ICTY wartime sexual violence jurisprudence and the surrounding debate: a critical feminist analysis

The thesis is a critical feminist analysis of ICTY wartime sexual violence jurisprudence, as it is currently constructed in feminist legal scholarship and the surrounding debate. Violence against women, in particular sexual violence has been a greatly topical issue within recent years in both scholarship and the popular imagination. There have been important legal developments within international law, which have provoked much academic, and in particular, legal commentary. On one level, the thesis contributes to this commentary. At the same time, it aims to contribute to a broader feminist theory, which engages with questions of human rights, identity, gender, armed conflict, culture and violence. It therefore explores how female identity, bodily injury, ethnic identity and culture have become intertwined in the debate surrounding wartime sexual violence. Specifically, it analyses the legal modalities through which wartime sexual violence has been inscribed into ICTY judgements and it asks whether these have further entrenched strongly essentialised portrayals of women in international law as victims, mothers or wives in times of armed conflict. Moreover, it asks what the visibility of wartime sexual violence and gender-based violence, more broadly, signifies for women in the current political and legal moment.1 The research question of this project is therefore threefold:

How do wartime identities currently materialise in sexual violence jurisprudence? What does the increasing juridicalisation of wartime sexual violence represent for women in the contemporary political and legal moment? Are current feminist investments with the law the way forward in advancing the twin normative aims of gender justice and equality?