raped, and we had
people in the streets who had been raped. After the war, people became less
moral, and every�thing was allowed. This is a prob�lem. In our coun�try, we
completely changed our morals. Now it is normal to steal, and there is an
increase in viol�ence. I think that the destruction of values was very im�port�
ant for people during the war. Girls were exposed to constant attack not only
by the boys their own age, who also lost their values but older men who
ex�peri�enced the war. We can understand the prob�lems that they might have
but they all go to solve their prob�lems by placing the woman under them,
subordinate them.
104╇╇ Therapeutic work with victims
In a thorough study of the roles of women in an ethnically mixed village in
central Bosnia, Bringa (1995) argues that women in both Croat and Bosniak
fam�il�ies were often seen as maintainers of family values and morals. The quotes
above suggest that as the war brought a collapse in normal values and morals,
women increasingly became the targets of negat�ive attention and viol�ence. The
values and morals they were seen to represent, according to Bringa, were dis-
torted, and viol�ence followed. This distortion means that the viol�ence women
ex�peri�enced during the war did not end with the signing of the Dayton Agree-
ment in 1995, but was simply moved to the private sphere as a result of changing
male and female identities.
The health workers went on to point out that post-�war viol�ence, which they
call do�mestic viol�ence or civil trauma, is very different from war rape. It is more
difficult to evoke the survivor identity for the vic�tims in the post-�war setting,
because the perpetrator–vicÂ�tim relationship does not run along ethnic or politÂ�ical
lines. In the post-�war setting, a rape vic�tim is first and foremost a female party
injured by a male perpetrator. Indeed, rape is a form of viol�ence in which the
relationship between the indi�vidual men and women involved is brought into
question. One health worker explained:

I think that the stigma for women raped during the peace period would be
much stronger than towards the women raped during the war. During the
war, we thought about our survival, and we thought about ourselves as a
group against the enemy. But, in the peace, it is something else. We are not
all equal. We have indi�vidual issues and lives. And the attitude towards
indi�viduals is different. This makes a woman alone in her trauma.

This de�velopment represents a shift towards how sexual viol�ence is commonly

perceived in the Western world. In his introduction to the his�tory of rape in
France, Vigarello (2001: 1) argues that the ‘crime is now glaringly visÂ�ible, prom-
inent as never before in police enquiries, court proceedings, news�paper art�icles
and pubÂ�lic concerns’ and goes on to say that this claim holds true for most
Western soci�eties. Acknowledging sexual viol�ence as a prob�lem shared with
other Euro�pean (and Amer�ican) soci�eties is therefore paradoxically regarded as a
form of deÂ�velopment towards a ‘normal sociÂ�ety’. The folÂ�lowÂ�ing quote illusÂ�trates
this point:

Now it is sim�ilar as in any Western soci�ety: the accusation against women

about why she walked alone at night, why she wore a short skirt, and why
she provoked the rape.

For the health workers, the challenge is how to transform their ex�peri�ences as
therapists with war traumas and sexual viol�ence during the war years in order to
adapt to situ�ations involving peacetime viol�ence against women. The pragmatic
challenge is to adjust therapy models to fit more long-�term abuse:
 Therapeutic work with victims╇╇ 105
Rape in war was often once and rape in do�mestic viol�ence is through many
years by a close member of your family. In the war, it is one soldier, and
perhaps even someone you do not even know, and this might make it easier
for her. In do�mestic viol�ence, the woman will ask why her father is doing
this. In the war, it is just normal for the soldier, because they test different
things. It is the most difficult for do�mestic violence.

Further, the health workers see a need to carry out more preventive meas�ures
and have increased and strengthened their in�forma�tion and outreach work.
By arguing that there has been an increase in sexual viol�ence against women
in the post-�war setting in Bosnia, the health workers de�scribe new forms of mas-
culinity and femininity. Men are seen to be more aggressive, while women are
seen as symbols of changing values and morals. When a woman is subjected to
sexual viol�ence, her mode of beha�vi�our, clothes and attitudes are brought into
question, which in many cases will be contrary to the ways in which a vic�tim of
a sim�ilar crime will be perceived during times of war, according to the health
workers. During times of war, a woman’s ethnic identity will come into play and
will lessen her perceived degree of complicity in the acts. The health workers
argue that what was conÂ�sidered abÂ�norÂ�mal behaÂ�viÂ�our during the war – that is,
aberrant modes of morals and values – has become, to some extent, normal behaÂ�
vi�our in the post-�war setting.

Discourses of traditions
Sexual viol�ence is also seen as inherent to the traditional pat�ri�archal family struc-
ture in Bosnia. The perceived increase, goes the argument, is simply the result of
more attention devoted to this par�ticu�lar kind of viol�ence. While stat�ist�ical meas�
ures might be able to evalu�ate this line of argument, such stat�ist�ics do not to date
exist. In any case, the reason that more attention is being paid in Bosnia today is
because the war brought a new aware�ness about gender-�related violence:

In the beginning, we started to work with women vic�tims of war, and we

started talking openly about the viol�ence of war, and we were the first to
talk about viol�ence against women .╛.╛. prob�ably because we had so many
journ�al�ists who came and wrote about the viol�ence. Women who ex�peri�
enced do�mestic viol�ence prob�ably thought that people here would listen.╛.╛.╛.
I think that was the main reason why women started to come here. It was
the trust during the war, and we were the first organ�iza�tion who openly
started to talk about this.

Another health worker explained:

I know that there were rapes in Bosnia before. Whether the number of rapes
has increased or decreased I do not know. It is maybe the point that we are
more aware of the rape as a crime. Before, the woman would have to keep
106╇╇ Therapeutic work with victims
her mouth shut. The background story is that she caused it in this way or
another [.â•›.â•›.] by wearing specific clothes. Now, more and more people think
that she should be allowed to wear what she wants. And now we talk about
the issue for the first time in the his�tory of this coun�try. And many women
are now aware that no one has the right to rape them. Most are aware that
they should talk about it and make it visible.

Yet, despite the op�tim�ism of this par�ticu�lar health worker, another health worker
explained the dif�ficult�ies they face when educating women about the issue of
doÂ�mestic violÂ�ence, espeÂ�cially in what is conÂ�sidered traditional – that is, strongly
patÂ�riÂ�archal – families:

All of us Serbs, Cath�olics, and Bosniaks, all of them they have the same way
of thinking, the same tradition. If you have a daughter, the purpose for that
girl is to get married [.â•›.â•›.] deliver babies [.â•›.â•›.] cook and work in the field and it
is hard work [.â•›.â•›.] and to take care of her husband [.â•›.â•›.] and to wash his legs
and to be very nice to her husband when he beats her. And some of them
would talk to each other and say that my husband is very nice, he only beats
me once a month, or only once a week. Because of their fathers they are
taught to live like that because he was beating their mother and that is normal.

Since viol�ence against women also is seen as an in�teg�ral part of traditional pat�ri�
archal family structures in Bosnia, the health workers have taken it upon them-
selves to inform the larger pub�lic and change these perceptions. This has taken
the form of extensive, professionalized collection, ana�lysis and dissemination of
stat�ist�ical in�forma�tion about their work and the prevalence of different prob�lems.
Furthermore, they often use the local media to promote their ac�tiv�ities, while
also focusing on women’s rights in more genÂ�eral terms. In addition, both centres
are parts of different networks – local NGOs and women’s NGOs in Bosnia, as
well as interÂ�naÂ�tional networks for women’s organÂ�izaÂ�tions. These efforts enable
them to disseminate their insights and ex�peri�ences more and more widely.
This trans�forma�tion in in�forma�tion and ac�tiv�ities, how�ever, also has a down-
side. The increased focus on issues related to women’s rights in Bosnia has led
to reduced con�tri�bu�tions from foreign donors, which are prim�arily inter�ested in
war-�related prob�lems. It is therefore clear that the more the health workers
make a connection between current probÂ�lems faced by women and the war –
that is, the more clearly they can argue that sexual viol�ence during the war has
been transformed into an increase in sexual viol�ence in the post-�war aftermath
– the more likely they are to get attention from the interÂ�naÂ�tionals. On the posÂ�itÂ�
ive side, how�ever, these in�forma�tion efforts con�trib�ute to keeping sexual viol�
ence part of a pub�lic discourse in Bosnia. There are now SOS hotlines,
estab�lished in the imme�diate post-�war years, where people can call for legal and
psycho�social assistance when they have ex�peri�enced different kinds of viol�ence,
including sexual viol�ence. In order to make their work known, the workers at
the centres have pub�licized these SOS hotlines in the local com�munit�ies,
 Therapeutic work with victims╇╇ 107
thereby acknowledging that sexual viol�ence is a prob�lem of pub�lic concern for
which there are legal and psycho�social implications.
This line of argument shows that sexual viol�ence is a grave prob�lem in Bosnia
today. But the conceptualization of masculinity and femininity here is different
from that found within the trans�ition arguments. As the last quote shows, the
deeply rooted pat�ri�archal structures of Bosnian fam�il�ies are seen as the prime
reason for sexual viol�ence. For a man to have sex with his wife when he wants is
regarded as his right. Also, the notion of rape among married couples is per-
ceived as a contra�dic�tion in terms. For many of the health workers, this kind of
male–female relationship is viewed as not only traditional but also highly rural.
The fact that the demography of Bosnia has changed drastically during the war
years – many rural inhabitants have been forced to move to urban centres and
live in refuÂ�gee settlements – has also changed perceptions about what are conÂ�
sidered normal relationships between men and women.

Summary
What have the health workers’ reflections taught us about sexual violÂ�ence in war
in gen�eral and about the impact of sexual viol�ence during the Bosnian war in
particular?
First and foremost, this ana�lysis shows that it is pos�sible to study sexual viol�
ence in war in an empirical, qualit�at�ive manner, despite the fact that many vic�
tims of this form of viol�ence remain silent. The health workers provided valu�able
insights because they, as a group, speak as ‘liÂ�aisons’ between vicÂ�tims, and poten-
tial vic�tims, of sexual viol�ence and their local com�munit�ies. One conclusion,
therefore, is that in order to study the impact of sexual viol�ence in war, it is
crucial that we identi�fy people who have contact with the vic�tims in the local
com�mun�ity. These li�aisons are best situated to explain the cultural im�plica�tions
of sexual viol�ence in the given conflict setting.
Second, this study has shown that the impact of sexual viol�ence in war varies
according to con�text. The con�text of war brought a discourse in which sexual
viol�ence was defined as war viol�ence. This discursive construction made it pos�
sible for both the women subject to sexual viol�ence and the health workers to be
positioned as vic�tims, albeit in different ways. Through this common identity,
the health workers became motiv�ated to work with women who had suffered
from different kinds of war trauma, including sexual viol�ence. In order to keep
on with their work, how�ever, it was im�port�ant for the health workers to maintain
some distance from their clients, and situate themselves as professionals. This
was made pos�sible through education on war traumas and trauma psychology. In
turn, this education enabled the health workers to talk about sexual viol�ence with
clients and others in ways they had not done before.
By naming and identi�fying sexual viol�ence and its vic�tims, the health workers
were able to situate the rape vic�tims and their ex�peri�ences in different ways. On
the one hand, the vic�tims were seen as war survivors, in line with the fatwa
issued by Bosnian Islamic leaders. The ways in which sexual viol�ence became
108╇╇ Therapeutic work with victims
politicized took, to some degree, the stigma away from the female vic�tim. Her
ethÂ�niÂ�city determined whether she was ‘eliÂ�gible’ for attack. By situating the
sexual viol�ence vic�tims as ethnic subjects, a sense of unity was created between
men and women within the same ethnic group. For the local health workers, this
unity created a basis for therapy because the vic�tims of sexual viol�ence received
sup�port and understanding from their fam�il�ies and com�munit�ies. On the other
hand, the most pre�val�ent identity for the vic�tims of sexual viol�ence was as stig-
matized women, which also had im�plica�tions for the health workers. They risked
being ‘smitten’ by the same stigma attached to the vicÂ�tims. As a result, the
psycho�social centres became multifaceted in outlook. They provided an array of
ser�vices to their clients and addressed different kinds of war traumas such as
rape, torture, and loss of homes and family members.
In the post-�war con�text, sexual viol�ence and its vic�tims are situated differently.
The polit�ical con�text shifted and sexual viol�ence became more a question of male
and female power relations, and less a question of eth�ni�city. It is through the
health workers’ discussions about rape in post-Â�war Bosnian that we see the con-
tours of the long-�term sociopolit�ical im�plica�tions of war rape. On the one hand,
the health workers de�scribe an increase in sexual viol�ence in the post-�conflict set-
tings, which they attribute to a collapse in values and morals during the war years.
The use of sexual viol�ence during the war is seen as one manifestation of such a
collapse. This ana�lysis suggests a hege�monic gender relationship comprised of
aggressive men and subordinate women. On the other hand, another line of argu-
ment claims that the hege�monic relationship between the genders has not been
altered. Rather, it is awareÂ�ness about women’s rights that has increased, owing to
the huge focus on sexual viol�ence against women during the war. For the health
workers, both lines of argument have led to different changes in their work
methods (more focus on long-�term abuse and family therapy), choice of clients
(more focus on the role of men in fam�il�ies and ado�les�cent beha�vi�our), and out-
reach target groups (more focus on reaching boys and girls of school age).
Finally, this ana�lysis shows that sexual viol�ence is not simply sexual viol�ence
that happens to occur during the course of a war, but it is a distinct form of crime
which might require unique therapy methods from health workers. These therapy
methods must balance between the as�sump�tions that there are uni�ver�sal effects
of sexual viol�ence which cut across various con�texts, and cultural relativism,
which as�sumes the oppos�ite. Close coopera�tion between inter�na�tional and local
health workers is one way of managing this challenge. This insight suggests that
both aid workers and policy-�makers in conflict areas must also balance their
efforts in post-�conflict settings in order to assist the vic�tims in a non-�stigmatizing
fashion. Carefully analysing the gendered pre- and post-�war culture, along with
the ways in which gender relations become politicized during the conflict is
therefore crucial in order to meet the needs of the vic�tims most effectively.
The next chapter presents an attempt to do exactly this; analysing how gender
relations became politicized in Bosnia during and after the war. This is done by
asking a set of focus groups in Bosnia to discuss notions of ‘good womanhood’
in relation to different sociopolit�ical changes.
8 Traditions and transitions1
Perceptions of ‘good womanhood’
among 20 Bosnian focus group
participants

Here I have a job, which is good, and I have my flat and my daughter and my
husband and I am trying to make the situ�ation in my home normal. I am trying to
make my daughter a good pupil, a good woman and a good girl, but I cannot
explain to her what the future will bring, what are the right values, what are the
good values in this soci�ety and that is really hard.
(Croat woman, born 1967; interviewed in June 2002, Bosnia and Herzegovina)

What does it mean to be a good woman and girl, and what does this mean in a
coun�try which has been ravaged by war and extreme viol�ence? Which norms
and values are embedded in conceptualizations of ‘good womanhood’, and how
are these values constructed within different sociopolit�ical contexts?
This chapter attempts to examine perceptions of ‘good womanhood’ from the
per�spect�ive of six different focus groups in Bosnia. The focus group inter�views
took place in 2002 and the focus group parti�cip�ants were asked to discuss how
gender relations might have changed since before the war of 1992–1995, during
the war and after the war.
The term ‘womanhood’ commonly denotes mature female sexuality, in other
words the time after girlhood and puberty. While this chapter is by no means a
psychoanaÂ�lytÂ�ical study of sexuality or anxiÂ�eties, it is useÂ�ful to conÂ�sider woman­
hood along the lines suggested by psychoanalyst Karen Horney as early as 1926.
An ardent critic of Freud’s theories, Horney argued that women’s anxiÂ�eties did
not stem from a castration complex but from a complicated pro�cess of coming to
terms with a female body in a social, cultural and ideo�logical power structure
which favoured men’s bodies. What Horney does is place the female body in a
sociopolit�ical con�text in which the meaning and value of the body is in�ternalized
and inscribed within a pat�ri�archal social order. The body, whether male or
female, echoes Balsamo (1996: 3) many years later, ‘is not simply an outcome,
it is not simply written upon, but mater�ializes the opera�tions of power in social
life’. ‘Good womanhood’, then, becomes a normÂ�ative term which suggests
inscriptions of apt social, cultural and ideo�logical power structures on the mature
female body at a given point in time. It is from this starting point that this
ana�lysis emerges.
110╇╇ Traditions and transitions
The Bosnian war rapes brought female bodies onto the stage of inter�na�tional
securÂ�ity concerns (Hansen 2001). Feminist writers have attempted to conceptual­
ize the Bosnian war rapes primÂ�arily within an accentuated (and violent) uniÂ�ver­
sal pat�ri�archal order (MacKinnon 1993; Seifert 1994; Allen 1996), while others
have emphas�ized the par�ticu�larities of the Bosnian con�text (Meznaric 1994;
Stiglmayer 1994a; Zarkov 1997; Kesic 2000; Nikolic-�Ristanovic 2000; Korac
2003; Papic 2003). It is clear, how�ever, that the ways in which rapes could be
construed as a weapon of war was intimately linked to perceptions of, or rather
violations of, ‘good womanhood’, defined both within a patÂ�riÂ�archal power struc­
ture and in a local Bosnian context.
Through these acts, the perpetrators produced and reinforced ethnic difÂ�fer­
ences, not only between the women, but between men and women cast within€the
same eth�ni�city. Zarkov (2007: 8) claims that the media im�agery of female bodies
in the Yugoslav press preceding both the Croatian and Bosnian wars was
constitutive of ethnic difÂ�ferÂ�ences: ‘bodies were vested with gendered and
sexualized meanings that made ethÂ�niÂ�city appear transparent and unambiguous’.
It was women’s bodies, argues Zarkov (2007: 13) that constituted the site of
the€ politÂ�ical struggles of the war because the bodies ‘were ascribed meaning
through acts of viol�ence, as much as through words, photos and polit�ical
cartoons’. By this claim, Zarkov (2007) challenges conventional notions of
eth�ni�city by stating that eth�ni�city is inscribed rather than given, and that it is the
female body both directly and symbolically which is the site of these inscription
processes.
The anaÂ�lysis presented in this chapter, howÂ�ever, attempts to look at how per­
ceptions of ‘good womanhood’ were articulated by 20 Bosnian men and women
interÂ�viewed in focus groups in 2002. Building on Zarkov’s thesis that percep­
tions of female bodies produce eth�ni�city, my aim was to examine how a group
representing the emerging power elite in Bosnia, a group which also had exÂ�peri­
enced their most formÂ�atÂ�ive years during the time of the most dramatic sociopolit­
ical changes in Bosnia, perceived ‘good womanhood’ and whether ethnic
dif�fer�ences emerged in these various understandings.

