Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T06:06:11.555Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Wartime sexual violence: women’s human rights and questions of masculinity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2007

Abstract

This article examines wartime sexual violence, one of the most recurring wartime human rights abuses. It asserts that our theorisations need further development, particularly in regard to the way that masculinities and the intersections with constructions of ethnicity feature in wartime sexual violence. The article also argues that although women and girls are the predominant victims of sexual violence and men and boys the predominant agents, we must also be able to account for the presence of male victims and female agents. This, however, engenders a problem; much of the women’s human rights discourse and existing international mechanisms for addressing wartime sexual violence tend to reify the male-perpetrator/female-victim paradigm. This is a problem which feminist human rights theorists and activists need to address.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2007 British International Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)