Victim participation at the international criminal court and the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia: A feminist project?

Source: (2012) Michigan journal of Gender and Law vol.18 297

Over the last couple of decades, and particularly since 1998, incredible
advances have been made in the effort to end impunity for sexual and
gender-based violence’ committed in the context of war, mass violence, or repression. Before this, crimes committed exclusively or disproportionately
against women and girls during conflict or periods of mass violence
were either largely ignored, or at most, treated as secondary to other
crimes. 2 However, evidence of the large-scale and systematic use of rape
in conflicts over the last two decades helped create unprecedented levels
of awareness of sexual violence as a method of war and political repression.’
As a result, great strides have been made in the investigation and
prosecution of rape and other forms of sexual violence at the international
level. Indeed, rape and other forms of sexual violence have been successfully
prosecuted as war crimes, crimes against humanity,’ and even genocide6 by the ad hoc international criminal tribunals established to
prosecute such crimes in the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda
(ICTR). Furthermore, the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the International
Criminal Court (ICC) incorporates many of these advances,
enumerating a broad range of sexual and gender-based crimes as war
crimes and crimes against humanity.7