Rape and International Criminal Law

Only recently has the international community recognized the seriousness of rape, as well as its nature as an international crime punishable by international criminal tribunals. During the Balkan conflict in the last decade of the 20th century, the atrocities committed have awakened the conscience of those who, until then, had preferred to consider rape as a side effect of wars, both international and internal. The discovery of camps where rape was conducted in a systematic way for the mere solace of armed forces, as well as the use of rape as a tool of genocide (the infamous "ethnic cleansing"), have led to the creation of the first true international criminal tribunal (the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia/ICTY), as well as to the inclusion, for the first time, of the crime of "rape" within the ratione materiae jurisdiction of international judges. Through the jurisprudence of the ICTY and of its twin tribunal (the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda/ICTR), the notion of rape and its different shades have been gradually outlined and finally incorporated almost entirely by the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The aim of this book is to follow this evolution, examining the historical reconstruction in order to provide an overview of how the crime of rape is currently considered in international criminal law. (Series: International Criminal Law - Vol. 7)