Focus groups
The focus group methodology used in this study was chosen for three main
reasons. First, the focus group research technique allows for a constrained dis­
cussion on a topical issue. Wilkinson (2003: 187) argues that the use of focus
groups is a good research method when the aim is to map out how the topic of
the discussion is elaborated and negotiated within a social con�text. Given that
the aim was to interrogate perceptions of ‘good womanhood’, the challenge was
to opera�tionalize this term in ways that would provide meaningful discussions
within the focus groups. A suit�able starting point for discussion seemed to be
about the constiÂ�tuÂ�tion of ‘typical’ gender relations within famÂ�ilÂ�ies. The first
question asked of all focus group parti�cip�ants was therefore to evalu�ate whether
their own family situÂ�ation in the pre-Â�war era was ‘typical’ and if so in which
 Traditions and transitions╇╇ 111
ways, and if not, how was it different? Without exceptions, this little question
sparked discussions in all the groups which led us through the war and post-�war
eras without much difficulty. In addition, I had a written inter�view guide which
made sure that we covered the same main themes in all the focus group sessions.
Second, the focus group methodology allows for a stra�tegic composition of
parti�cip�ants. In these groups the parti�cip�ants were chosen on the basis of their
age, gender, place of living, mastery of English and presumed ethnic belonging.
I wanted to map perceptions of ‘good womanhood’ over a period of time span­
ning 20 to 25 years and it was im�port�ant for me to have focus group parti�cip�ants
who grew up during these times of such dramatic changes. It was also im�port�ant
to have both men and women in the groups in order to elicit potential gender dif­
ferÂ�ences in conceptualizations of ‘good womanhood’ within the groups. The
need for the partiÂ�cipÂ�ants to speak English was partly a pragmatic choice – I do
not speak Bosnian and it would be very difficult for an in�ter�preter to master so
many voices simulÂ�tanÂ�eously – and partly a straÂ�tegic choice, the English speakers
were all urban young professionals2 who repres�ented the voice of the (emerging)
power elite in Bosnia. It was im�port�ant that the focus group parti�cip�ants all lived
in Bosnia at the time of the interÂ�view and that they wanted to remain in the coun­
try in the foreÂ�seeÂ�able future. This latter choice meant that the focus group parti­
cip�ant did not neces�sar�ily represent the majority of Bosnian urban dwellers,
because there is a substantial number of young professionals whose major hope
is to leave the coun�try and seek a better future elsewhere. Because the aim of the
study was to create a constrained topical discussion, having 20 focus group parti­
cip�ants proved to be an op�timal number.
Finally, the partiÂ�cipÂ�ants were chosen based on their presumed ethnic belong­
ing and it was im�port�ant to handle eth�ni�city in a careful manner. I decided to
have as ethnically homogenous3 groups as posÂ�sible. This would allow me to ana­
lyse perceptions of ‘good womanhood’ across and between ethnic groups in rela­
tion to different time periods. Other ways of organ�izing the focus groups
according to eth�ni�city would have been pos�sible, and this would presumably
have led to different findings which would enrich and nuance the finding in this
study. At this point, how�ever, it was im�port�ant for me to be able to compare
across ethnic groups and that is why this focus group set-�up was chosen. All
focus group parti�cip�ants were recruited through the Nansen Dialogue Network,4
a local NGO involved in inter-�ethnic dialogue work between different groups in
the former Yugoslav repub�lics. This group was chosen because they work with
the kind of people I was interÂ�ested in getting touch with, that is, young profes­
sionals, and because their network spans the major cities in Bosnia.
This research technique also allows the researcher to gather more elaborate
and cumulative data than is pos�sible in the dyadic inter�view setting. Points of
consensus and dis�agree�ment become very vis�ible in a short period of time. In
this study each focus group session lasted about 1.5 hours in which the
researcher acts as moderator and inter�viewer at the same time.5 This gives the
researcher the oppor�tun�ity to ask questions about his/her in�ter�pretation of what is
being discussed within the time-�frame of the inter�view which is both efficient
112╇╇ Traditions and transitions
and gratifying. The dis�advant�age, how�ever, is that the researcher might influence
the discussions too much. It is therefore vital that in the ana�lysis of focus group
inter�views excerpts (including several voices) of the discussions be recounted in
the ana�lyt�ical text so that it is clear how vital questions were posed and answers/
discussions were formulated. Finally, the ana�lysis itself can be quite a challenge
when the data are comprised of so many different voices. In this study I have
attempted to follow the techniques suggested by Miles and Huberman (1994:
245–246) by noting patterns, seeing plausibility, clustering, making metaphors,
counting, making contrasts/comparisons, subsuming parÂ�ticuÂ�lars under the gen­
eral, factoring, noting relations between vari�ables and finding intervening vari�
ables, aiming to lead to conceptual and theor�et�ical coherence.

The pre-�war years

The pre-Â�war era is delineated only by a clear end-Â�date – the disÂ�integÂ�ration of the
Socialist Federal RepubÂ�lic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) in 19916 – and has no clear
starting point. Given the age span of the focus group parti�cip�ants, how�ever, we
can estab�lish a starting point for the purpose of this ana�lysis. The focus group
parti�cip�ants were all born between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. This
means that their coming of age coincided with the last years of communist rule,
the death of Tito and the years imme�diately preceding the war. In order to get a
sense of the polit�ical turmoil in which the focus group parti�cip�ants grew up, I
will briefly review some of the signi�fic�ant polit�ical events preceding the outbreak
of war.
The beginning of the end of the stability Bosnia and Herzegovina had enjoyed
since World War II (as one of the six Yugoslav repub�lics) was the death of
Joseph Broz, or Tito, in 1980. With Tito’s death, politÂ�ical supÂ�port for his ideo­
logy of ‘brotherÂ�hood and unity’ – characterized by many as the glue that kept the
South Slav peoples together – lost ground, and Yugoslavia descended into a
period of polit�ical, eco�nomic and civil in�stability. At the same time, the decline
of com�mun�ism, epitomized by the collapse of the Berlin Wall in Novem�ber
1989, took its toll on the people in Yugoslavia in much the same way as it did in
other communist states. Privatization efforts affected employment rates and
people’s finÂ�anÂ�cial situÂ�ations. Secure jobs, housing, childcare and health beneÂ�fits
that had been avail�able to many within com�mun�ism gave way to a capitalist-�
driven eco�nomy and greater in�secur�ity. In the realm of pol�itics, new par�ties grew
in pop�ularity and power, a de�velopment accompanied in the Yugoslavian case,
where the phenomenon was perhaps more predominant than elsewhere, by the
rise of nationalist sentiments. These sentiments and ambitions eventually led to
the dis�integ�ration of the Yugoslav state and a series of wars.
During the years of Tito’s rule, women entered the workforce in great
numbers, as did women in other communist coun�tries. Maternity leave and state-�
run childcare made it pos�sible (and obligatory) for women to be workers in the
pubÂ�lic sphere. In the private sphere of home and family, howÂ�ever, it was busi­
ness as usual. Women were still in charge of the household, and there was no
 Traditions and transitions╇╇ 113
increase in male involvement in doÂ�mestic work. The central issue for the Yugo­
slav fem�in�ist movement was to challenge the official view of the status of
women and the gap between Marxist theory and social reality (Drakulic 1993:
127).
According to leading Bosnian fem�in�ist Nada Ler Sofronic, compared to the
neighÂ�bouring repubÂ�lics of Croatia and Serbia, Bosnia was parÂ�ticuÂ�larly tradi­
tional7 at a time when the SFRY ex�peri�enced a rapid urbanization movement.
According to Korac (2003: 27), rural migrants to urban areas became rootless
and were the initial group from which the ‘real warriors’ were recruited in the
early 1990s. During the same time, fem�in�ist activists focused much attention on
preventing the manipulation of women’s reproductive rights for nationalistic
purposes (Korac 2003: 28). According to Slapsak (2000) attempts to make fem­
in�ist concerns vis�ible in the pub�lic sphere, how�ever, was a severe struggle in the
imme�diate pre-�war years and gender-�based viol�ence, as a con�sequence, was a
non-�issue in the limited pub�lic discourse on male and female relations. A use�ful
illustration can be found in Gal and Kligman (2000: 96–97), where the authors
de�scribe how the response to the opening of an SOS Hotline in Belgrade in the
late 1980s radic�ally changed the pub�lic discourse on viol�ence against women.
Rape between married couples had been regarded as a non-�issue, but through the
effort of the Belgrade SOS Hotline it came to be perceived as a social probÂ�lem –
that is, something that could be of pubÂ�lic concern – rather than an inÂ�tegÂ�ral part of
married life.
How, then, in retrospect, did the focus group partiÂ�cipÂ�ants perceive ‘good
womanhood’ at this time? Here is what they emphasÂ�ized in the Bosniak8 groups:

Bosnia was a very pat�ri�archal soci�ety before, and in the social organ�izing of
our soci�ety men had more rights. It was like, they could say that you cannot
parti�cip�ate in this or that, but women had the role of mother, be at home and
be a daughter .╛.╛. And in our soci�ety it was not really common to see the
man with their fam�il�ies, everybody wanted to have a mother left at home.
(Bosniak woman, born 1981)

Would a traditional Muslim family be the same as a traditional Croat family

for instance?
Yes.
(Bosniak woman, born 1974)

Yes, I agree, I would say that it was almost the same, it was affected by the
patÂ�riÂ�archal sysÂ�tem and everyÂ�one was protected by the patÂ�riÂ�arch so all reli­
gion in Bosnia was the same when it comes to gender roles.
(Bosniak woman, born 1981)

You have all told me that you had mothers who worked outside the home
when you grew up, but did that mean that your fathers did more housework
than, for instance, your grand�fathers did?
114╇╇ Traditions and transitions
Well, during the communist time everybody was equal, but in the houses
they kept the traditions.
(Bosniak man, born 1981)

For the young Croats I inter�viewed, it was im�port�ant to emphas�ize that they did
not grow up in a traditional family:

My family was in no way traditional because, for me, traditional is some

kind of primitive lifestyle. I had all my freedoms and they, my parents, were
always supportive.
(Croat woman, born 1973)

So when you say that your family was non-�traditional you mean that your
parents shared duties at home?
My mother did most of the work at home even if she had her own job, and
my father would maybe fix things, but he never did the dishes or fixed
things like that. I would also say that there were difÂ�ferÂ�ences between the dif­
ferent nationalities, mostly in the house, and how we acted in the house,
those things were, I do not know, the different customs and the way we
made tea and coffee and just small things. But these small things meant
something for many people, like not to eat pork, and how to pray is a difÂ�fer­
ence. But it was mostly in the house.
(Croat man, born 1978)

My parents were partners so whoever had the time did the dishes and raised
the kids.
(Croat woman, born 1973)

To me traditional means the Ottoman her�it�age, meaning that women must

work in the house and that she must work for her husband and chil�dren and
have no right, and that men have rights. This is Balkan her�it�age, and all the
nations here have that mentality, that kind of framework. But I made some
pro�gress in my own family, I have done something that is unusual for this
coun�try and area, I left my girl surname and my husband surname so I have
both. And even my father told me ‘what are you doing, your husband will
be crazy’. But I have not had any probÂ�lems with that, but my husband is not
very impressed.
(Croat woman, born 1967)

The Serb groups emphas�ize family union:

Our grandparents lived with their fam�il�ies and they had lots of chil�dren.
Today’s famÂ�ilÂ�ies normally have one or two chilÂ�dren maxÂ�imum, but my
grandparents had six or something like that. It was a big family and all of
 Traditions and transitions╇╇ 115
them worked in the household and it was or�gan�ized so that all de�cisions
inside the family were made by the pater familias.
(Serb woman, born 1980)

But when you were young and grew up under the communist sys�tem, how
were things then?
I think according to law every�thing was perfect and every�thing was great
[during the communist era]. Women had all the possib�il�ities for education
and employment and they had social protection. They could have kids and
maternity leave .╛.╛. the prob�lem was that men were not influenced by this.
For example if the woman was very successful in her job and in education
she still had to cook and clean and it means that it was not equal. She could
do what she wanted but at home she had to play the right role and this meant
that for other people in the soci�ety the roles of women did not change.
(Serb woman, born 1963)

My wife takes care of the kids and that is how we do it .â•›.â•›. and that is how
my father was raised and I was raised.
(Serb man, born 1970)

From the excerpts above we can see that perceptions, and recollections, of ‘good
womanhood’ come in two distinct forms; one pubÂ�lic and one private. The recol­
lections of the pubÂ�lic notion of ‘good womanhood’ were characterized by Yugo­
slav Marxist ideoÂ�logy and non-Â�ethnic difÂ�ferÂ�ence (‘during the communist time
everybody was equal’ (Bosniak man, born 1981)). The pubÂ�lic construction of
‘good womanhood’ is seen as a legisÂ�latÂ�ive and rhetÂ�orical issue (‘according to
law everyÂ�thing was perfect and everyÂ�thing was great’ (Serb woman, born 1963)).
But perhaps the most striking feature of the ways in which the pub�lic discourse
of ‘good womanhood’ is narrated is in the widespread agreement that this was a
fictitious construction. A young Bosniak man (born 1981) explains by saying
that ‘in the houses they kept the traditions’. A Serb woman (born 1963) expands
on this by saying that a woman ‘could do what she wanted (i.e. in the pubÂ�lic
sphere) but at home she had to play the right role’. The ‘right role’ is the
do�mestic woman in a pat�ri�archal family structure. Within this family structure,
the man had the ecoÂ�nomic power (‘my father made all the money’ (Bosniak
woman, born 1967)), the moral power (‘my father made all deÂ�cisions’ (Serb
woman, born 1968)) and the legal power (‘my father had more rights’ (Croat
woman, born 1967)). This family structure is seen as ‘old’ – one informant sees
it as a legacy of the Ottoman rule – and as an oriÂ�ginal way of life that pre-Â�dates
not only the war, but also the communist years. In this pic�ture, a woman was
ecoÂ�nomicÂ�ally and legally inferior to her husband and chilÂ�dren (‘the woman had
to work for her husband and chilÂ�dren in the house and she had no rights’ (Croat
woman, born 1967)), but was paradoxically con�sidered to be the pillar of the
family (‘the woman was not equal with the man, but still we used to say that
women were the pillar of the family’ (Serb man, born 1972)).
116╇╇ Traditions and transitions
The focus group partiÂ�cipÂ�ants reveal that although there was conÂ�siderÂ�able dif­
fer�ence in terms of gender ideo�logy and equality in the private and pub�lic
spheres, this dif�fer�ence was the same for all the ethnic groups in the region.
While this conceptualization is power�ful, it does not completely rule out other
conceptualizations. Closer reading of the discussions reveals that the parti�cip�ants
did see ethnic dif�fer�ences in gender relations in the private sphere of family life.
In the home envir�on�ment, one young Croat tells us, there were dif�fer�ences
between the different ethnic groups, and these dif�fer�ences lay in do�mestic
details. The focus group partiÂ�cipÂ�ants let us know that it was the work and beha­
vi�our of women that marked and maintained ethnic dif�fer�ence; in the way they
made tea or coffee, cooking or not cooking pork, and so on.
The distinction between the pubÂ�lic and private perceptions of ‘good woman­
hood’ is also a distinction between the imaÂ�gined and the real. The imaÂ�gined is
the well educated women who are part of the pubÂ�lic work-Â�force, at least rhet­
orically, on the same level as men. In reality, the focus group partiÂ�cipÂ�ants reiter­
ate, the picÂ�ture was quite different. ‘Good womanhood’ meant traditional
womanhood. The social expectation for women was marriage and reproduction,
as markers of ethnic dif�fer�ence through do�mestic chores within a pat�ri�archal
power structure. If the consensus among the 20 focus group partiÂ�cipÂ�ants is repre­
sentative for the larger urban and professional Bosnian popuÂ�laÂ�tion, it is not sur­
prising that in the build-�up to the war it was the polit�ical manipulation of gender
images and relations which proved the most efficient in constructing polit�ical
ten�sions along ethnic lines.

The war years

In April 1992, the violent conflict that had begun in Slovenia and Croatia
reached Bosnia with full force. The months that followed were marked by
extreme viol�ence, killings and mass rapes, par�ticu�larly in the areas bordering
Serbia. The ethnic cleansing of this region meant that numerous Bosniak famÂ�il­
ies were driven from their homes; men and women were separated, and men
were kept in detention and/or killed, while many women also were raped and/or
kept in detention. As the years went on, numerous villages were ethnically
cleansed, and there are heroes, villains and saints on all sides of the ethnic
divides in Bosnia (see, for example, Woodward 1995; Malcolm 1996; Silber and
Little 1996; Ramet 2002). As has been shown in previous chapters the estim�ated
numbers of rapes varies and here is an illustration of how: At the end of 1992,
the Bosnian gov�ern�ment released figures suggesting that the number of women
who had been raped was approximately 14,000 (Olujic 1998: 40). In Decem�ber
1992, the Euro�pean Community set the number of women of Muslim eth�ni�city
who had been raped by Bosnian Serb soldiers at around 20,000 (Drakulic 1993:
270; Wing and Merchan 1993: 11, note 54; Meznaric 1994: 92; Olujic 1998: 40;
Nikolic-�Ristanovic 2000: 43). For its part, the Bosnian Ministry of the Interior
set the figure at approximately 50,000 (Wing and Merchan 1993: 11, note 54;
Olujic 1998: 40; Nikolic-�Ristanovic 2000: 43).
 Traditions and transitions╇╇ 117
Against such a background, I asked the parti�cip�ants in the focus groups to
characterize gender relations, and changes in them, during the war, and I found
that they did so in very different ways. The Bosniak groups seized this opporÂ�tun­
ity to focus on Muslim extremism, most notably in the town of Zenica, and they
let one woman’s story of an encounter with foreign Muslim extremists take
centre stage:

Zenica used to be a real communist city. It was de�veloped and it was a

workers town where there was equality and everybody worked and it was a
great time because of the steel factory. But during the war, many people
came to Zenica.
(Bosniak woman, born 1981)

But they were not all from Bosnia.

(Bosniak man, born 1979)

Well they were from other coun�tries, Muslim coun�tries and many of them
[.â•›.â•›.] many women married them. I think the price for them was about
100€DM.
(Bosniak woman, born 1981)

So you could buy wives?

