INTRODUCTION

The past two decades have brought some remarkable developments when it comes to accountability for conflict-related sexual violence. The historical silence surrounding these crimes was severely fractured — even if not entirely shattered — by the work of the ad hoc and hybrid criminal courts and tribunals, particularly the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The International Criminal Court (ICC), too, recovering from a shaky start, is showing signs of improved approaches to sexual violence crimes. The United Nations (UN) Security Council has now adopted an ambitious agenda on women, peace and security, has mandated the appointment of a Special Representative to the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, and receives annual reports on the status of conflict-related sexual violence worldwide.

In perhaps the most unexpected development, the United Kingdom's Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, unveiled by former Foreign Secretary William Hague, placed accountability for conflict-related sexual violence prominently on the political agenda for the first time. The UK initiative has also facilitated a much-needed dialogue between criminal justice practitioners, policy makers, military officials, humanitarian responders, members of civil society and others who have a role to play in the accountability process.

This intense focus on conflict-related sexual violence has, justifiably, led some commentators to question the level of priority now given to the issue at the expense of other devastating gender-related harms arising from conflict. Certainly, it is time that the critique on gender and armed conflict moved beyond the narrow focus on sexual violence to the many other gendered dimensions of conflict and their treatment within the framework of international criminal law. Even so, as a practitioner at the ICTY for the past fifteen years, I have to conclude that sexual violence, more than any other category of crimes, is subject to misconceptions that block analysis, thwart accountability efforts and minimise prospects of redress. At the heart of the problem is the failure to fully recognise rape and similar crimes as violent acts. This in turn has a myriad of adverse consequences throughout the investigation and prosecution process.