FEMINIST LEGAL STUDIES

This article proposes a shift away from legal feminism's excessive prioritization of sexual violence as the foremost inquiry of gender and transnational justice. In particular, the authors contend that a framework based on other gender-specific harms, such as displacement and economic insecurity, allows for a better understanding of the disproportionate impact of armed conflict on women. The authors present a comprehensive case study of the internally displaced women of Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas in the Cartagena region of Columbia. They explain how these

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]