Yes. Something like that [.╛.╛.] and girls [.╛.╛.] most of them were refu�gees,
Zenica was the biggest town in the free territory, and many of the people
who were there were very desperate and they turned to religion. And
because of the influence of the Muslim extremists many of the do�mestic
people also became extreme in their religion. I have one inter�esting example
for you. I was sitting on a bench with a boyfriend, and we were just sitting
and not touching or anything, and some of them [earl�ier in the inter�view she
has clarified that she is referring to what she calls religious extremists] came
in the car and put their guns toward us just like that, and they did not speak
a word to me. They asked my boyfriend what is the relationship between us
and he had to lie and say that we were married. Then they asked how old I
was and I answered out loud because I was scared, but he was expecting the
answer from my boyfriend. The rest of the conversation was between them
and my boyfriend and I was just an object who was sitting there. But since
we were ‘married’ it was ok, but we were not supposed to have any physÂ�ical
contact in public.
(Bosniak woman, born 1981)

Yes .â•›.â•›. it was really extreme during that time [the war].
(Bosniak man, born 1979)

In the Croat groups, their war stories focus on the beha�vi�our and customs of
rural in�ternally displaced persons (IDPs) coming to Mostar: how they get
118╇╇ Traditions and transitions
married early and have many chil�dren, along with a suspected rise in do�mestic
violence:

Just before the war started we were a very civilized com�mun�ity but since the
war many people left [.â•›.â•›.] and people from the small places and the villages
moved to the cities and the towns and they brought with them their primitiv­
ism [.â•›.â•›.] for instance they grow up and have boyfriends and then get married
and then they have kids [.â•›.â•›.] and it has kind of become an epidemic this
getting married.
(Croat woman, born 1973)

Yes, people are getting married much younger than in my generation, they
will be from 20 to 25. It could be the influence of the Cath�olic Church or the
in�secur�ity of the situ�ation. It is difficult to say really. I know some of my
friends who got married, also during the war, but I could understand that
under the pressure they felt that they could share something.
(Croat man, born 1970)

But there is also much more divorce now than before!

(Croat woman, born 1967)

And why is that, do you think?

I think do�mestic viol�ence has increased in these marriages. During the war
we witnessed so much viol�ence. In 1992 and 1993 it was normal to see a
dead man, you would see a dead man in the street and just walk by. But now
you also have the eco�nomic situ�ation: you have to feed your kids and if you
cannot you get nerv�ous. And if the wife said the wrong word you can freak
out. I think the level of tolerance is lower.
(Croat woman, born 1973)

If you are a man and the pater familias of the family and you do not make
enough money you are under tre�mend�ous stress and pressure and they lose
it. Many people here are under tre�mend�ous pressure and then they get totally
lost, like zombies, because there is no future.
(Croat man, born 1970)

In the Serb groups, how�ever, it is mostly the men who talk, and they focus their
discussions on how many women appeared willing to enter into ‘sponsored’
relationships in order to obtain money and things that were hard to get during the
war:

When the war started all the moral values were destroyed and I felt that we
were moved back to the time before com�mun�ism. I have been stunned to see
today, espe�cially with women how things have changed .╛.╛. I remember
when I was in high school it took me months to get a girlfriend, but when
 Traditions and transitions╇╇ 119
the war started it was a piece of cake .╛.╛. there was money and every�one was
disturbed!
(Serb man, born 1972)

So was this prostitution?

It was a kind of prostitution, sponsorship, and it is not good.
(Serb man, born 1972)

When did the phenomenon of sponsorship start?

Maybe it has always been like this but before it was not common.
(Serb man, born 1972)

I think it started in Belgrade in 1994 during the sanctions.

(Serb man, born 1970)

But can you ima�gine how it is for that girl, she has given her whole life
away, and maybe her parents even think it is ok!
(Serb woman, born in 1963)

I agree, we say that it is imported from Serbia, because in the old Yugosla­
via women had a very high status, but when the war started they wanted to
con�tinue to have such a status and then, how should I say this, they started
to fake the high stand�ard of living [.╛.╛.] the way of living has changed.
(Serb man, born 1970)

When asked about the changes in gender relations during the war years ethnic
dif�fer�ence takes centre stage both in terms of how focus groups respondents talk
about the changes and what kinds of changes they experienced.
For one Bosniak woman, her movement and inter�action with men in
pub�lic€ space was restricted owing to the influx of foreign Muslim extremists
who€ had married local women and thereby exercised increasing influence in
the€ region (‘because of the influence of the Muslim extremists many of the
doÂ�mestic people also became extreme in their religion’ (Bosniak woman, born
1981)). This restriction is based on Muslim notions of ‘good womanhood’,
which sets this woman’s restrictions apart from those of her Serb and Croat
counterparts. In other words, in the Bosniak account it is the increasing influence
of religion that has set new para�meters for the inter�action between men and
women and definitions of what is appropriate beha�vi�our for women and what
is€not.
The Croat parti�cip�ants focus on demographic changes and what they call
primitive lifestyles. The hallmark of this lifestyle appears to be an increase in
young marriages among the rural popuÂ�laÂ�tion (‘people from the small places and
villages moved to the cities and towns and brought with them their primitivism’
(Croat woman, born 1973)). The primitive lifestyle is characterized by the Croat
focus groups as getting married and having chil�dren which is seen both as a
120╇╇ Traditions and transitions
direct result of the war and a result of an increasing religious influence of the
CathÂ�olic Church (‘it could be the CathÂ�olic Church or the inÂ�securÂ�ity of the situ­
ation’ (Croat man, born 1970)). The rural people referred to here were primÂ�arily
in�ternally displaced persons (IDPs) who had been forced to leave their homes
and towns at gunpoint and had sought refuge in Mostar, which had not necesÂ�sar­
ily made their lives more secure. The hostility from the urban popu�la�tion toward
the rural ‘lifestyle’ stems from the rapid urbanization proÂ�cesses in the 1970s and
1980s which brought numerous rural dwellers to the major cities for work. For
the urban Croats in the focus groups, it is clear that they felt trapped in a
restricted geographical space with people who would other�wise have been
defined as an out-�group (rural), but owing to the war the par�ties were situated
together as an in-�group (Croat).
In the Serb groups, another element of the war that was discussed was chang­
ing ecoÂ�nomic structures and the issue of ‘sponsorship’. Sponsorship is what
could be labelled as ‘funded sexual relationships’, seen by many as not very dif­
ferent from prostitution, but in some ways still seen as a boyfriend/girlfriend
relationship. The rise of ‘sponsored relationships’ is seen as the result of ‘all
values being destroyed [.â•›.â•›.] espeÂ�cially with women’ (Serb man, born 1972). The
change, explains another man, was that ‘in the old Yugoslavia women had a very
high status’ (Serb man, born 1970), but the war changed this, according to the
focus group parti�cip�ants. The deteriorating eco�nomic situ�ation made the female
body a commodity for sale, and men with cash or other mater�ial goods to offer,
had a new means for sexual outlet. The focus group parti�cip�ants situate this as an
ethnic phenomenon, because it started, they argue, when the interÂ�naÂ�tional com­
mun�ity implemented sanc�tions against Serbia.
What appears to have happened during the war, according to the discussions
in these focus groups, is that eth�ni�city sets the para�meters for changes in gender
relations and inter�actions. This trans�ition meant that increasing restrictions on
female mobility became a Bosniak issue; the return to more ‘primitive’ modes of
life in the form of early marriage and having many chil�dren became a Croat
issue; and commodification of sexual relations became a Serb issue. This does
not mean that these de�velopments were representative of the different ethnic
groups in Bosnia at large. Rather it shows how the ten�sions and viol�ence during
the war impacted the ways in which ‘good womanhood’ was understood differ­
ently within the different ethnic groups. How, then have these changes played
out in the post-�war setting?

The post-�war years

The most vis�ible gender aspect of post-�conflict Bosnia is the fact that Bosnia is
one of the most frequently used transit coun�tries for trafficking of women from
Eastern to Western Europe. In a report from Human Rights Watch from Novem­
ber 2002 focusing on the trafficking of women and girls in post-�conflict Bosnia,
it is claimed that there is a clear connection between the war and the increase in
forced prostitution in the region. Trafficking started to appear in late 1995, after
 Traditions and transitions╇╇ 121
the DPA had been signed and the ‘interÂ�naÂ�tionals’ started pouring in. Experts
from the UN Missions Special Trafficking Operation Program (STOP) stated at
a press conference in 20019 that approximately 25 per cent of the women and
girls working in nightclubs and bars were trafficked. The majority of the traf­
ficked women come from Moldova, Romania and Ukraine, and the Human
Rights Watch report tells of women being kidnapped off the streets in those
former Soviet Repub�lics, while others had been lured with job oppor�tun�ities in
Western Euro�pean countries.
When asked to characterize gender relations in post-�conflict Bosnia, it is the
sex trade that takes centre stage for most of the parti�cip�ants, as seen in the
Bosniak discussions below:

I think that now more people go to prostitutes. In other coun�tries it is normal

that people go to prostitutes, but here because of traditional attitude people
did not go. But, now, with the foreign influence people go.
(Bosniak man, born 1981)

So you are saying that because there are now so many inter�na�tionals, the
level of prostitution has gone up?
Well, there is a big market north of Tuzla in the Amer�ican Zone [milit�ary
zone] and I was working as a photo�grapher for two-�and-a-�half years, and I
saw lots of foreign prostitutes from Hun�gary, Russia and Romania.
(Bosniak man, born 1979)

So, one of you is saying that local prostitution has increased, while one of
you is saying that it is the trafficked women that have increased?
There is an increase in prostitution in Bosnia in gen�eral, and perhaps we
always had prostitutes, and they were here before the war and then they
came back after the war.
(Bosniak man, born 1979)

Yes, people like easy money and it is easy to make money that way.
(Bosniak woman, born 1981)

And the customers are not foreigners, it was in the beginning, it was SFOR
[Stabilization Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (NATO)] and those people,
I was a photo�grapher and I saw every�thing, but now it is more local.
(Bosniak man, born 1979)

Yes, it started with the inter�na�tionals, but now it is the locals.

(Bosniak man, born 1981)

Now you can see flyers with ads for striptease clubs and you know what is
happening there. It was never like that before.
(Bosniak woman, born 1974)
122╇╇ Traditions and transitions
In the Croat groups, they address the increase in HIV and AIDS:

Maybe two or three months ago there was a big art�icle in the news�paper
about the prostitution in Bosnia, but for Mostar, mostly the prostitutes
want€ to get away from Mostar because they do not feel safe here. In the
art�icle some journ�al�ists had talked to the prostitutes and they had said
that.€ Each day in the news�paper you can find some people that the police
have discovered that there are many women from the ex-�Soviet coun�tries
who have come here or even just going through Bosnia to go to other
countries.
(Croat man, born 1978)

I have read that there is an increase of HIV and AIDS in Bosnia because of
the trafficking. Is that something that people are concerned with? Is that, for
instance, written about in the newspapers?
Yes, I think so, there was a media cam�paign to have people use condoms,
and it was like an AIDS protection day and they were giving out free
condoms, it was the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and
the inter�na�tional com�mun�ity. But the guys have this expression that they
will not have good sex if they use condoms and also the church, the influ­
ence of the Cath�olic Church is very strong, and I am Cath�olic myself but I
think it is cruel that they do not con�sider people as indi�viduals, but as
groups.
(Croat woman, born 1973)

In the Serb groups, they are concerned with how vis�ible and seemingly socially
accepted the prostitution industry has become:

Prostitution and trafficking is a huge prob�lem and tragically it is accepted. It

was something that was unima�gin�able before. Today you know the houses
and you know the bars and every�thing is known and it seems to be
legalized.
(Serb woman, born 1968)

But are people concerned about HIV and AIDS?

I think it is a huge prob�lem because I think that our mentality is that that this
is something that happens to foreigners and not to me, and to gays, and
people in Africa and all the time other people, but not to us.
(Serb woman, born 1980)

I think it is a prob�lem that kids are so young when they start their sexual life
[.â•›.â•›.] I do not think it was like that ten to fifÂ�teen years ago [.â•›.â•›.] and I remem­
ber when we heard stat�ist�ics from other Western Euro�pean coun�tries we
were shocked .â•›.â•›. and now it has changed here.
(Serb woman, born 1968)
 Traditions and transitions╇╇ 123
Thus according to the focus group parti�cip�ants, the single most im�port�ant change
in gender relations since the war can be seen in the increase in trafficked women
and the impact that this has had on local Bosnians. Stories about the increasing
sex trade are further qualiÂ�fied by statements such as ‘there is a backlash of everyÂ�
thing after the war’ (Bosniak man, born 1979), ‘there is a lot of transÂ�ition enter­
ing all levels of sociÂ�ety after the war’ (Bosniak woman, born 1967), ‘after the
war we have a big wave of violÂ�ence’ (Serb man, born 1976), ‘after the war there
are so many divorces’ (Croat woman, born 1967) and ‘all our values have
changed’ (Croat man, born 1970). The question, then, is what kind of change
occurred that made it pos�sible for the sex trade to get such a solid grip on
Bosnian men and women? How are discourses of ‘good womanhood’ narrated
within partiÂ�cipÂ�ants’ accounts of the sex trade?
The nar�rat�ives of changes in gender relations are made in two discursive
forms: as a trans�ition toward increasing westernization and a market eco�nomy, on
the one hand, and, simul�tan�eously, as a backlash against traditional pat�ri�archal
modes of life, with increasing religious influence and control, on the other. ‘Good
womanhood’, then, is a question of social, cultural and ideoÂ�logical positioning
within two opposing sociopolitÂ�ical forces. Let us revisit the focus group partiÂ�cip­
ants’ discussions to see how these opposing manifestations are played out. The
discussions on the increasing sex trade tell stories of changing gender relations as
changing sexual practices: it is now local men who go to the trafficked women (as
opposed to the inter�na�tional men who did this in the beginning), and the issue of
HIV and AIDS has become a mat�ter of pub�lic concern that local NGOs and health
authorities have been compelled to address through cam�paigns promoting the use
of condoms. Further, women’s bodies are a money-Â�making business in which
there are many investors, including women. It is no longer a question of indi­
vidual women entering into ‘sponsorship’ relations, there are now other people
behind the women, making easy money off the women’s sexual ‘favours’. The
people running the trade are not just or�gan�ized inter�na�tional criminals, but also
local Bosnians. One example is provided by a woman in Banja Luka who has rel­
atÂ�ives who run a brothel in their own home, with everyÂ�one in the family – both
men and women – involved in the ‘family business’:

It was really a shock how they, educated people, mother and father and
women and sons, how they all spoke about it, like some kind of business,
and it was not something they were forced to do .â•›.â•›. they have ordinary jobs.
(Woman, born 1968)

The greatest change resulting from the commodification of women’s bodies

during the war is that the market has increased and there are now far more
people and money involved. As a result of this market expansion, sexualized
images of female bodies have become much more vis�ible within the pub�lic
space: ‘Now you can see flyers with ads for striptease clubs and you know what
is happening there. It was never like that before’, says one focus group partiÂ�cip­
ant (Bosniak woman, born 1974). Another points out: ‘Today you know the
124╇╇ Traditions and transitions
houses and you know the bars and everyÂ�thing is known and it seems to be legal­
ized’ (Serb woman, born 1968). The way in which these gendered changes are
narrated suggest that the push toward increasing westernization and a changed
eco�nomic sys�tem is seen as having been imported (both by the inter�na�tional
com�mun�ity and, in a very literal manner, through the trafficking of women from
different coun�tries), and this represents a decline in old morals and values.
Alongside this deÂ�velopment, or perhaps because of it, there is a competing dis­
course of backlash and increasing religious influence:

Well, I think it is not only among Cath�olics but also among others because
religions spread during the war and each religion has its views, and it does
not mat�ter which. Each one is against abor�tion and free sex. They are the
same. Also sex before marriage, so even if the last is still the same, the reli­
gious pressure has increased.
(Croat woman, born 1973)

Yes, I think with the war, what has happened here, and prob�ably throughout
Bosnia, is that these traditional pat�ri�arch values, and I am sorry to say so,
but there has been a sort of backlash.
(Croat man, born 1970)

One of the main prob�lems for women today is connected to the war.
Because during the war those who could work were the women because the
men were away, and in many cases, and espe�cially in traditional fam�il�ies,
they were shocked because they saw that women had become [taken on
roles and respons�ibil�ities] that had tradi�tion�ally belonged to men. They were
maybe working at home or in factories or somewhere else in order to
provide food for their families.
(Serb woman, born 1980)

Thus, the focus group parti�cip�ants emphas�ize that the post-�conflict era is seeing
a return to traditional patÂ�riÂ�archal relations, with clear ethnic and religious under­
tones. This backlash has taken the form of increasing control over female bodies.
The backlash does not represent a return to the mode of life in the communist
pre-�war years, parti�cip�ants argue, but rather a return to the pre-�communist years.
At this point, it is worth noting that the same set of gender relations – that is, the
traditional patÂ�riÂ�archal family – represents a different deÂ�velopment in the post-Â�
war era compared to the pre-�war era. It is no longer a non-�ethnic pan-�Yugoslav
mode of life, but represents a change back in time, in which religious norms and
values regulating gender relations also regulate ethnic differences.

Summary
The focus group discussions show that, in the views of the 20 partiÂ�cipÂ�ants, per­
ceptions of ‘good womanhood’ is a contested theme in which there are, and have
 Traditions and transitions╇╇ 125
been, many different stakeholders. What the ana�lysis also shows is that different
sociopolit�ical changes are seen as being constitutive of changing perceptions of
‘good womanhood’. The current situÂ�ation is seen as one where increasing west­
ernization is an opposi�tion force to the backlash and increasing dominance of
religious groups.
Returning, then, to the Croat woman in the initial quota�tion in the text, her
frustration about not knowing what the future might bring and what the good
and right values for her daughter might be, could perhaps be di�min�ished by
returning the question to herself. The good and right values for her daughter,
whatever she believes them to be, will be constitutive for new sociopolit�ical
changes in Bosnia. The defining power lies as much on her shoulders as it does
on Bosnian sociÂ�ety at large. This is because her daughter’s body, and existÂ�ence,
is not neutral territory, but a site for opposing sociopolit�ical expectations and
ideals.
After the Bosnian war rape exÂ�periÂ�ences this insight has entered the interÂ�na­
tional arena with full force. Gender pol�itics, as both rhet�oric and practice, can be
seen and heard in relation to numerous conflicts around the world. War rape and
sexual viol�ence, therefore, are now seen as an inter�na�tional peace and secur�ity
concern which are the respons�ib�ility for organ�iza�tions such as the UN, NATO,
the EU and others. This concern will be discussed in the next chapter.
9 Beyond Bosnia
International efforts to move from
accounting to accountability

In the Brahimi report in the fall of 2000 (United Nations 2000), which evalu�ated
the status of United Nations peacekeeping opera�tions, former UN Secretary-�
General Kofi Annan emphas�ized the UN failure to prevent the geno�cide in
Rwanda in 1994 and to protect the inhabitants of Srebrenica in Bosnia Herze-
govina in 1995. The report specifically drew attention to the failure of the UN to
protect thou�sands of civilian women from being raped and other�wise sexually
abused by the perpetrators in these same conflicts. It is perhaps not therefore sur-
prising that, only two months after the Brahimi report was presented, the Secur-
ity Council for the first time addressed secur�ity concerns and their gendered
im�plica�tions and precon�ditions by the unanimous adoption of Resolution 1325
(hereafter UNSCR 1325). This marked a turning point in inter�na�tional com�mit�
ment and engagement for women’s partiÂ�cipaÂ�tion in peacemaking and protection
needs.

