Generalidades para Glomus

abuses Corruption Poorly controlled armed forces Multiple authority structures Weak state ethnicity Gender norms rejection of ‘Global’ refuge in culture & custom

refuge in drugs &

As Figure 6 suggests, there are several forces behind the continuation of sexual violence. While the symptoms and impacts on victims of sexual violence are broadly speaking the same, the motivations of perpetrators are not. On the one hand it becomes necessary to distinguish these different motivations, on the other it is equally necessary to recognise that there are connections between them. The failure to deal with rape when used as a weapon of war is one of the most notable dimensions of the climate of impunity which enables crimes of opportunity and it is these crimes of opportunity, as much as the sexual violence as a weapon of war, that contribute to a context in which people’s sense of order, justice and self are all under severe challenge. This context is then internalised and becomes part of their psychological landscape. It seems plausible, from a psychological perspective, that for some people who are struggling to resolve the contradictions of the predicaments created by their situation, sexual violence becomes the externalised expression of these internalised conflicts.

Interventions in SGBV to date have generally failed to deal with the psychological dimensions of sexual violence, tending instead to target and treat the most visible symptoms (women and children). While interventions around impunity, such as the promotion of the 2006 law on sexual violence, tackle one of the linkages in the chain of causes of sexual violence, they are essentially working on the assumption that sexual violence is merely a crime of opportunity and thus continue to dodge the question of why the perpetrators are even seeking such opportunities. Even if some

Figure 5: the relationship between key conflict dynamics and three major explanations for ongoing sexual violence

sexual violence as

Weapon of War

Poverty

Low authority/

High impunity

identity, sense

of order, Justice and

self are all under

challenge

Crime of opportunity

indicator of internalised

Conflicts

sexual violence is best understood as a simple crime of opportunity, legal impunity is only one of the enabling factors and it is clear that little has been done to address other enabling factors within the way society and authority systems operate in and have responded to a situation of ongoing conflict.221

The above discussion suggests that the ‘rape as a weapon of war’ argument, while still valid in some instances of sexual violence, nonetheless has limitations as an explanation for patterns of sexual violence as a whole. The majority of instances of sexual violence have not been explicitly called for by those responsible for military strategy. Even where soldiers have been ordered to rape, those with command responsibility will rarely if ever be brought to trial, neither will the implementers or perpetrators of their strategy. It is possible that some commanders, working on the view that rape is a default behaviour of armed men and therefore does not require commands from on high or authorisation but merely the creation of suitable conditions and a failure to punish the perpetrators, will have deliberately created such conditions, but to prove this as an intentional act would be exceptionally difficult in a court of law.

It seems safe to say that where it is not evidently being used as a weapon of war as conventionally understood, it is an individual expression of socio-economic and political malaise in the society. The analysis suggests that, rather than reading sexual violence simply as a consequence of impunity, we need to understand sexual violence as one, if not the indicator of ongoing, unresolved social and political conflicts, especially where those are technologically simple yet psychologically complex. In all four sites, men, women and youth agreed that according to their culture, women are supposed to be “soumise” or subservient (see above). When combined with the fact that women are widely regarded by men as existing to provide an outlet for sexual needs but not to initiate sexual activity, these norms all lower the psychological barriers to raping women, whether as a weapon of war or as an opportunistic crime or as an expression of the perpetrator’s own internal conflicts. Other dimensions of the gender identities of both women and men, on the other hand, can in some respects be seen to raise the psychological incentives to rape both women and men, in line with the ‘rape as a weapon of war’ argument. The fact that women are regarded as the pillars of the household and are undoubtedly the backbone of the agricultural economy, makes their destruction strategically self-evident. Equally, the fact that men are so invested in their own superiority means that, when violated, they were perceived as having further to fall, such that in a sense the rape of a man makes a still stronger statement about the change in power relations than when an already subordinate woman is further debased by her aggressor(s).

221 addressing these dynamics is not easy; as one respondent noted, ‘there is custom which blocks things even more, because it hasn’t changed. We have sometimes been the protectors of culture, especially as local chiefs... when you want to wake people up, to revolutionise society, you attract all the rage of your colleagues, of all the leaders, especially the customary ones; that’s why things are blocked and can’t really take off’. (Walungu, Comité local de développement, 23rd June 2010).