Advances and Missed Opportunities in the International Prosecution of Gender-Based Crimes
![handle is hein.journals/mistjintl15 and id is 143 raw text is: ADVANCES AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES IN THE
INTERNATIONAL PROSECUTION OF GENDER-
BASED CRIMES
Susana SdCouto*
INTRODUCTION
In the past decade, and particularly since 1998, there has been an
incredible transformation in the treatment of sex-based and gender-
based violence' in the fields of international humanitarian law and
international criminal law. Before this, crimes committed exclusively
or disproportionately against women and girls, in times of conflict, were
largely either ignored, or at most, treated as secondary to other crimes.2
Despite the fact that rape and other forms of sexual violence had been
widely reported during World War HI, for instance, the crime of rape
was not expressly included in either the London Charter, establishing
* Director, War Crimes Research Office, American University Washington College
of Law; former Director of Legal Services, Women Empowered Against Violence, Inc.
(WEAVE). The opinions expressed are those of the author alone. This comment is an
expanded version of remarks presented at a conference on Gender, War & Peace: Women's
Statues in the Wake of Conflict, hosted by Michigan State University College of Law on
February 24, 2006. Another version of these remarks appear in the Gonzaga Journal of
International Law.
1. As leading commentators on international crimes against women have noted,
Gender-based crimes, reflected primarily in socially constructed roles, manifestations, and
stereotypes, and sex-based crimes, reflected primarily in biological differences, to a great extent
overlap and intersect. Dorean M. Koening & Kelly D. Askin, International Criminal Law: The
International Criminal Court Statute: Crimes Against Women, in 2 WOMEN AND
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW 5 (Askin and Koening eds., 2000). However, there is an
increasing trend to use these terms more precisely. Id. Nevertheless, confusion remains as the
terms still lack universally accepted definitions and are often subject to different meanings,
usages and interpretations. Id.
2. See Kelly D. Askin, Prosecuting Wartime Rape and Other Gender-Related Crimes
Under International Law: Extraordinary Advances, Enduring Obstacles, 21 BERKELEY J. INT'L
L. 288, 294-96 (2003) [hereinafter Prosecuting Wartime Rape]; ANNE TIERNEY GOLDSTEIN,
RECOGNIZING FORCED IMPREGNATION AS A WAR CRIMES UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW 2 (1993)
(When ... atrocities are perpetrated against men, or against women in the same form as they
are perpetrated against men, they constitute and are universally recognized as war crimes....
But when they are committed against women in the form of sexual abuse, no matter how
perfectly they fit the legal definition of a particular war crime, historically they have been
treated as less serious than nonsexual atrocities.).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/mistjintl15&div=12&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Advances and Missed Opportunities in the International Prosecution of Gender-Based Crimes
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