From UNSCR 1325 to UNSCR 1889: women, peace and

security
In order fully to appreciate the enorm�ous changes that have taken place on the
inter�na�tional scene re�gard�ing inter�na�tional com�mit�ment to combating sexual
viol�ence in war, it is im�port�ant to con�textualize both UNSCR 1325 and other
them�atic follow-�up Security Council Resolutions. (See Table 9.1 for an over-
view.) Tryggestad (2009: 539) helps us understand the major achievements of
the resÂ�oluÂ�tion when emphasizing that it deserves to be celÂ�ebÂ�rated as a ‘major
breakthrough for women’s rights in the peace and securÂ�ity arena’. The ground-Â�

Table 9.1╇ Overview of the United Nations Resolutions

Resolution number Resolution theme Date of adoption

1325 Women, peace and security 31 October 2000

1820 Sexual violence and protection 19 June 2008
1888 Women, peace and security 30 September 2009
1889 Sexual violence and protection 5 October 2009
1960 Sexual violence and protection 16 December 2010
 Beyond Bosnia╇╇ 127
breaking aspect of the res�olu�tion is its sys�tematic insistence on the interconnect-
edness between gender and peace and secur�ity concerns or, as Tryggestad puts it
(2009: 541), between ‘women’s rights and interÂ�naÂ�tional peace and securÂ�ity –
between traditional soft sociopolitÂ�ical issues and hard securÂ�ity’. More specifi-
cally, Tryggestad (2009: 540–541) conÂ�tinues, the resÂ�oluÂ�tion asks for changes in
three distinctly different ways.
First, it asks member states to increase the repres�enta�tion and active parti�
cipa�tion of women at all decision-�making levels in national, regional and inter�
na�tional institutions and mech�an�isms for conflict pre�ven�tion, conflict
management, conflict res�olu�tion and peacebuilding.
Second, it emphas�izes that a gender per�spect�ive should be adopted in the
planning and implementation of peace opera�tions and peace nego�ti�ations. These
should include gender-�sensitive training of personnel to enable them to better
understand and appreciate local women’s peace initiatives, needs and interÂ�ests in
mission areas. This could also mean that the roles for women as peacekeepers
would/will need to be expanded.
Third, increasing gender aware�ness would presumably lead to increased atten-
tion being given to protection of and respect for women’s rights, including pro-
tection from gender-�based viol�ence in situ�ations of armed conflict, and initiatives
to put an end to impunity for such crimes.
The res�olu�tion held such great promise, and disappointment in the lack of fol-
low-�up mirrored the enthusiasm with which adoption of the res�olu�tion was
received. For many years, the most vis�ible impact of the res�olu�tion was annual
celebÂ�raÂ�tions in New York and elsewhere on the day of adoption – Halloween –
but not much more. Tryggestad (2009: 541) has reviewed the schol�arly liter�at�
ure, which points to the lack of implementation and voices the aforementioned
disappointment. She emphas�izes that there are a number of issues reiterated
across these pub�lications. First of all, it is as�sumed that there is a lack of polit�ical
will by many member states to follow up. Linked to this is a complete lack of
account�abil�ity mech�an�isms by which personnel in peacekeeping missions,
policy�makers and member states are asked to report on 1325 follow-�up. Finally,
there is a sus�pi�cion among many of the scholars in this field that organ�iza�tional
inertia and discriminatory attitudes toward women strongly hinder implementa-
tion. Against this background, 2008, 2009 and 2010 marked a note�worthy shift,
with no fewer than four follow-�up res�olu�tions linked to the women, peace and
secur�ity agenda of UNSCR 1325. One of these res�olu�tions, UNSCR 1889
(adopted on 5 Octo�ber 2009) addresses some of the criticisms directly by asking
for a multi-�donor trust fund, coun�try reports to the Security Council on the
impact of situ�ations of armed conflict on women and girls, and providing for UN
bodies in coopera�tion with member states and civil soci�ety to collect data on,
ana�lyse and sys�tematically assess par�ticu�lar needs of women and girls in post-�
conflict situ�ations. In order to ensure a system-�wide response to these needs a
new UN body was estab�lished in July 2010 entitled UN Women. The main role
of this body, which merges and builds on many former UN bodies which have
been concerned with women’s issues,1 is to supÂ�port intergovÂ�ernÂ�mental bodies,
128╇╇ Beyond Bosnia
member states and the UN to be account�able for their com�mit�ments on gender
equality. All these efforts are direct outcomes of UNSCR 1325, and perhaps in
the next ten years more pro�gress will be made in terms of implementation and
changes than in the previous ten years.
What about the issue of sexual viol�ence in this myriad of Security Council
Resolutions? As shown above, gender-�based viol�ence was mentioned in UNSCR
1325 under the issue of protection and, as will be shown, in many ways this
theme has overshadowed the more comprehensive approaches to gender and
secur�ity expressed in UNSCR 1325 and 1889.

Sexual violence and protection: UNSCR 1820, 1888, 1960

The frustration for many politicians, milit�ary personnel and others mandated to
implement UNSCR 1325 was that it was seen as too broad and too vague. It was
hard to understand how to opera�tionalize the intentions behind it, and this could
be part of the reason for the lack of implementation; it was simply too difficult to
implement. Protection of women, on the other hand, is much easier to conceptu-
alize and understand; this is about implementing secur�ity meas�ures ensuring that
vulner�able groups of people are less vulner�able in given situ�ations. The groups
in need of protection are easy to define (women, chil�dren and the elderly), and
the forms of protection are often prac�tical and hands-�on: lights in dark places in
refu�gee settlements, milit�ary pres�ence in areas of ten�sion between rival groups,
safe houses for women, and more. Lack of protection per�petu�ates vul�ner�abil�ity,
which in turn may be detrimental to inter�na�tional peace and secur�ity. This line of
thinking lies behind three new res�olu�tions, one adopted in June 2008 (UNSCR
1820), one in Septem�ber 2009 (UNSCR 1888) and one in Decem�ber 2010
(UNSCR 1960), all focusing on the protection of women and vulner�able groups
against sexual violence.
UNSCR 1820 (2008) was the first Security Council res�olu�tion exclusively to
address sexual viol�ence in armed conflict. Its adoption can be attributed to three
different sets of de�velopments. First, new conflicts gen�er�ated new docu�mentation
about the sys�tematic use of sexual viol�ence against civilians. At the time it was
adopted, it was the situ�ation in the Democratic Repub�lic of the Congo (DRC)
that made headlines in the inter�na�tional press with stories of sexual viol�ence.
Baaz and Stern (2008) studied the perpetrators of sexual viol�ence in the DRC
and found, quite disturbingly, that indi�viduals who commit these acts have two
major moÂ�tivaÂ�tions: lust and evil-Â�doing. ‘Lust rapes’ were seen as the inevÂ�itÂ�able
result of men with no pos�sib�il�ity of having sex while in combat units: no money
and no leave. ‘Evil rape’, on the other hand, was seen as the result of basic frus-
tration over the craziness of war, hunger, pov�erty and neg�lect by the milit�ary
leadership. Documentary filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson, who went to the DRC and
talked to vic�tims and perpetrators of sexual viol�ence, confirms the findings of
Baaz and Stern (2008). Her film, The Greatest Silence, won the Sundance
Special Jury Prize in Documentary in 2008 and con�trib�uted to the gen�eral raising
of aware�ness of the issue. Second, the dif�ficult�ies and slowness in implementing
 Beyond Bosnia╇╇ 129
UNSCR 1325 created a need to narrow down the scope of the res�olu�tion and
define a more focused area to follow up. As mentioned above, protection
emerged as more manageable to work with and made it easier to define bench-
marks for success. Documentation, criminal pro�secu�tion and protection mech�an�
isms were singled out as areas to focus on, and a par�ticu�lar respons�ib�ility for
follow-�up was put on the Secretary-�General:

[the res�olu�tion] requests the Secretary-�General to submit a report to the

Council by 30 June 2009 on the implementation of this res�olu�tion in the
con�text of situ�ations which are on the agenda of the Council, utilizing
in�forma�tion from avail�able United Nations sources, including coun�try
teams, peacekeeping opera�tions, and other United Nations personnel, which
would include, inter alia, in�forma�tion on situ�ations of armed conflict in
which sexual viol�ence has been widely or sys�tematically employed against
civilians; ana�lysis of the prevalence and trends of sexual viol�ence in situ�
ations of armed conflict; proposals for strat�egies to minimize the suscepti-
bility of women and girls to such viol�ence; benchmarks for measuring
pro�gress in preventing and addressing sexual viol�ence; appropriate input
from United Nations implementing partners in the field; in�forma�tion on his
plans for facilitating the collection of timely, ob�ject�ive, ac�cur�ate, and reli�
able in�forma�tion on the use of sexual viol�ence in situ�ations of armed con-
flict, including through improved co�ordination of UN ac�tiv�ities on the
ground and at Headquarters; and in�forma�tion on actions taken by par�ties to
armed conflict to implement their respons�ibil�ities as de�scribed in this res�olu�
tion, in par�ticu�lar by imme�diately and completely ceasing all acts of sexual
viol�ence and in taking appropriate meas�ures to protect women and girls
from all forms of sexual violence.
(S/RES/1820 (2008) Action Point 15)

Third, as can be seen from the above quota�tion, the res�olu�tion makes follow-�up,
as well as protection, the respons�ib�ility of new organ�iza�tions and groups within
the UN. This is perhaps the most im�port�ant achievement of UNSCR 1820,
namely that it lifts sexual viol�ence out of the sphere of private, and hence in�vis�
ible, suffering and makes it a concern for inter�na�tional peace and secur�ity. As a
result of this conceptual shift, sexual viol�ence becomes an area of respons�ib�ility
for states, gov�ern�ments and their militaries. This means that not only are mili-
taries, states and gov�ern�ments not allowed to commit these acts of viol�ence, they
are also obliged to protect vulner�able groups from this viol�ence, and to include
anaÂ�lyses of sexual violÂ�ence in overall securÂ�ity assessments. Women’s groups
and organ�iza�tions that focus on the situ�ation for women in conflict areas must
therefore be routinely consulted if we are to get a better understanding of the
secur�ity situ�ation of all groups in a conflict area.
The report presented on 20 Au�gust 2009 by the Secretary-�General reveals
how difficult it is to meet the intentions in UNSCR 1820. For example, how can
the UN ensure that rel�ev�ant institutions have timely, ob�ject�ive, ac�cur�ate and
130╇╇ Beyond Bosnia
reli�able data on the use of sexual viol�ence in conflicts? The report states that the
Secretary-�General has entrusted the Department of Peacekeeping Operations
(DPKO) with the respons�ib�ility of co�ordinating follow-�up. In addition, in 2008
Secretary-Â�General Ban Ki-Â�Moon launched ‘UNiTE to End Violence’, a global
cam�paign co�ordinated by all UN agencies to put an end to viol�ence against
women. The camÂ�paign also initiated ‘the Secretary-Â�General’s Network of Men
Leaders’ to raise greater awareÂ�ness among the male popuÂ�laÂ�tion about the impact
of sexual viol�ence, par�ticu�larly on women and girls. The most committed fol-
low-�up, how�ever, came only one month later with UNSCR 1888.
This res�olu�tion emphas�izes the im�port�ance of addressing sexual viol�ence
issues right from the outset of a peace pro�cess and of bringing perpetrators to
justice. The res�olu�tion calls for the inclusion of specific pro�vi�sions protecting
women and chil�dren from rape and other sexual viol�ence in the mandates of the
UN peacekeeping opera�tions and all UN sponsored peace nego�ti�ation. Moreover,
it requests that the UN Secretary-�General de�velop a proposal to ensure monitor-
ing and reporting of sexual viol�ence in conflict and post-�conflict situ�ations and
also to appoint a special representative (SRSG) for sexual viol�ence. Margot
Wallström was appointed to the post in March 2010 to lead this work for two
years. In addition, there are a number of UN agencies on women, including
OSAGI, UNIFEM and INSTRAW, raising aware�ness about sexual viol�ence and
providing pol�icy research on conflict-�related sexual violence.
Finally, in Decem�ber 2010 UNSCR 1960 was adopted; it is even narrower
than UNSCR 1820 and 1888, and asks specifically for account�abil�ity meas�ures.
The res�olu�tion asks for clearer identification of respons�ible milit�ary groups
involved in sexual viol�ence acts and that inter�na�tional meas�ures must be con�
sidered accordingly. A pilot study on the reported use of sexual viol�ence in
African conflicts from 1989–2010 shows that it is govÂ�ernÂ�ment actors, or militÂ�ary
groups backed by gov�ern�ments in conflict, that are most often reported to be
implicated in sexual violÂ�ence against targeted groups (Nordås and Cohen, 2011).
More studies that would potentially sup�port this observation could suggest that
the ‘naming and shaming’ stratÂ�egy suggested in UNSCR 1960 could be
effective.
In the tenth year after the adoption of UNSCR 1325 many of the aims of the
res�olu�tion are now coming to fru�ition. It is worth mentioning that the engage-
ment of the United States is im�port�ant in this con�text because it gives neces�sary
weight to a theme that might other�wise have been overlooked. Yet, it is worri-
some that so much effort is put into the protection aspect of UNSCR 1325, while
the repres�enta�tion and gender per�spect�ive, i.e. the aspects which focus on
women’s agency, risk coming in the shadows. This is unfortunate because the
two aims − integrating women and women’s perÂ�spectÂ�ive in peace proÂ�cesses and
protection − are interconnected. The logic of rape in war builds on the socio-Â�
political and symbolic in�equal�it�ies between men and women. Working towards
greater equality is therefore im�port�ant not only in its own right, but also because
it might weaken the basis for rape to make sense to male perpetrators in war
settings.
 Beyond Bosnia╇╇ 131
A new generation of sexual violence in armed conflict
literature
One of the intentions of UNSCR 1820, 1888 and 1960 is to gather better data
and overviews so that improved pol�icies can be designed and better protection
meas�ures be created. The aca�demic com�mun�ity has indeed responded to this
challenge and several initiatives are underway in close coopera�tion with NGOs,
inter�na�tional organ�iza�tions and agencies. Mapping out the status quo is therefore
a challenging task because the landscape is constantly changing, but a few
de�velopments can be teased out from the current state of affairs and these will be
ex�plored in more detail below. First, there is a new generation of docu�mentation
liter�at�ure which has emerged since the adoption of UNSCR 1325 which brings
insights on new conflicts and new sexual viol�ence patterns. Second, methodo�
logical issues emerge as a grave concern in much of the new liter�at�ure. Finally, a
revelation of themes and areas of concern which are largely ab�sent in the liter�at�
ure but which need to be ex�plored further.

