A WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

Violence against women: The unacknowledged casualties of war (Irene Khan, International Herald Tribune, December 18th, 2004)

Throughout history, women's bodies have been considered the legitimate booty of victorious armies. Custom, culture and religion built an image of women as bearing the "honor" of their communities, so that destroying a woman's physical integrity became a means by which to terrorize, demean and "defeat" entire populations, as well as to punish, intimidate and humiliate women. [...]

International justice is the key to ending impunity. Even though the ICC will only be able to try a limited number of cases, high profile international prosecution could deal a strong blow to the prevailing culture of impunity.

By trying prominent leaders who either encouraged or ignored sexual violence, the ICC will send a message that there is no longer a carte blanche to commit these heinous acts. It will shame states into acknowledging the problem and promoting action through their national courts. Most important, it will give hope to thousands of women.

The ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, has made a welcome commitment to investigate cases of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Next year when prosecutions are expected to begin, many women's groups and human rights organizations will be watching.

To make the international justice system work, governments must take concrete steps to support the ICC, for instance by enacting necessary legislation, assisting the ICC prosecutor in his investigations, sharing evidence with him and providing protection to witnesses. [...]

The United States has been vociferous in condemning killings and rape in Sudan, but it has been even more active in undermining the authority and jurisdiction of the ICC, for instance through impunity agreements for its own troops. Enabling the ICC to prosecute the crimes in Darfur could be an opportunity for the U.S. administration to recognize the ICC not as some international conspiracy against its troops and leaders, but as a real tool to promote justice for women who have been the victims of the worst forms of brutality.

It is not possible to separate rape from civilian atrocities generally and those who are concerned with this issue would do well to remember it is usually a complement to the wanton slaughter of men and children. Ms. Khan’s sweeping historical generalizations are simply wrong but, like most tranzis, she is more concerned with ushering in the perennial abstract dream of world federalism than with actually protecting women. To do this, she must distort history egregiously and ignore the sources of the very evil she wishes to eradicate.

For the last two hundred years, the armies of the United States and the other Anglospheric countries have waged many brutal wars without any notion of “booty” and without inflicting atrocities on civilians. From the first moment of victory, they set out consciously to protect and provide rather than rape and pillage. The Civil War was unspeakably bloody and saw both barbaric guerilla struggles and the gross mistreatment of prisoners, but there is no record of condoning the abuse of women as spoils of war, and both sides regularly court-martialed soldiers who assaulted or even propositioned women, including black women. Few stories are more poignant than the desperate efforts of Germans and other Central Europeans to reach Allied lines before World War 11 ended. They knew they would be surrendering to a civilized enemy more likely to feed them than violate them.

To be sure, there have been lots of individual exceptions to the rule, but so intolerant are both the publics and high commands of such behaviour, political opponents are often able to use such cases to attack the war generally by shaming the whole nation. The combination of free democracy and Judaeo-Christian morality has wrought a miracle in the annals of war. Never have enemy armies had so much to fear. Never have enemy civilians had so little.

Yet all this is beyond the ken of the likes of Irene Khan, whose dangerous dreams are built on the notion that we should transfer power and authority from the civilized to the barbarous.