Rethinking 'Rape as a Weapon of War'

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 author argues that, although rape as a weapon of war has instrumentalist import, it is also important to consider institutional and underlying factors that ignite such violence. Otherwise the treatment of rape might be "homogenous".