Documentation of new and old conflicts

It is a set of conflicts in the African continent which has served as the imme�diate
impetus for the ratification of UNSCR 1820, 1888 and 1960, and above all these
is the long lasting conflict and the situ�ation for women and girls in the Demo-
cratic Repub�lic of Congo (DRC) (see, for instance, Csete and Kippenberg 2002;
Puechguirbal 2003). In the report of 20 Au�gust 2009 by the Secretary-�General,
i.e. the first report after the adoption of UNSCR 1820, it is stated that at least
200,000 cases of sexual viol�ence have been re�corded in the eastern part of the
coun�try since hostilities began in 1996 (UN Security Council 2009: 5). Further,
in a report by Doctors Without Borders from Octo�ber 2007, between 50 and 300
patients a month have reported being vic�tims of sexual as�sault since MSF began
offering medical care in Spring 2003 in the district of Ituri in the northeastern
part of the coun�try, which has a popu�la�tion of about 4.6 million (MSF 2007: 11).
In an inter�view sample of patients in 2005 and 2006, 2 per cent identified their
perpetrators as belonging to an armed group, 2−4 per cent of the vicÂ�tims are men
or boys, and an increasing number of young girls and women are subject to
do�mestic sexual viol�ence (MSF 2007). Doctor Denis Mukwege, who is a gynae-
cologist working in Panzi Hospital in Bukavu treating women who have been
subject to mul�tiple and gang rape, has characterized the rapes as a slow geno�
cide; the phys�ical, psychological as well as cultural abil�ity for many of these
raped women to reproduce is limited and hence the entire ethnic group of which
the woman is part is at risk.2 There are several aspects which make the docu�
mentation from the DRC distinct. First, the sheer magnitude is over�whelm�ing.
There have been numerous reports in the media. For instance, the rapes commit-
ted by the Mai Mai rebel group and Rwandese Democratic Forces for the Libera-
tion of Rwanda (FDLR) against civilians in villages in the North Kivu province
in July 2010 were extensively reported on all the major new channels and in the
132╇╇ Beyond Bosnia
inter�na�tional press. The reporting focused in part on the massive use of sexual
viol�ence against women and girls, the fact that the events took place near a base
of the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) and that
the latter did nothing to intervene. Human rights and aid organ�iza�tions have also
reported extensively from the region, and top officials within the US administra-
tion such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have visited the coun�try and taken
steps to build up hos�pital and other facilities to help vic�tims. It is perhaps no
coincidence that UNSCR 1888 was adopted almost imme�diately after Hillary
Clinton’s visit to the DRC in SeptemÂ�ber 2009. Within the first months of serving
in her post as SRSG for sexual violÂ�ence Margot Wallström went to the DRC to
increase attention to this par�ticu�lar aspect of the on-�going conflict and on one
occasion she asked rhet�orically if women and girls in the DRC know how much
attention there is vis-Â�à-vis their exÂ�periÂ�ences and whether this helps them or not?3
Do these docu�mentation efforts really help those who need sup�port? This ques-
tion is to some extent addressed in the increasing number of medical ana�lyses of,
in par�ticu�lar, the situ�ation in the DRC. The need to provide help in order to docu�
ment what is going on is crucial, but poses some difficult challenges for research.
This is a theme I will return to below. But the liter�at�ure also shows that human�
itar�ian programmes and other efforts to aid sexual viol�ence survivors must work
with local organ�iza�tions which can address mul�tiple needs for women in mul�
tiple age groups (Steiner et al. 2009: 8).
The same pattern which is seen in the DRC was docu�mented only a few years
earl�ier in the Sudan and, more specifically, in the Darfur region; Amnesty Inter-
national issued a report in 2004 docu�menting sys�tematic use of sexual viol�ence
by militia groups, such as the Janjawid militia with direct links to gov�ern�ment
forces. The rapes were committed with complete impunity, as no perpetrators
have been convicted (Amnesty International 2004b). The same patterns and con-
cerns are given in a Human Rights Watch report from 2005 docu�menting that
sexual viol�ence was used as a means of ethnic cleansing by gov�ern�ment forces
and militias. Women and girls have been sexually abused during pro�cesses of
forced replacement from their homes and in displacement settlements (HRW
2005: 5–6). The grim picÂ�ture re-Â�emerges in accounts from Liberia, where a
WHO study (Omanyondo 2005) suggests that 90 per cent of the female popu�la�
tion has suffered phys�ical or sexual viol�ence and that three out of four women
were raped during the most recent conflict in 1999–2003. The authorities are
struggling to bring the many perpetrators to justice for these crimes, and are
being criticized by Amnesty for not doing enough (Amnesty International
2007a). In Sierra Leone it is estim�ated that 250,000 girls (i.e. about 33 per cent
of the female popu�la�tion) were subjected to sexual viol�ence crimes during the
1991–2002 conflict (Amnesty International 2007b: 4). In March 2007, in an
Amnesty International study in the easternmost district of Kailahun, it was found
that few had received any form of help; that the social stigma was still very
strong for many of these women; that the perpetrators were not brought to
justice; and that the vic�tims were still suffering in mul�tiple ways (Amnesty Inter-
national 2007b)
 Beyond Bosnia╇╇ 133
In Eastern Europe, the conflict in Chechnya is often mentioned, where gang
rapes by Russian soldiers are by no means uncommon (Rousseva 2004; MSF
2004), but more comprehensive docu�mentation is hard to come by. A strong cul-
tural pattern of silence and taboo re�gard�ing these ex�peri�ences con�tinues to
hamper docu�mentation efforts.4 The list could have gone on to include Burundi,
Uganda, the Central African Repub�lic, Haiti, Columbia, Indonesia and the
Occupied Palestinian Territories, which are the areas covered in the ‘Interna-
tional Symposium on Sexual Violence in Conflict and Beyond’ orÂ�ganÂ�ized in
Brussels in June 2006 by the UNFPA (2006). The conference brought together
heads of UN agencies and NGOs, human activists and researchers, gov�ern�ment
min�is�ters, doctors and other field-�based human�itar�ian workers, parlia�ment�arians,
representatives from the International Criminal Court, milit�ary and police offic-
ers and members of the media to share ex�peri�ences, strat�egies and a renewed
com�mit�ment to end the scourge of sexual viol�ence in coun�tries torn apart by war.
The main goal of the symposium was to address the in�ad�equacy of the inter�na�
tional response to the protection needs of women in armed conflict; the lack of
pri�or�ity in addressing gender-�based viol�ence in gen�eral; and the lack of polit�ical
action and reli�able funding to improve effect�ive and appropriate responses to
vulner�able popu�la�tions (UNFPA 2006: 1), i.e. many of the points addressed in
UNSCR 1820, 1888 and 1960. But in order to identi�fy the best responses, reli�
able docu�mentation is needed and the gath�er�ing of these data can be difficult and
challenging as the next section points out.

Methodological challenges
The new schol�arly liter�at�ure which has emerged since 2000 is more engaged in
methodo�logical challenges than was the case for the liter�at�ure which came out in
the 1990s. While the early liter�at�ure was more geared towards placing the issue
of sexual viol�ence in armed conflict on the map and getting re�cog�ni�tion for its
polit�ical significance in war, the new liter�at�ure takes this as given. The new
authors are not only writing in order to persuade polit�ical analysts that they
should pay more attention to sexual viol�ence in war and its impact on global
peace and secur�ity issues, but they are communicating to a growing audience of
estab�lished aca�demics and high-�level policy�makers who wish to know the facts
on the ground and to understand the trends that emerge. In order to respond to
these audiences’ methodoÂ�logical and ethical challenges are the central themes
both in the aca�demic writing as well as in the field reporting.
The first challenge discussed in several pub�lications is the definitional chal-
lenge, i.e. how should sexual viol�ence in war be understood in order to conduct
meaningful and com�par�able studies of this phenomenon? In response to this
need the legal liter�at�ure has proved helpful. The legal elements of inter�na�tional
sex crimes, as they are defined in the Preamble to the Rome Statute of the Inter-
national Criminal Court5 include rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution,
enforced sterilization and sexual viol�ence. Documenting these crimes in court is
by no mean straight�forward and in order simply to formulate an indictment the
134╇╇ Beyond Bosnia
fol�low�ing elements must be outlined: (1) the profile of the perpetrators; (2) the
profile of the vic�tims; (3) the geographical and chronological distribution of the
crime; and (4) the modus operandi in the commission of the crime (list from
Aranburu 2010: 610). In order to get all these elements in place, the first step is
to recog�nize and thereby report that these crimes have taken place which, in turn,
means that vic�tims must have a language for reporting these crimes. Patricia
Viseur Sellers, who served as the Legal Advisor for Gender Related Crimes and
Acting Senior Trial and Attorney at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for more than ten years, has underlined how
im�port�ant it is that those docu�menting these crimes understand how these events
are talked about, if at all, in specific local settings.6 In many instances, she
argues, the vic�tims may not have a language, or they may simply be too inhib-
ited by social taboos, to name the events that have happened to them. Respectful
and clear language use is therefore a core challenge in order to simply record the
various forms of sex crimes that happen in armed conflict settings. This point is
reiterated in a report by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) where they
state the following:

Establishing case definitions at the field level are espe�cially challenging

since sexual viol�ence in conflict situ�ations often take place in settings where
local languages do not have a word for rape, or in cultures with high inci-
dences of intimate partner viol�ence, police viol�ence and other forms of viol�
ence. The definition of rape is not a question of cultural relativism, but one
of identi�fying the specific definitions that are rel�ev�ant to the community.
(SSRC 2005: 9)

But this does not solve the challenge, because as indicated in the various ele-
ments needed to formulate and indictment, there are a number of specific charac�
ter�istics about the crimes which also need to be clarified for various forms of
docu�mentation. Elisabeth Wood, who has published widely on the vari�ation of
sexual viol�ence in armed conflict (see, for example, Wood 2006, 2009) provides
the fol�low�ing definitional clarification based on her readings of the ICC
definitions;

By rape, I mean the penetration of the anus or vagina with any object or
body part, or of part of any body part of the vicÂ�tim or perpetrator’s body
with a sexual organ, by force or by threat of force or coercion, or by taking
ad�vant�age of a co�er�cive envir�on�ment, or against a person in�cap�able of
giving genu�ine consent. Sexual viol�ence is a broader cat�egory that includes
rape, sexual torture and mutilation, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution,
enforced sterilization and forced pregnancy.
(Wood 2009: 133)

What we can see from this definition, as well as the complex docu�mentation
needs for the purpose of criminal pro�secu�tion laid out by Aranburu (2010: 610),
 Beyond Bosnia╇╇ 135
is that the docu�mentation efforts need to combine a focus on the vic�tim/perpetra-
tor relationship (modes of viol�ence, coercion and threat) as well as the event (the
armed con�text in which the events occur). How complex studies become where
these dimensions are inÂ�tegÂ�rated can be found in Leiby’s (2009) study of war-Â�
time sexual viol�ence in Guatemala and Peru, where she not only differentiates
between different forms of sexual viol�ence, i.e. what are the pri�mary patterns of
sexual viol�ence in these conflicts, but also looks at the settings in which these
events occur, i.e. what is achieved in the settings in which these acts of sexual
viol�ence occurs. What she achieves through these efforts is to show that sexual
viol�ence can be used for mul�tiple purposes even within the same conflict and
that the sexual viol�ence does not serve the same function in civil wars across
time and space (Leiby 2009: 465). Other empirical studies which supÂ�port Leiby’s
finding can be found in Wood (2009) and Cohen (2010). What these studies also
show is that docu�mentation efforts on sexual viol�ence in armed conflict are best
served when combining qualit�at�ive (cultural and con�text specific insights) and
quantitative efforts (creating overviews based on narrowly defined cat�egor�ies of
sexual viol�ence). In other words, the best know�ledge is gen�er�ated by defining the
unit of ana�lysis as a combination of vic�tim, perpetrator, event and con�text (which
is what is also argued by the SSRC 2005: 10).
The second major challenge discussed in the new liter�at�ures is how to dem�on�
strate patterns of sexual viol�ence use in armed conflicts. In par�ticu�lar, there is a
need for a conceptual clarification of the distinction, or conflation, of the terms
widespread and sys�tematic. In part the need for this clarification is a legal one.
As more docu�mentation on sexual viol�ence in armed conflict is avail�able, more
criminal pro�secu�tion is made pos�sible. In a review on the criminal pro�secu�tion
efforts relating to sexual crimes the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
(DPKO 2010: 23) discusses the meaning of widespread versus sys�tematic and
explains the following:

In the case-Â�law, ‘widespread’ refers to the large scale nature of the attack
and the number of vicÂ�tims while ‘sysÂ�tematic’ refers to the orÂ�ganÂ�ized nature
of the acts of viol�ence and the improb�abil�ity of their random occurrence.
Patterns of crimes – that is the non-Â�accidental repetiÂ�tion of simÂ�ilar criminal
conduct on a reguÂ�lar basis – are a common expression of such sysÂ�tematic
occurrence.
(DPKO 2010: 23)

In order to make convincing arguments in the various courts where sexual viol�
ence crimes in armed conflict are pro�sec�uted the lawyers need to rely on social
science data in order to prove the co�er�cive con�text and the patterns on sexual viol�
ence misuse. Wood’s (2006, 2009) work speaks to this challenge by raising the
question of when (i.e. where as well as at which moments in time) armed groups
do not engage in widespread (a) viol�ence and (b) sexual viol�ence, and when
sexual viol�ence is used (a) sys�tematically by an armed group or (b) is part of other
kinds of sys�tematized viol�ence in armed conflict settings. Cohen (2010: 1) argues
136╇╇ Beyond Bosnia
that it is myth that sexual viol�ence is an or�gan�ized top-�down activity, and that
this view characterizes many ad�vo�cacy groups working to docu�ment these
crimes. Based on thorough studies of sexual viol�ence during the civil wars in
Sierra Leone, El Salvador and East Timor, Cohen (2010: 178–180) argues that
the use of sexual viol�ence in war, at least in these three cases, is characterized by
a bottom-�up strat�egy. The challenge, she argues, is to find ways of holding milit�
ary commanders respons�ible even if the crimes were not committed on the basis
of top-�down leadership command.
The third challenge is to find ways to gather data on the ground. Different
organ�iza�tions which operate in conflict settings and are able to provide reports,
such as UNFPA, UNICEF and UNIFEM, as well as big NGOs such as Amnesty
International, Doctors without Borders (MSF↜) and Human Rights Watch, all
discuss these challenges in their various reports and calls for action. In their con-
certed efforts, how�ever, it can be seen that there are numerous ways of accessing
this in�forma�tion and assessing needs, but that big datasets and stand�ardized
information-�gathering techniques are still beyond reach. One overarching prob�
lem, which is addressed in a pub�lication by the Geneva Center for the Demo-
cratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF 2006), is that the in�forma�tion gathered is
often based on the mandate of the organ�iza�tion, so that the in�forma�tion Amnesty
International is able to gather will vary greatly from what Doctors Without
Borders is able to gather. There is in other words a myriad of organ�iza�tions and
agencies involved in different forms of docu�mentation and the methods used are
population-�based, where a representative sample is selected based on the popu�la�
tion at large; service-�based where data are gathered by ser�vice providers of dif-
ferent kinds; and, finally, an�ec�dotal. The research challenge is therefore to use
mul�tiple sources, i.e. reports from various agencies on the ground in armed con-
flict settings, in order to get as close as pos�sible to the reality of sexual viol�ence
perpetration.
The final point addressed in the new liter�at�ure is the ethical concerns in data
gath�er�ing. Bastick et al. (2007) stress the need (1) to collect these data in ways
that do not compromise the safety of the vic�tims and (2) to create questionnaires
and conduct inter�views which do not cause further emotional and psychological
stress. It is therefore imperative that (a) data-�gathering techniques take into con�
sidera�tion the gender of the person gath�er�ing the data; (b) gender-�sensitive train-
ing/education is provided for those involved in the data-�gathering; and (c) data is
collected and stored safely so that the ‘data providers’ (vicÂ�tims or others) do not
risk unwanted disclosure.
The new liter�at�ure on sexual viol�ence in armed conflict is, as has been shown
to be, more engaged in conceptual and methodo�logical challenges than was the
case in the liter�at�ure in the 1990s. The interdependency between legal scholars,
social sci�ent�ists and organ�iza�tions reporting from the ground has provided a
fertile basis for mutual de�velopment and clarification of central schol�arly chal-
lenges. But these efforts also reveal that central themes which are part of the
sexual viol�ence in war complex are still insufficiently studied.
 Beyond Bosnia╇╇ 137
Missing themes in the new literature
More docu�mentation and more nuanced discussions within the new schol�arly
liter�at�ure since 2000 also reveal themes linked to the sexual viol�ence in war
complex which have not yet been ex�plored in sys�tematic ways. In par�ticu�lar, the
situ�ation of chil�dren has been remark�ably little studied. Sexual viol�ence in war is
a par�ticu�lar form of viol�ence in that it produces chil�dren, whose fate is unknown.
Those chil�dren conceived through the war rapes in Bosnia7 now want to know
more about what happened during the war and about their own personal his-
tories. During my field inter�views in Bosnia questions about chil�dren conceived
through the rapes were the only questions that certain inter�viewees declined to
answer. Several inter�viewees knew about such chil�dren in their com�munit�ies, but
said that these chil�dren may not have been aware of their own histories. Similar
accounts are also emerging from other sources (CNN 2007). The status of chil�
dren born of war is, at best, underdocu�mented; at worst, it is simply ignored. In a
book focusing on this theme, the various authors discuss the legal, social and
ethnic/racial identities of war chil�dren of sexual viol�ence survivors (Carpenter
2007). In the Introduction, Carpenter (2007: 2) writes ‘to date there have been
no sys�tematic fact-�finding missions at the global level to assess the needs and
inter�ests of chil�dren born of war in different con�texts and to estab�lish best prac-
tices with respect to advocating for and securing their human rights’. In order to
meet this challenge an interdisciplinary network has been estab�lished, entitled
the International Network for Interdisciplinary Research on Children Born of
War (INIRC)8 and more efforts like these are needed. Linked to this theme,
reproductive and health issues are also insufficiently studied. We need to know
more about the extent to which sexual viol�ence in armed conflicts con�trib�utes to
the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus both directly and indirectly. There are several
issues that interconnect with the HIV/AIDS issue: the potential secondary stig-
matization of being both a rape vic�tim and having a sexually transmitted disease;
the potential ramifications this might have on reproductive health at both sym-
bolic and phys�ical levels; the potential increase in do�mestic sexual viol�ence fol�
low�ing armed conflict; and a potential increase in the sex industry as a result of a
difficult eco�nomic situ�ation. In other words, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health
concerns might increase as the use of sexual viol�ence in armed conflict
increases.
It is also crit�ical to investigate the ways in which polit�ical discourse prior to,
as well as after, an armed conflict becomes sexualized. Knowledge of this kind
helps in our understanding how women within different classes, races and cul-
tures in conflict are socially and polit�ically situated, this again suggesting differ-
ent levels of vulÂ�nerÂ�abilÂ�ity vis-Â�à-vis sexual violÂ�ence. One excellent example of
this type of study can be found in Zarkov (2007), where she ana�lyses the con-
flicts in the former Yugoslavia and how ethnic dif�fer�ences became sexualized
through a series of events and their cover�age in the media in Serbia, Croatia and
Bosnia. This form of ana�lysis is im�port�ant not only for predicting vul�ner�abil�ity,
but also for helping us understand how the post-�war stigmatization might play
138╇╇ Beyond Bosnia
out. Building on this point, there is also a need for studies focusing on social
mech�an�isms that could counteract the stigma of sexual viol�ence survival. Much
of the liter�at�ure is focused on psycho�social help to indi�vidual vic�tims, and very
little on the societal mech�an�isms that can play an im�port�ant part, such as the role
of Muslim leaders discussed in the chapter focusing on the health workers. One
thing often mentioned in the Bosnian setting is the ways in which Muslim
leaders have con�trib�uted to lifting the stigma normally attached to rape vic�tims
by openly discussing war rape and urging Muslim men not to leave their respec-
tive wives, daughters or sisters.
Finally the role of masculinity and men requires further study. This is im�port�
ant in relation to two themes: male vic�tims and male perpetrators. Obtaining
more data on men’s exÂ�periÂ�ences with sexual violÂ�ence in armed conflict encoun-
ters many of the same challenges as gen�eral data-�collection. If the docu�mentation
of sexual viol�ence against women in war suffers from being an�ec�dotal, the data
on sexual viol�ence against men does so even more. There might be a greater
need to involve more men in research on this theme if we are to get better access
to data, because it might be easier for male vic�tims to talk to male researchers.
Today it is predominantly women who study sexual viol�ence in war, but this
might well change in the coming years as inter�na�tional attention, as well as
research prestige linked to these themes, increases. There is also clearly a need
to have psycho�social and medical help or�gan�ized in a way that caters to male
needs for sup�port. In turn, this would make it easier to gather more data. Male
perpetration of sexual viol�ence, on the other hand, is a theme that has been the
subject of thorough study in clinical psychology (e.g. Groth [1979] 2001), crimi-
nology (e.g. Odem and Clay-�Warner 1997) and gender studies (e.g. Mardoros-
sian 2004). Furthermore, the role of perpetrators in armed conflict is a theme that
has been studied extensively in the past. The cruelty of the Nazi regime during
World War II, for instance, has resulted in studies of Nazi doctors (Lifton 1986;
Kater 1989), and discussions about the root of evil-�doing have a prominent place
in psychological (Baumeister 1996; Staub 1989) and philosophical (Vetlesen
2005; Reichberg et al. 2006) research. Yet few, if any, of the studies just men-
tioned focus on the roles of male perpetrators committing acts of sexual viol�ence
against enemy vic�tims in war settings. In order to further our know�ledge and
theory de�velopment, we need to incorp�or�ate empirical data that bring the percep-
tions and voices of the perpetrators into the equation. We need to do this, not to
jusÂ�tify the perpetrators’ actions, but in order to seek insight into how supraÂ�
national criminal proÂ�secuÂ�tion affects the perpetrators’ views of their actions and
pun�ishment. By implication, we will also gain insight into the potential deter-
rence effect of these legal processes.

