Buss, Doris E.

This article examines the prevalence of patriarchal values in issues that pertain to women. This involves transitional justice institutions (such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) constantly conflating 'victim' with 'woman', as well as associating women with 'sexual violence'. The author then focuses particularly on the challenges that the male-centric nature of society and these patriarchal institutions' administration of justice have posed for the survival and recuperation of these women. She concludes with the notion that patriarchy is the

This article offers a critique of the feminist politics that have influenced international law developments in the area of reproductive rights by looking specifically at the Programme of Action drafted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo. The author finds that while significant progress was made in the discourse on, and conceptualization of, the role and equality of women in population and reproductive health policies, the Cairo agreement continues to reinforce conceptions of the fertilization of Southern women as dangerous or threatening.

This article considers the efficacy of conceptualizing rape as a weapon of war, that is, as a targeted and deliberate war policy, not as incident to it. Specifically, the author examines the prosecution of the crime of rape by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), who considered rape an instrument of genocide. The author contends that, although this approach has strengths, it can also obfuscate how and why rape is used in an armed conflict. For example, it ignores why women were particularly vulnerable to rape in the first place. The

While recognizing that the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) suggests that, unlike in previous wars, the rape of women in this conflict will be condemned and some violators prosecuted, the author argues that it fails to meaningfully challenge the gendered nature of humanitarian law in which violence against women will always remain secondary to the prevailing dictates of military necessity.

This comment addresses the landmark decision of Prosecutor v Kunarac, Kovac and Vokovic issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and which established that the rape of Muslim women during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina amounted to a crime against humanity under international law. The article provides an overview of the decision and explores the rationale behind including rape in the category of crimes against humanity. [Descriptors: Armed Conflict, International]