Sexual Violence and Peacekeeping.

• Author: Johansson, Karin

1 Introduction

As peacekeeping operations have become more complex and their mandates more multidimensional, scholars have increasingly assessed the capacity of peacekeepers not only to reduce altercations between different armed groups, but also to reduce various forms of violence against civilians. The focus is thereby not just on battle-related violence and deaths. Recent scholarship has undertaken efforts to take into account different types of conflict-related violence against civilians. One of these is conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). In this article, we review what existing academic research tells us about the responsiveness of peacekeeping authorities to CRSV and the missions' de facto ability to protect civilians from this violence. Our goal is not just to provide an overview of what we already know and what remains underresearched about the CRSV-peacekeeping nexus, but also to share our thoughts on the road ahead for this body of research.

Existing cross-national studies have found that peacekeepers are more likely to be deployed to conflicts with large-scale sexual violence than to conflicts with fewer, known, incidents of CRSV. This pattern corroborates a larger trend of increased international attention to sexual violence as a matter of global security. This trend marks a stark departure from the previous understanding of CRSV as an unavoidable side effect of war. Studies of peacekeeping effectiveness paint a cautiously optimistic picture: peacekeeper presence is associated, at least under certain conditions, with a decrease in sexual violence perpetrated by armed actors. At the same time, the studies do not suggest that CRSV prevention simply follows conventional peacekeeping practices. Rather, the findings suggest that CRSV may require different types of efforts, based on thoughtful analyses of drivers and consequences of CRSV within armed groups as well as in the conflict environment writ large.

While existing research has given valuable insight into the responsiveness and effectiveness of peacekeeping authorities, as well as persisting challenges, important gaps in our knowledge remain, in particular as we move from national-level patterns to more local, fine-grained dynamics. We therefore conclude this article with a discussion of the avenues for future research that we find most worthwhile. First, however, we provide an overview of CRSV and the global approaches to this violence.

2 Sexual Violence as an International Security Concern

State armies, security actors, nonstate armed groups, and paramilitaries perpetrate sexual violence against civilians in armed conflicts around the globe. Conflict-related sexual violence can take different forms and is usually understood to comprise rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization, forced abortion, sexual mutilation, and sexual torture. (1) Figure 1 provides an overview of how widespread CRSV is in conflicts around the globe, based on the most comprehensive cross-national data currently available: the Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC) dataset. (2) Not all armed groups perpetrate sexual violence, however, and even where sexual violence occurs there is considerable variation in prevalence, targeting patterns, and the specific manifestations of sexual violence across armed groups and conflicts, or even for the same armed group over time. (3)

Some armed groups impose strict prohibitions on the perpetration of sexual violence, while others adopt it as a policy or war strategy. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka is an example of a rebel group that actively refrained from perpetrating sexual violence. (4) Meanwhile, in the wars in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda in the 1990s and more recently in Tigray in Ethiopia, armed actors infamously perpetrate(d) sexual violence against civilians strategically. Frequently, however, widespread sexual violence takes the form of an established practice that arises from individual motivations and group dynamics within military units and is tolerated by military leaders. (5) In particular in armed groups that rely on forced recruitment and that lack strong and consistent ideological orientation, (6) sexual violence in the form of gang rape often serves as a bonding mechanism and a way to create internal cohesion. (7)

Sexual violence has been documented in World Wars I and II as well as in different medieval and ancient wars, (8) and was long considered an unavoidable side effect of warring. Only in the wake of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which attracted unprecedented attention for the brutal and systematic use of sexual violence, did CRSV come to be understood as a weapon of war. The 1998 Rome Statutes of the International Criminal Court classify sexual violence as a crime against humanity and a war crime. This makes CRSV, in principle, a candidate for military intervention under the Responsibility to Protect. (9) In the same year, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda recognized that sexual violence can constitute acts of genocide. (10) In 2000, the UN Security Council (UNSC) for the first time urged all warring parties to protect women and girls against CRSV. This call was part of landmark Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security (WPS). Eight years later, CRSV was acknowledged as a threat to international peace and security in Resolution 1820 (2008). Since then, Resolutions 1888, 1960, 2106, and 2467 within the WPS framework have been dedicated specifically to CRSV, its prevention, the protection of civilians from this violence, accountability for its perpetrators, and support for its victims. In short, sexual violence has become of greater concern to the international community, at the same time as peacekeeping operations have become more multidimensional and now often include a mandate to protect civilians. This has prompted scholars to examine to what extent and how effectively peacekeeping operations respond to CRSV.

3 Peacekeeping and CRSV: Attention and Deployment

Global transformations in the understanding of, and approach to, CRSV are mirrored in an increased attention by the UNSC to this violence. Michelle Benson and Theodora-Ismene Gizelis (11) found that the UNSC is more likely to pass a resolution on an armed conflict with more frequent reports of CRSV than on a conflict where reported CRSV is low. Conflicts with large-scale CRSV likewise receive a greater number of resolutions than other conflicts. (12) The increased attention to CRSV is also reflected in UN peace operations. In fact, the UN Department of Peace Operations (DPO) has been at the forefront as sensitivity to gender-related aspects of security has gained traction within the UN. Already before Resolution 1325, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations urged the Secretary-General, through the Windhoek Declaration, to take measures to ensure gender mainstreaming in peacekeeping. (13) This means, for example, that peacekeepers on arrival in a new host country are obliged to participate in induction training on gender issues. It also means that effects of peace agreements, and peace-supportive efforts more generally, should be assessed from a gender perspective. This necessitates the acknowledgment that men and women may be subject to different forms of conflict-related violence. Men tend to be...