Summary
This chapter has dem�on�strated a remark�able increase in inter�na�tional attention
given to the issue of sexual viol�ence in war. The United Nations Security
Council is in the van�guard of promoting these changes, and five crucial
 Beyond Bosnia╇╇ 139
Resolutions have placed gender concerns centre stage in the area of inter�na�tional
peace and secur�ity. The de�velopments in the Security Council are, of course, the
result of lobbying by many women’s groups and NGOs for these parÂ�ticuÂ�lar
forms of change, but as of 2000 and UNSCR 1325 they have succeeded in
getting the attention of the most im�port�ant decision-�makers. Now the challenge
is to get the job done, i.e. acquire docu�mentation, pro�sec�ute perpetrators and
secure the needs of vic�tims. As this chapter has shown, there are many chal-
lenges ahead, as new conflicts emerge with new patterns of gender-�based viol�
ence and new research themes placed on the map.
10 The political psychology of war
rape

The aim of this book has been to show how the indi�vidual ex�peri�ence of a vic�tim
of rape has to be understood within the polit�ical con�text in which the events
occur. More specifically, the studies presented began from the view that sexual
viol�ence in war is best understood within a social constructionist framework,
because it would be empirically wrong to argue that sexual viol�ence in war is
simply an outcome of male biological drives (essentialist position) or of the war
sys�tem itself (structuralist position), but is instead, at the very least, a combina-
tion of the two. The social constructionist approach, which is categorized as
post-�structuralist by most textbooks (Guba and Lincoln 1994; Lincoln and Guba
2000), provides a framework for conceptualizing the ways in which femininity,
masculinity and violent polit�ical power struggles interact in constructing the
meaning of sexual viol�ence in armed conflict. In this pro�cess, it has been im�port�
ant to create a polit�ical framework from which the indi�vidual ex�peri�ences exam-
ined are understood.
One major conclusion that emerges across the various chapters in this book is
the finding that war rape must be understood as a violent relationship in which
the perpetrator is masculinized and the vic�tim feminized. In this pro�cess, other
identities linked to the masculinized perpetrators and the feminized vic�tims are
sexualized in a hierarchical fashion, where power follows masculinization and
powerlessness follows feminization. This means that the use of rape in war not
only represents a violent hierarchical relationship between the male perpetrator
and the female vic�tim, but also situates other identities in the polit�ical power
struggle in a sim�ilar way. The pro�cess of masculinization and feminization on
which war rapes are based confirms the claim made by fem�in�ist scholars within
peace and conflict studies that war polarizes gender relations in hierarchical and
pat�ri�archal ways, but takes the argument one step further. The ways in which
masculinization and feminization polarize other identities are intimately linked
to the overall conflict structure, and it is this mech�an�ism which can make rape a
power�ful weapon of war.
The implication of this understanding of sexual viol�ence in armed conflict is
that the intersectionality of gender and other identities in conflict become the
barometer for understanding sociopolit�ical change at large. In Bosnia, it seems
that this conceptualization of sociopolit�ical struggle, first violently manifested in
 The political psychology of war rape╇╇ 141
the war rapes, was sub�sequently carried over to the post-�war era. Examples of
these forms of change would be the fact that the discourse of a backlash, increas-
ing religious dominance, and traditional modes of life in post-�war Bosnia is nar-
rated as increasing restriction of mobility for women in pub�lic space, restrictions
on abor�tions and increasing do�mestic viol�ence. Likewise, the discourse of a
trans�ition towards increasing Westernization and a market eco�nomy is narrated
as an increasing openness about human rights abuses against women, an increas-
ing use of female prostitutes and trafficked women by civilian males, and a sexu-
alization of pub�lic spaces through blatant advertisements for places where sex
can be bought and sold.
The finding that rape sexualizes sociopolit�ical change in war and post-�war
leads to a conclusion that is different from the arguments of scholars like Allen
(1996), Nordstrom (1996) and MacKinnon (1993). They have argued that we
recog�nize the impact and con�sequences of rape in times of war because we know
its impact and con�sequences in times of peace. The main reason this claim has
not been debated within the schol�arly liter�at�ure on war rape has to do with the
fact that little research, if any, has focused on the social impact that war rape
might have in the aftermath of a given conflict beyond the harm it inflicts on its
indi�vidual vic�tims. I will argue, how�ever, that we cannot recog�nize the impact
and con�sequences of rape in times of war solely based on the impact of rape in
times of peace because rape in war sexualizes other gendered as well as non-�
gendered identities for polit�ical purposes and thereby alters the ways in which
masculinization and feminization are perceived. What we can as�sume is that
rape in war alters the intersectionality between gender and other polit�ical identi-
ties, and thereby situates gender as the optic though which other forms of
sociopolit�ical changes are viewed and understood.
If the use of rape in war alters the intersectionality between gender and other
polit�ical identities, what does this mean for local understandings of the Bosnian
war rapes and for the indi�vidual war rape sufferers? The Bosnian health workers
discuss at great length how the polit�ical nature of the war rapes changed local
per�spect�ives on sexual viol�ence against women. The war rapes were clearly con-
strued as a polit�ical phenomenon with polit�ical im�plica�tions and intent. One of
the health workers deÂ�scribed how, paradoxically, the war created a ‘good basis’
for therapy with rape sufferers because the situ�ation para�meters for the crime
were so different from post-�war rapes. To some extent, the ways in which sexual
viol�ence became politicized took the stigma away from the female vic�tim. Her
ethÂ�niÂ�city determined whether she was ‘eliÂ�gible’ for attack. Through the situating
of vic�tims of sexual viol�ence as ethnic subjects, a sense of unity was created
between men and women within the same ethnic group. For the local health
workers, this unity created a basis for therapy, because vic�tims of sexual viol�
ence received sup�port and understanding from their fam�il�ies and com�munit�ies.
In the post-�war con�text, sexual viol�ence and its vic�tims are situated differently.
The polit�ical con�text shifted, and sexual viol�ence became more a question of
male and female power relations, less a question of eth�ni�city. For the health
workers, both lines of argument have led to various changes in terms of work
142╇╇ The political psychology of war rape
methods (more focus on long-�term abuse and family therapy), choice of clients
(more focus on the role of men in fam�il�ies and ado�les�cent beha�vi�our), and out-
reach target groups (more focus on reaching boys and girls of school age).
For the indi�vidual war rape sufferers, the intersectionality between gender and
other polit�ical identities that the war rapes brought about has meant different
possib�il�ities for situating their war rape ex�peri�ences in the post-�war setting. The
five different nar�rat�ives from women who ex�peri�enced war rape showed that
rape in the Bosnian war has an impact upon and violates the social identity of its
vic�tims in at least two distinct ways: it targets both the ethnic and the gendered
identity of its vic�tims, and this dual identity violation creates a pos�sib�il�ity for
dual identity construction in the aftermath. Through their accounts, the five
women created two distinctly different nar�rat�ive plots, within which their pri�
mary positioning in the stories varied. As ethnic vic�tims, the elements of their
stories created a survivor plot characterized by absence of guilt, sup�port from
family members, and active engagement in getting their perpetrators convicted.
As female vic�tims, how�ever, the elements of their stories created a vic�tim plot
characterized by feelings of guilt and shame, hiding their stories from imme�diate
family members, and bodily pains and immobility.
These observations show: (1) that the vic�tims have power to redefine their
social identities in the post-�conflict sociopolit�ical space; (2) that their abil�ity to
do so, how�ever, depends on the mater�ial, social and polit�ical con�text in which
they find themselves in the post-�conflict setting, as well as the ways in which
their ‘supÂ�porting cast’ plays its part; and, finally, (3) that positioning oneself
mainly as a vic�tim as opposed to a survivor (or the other way around) has differ-
ent impacts on intrapersonal, interpersonal and societal relations.
The studies presented in this book also show that there are methodo�logical
ways of circumventing the prob�lem that many war rape vic�tims choose to remain
silent about their ex�peri�ences. First, it is clear that there will be people in a given
conflict setting who will have extensive know�ledge of ex�peri�ences of war rape
though they are not direct war rape suffers themselves. The study with local
health workers showed that, as li�aisons between war rape sufferers and the
Bosnian com�mun�ity at large, health workers were able to provide in�valu�able
insights into both the social and the indi�vidual im�plica�tions of wartime rape.
Second, the use of in�ter�preters in the inter�views with war raped women also
proved to be a way of giving voice to local women and their ex�peri�ences in ways
that might other�wise have been disregarded.
On the issue of long-�term effect, the studies show that rape in the Bosnian
war was an effect�ive weapon. Not only did it have a signi�fic�ant polit�ical impact
during the conflict from 1992 to 1995, it also con�trib�uted to changing pre-�war
modes of social and gendered inter�action. For indi�vidual war rape sufferers, the
harm and trauma inflicted is undisputable, but the ways in which these indi�
viduals live with their war rape ex�peri�ences in the aftermath take diverse forms.
One of the reasons for these vari�ations is the fact that the use of rape in war
transforms notions of femininity and masculinity by sexualizing other (polit�ical)
identities. Tragically, male war rape against female members of opposing
 The political psychology of war rape╇╇ 143
warring groups does achieve its polit�ical ob�ject�ive of destroying the existing
social fabric, but by doing so war rape has an unintended potentially pos�it�ive
side-�effect in that it creates new spaces for the social construction of gender.
This change of social constructions of femininity and masculinity shows that
rape in war has societal con�sequences that extend beyond the harm and dev�asta�
tion these acts of viol�ence inflict on indi�vidual vic�tims, and it also shows that
these larger societal changes have im�plica�tions for psychological therapy with
war rape vic�tims and for the ways in which indi�vidual vic�tims regard their war-�
trauma ex�peri�ences. Against this backdrop, then, an op�tim�istic potential for
policy�makers and psychological therapists comes into relief, in that an increased
focus on the sociopolit�ical nature of war rapes and notions of femininity and
masculinity can counteract the stigmatization of rape vic�tims, because it lifts the
indi�vidual ex�peri�ence out of the indi�vidual sphere of private suffering.
Finally, this study has shown that policy�makers aiming to assist war raped
com�munit�ies and sufferers must be aware of several factors. First, they must not
as�sume that war rape has uni�ver�sal effects on its sufferers, but realize that this
par�ticu�lar form of war viol�ence has multifaceted outcomes. Close coopera�tion
with local partners (such as the health workers in this book) is crucial in assess-
ing the impact of war rape in the given conflict setting. Second, the fact that war
rapes have polit�ical significance in conflict settings means that there is a poten-
tial for transforming the traditional stigma normally attached to rape vic�tims.
Local authorities in a par�ticu�lar conflict setting (for instance, religious and com�
mun�ity leaders in Bosnia) can counteract the stigma normally ascribed to a rape
vic�tim by talking pub�licly about how these acts of war are polit�ical forms of
viol�ence and by pointing out that no form of guilt or respons�ib�ility should be
ascribed to indi�vidual sufferers. When this is done with authority, repeatedly and
compas�sion�ately, the rape ex�peri�ences will be made vis�ible in ways that can
have a pos�it�ive effect on the self-�perception of the indi�vidual war rape sufferer
and her ways of living with the trauma.
Future research in this field must have as a premise that the con�sequences of
acts of sexual viol�ence are not given. The effects and con�sequences of such viol�
ence will most likely vary according to time, culture and the nature of the con-
flict. It is only through inter�action with the female vic�tims and male perpetrators,
as well as an understanding of the nature of the conflict and culture in which the
acts of sexual viol�ence took place, that the researcher can explain the impact and
con�sequences of wartime sexual viol�ence in any given conflict con�text. Generali-
zations about the impact of sexual viol�ence on indi�vidual vic�tims and their
respective sociopolit�ical com�munit�ies can only be made by comparing mul�tiple
local studies, simply because one cannot adequately assess the indi�vidual impact
without an appreciation and understanding of the wider sociopolit�ical con�text in
which given acts of war rape occurred and in which the war rape sufferers live in
the aftermath of the events. We thus need more in-�depth and case-�based ana�lyses
of war raped women and com�munit�ies in order to compare situ�ational para�meters
and local variations.
Notes

Preface
1 English translation found at: http://perso.orange.fr/chabrieres/texts/whywar.html
(accessed Janu�ary 22, 2007).

1╇ Introduction
1 Agger has also written about sexual torture in other armed conflicts: see Agger (1989);
Agger and Bruus Jensen (1993).

2╇ Designing a study of the aftermath of the war rapes in Bosnia

1 Chapters 3, 7 and 8 are based on five field trips to Bosnia over the course of 2001 and
2002.
2 The researcher must con�sider the theme of study and ask if the know�ledge sought can
improve the human situÂ�ation investigated. The researcher must also design the inter­
view propÂ�erly: obtain informed consent, ensure the interÂ�viewees’ confidentiality and
evalu�ate the pos�sible con�sequences of the study for the subjects and, finally, con�sider
the inter�view situ�ation and how the stress of the inter�view inter�action might be taken
into account. After the interÂ�views, the researcher must conÂ�sider the transcription pro­
cess and critÂ�ically examine whether it is a faithfully written transcription of an inter­
viewee’s oral statements, and must conÂ�sider the anaÂ�lysis and how deeply and critÂ�ically
the inter�views can be ana�lysed. Lastly, the researcher must con�sider the verification of
know�ledge and make sure that know�ledge is as secure and verified as pos�sible, and
con�sider the reporting of the inter�views in the final report/art�icle/dissertation and the
imÂ�plicaÂ�tions for the interÂ�viewees and their affiliates (the four last sentences are para­
phrased from Kvale 1996:111).
3 What I learned was that showing crying during an inter�view could do no harm,
because, as the health workers pointed out, this shows the war rape sufferers that the
interÂ�viewer is empathizing with their pain, which legitimizes their feelings. In inter­
views with other vic�tims of torture (not rape), this message from the health workers
was confirmed.
4 The term ‘Bosniak’ has a long hisÂ�tory in Bosnia, and has been used both as a generic
term for inhabitants of Bosnia (Bosnjak) and as a term for Muslims living in Bosnia at
different points in time (for an elaborate discussion, see Bringa 1995: 34–36). In
present-Â�day Bosnia, howÂ�ever, the term ‘Bosniak’ has replaced the religious identifier
‘Muslim’. Thus, ‘Bosniak’ now denotes Muslims in Bosnia, while the term ‘Bosnian’
denotes inhabitants of Bosnia of different nationalities (Alexander 2003).
 Notes╇╇ 145
3╇ Victim and survivor: narrated social identities of women who
experienced rape during the war
1 This chapter is based on an artÂ�icle published by the author: Inger Skjelsbæk (2006)
‘Victim and Survivor: Narrated Social Identities of Women who Experienced Rape
during the War in Bosnia-Â�Herzegovina’, Feminism and Psychology, 16(4): 373–405.
Reprinted with per�mis�sion of Sage Publications Ltd, and avail�able from http://fap.
sagepub.com/con�tent/16/4/373.
2 The themes covered were: present life situ�ation of the inter�viewees (work, family,
housing/living situÂ�ation); their lives before the war (work, family, housing/living situ­
ation); with whom they have shared or revealed their war ex�peri�ences, and with whom
they can seek comfort and trust; what sort of help they have received in the aftermath
(psychological, ecoÂ�nomic and medical); how they would characterize themselves –
vic�tim and/or survivor; thoughts about the future.
3 Hydén (2005:172) warns against inscribing abused women into the PTSD diaÂ�gnosis
because this reduces the violated woman to her sufferings. This is a central theme and
concern also in other fem�in�ist critiques of the PTSD dia�gnoses (e.g. Shaw and Proctor
2005).
4 The parliaÂ�mentÂ�ary election of OctoÂ�ber 2002 – the first election the Bosnian authorities
or�gan�ized without the imme�diate supervision of the Office of the High Representative
(OHR) and the Organization for Security and Co-Â�operation in Europe (OSCE) –
showed that efforts to ‘educate’ the Bosnia popuÂ�laÂ�tion in demoÂ�cratic values and toler­
ance have not provided the results hoped for by the inter�na�tional com�mun�ity. Not only
was voter turnout extremely low (less than 55 per cent), but those who did show up
voted for nationalist canÂ�didÂ�ates. Knaus and Martin (2003: 60) criticize the OHR – and
High Representative Paddy Ashdown in parÂ�ticuÂ�lar – for demonstrating the ‘unlimited
authority of an inter�na�tional mission to overrule all of the demo�cratic institutions of a
soverÂ�eign member state of the United Nations’.
5 One woman explained to me that despite the very frequent use of rape during the con­
flict, it was first when the SFOR soldiers came to the region that the spreading of veÂ�ner­
eal diseases became a probÂ�lem. She explained it thus: ‘It was not our men, but your
men who brought the probÂ�lem to us’.

4╇ What do we know about war rapes before the 1990s?

1 The col�lect�ive term for the indi�gen�ous peoples of the CHT.
2 War erupted in late 1946, when a customs dispute led the French to take full control
of Haiphong in late Novem�ber; the militia forces of the Democratic Repub�lic of
Vietnam (DRV) attacked the French in Hanoi one month later (Tønnesson 2010).
The war con�tinued until after the fall of the French fortress at Dien Bien Phu in May
1954 when, in June, a settlement was agreed upon at an inter�na�tional conference in
Geneva. The€agreement divided Vietnam preliminarily at the 17th Parallel and pro­
vided for gen�eral elections in all of Vietnam before July 1956. These elections were
never held. Instead, Vietnam remained divided between the DRV in the North and a
US-�supported Repub�lic of Vietnam in the South, with Ngo Dinh Diem, a Cath�olic, as
its leader. He estab�lished control over Saigon and severely repressed communists,
gangsters as well as Buddhist and other religious groups. In 1959, the communists
took up arms again in the South, with sup�port and guidance from the North, and a
National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF↜) was founded in 1960. Diem’s
regime was under�mined, and fell in a milit�ary coup in 1962 when Diem himself was
murdered. The ensuing polit�ical crisis, with a rapid succession of gov�ern�ments,
formed the backdrop to an escalation in the US ad�vis�ory role, to US bombing of the
North, and the landing of US combat troops in 1965. The US involvement lasted
until the Paris agreement in 1973, and the sub�sequent withdrawal of US troops. Soon
146╇╇ Notes
after, the war broke out once again, ending in the conquest of South Vietnam by the
DRV and NLF armies in 1975.
3 The communication trail from North to South Vietnam used by the North Vietnamese.
4 Quote from a squadron leader in the 3rd Platoon interrogated by Seymour Hersh about
the My Lai masÂ�sacre (quoted in Brownmiller ([1975] 1991, pp.€104–105).

