(Paris) Rapes in Israel, Ukraine and other war zones: more and more voices are being raised to denounce sexual violence committed against women in countries at war, an ancient crime, prohibited by international law , but rarely sanctioned.
Israeli police announced on November 14 that they were investigating sexual violence, including rape and mutilation, allegedly committed by Hamas men during the bloody attack of October 7.
Regarding Ukraine, UN investigators said in March that Moscow was behind a wide range of war crimes since the Russian invasion, including rape and other sexual violence. Violence constituting “a military strategy” and “a deliberate tactic to dehumanize the victims”, said UN special representative Pramila Patten in October 2022.
Friday, the eve of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a conference is being organized in Poland by associations to discuss the support to be given to Ukrainian women victims of these abuses attributed to Russian forces.
“Attacking women by raping them destabilizes the entire social fabric, it destroys a community,” Richard Matis, president of Gynecology Without Borders, told AFP. The association trains health professionals abroad to care for women, particularly in cases of sexual violence.
“The children born from these rapes also represent a problem of imbalance for the society concerned,” adds this gynecologist.
“Care for the victims”
Women are the main victims of sexual violence in times of war, on different continents and at various times, notably during the colonial conquests of the 19th century.e century and during the two world wars.
“Rape in times of war has been prohibited for centuries, but armies do not necessarily enforce this ban,” explains Fabrice Virgili, historian and research director at the CNRS, to AFP. Noting that this ban was introduced with the aim of maintaining discipline among soldiers and not to protect women.
“Since the genocide in Rwanda (1994) and the war in former Yugoslavia (1992-1995), we have paid particular attention to the facts of sexual violence in each conflict: there is the idea that it is necessary to punish perpetrators and to take care of the victims”, explains the man who co-edited the work “Rapes in times of war”.
This idea was notably supported by Dr Denis Mukwege, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, for his action in favor of women victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Concerning the possible criminal consequences, “the law is an essential response, but is not yet up to the task,” jurist Céline Bardet told AFP.
“Evidence problem”
Rape is defined as a “war crime” in the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC).
However, “we still struggle to include sexual violence in indictments, often due to a problem of evidence, because there are only testimonies,” adds this specialist.
With her association “We are not weapons of war”, she created an online tool to collect testimonies from victims in several languages. A “reporting and alert web application” allowing photos and videos to be stored on “an ultra-secure server”, to “document the reality on the ground”.
The association is “working to deploy” this tool in Israel to collect contributions, particularly from witnesses or forensic doctors, linked to October 7.
In France, more than 20,000 people, including the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and the singer and actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, signed a petition demanding that the Hamas attack be recognized as “mass feminicide”. “Many civilians died, but women were not killed in the same way as others,” underlines the text initiated by the “Paroles de femmes” association.
Witnesses cited by AFP spoke in particular of “broken pelvises” and shots in the genitals.
“We attacked them as women, on their genitals, it’s serious,” Maya, an activist who did not wish to give her name, told AFP. She will participate in a demonstration in Paris on Saturday, with a group which will address signs and slogans “to honor the memory” of Israeli women, “victims of feminicide”.