5╇ The turning points in the 1990s which created a new

understanding of war rape
╇ 1 The Korean comfort women are a case in point. In Uganda, women have been forced
to marry men in the rebel forces in order to provide sexual favours for free (Bennett et
al. 1995: 96). Palestinian women in Israeli occupied ter�rit�ories have related how they
have been sexually humiliated by Israeli secur�ity guards who have fondled them and
threatened with sexual viol�ence (Amnesty International 1991: 23). In Somalia, female
prisoners have been stripped naked in front of male guards as a means of pun�ishment
(Amnesty International 1991: 22). In Bosnia, men have been ordered to bite off the
testicles of fellow male prisoners. This was one of the points in the verdict against
Ducan Tadic (see Walsh 1997: 21).
╇ 2 I thank my colleague philo�sopher Henrik Syse for having enlightened me on this
subject.
╇ 3 Serb monarchists.
╇ 4 It is worth noting that these numbers are still the numbers referred to by most writers
on this theme. If this is a good estim�ate then it would suggest that most of the rapes
occurred at the beginning of the war, since these numbers are from only the first year
of the conflict.
╇ 5 Figures presented by Silva Meznaric (1994). She does not comment on the ethnic
composition of these totals, however.
╇ 6 These figures were presented by Elenor Richter-�Lyonette, who works for the Geneva-�
based NGO Women’s Advocacy. She was one of the key speakers at a FOKUS
seminar held in Oslo on 17 June 1996. Richter-�Lyonette does not comment on the
ethnic composition of these figures.
╇ 7 The inÂ�formaÂ�tion in this paragraph is based on Dr. Vesna Nikolic-Â�Ristanovic’s paper
‘From Sisterhood to Non-Â�Recognition: Instrumentalization of Women’s Suffering in
the War in the Former Yugoslavia’, presented at the conference Women’s Discourses,
War Discourses, at the Ljubljana Graduate School of the Humanities, 2–6 DecemÂ�ber
1997.
╇ 8 The Arusha Accords were a set of five accords (or protocols) signed by the govÂ�ern­
ment of Rwanda and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF↜), under medi�ation, after
the three-�year long Rwandan Civil War.
╇ 9 The ‘Hutu Ten Commandments’ (also ‘Ten Commandments of the Bahutu’) was a
docu�ment published in the Decem�ber 1990 edition of Kangura, an anti-�Tutsi, pro-�
Hutu, Kinyarwanda-Â�language newsÂ�paper in Kigali, Rwanda. The Hutu Ten Com­
mandments are often cited as a prime example of anti-�Tutsi propaganda that was
promoted by extremists in Rwanda fol�low�ing the 1990 invasion by the Rwandan
Patriotic Front and prior to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
10 UNMISET was later replaced by the UN Office in Timor-�Leste (UNOTIL) on 20 May
2005 (to 25 Au�gust 2006).

6╇ The first generation of systematic documentation of sexual

violence in war 1990–1998: naming the unnameable and
understanding the incomprehensible
╇ 1 This chapter is based on an artÂ�icle published by the author: Inger Skjelsbæk (2001)
‘Sexual Violence and War: Mapping Out a Complex Relationship’, EuroÂ�pean Journal
 Notes╇╇ 147
of International Relations, 7(2): 211–237. Reprinted by perÂ�misÂ�sion of Sage Publica­
tions Ltd, and avail�able from http://ejt.sagepub.com/con�tent/7/2/211.
╇ 2 The art�icles and pub�lications have been compiled in an an�not�ated bibliography:
Skjelsbæk 1999.
╇ 3 The term ‘constructionism’ is often used inÂ�terÂ�changeÂ�ably with the term ‘constructiv­
ism’. However, in psychology the term constructivist is often used to denote a set of
cognitive theories that emphasÂ�ize the indiÂ�vidual’s psychological construction of the
ex�peri�enced world. Both constructivism and constructionism unite in their emphasis
on know�ledge and perception as constructed and in their challenge of the traditional
view that the indi�vidual mind is a device for reflecting the character and con�ditions of
an inde�pend�ent world (Gergen 1994: 67). Since I am a psychologist by training, I use
the term social constructionism, rather than constructivism.
╇ 4 The ‘canon’, as I see it, consists of Brownmiller 1975; Allen 1996; Copelon 1995;
Drakulic 1993; Gutman 1993; MacKinnon 1993; Niarchos 1995; Nordstrom 1996 and
Stiglmayer 1994b. In addition, ref�er�ence is frequently made to certain human rights
reports, such as Amnesty International 1991, Women in the Front Line, and 1995,
Human Rights are Women’s Rights; Human Rights Watch 1995, The Human Rights
Watch Global Report on Women’s Human Rights, and 1996, Shattered Lives: Sexual
Violence During the Rwandan Genocide; and United Nations 1994, Final Report of
the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780
(1992), UN Doc. S/1994/674.
╇ 5 In this endeavour, it has been helpful to read Sandra Harding’s definitions of femÂ�inÂ�ist
epi�stemo�logy (see Harding 1986; 1991). She makes the distinction between fem�in�ist
empiricism, standpoint femÂ�inÂ�ism and post-Â�modern femÂ�inÂ�ism. The latter two epistemolo­
gies depart from the grand theory of uniÂ�verÂ�sal patÂ�riÂ�archy and argue that there are difÂ�fer­
ences and nuances between masculinity and femininity. In her definition of standpoint
femÂ�inÂ�ism, Harding says that there are difÂ�ferÂ�ences between ‘femÂ�inÂ�ine and masculine
personÂ�alÂ�ity structure [.â•›.â•›.] in different classes, races and cultures’ (Harding 1991: 121).
Standpoint fem�in�ism still maintains that there are pat�ri�archal power relations between
men and women, but that the con�tent of these dif�fer�ences will vary according to class,
race and culture. Post-�modern fem�in�ism, on the other hand, is based on an inherent
scep�ti�cism of uni�ver�sal theories (Harding 1986: 27). Within this line of thought and
argument, gender relations are questions of how acts, beliefs and beha�vi�ours become
gendered, i.e. seen as appropriate to men and women. The relationship between mascu­
linity and femininity is a mat�ter of constant nego�ti�ation and renegotiation.
╇ 6 Quotes, examples and ref�er�ences are intended as exemplars of discourses, rather than
a classification of the pub�lication as a whole.
╇ 7 See, for instance, Amnesty International 1993: 1; Bassiouni 1994: 312; Jones 1994:
117; Salzman 1998: 349. In these art�icles, it is stated that rape occurred on all sides in
the conflict, but it was predominantly Serbs who were the rapists and Muslims who
were the vicÂ�tims. Zarkov (1997:€140–141) discusses how the rape vicÂ�tim identity in
Bosnia has become syn�onym�ous with Muslim vic�tim identity and is crit�ical to this.
Helsinki Watch (1993) and HRW (1995) provide a sysÂ�tematic outline of crimes com­
mitted in different areas of Bosnia by the different ethnic groups.
╇ 8 See HRW 1996.
╇ 9 Elshtain’s work ([1987] 1995) is mostly focused on nuancing these myths. She makes
the elegant distinction between men and women by calling women ‘the ferocious few/
the noncombatant many’ and men ‘the militÂ�ant many/the pacific few’.
10 ‘Doing gender’ is a term introduced by West and Zimmerman (1991: 24) reflecting an
understanding that dif�fer�ences between girls and boys and women and men are not
nat�ural, essential or biological, but socially constructed. Male and female identities
are negotiated and agreed-�upon in�ter�pretations of what it means to be a man or a
woman. These inÂ�terÂ�pretations determine male and female actions, behaÂ�viÂ�our, percep­
tions and rationality.
148╇╇ Notes
11 Jones (1994: 123) also argues that the fact that men of combat age were denied the
right to flee the war zone and claim refu�gee status was another form of vic�timization
of men.
12 See, for instance, Cameron (1994: 121), who defines rape in war as a secret ‘time
bomb’; Chinkin (1992: 284), where she says that rape is being used to render women
in�vis�ible in both war and peace; Nordstrom (1996: 147) defines rape in war as a pub�lic
secret; Swiss and Giller (1993: 614) define rape as a secret which can lead to social
isolation. In the liter�at�ure on inter�na�tional law, one of the major concerns is to stop
the tradition of impunity (see, for instance, Askin 1997; Aydelott 1993; Healey 1995;
Thomas and Regan 1994; Wilbers 1994), an argument that can be read as a wish to
stop the secrecy and the making in�vis�ible of crimes of sexual violence.

7╇ Therapeutic work with victims of sexual violence war and

post-�war
1 This chapter is based on an artÂ�icle published by the author: Inger Skjelsbæk (2006)
‘Therapeutic Work with Victims of Sexual Violence in War and Postwar: A Discourse
Analysis of Bosnian Experiences’, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology,
12(2): 93–119. Reprinted by perÂ�misÂ�sion of Taylor & Francis Ltd, and availÂ�able from
www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=artÂ�icle&issn=1078–1919&volume=12&issue
=2&spage=93.
2 The term ‘health worker’ has been used to enÂ�comÂ�pass the vast array of different back­
grounds of the inter�viewees in this study. This approach means that the cook, the nurse,
the theo�lo�gian, the ped�agogue and the psychologist (to name just a few professional
groups) are all included in the term ‘health worker’, because they all have been trained
in various ways to meet and talk to severely traumatized people. Despite their different
tasks, they all share a theraÂ�peutic function vis-Â�à-vis the clients.
3 The man who leads prayer in a mosque. Authority on Islamic theo�logy and law and
spiritual leader.
4 Ruling on a point in Islamic law that is given by a recog�nized authority.
5 In his memoirs of his role as peace negotiator in the Bosnian conflict, Richard Hol­
brooke (1999) deÂ�scribes what he calls ‘the Rebecca West Factor’: Rebecca West wrote
the first English-�language book (Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, published in 1941)
about the Balkan region, in which she is overtly pro-�Serb and anti-�Muslim. In addition,
Robert Kaplan’s (1993) book, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History, echoed
some of Rebecca West’s thoughts and influenced policyÂ�makers to think that the con­
flict in the region was based on age-�old hatred between ethnic groups.
6 The unemployment rate in Bosnia was estim�ated in 2002 to be between 40 per cent and
80 per cent, depending on the area con�sidered (Becirbasic and Secic 2002). The highest
levels of unemployment are found in industrial areas, where former communist-�style
industries have collapsed.

8╇ Traditions and transitions: perceptions of ‘good womanhood’

among twenty Bosnian focus group participants
1 This chapter is based on an artÂ�icle published by the author: Inger Skjelsbæk (2009)
‘Traditions and Transitions: Perceptions of “Good Womanhood” among Twenty
Bosnian Focus Group Participants’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 11(3):
392–411. Reprinted by perÂ�misÂ�sion of Taylor & Francis Ltd, and availÂ�able from www.
informaworld.com/openurl?genre=artÂ�icle&issn=1461–6742&volume=11&issue=3&sp
age=392.
2 Their professional backgrounds were as teachers, nurses, engineers, local politicians,
journ�al�ists, NGO workers and workers in different inter�na�tional organ�iza�tions in Bosnia.
3 I asked all inter�viewees in the focus groups to list their nationality, and thereby map
 Notes╇╇ 149
their eth�ni�city, together with background in�forma�tion about their age, education, work,
place of birth and current place of residence. Of all the inter�viewees, only two declined
to state their nationality and refused to be identified according to ethnicity.
4 The Nansen Dialogue Network (www.nansen-�dialog.net) gathers professionals like
teachers, politicians and journ�al�ists for dialogue about their own conflict, ex�plor�ing
potential solutions. The network was founded through a cooperaÂ�tion between Norwe­
gian NGOs and the Nansen Humanistic Academy at Lillehammer and it has enjoyed
substantial funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For my study it
was Mrs Ljuljeta Brkić at the Sarajevo office who facilitated contact, orÂ�ganÂ�ized the
meetings along the para�meters I had laid out and drove me around to the offices in
Mostar and Banja Luka for the focus group inter�views. She was an enorm�ous help and
great supÂ�port – THANK YOU!
5 All inter�views were carried out, re�corded and transcribed by the researcher (i.e. me).
6 The Socialist Federal RepubÂ�lic of Yugoslavia disinÂ�tegÂ�rated with the secession of Slov­
enia and Croatia in 1991 and 1992. The Bosnian War started in April 1992.
7 Sofronic draws this conclusion on the basis of her own ex�peri�ence of attempting to
introduce femÂ�inÂ�ist thoughts and ideals to the Bosnian pubÂ�lic during the Tito reign: ‘The
situ�ation [at that time] was very different in Bosnia. There were not so many culturally
open places as was the case in for instance Zagreb and Belgrade. First of all we were
smaller and the new ideals were very difficult to get through here in Bosnia because it
is really a place with very strong dogÂ�matic convictions. The mere vocabulary of femÂ�in­
ism was seen as something very bad, and had very bad connotative meaning. It was
seen like a bourgeois ideoÂ�logy .â•›.â•›. and it was perceived as something very bad (inter­
view by author,15 June 2002, Sarajevo).
8 For an explanation of the term ‘Bosniak’, see Chapter 2, note 4.
9 Quoted in a written statement submitted by Human Rights Advocates, Inc. (HRA) to
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Sixtieth session, Item 12 of the pro­
vi�sional agenda, entitled: Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender
Perspective. Presented for the Secretary General on 30 Janu�ary 2004, E/CN.4/2004/
NGO/95:4.

9╇ Beyond Bosnia: international efforts to move from accounting to

accountability
1 Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), International Research and Training
Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), Office of the Special Adviser
on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI), United Nations Development
Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
2 Argument presented at one-�day conference on Rape in War and Peace, Organized by
Norwegian Church Aid, Oslo, 10 Septem�ber 2010.
3 Meeting with Margot Wallström at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), 23 March 2010.
4 Personal communication with Advisor Aage Borchgrevink in the Norwegian Helsinki
Committee, 26 Novem�ber 2010.
5 www.iccnow.org/docu�ments/rome-�e.pdf.
6 Argument presented at an interÂ�naÂ�tional conference entitled ‘The Impact of Armed Con­
flict on Women. Co-�organized by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the
Norwegian Red Cross, 8 May 2007, Oslo.
7 There is con�sider�able un�cer�tainty in the estim�ates of numbers of chil�dren conceived
through the Bosnian war rapes. Drakulic (1994: 180) quotes an estim�ate from the
Bosnian Ministry of Works and Social Affairs that 35,000 women were impregnated
through rape and released from captivity only when abor�tion was im�pos�sible. Salzman
(1998: 363) quotes the same source and confirms the estimÂ�ate of 35,000 women –
primÂ�arily Muslim, but also Croat – who became pregnant. In genÂ�eral, howÂ�ever, it is
150╇╇ Notes
extremely difficult to find approximations of the number of chil�dren conceived through
rape because many mothers will not say what happened, many had legal or illegal abor­
tions, and many such chil�dren were adopted after birth. Further, single-�parent female-�
headed households are not uncommon in post-�conflict Bosnia (since many fathers were
killed), and mothers who have had, and kept, chil�dren conceived through rape do not
neces�sar�ily stand out in their local com�munit�ies. This might make it easier for them to
conceal the origin of their child.
8 www.chil�drenbornofwar.org.
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Index
abduction 51, 58
‘Abduction of the Sabine Women’
(Poussin) 47
abortion: Bengali experience 53; of rape
babies 38, 40
ad hoc tribunals 75
Afghanistan 57
Africa Watch 58
African conflicts, study on the reported use
of sexual violence in 130
Agger, Inger 33, 84
Akayesu, Jean Paul 68
Alfonsín, Raúl 56
Allen, Beverly 63, 82, 84, 141
American GIs: documentation of rape by
50, 54; Platoon’s depiction 54
Amnesty International reports 53, 56, 65,
73, 78, 86, 132, 136
Angola 58
Annan, Kofi 126
armed conflict literature: African conflicts
131; Amnesty International 132;
Chechnya 133; children of war rape
137; data gathering challenges 136;
definitional challenges 133–5;
Democratic Republic of the Congo
131–2; ethical concerns 136; Guatemala
and Peru 135; Liberia 132; masculinity
and men 138; methodological
challenges 133–6; missing themes
137–8; Nazi regime 138; new generation
of sexual violence in 131; pattern
demonstration challenges 135;
reproductive and health issues 137;
Sierra Leone 132; see also literature
survey
Arnett, Peter 54
Aron, Adrianne 86
Arusha Accords 66
Asia Watch Report 57, 85
Askin, Kelly Dawn 49
‘Azra’, interview responses 28, 30–6
Baaz, Maria Eriksson 128
Ban Ki-Moon 130
Bangladesh 52–3, 57
Bastick, Megan 55, 57, 136
Beevor, Anthony 50–1
Benderly, Jill 37
Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (Beevor) 50
Berlin rapes 50
Berlin Wall, collapse of the 112
Blatt, Deborah 84
Bohan, Janis S. 87
Bosnia, accounts of pre-war life in 28
Bosnian conflict: demographic changes
caused by the 107; essentialist
perspective 81; estimates of rapes 116;
ethnic perceptions of perpetrator and
victim 33; gender polarization 36–7;
goal of sexual violence 62; perceptions
about the reason for 28; rape camps 63;
war rape reporting features 64–5
Boulding, Elise 6
Brahimi report 126
Bringa, Tone 104
Brocko Luka death camp 63
brothels 50, 52, 123
‘brotherhood and unity’ 28, 112
Brownmiller, Susan 48, 50, 53–4, 82–3
Bunster-Burotto, Ximena 55, 57, 86
Burma 57
Cambodia 57
Card, Claudia 82
‘Ceca’, interview responses 26, 37–8,
40–1, 44
Chai, Alice Yun 85

chastity 74
Chechnya 133
Chetniks 63
child soldiers, vulnerability to rape 58
children: rape of 55, 57, 64, 85; of war
rape 41, 53, 63, 137
Chile 55, 97
Chung, Chin-Sung 51
civilians, as target 60
Cleiren, C.P.M. 84
Clinton, Bill 28
Clinton, Hillary 132
Cohen, Dara Kay 135–6
comfort women 51–2, 85
concentration camps 16, 18, 29, 39, 63, 85,
87, 99
Confucian patriarchy 52
‘constructionism’, vs ‘constructivism’
147n3
control, rape as demonstration of 85
conviction: Akayesu’s 68; likelihood of 48
cooperative inquiry, methodology 14
Coordinative Group of Women’s
Organizations of Bosnia and
Herzegovina 65
Copelon, Rhonda 74, 81, 84
‘damaged goods’ 43–4, 85
‘Danira’, interview responses 28–36
Dayton Agreement 1, 11, 28, 104
De Brouwer, Anne-Marie L.M. 67
demography, change in Bosnia’s 107
demoralization, sexual violence as a
weapon of 25
displacement: rape as catalyst for 62; see
also IDPs (internally displaced persons)
division of labour, wartime 36
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) 131, 136
documentation: availability 49, 64, 135;
DRC 131; Guatemala and Peru 56; My
Lai 54; new pattern in 71; of rape as a
weapon of war 65; rape camps in Bosnia
64; of the rape committed by Russian
soldiers in Berlin 50; of rape in Vietnam
conflict 54; responses to the massive
amount of 74–5
domestic violence: impact of war trauma
103; and patriarchy 93, 106; post-war
increase 102, 118; psychosocial work on
92; rape in 105; Timor-Leste 73; vs war
rape 104; and war trauma 103
DPKO (Department of Peacekeeping
Operations) 73, 130, 135
Index╇╇ 167
DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
7, 69, 128, 131–2
drug abuse 92, 102
East Timor (Timor Leste) 71–3, 136
East Timorese Women Against Violence
72
Eine Frau in Berlin
-Tagebuchaufzeichnungen vom 20. April
bis 22. Juni 1945 (Anon.) 50–1
El Salvador 1, 55–6, 86, 136
eligibility for marriage, of rape victims
43–4
Elshtain, Jean B. 6, 84
‘Emila’, interview responses 26, 38–43
empiricism, feminist 80
enforced pregnancy, prostitution and
sterilization see under forced
Enloe, Cynthia 6, 36, 47
ethnic cleansing 63–5, 85–6, 93, 116, 132
ethnic conflicts, gendered perspective 88
ethnic identities, perpetrator and victim 33
ethnicity: children of rape 63; and criminal
vs political perspective of rape 34; and
‘eligibility’ for attack 141; and gender
69, 83, 110; narratives of survival and
28–36, 59; place in the Bosnian conflict
28, 99–100; presence in interviewees
accounts 31; sexual violence in times of
war as crime of 74; of victims and
perpetrators 23–4
EU Police Mission (EUPM) 11
Europe, use of rape by American GIs in
50
‘evil rape’ 128
fact-finding missions 65
family union, Serb emphasis 114
fatwa, on heroism of rape victims 98, 99,
100
FDLR (Forces for the Liberation of
Rwanda) 131
female victimhood, Hydén’s argument 25
feminist empiricism 80
Final Report of the Commission of Experts
established Pursuant to Security
Council 780 (UNSC 1994) 87
FMLN (Farabundo Martí National
Liberation Front) 55–6
focus-group interviews see interviews
forced displacement 62, 72
forced nakedness 61
forced pregnancy 62, 76, 84–5, 134
168╇╇ Index
forced prostitution/marriage 51, 58, 61, 76,
120, 133–4
forced recruitment 58
forced sterilization 76, 133
France 49–50, 104
Friedman, Amy R. 103
Gal, Susan 113
gang rape 57–8, 62, 67–8, 70, 131, 133
gender, in peace and conflict studies 6–8
gender-based violence, pre-war interest 113
gender dimension of the war zone,
militaristic culture and the 82
gender perspective, UNSCR 1325’s
recommendations 127
gender polarization: in the Bosnian conflict
36–7; the war zone as a place of 81–2
gender sensitivity, in UN peacekeeping
units 72–3
Gender Unit (UNTAET) 72–3
General Framework Agreement for Peace
(Dayton Agreement) 1, 11, 28, 104
Geneva Conventions 33, 74, 81, 84
genital mutilation 59, 61
genocidal rape 53, 62, 68–9, 71, 76, 81,
85, 131
Gergen, Kenneth J. 35
German army, documentation of rape by
the 50–1
Gilligan, Carol 43
Goldstein, Anne Tierney 50
‘good womanhood’ perceptions study see
perceptions of ‘good womanhood’ study
Greatest Silence, The (Jackson) 128
Grech, Joyoti 53
Green, Jennifer 84
Guatemala 55–6, 86, 135
Gutman, Roy 63
Habyarimana, Juvénal 66
Hague, Euan 87, 88
Haiti 55, 83
‘halalite’ (excuse me) 31
Harding, Sandra 80
historical perspectives: the 1970s 52–4; the
1980s 55–9; Afghanistan 57; African
continent 58; the Americas 55; Argentina
56; Asia 57; Bangladesh 52–3; Cambodia
57; East Timor 71–3; El Salvador 55;
France 49; Guatemala 56; international
criminal prosecution 7, 49, 64, 74–6;
Kashmir 57; Kosovo 69–71; loot, pillage
and rape 48–9; Peru 56; Roman Empire
47–8; Rwanda 66–9; Vietnam wars 53–4;
Vikings 48; war in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (1992–1995) 63; weapon of
war concept 60; World War II 49–52
HIV/AIDS 58, 122–3, 137
Honduras 55
honour 53, 74, 86
Horney, Karen 109
Hotel Rwanda (George) 68
Human Rights Watch reports 56, 58, 67,
70, 78, 83, 120–1, 132, 136
husbands: interviewee responses 41;
support 34–5
Hutchings, Kimberly 7
Hydén, Margareta 25, 27
ICC (international criminal court) 75–6,
133–4
ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia): formal
establishment 74; indictments 75;
interviewee responses 30, 33, 35, 42;
legal advisor for gender related crimes
134; territories covered 75
ICVA (International Council of Voluntary
Agencies) 12
IDPs (internally displaced persons) 15–16,
63, 91, 95, 117, 120
impunity, steps towards ending 74–6
India 53, 57
indigenous women 55
Indonesian army 71
INIRC (International Network for
Interdisciplinary Research on Children
Born of War) 137
insomnia 37–8, 40
inter-ethnic rape: historical perspective 70;
political impact 84
Interhamwe 66, 68
international criminal prosecution 7, 49,
64, 74–6
international law, changes to 49
International Red Cross 64
international sex crimes, defining 133–4
‘International Symposium on Sexual
Violence in Conflict and Beyond’ 133
interpretive repertoires 22, 33, 91, 93
interviewees, backgrounds 26
interviews: ‘Azra’ 28, 30–6; ‘Berina’ 26,
39–44; ‘Ceca’ 26, 37–8, 40–1, 44;
commentaries 20; ‘Danira’ 28–36;
duration 16; ethical considerations
17–18, 20; focus-group setting 24;
methodology and analysis 17; mode of
analysis 21–4; motivation 24; neutral

locations 18; people with direct
experience 22–3; people with symbolic
experience 23–4; with representatives
of different organizations and
professions 15; standard textbook
approaches 19; transcriptions 16; use of
interpreters 19–20; with war-trauma
sufferers 16
intimate partner violence 134
Iraq 57
Janesick, Valerie J. 12
Japanese military 51–2
Jensen, Søren Buus 33, 84
Jesh, Judith 48
Jewish women 49–50
Johnson, Lyndon B. 53
Jones, Adam 87
Kagame, Paul 66, 68
Kaldor, Mary 7
Karasin, Grigory 50
Kashmir 57, 83, 85
Kenya 58
Khmer Rouge 57
Kligman, Gail 113
Korac, Maja 113
Korean women, war experiences 51–2
Kvale, Steinar 17, 22
Latin America 78, 85–6
Leiby, Michele L. 56, 135
Liberia 58, 132
Lilly, Robert J. 50
literature survey: conceptualizations 81;
context 77; essentialist discourse 81–3;
Latin American perspective 86;
literature profile 79; social
constructionist conceptualization 87–9;
structuralist discourse 83–6; texts
studied 78–80; see also armed conflict
literature; documentation
‘lootpillageandrape’ nexus 47–9
‘lust rape’ 128
MacKinnon, Catherine 82–3, 141
Mai Mai 131
Malawi 58
male rape victims 56, 87–8, 138
Manjaca concentration camp 63
marriage prospects, of rape victims 42,
43–4
masculine actions, loot, pillage and rape as
49
Index╇╇ 169
masculinity: display of hegemonic and
militarized as pathological 7; essentialist
understanding 83; key element of 88;
literature on the role of in war 7; sexual
violence as a way of reaffirming 62;
sexual violence as reaffirming act of 82
Mazowiecki, Tadeusz 65
McCullen, James M. 51
Men, Women and Rape (Brownmiller) 48
Meznaric, Silva 83–4, 87–8
Milgram experiment 3
militaristic culture, and the gender
dimension of the war zone 82
military supplies, women as 52
misogyny, sexual violence as an outcome
of 63
mobility, post-war restriction of for
women 141
MONUSCO (UN Organization
Stabilization Mission in the DRC) 132
moral values, war’s impact 103–5, 118
Moscovici, Serge 24
Mozambique 58
MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) 131, 136
Mukwege, Denis 131
Murray, Michael 27
Muslim extremism 117, 119
Muslim identities, of protagonists 31
My Lai 54
naming and shaming strategy 130
Nanking, rape of 48
narrative: dimensions of 27–8; victim vs
survivor plots 44, 142
neighbours, as perpetrators 39
‘new wars’ 7, 61
Ngo Dinh Diem 146n2
Nicaragua 55–6
non-responsibility, interviewees’
perceptions of 33
Nordstrom, Carolyn 81, 87, 141
North Kivu 131
Olsson, Louise 72–3
Omarska concentration camp 63
Organization of African Unity 67–8
Papua New Guinea 57
patriarchal family structures: impact of
war rapes within 34; inherence of sexual
violence in 82, 105–6; as Ottoman
legacy 115; place of domestic violence
in 106; women’s role 115
Patton, George S. 48
170╇╇ Index
peace and conflict psychology:
characteristics and themes 3;
methodological challenges 3; study
methods 3
peace and conflict studies, gender in 6–8
peacekeeping operations, Brahimi report
126
perceptions of ‘good womanhood’ study:
Bosniak participants 113, 117, 119, 121;
context 109–10, 112; Croat participants
114, 117–18, 119–20, 124; distinction
between the imagined and the real 116;
Muslim notions 119; post-war years
120–4; pre-war era 112–16; prostitution
and trafficking 120–3; rape as weapon
of war 110; return to traditional
patriarchal relations 124; rural urban
migration 113; Serb participants 114,
119–20, 122, 124; ‘sponsored
relationships’ 120; war years 116–20
Peru 55–6, 83, 86, 135
Philippines 57
Platoon (Stone) 54
polarization, of gender in the Bosnian
conflict 36–7
political impact, of sexual violence 25
Political Psychology 3
political psychology: book publications 2;
momentum 2; Rosenberg’s argument
3–4
political rape 84
pornography 82–3
pornography industry 82
post-war morality, collapse in 103–5
Poussin, Nicolas 47
power, as key element of masculinity 88
pre-war era, delineation 112
pregnancy: forced 62, 76, 84, 134;
interviewee responses 37–8, 40
pregnancy, Bengali women 53
privatization 112
prosecution, pre-1990s track record 74
prostitution 58, 92, 102, 119–22
psychological effects: ‘Ceca’s story 40;
interviewee responses 37, 41
psychological trauma literature, focus 2
psychosocial centres: establishment 91;
post-war role 92–3, 102; themes of
focus 92
PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) 2,
41
qualitative data, ways of recording and
managing 21
Ralph, Regan E 87
RAM plan 64
rape: as attack on family 37; biblical
formulation 48; Brownmiller on the
function of 48; Card on the ultimate
goal of 82; as catalyst for displacement
62; change in Bosnian perceptions 35;
colonial perspective 60–1; criminal vs
political perspective 34; as cure for
HIV/AIDS 58; defining 134; Enloe on
47; Geneva Conventions’
characterization 74; Meznaric on the
politics of 84; symbolism 62
‘rape centres’ 100–1
rape/death camps 63–4, 70, 82, 84–5
raped women, prevalent assumptions about
the status of 34
rapes, estimated numbers of 116
re-traumatization, risk of in interviews 18
Reason, Peter 14–15
refugee camps 16, 53, 58–9, 70, 107, 128
refugees 28, 59, 63, 91, 117
research design 12–14; contextualizing 13;
data collection 14–17; ethical
perspective 13, 17–18; interviews see
interviews; premise 12, 24; social
constructionist perspective 12
Resolutions, UNSC see under UNSCR
Richlin, Amy 48
Richter-Lyonette, Elenor 146n4
Ricoeur, Paul 27
Roman Empire 47–8
Rosenberg, S. 3–4
Rusesabagina, Paul 68
Russian troops, documentation of rape by
50–1, 133
Rwanda 7, 66–9, 72, 75, 77, 79, 81, 126
Salzman, Todd A. 64
Sancho, Neila 52
Seager, Joni 57–8
Sears, D.O. 3
Security Council Resolutions: first
exclusively to address sexual violence in
armed conflict 128; intentions 129, 131;
see also under UNSCR
Seifert, Ruth 62–3, 82
Sellers, Patricia Viseur 134
Serbian ethnicity, as perpetrator identity
100
sexual relationships, interviewee responses
43, 44
sexual slavery: in African conflicts 58;
East Timorese experience 71–2;

Japanese military’s system 51–2;
Rwandan experience 68; as war crime
76, 133–4
sexual torture 33, 55–7, 64, 84, 134
sexual violence: bottom-up characteristics
136; defining 134–5; an element of male
communication 62; first Security
Council resolution to exclusively
address 128; forms of 61; function 65;
goal of in the Bosnian conflict 62; post-
war impact 140–1; post-war perceptions
102–3; Seifert’s hypotheses 62–3
SFOR (Stabilization Force) 42, 121
SFRY (Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia): disintegration 112; rapid
urbanization 113
shame 32–3, 35, 42–4, 48, 52, 65, 94, 97,
99, 142
Sharlach, Lisa 53
Sheen, Charlie 54
Shining Path, Peru 56
Sierra Leone 132, 136
Slapsak, Svetlana 113
Smith, Dan 63
social constructionist approach 4–6, 77,
80, 87, 140, 143
social identity 23, 25, 44, 89, 142
social identity study: interview format
26–7; interviewees 26; narratives of
ethnicity and survival 28–36; narratives
of gender and victimization 36–44
Sofos, Spyros A. 87
Sofronic, Nada Ler 113
Soh, Chunghee Sarah 52, 85
Somalia 58, 83
SOS hotlines 106, 113
South Korea 52
South Vietnam 53–4
Soviet Republics 121
sponsorship 119
Srebrenica massacre 15
SRSG (Special Representative of the
Secretary-Genera)l 130, 132
SSRC (Social Science Research Council)
134
standpoint feminism 80
Stern, Maria 128
Stiglmayer, Alexandra 64
stigma, of rape 34–5, 100–1, 104, 137–8,
141, 143
Stoltenberg, Thorvald 94
STOP (UN Missions Special Trafficking
Operation Program) 121
study design see research design
Index╇╇ 171
Sudan 58
suicide 52, 92, 102
Suriname 55
survivor identity, constructing a 35
survivor vs victim narratives 44, 142
Syse, Henrik 146n2
‘systematic’, ‘widespread’ v 135
taboo 13, 77, 96, 98, 133
Tadic, Ducan 146n1
Taliban 57
therapeutic work: creating a safe
environment for 100–1; focus on issues
related to women’s rights 105–6; post-
war discourses 102–7; psychosocial
centres 91–3; religious approach 98–9;
sexual violence discourses 93; training
for 96–8; war violence discourses see
discourses of war violence 94
Thomas, Dorothy Q. 87
Tickner, Ann J. 6
Tijssen, M.E.M. 84
Timor Leste (East Timor) 71–3, 136
Tito, Joseph Broz 28, 112
Tompkins, Tamara L. 60
Tønnesson, Stein 61
torture: Agger and Jensen’s distinction
between ‘regular’ torture and sexual 84;
Argentinian experience 56; bearing the
enemy’s child as life-long 63; Bosnian
experience 64; concentration camp
victims’ experience 16; gendered
perspective 57; Vietnamese experience
54; war-time sexual violence as 56,
84–5
trafficking 120–3, 141
trauma triggers, gendered 41
Tronopolje concentration camp 63
Trust Fund 75
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(East Timor) 71–2
Tryggestad, Torunn L. 127
Ueno, Chizuko 52
Uganda 58
UN Missions Special Trafficking
Operation Program (STOP) 121
UN Women 127
UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance
Mission for Rwanda) 66
uniforms, as trauma trigger 41, 42
UNITA 58
‘UNiTE to End Violence’ 130
United Nations 65, 73, 78, 94, 126, 129
172╇╇ Index
United Nations peacekeeping operations,
evaluation 126
United Nations Resolutions, overview 126;
see also under UNSCR
unity, as basis for therapy 141
UNMIBH (United Nations Mission in
Bosnia Herzegovina) 11
UNMISET (United Nations Mission of
Support in East Timor) 72
UNSCR 827, theme and date of adoption
74
UNSCR 1325: accountability mechanisms
127; achievements 126–7; adoption 127;
aims 130; criticisms 128; follow-up
resolutions 127; gender awareness
recommendations 127; outcomes 127–8;
reaction to adoption 127; theme and date
of adoption 126
UNSCR 1820, most important
achievement 129
UNSCR 1888: monitoring proposals 130;
theme and date of adoption 126
UNSCR 1889, theme and date of adoption
126, 127
UNSCR 1960: ‘naming and shaming’
strategy 130; theme and date of adoption
126, 130; thinking behind 128
UNTAET (United Nations Transitional
Administration in East Timor) 72–3
venereal diseases 52–3
victim vs survivor narratives 44, 142
victimization 36, 40, 87, 89, 95
Vigarello, Georges 49, 104
Vikings 48
violence against women: global campaign
to end 130; public discourse 113
violence in war discourses: central themes
94; ethnicity 99–100; health workers’
professionalism 96–8; stigmatization
100, 102; survival 98–100; victimization
95–6
virginity 43–4, 74, 85
Vranic, Seada 63
Wallström, Margot 130, 132
war crimes 12, 35, 49, 75–6
war rape: definitions 148n12; reporting
features 64–5
war violence, discourses of see violence in
war discourses
Ward, Jeanne 55, 70
weapon of war concept: basis 34; defining
61; documentation 65; effectiveness
142; and ‘good womanhood’ 110;
historical perspective 60–1; HRW report
83; scholarly consensus 77; Seifert’s
theses 63
‘widespread’, v ‘systematic’ 135
witness protection 12, 75
womanhood, perceptions of ‘good’ see
perceptions of ‘good womanhood’ study
women, UN agencies on 130
women’s sexuality, male honour and 34
Wood, Elisabeth Jean 50–1, 134–5
World War II 3, 48–51, 63, 112, 138
Zarkov, Dubravka 87–8, 100, 110, 137