RAPE AS AN INTERNATIONAL CRIME

The atrocities carried out in the Balkan war showed that in a terror campaign of "ethnic cleansing," rape can be used as a "Tool of Terror." The Serbs sought to carve out a new Republic of Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia by getting rid of the Muslim population. Witness accounts of rape that were communicated from a woman in one village to another became an important campaign of terror that caused the population to flee. Witnessing a rape of another woman is emotionally traumatizing, especially if that woman was your mother, sister or friend. A woman did not need to be herself raped in order to have the terror of rape to be effective causing her and her family to leave her home and abandon her possessions. Rape is not merely a brutal form of violence but it also violates deeply held social values,and therefore it breaks apart the ties of community that gives a group strength. When the rapist humiliates the woman or girl in public, it humiliates the entire community. Public rape communicates dominance not only over the victims that suffer this cruelty, but even more importantly it communicates the impotence of the community to do anything about it. Thus the crime of rape was perpetrated against the entire community in an effort to drive them out of their homes and off their land. The traumatic memories of the sexual violation of Muslim women would psychologically and emotionally traumatize the victims/witnesses long after they fled the area and were settled elsewhere, causing long term harm to the social group

The prosecution in the Foca rape case argued three things:

1. The use of rape in attacks on civilians was widespread and systematic,
2. To support the allegation that rape was "widespread and systematic" the prosecution worked to show that the tactic was repeated and continuous (systematic) and that what had happened in Foca was a representative sample of Serbian methods of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia (widespread),
3. Rape was not simply an individual action but involved a chain of command. This did not mean that a commanding officer had ordered his men to rape, but that rape was occurring with his knowledge and he did not intervene to stop it.

The court ruled that the acts of rape were recognized as crimes against humanity because:

� �� They were part of a systematic and widespread campaign,
� �� The acts included elements of enslavement.

The Statute of Rome had included rape in its definition of crimes against humanity, but the Foca rape case made that language a reality. After the court's decision in the Foca case, one commenter noted that, "Now we say rape is a crime, a crime against humanity, or a war crime or a constituent part of genocide." The ICC Statute is important because it expands the coverage of crimes against women to more than just rape. The ICC statute also makes clear that such crimes as sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization and sexual violence are all punishable under international law.

The Foca case taught us that it is extremely important that the court considers the views and concerns of victims throughout the legal proceedings. Experienced professionals with expertise in trauma, especially trauma related to sexual violence should provide psychological counseling to victims and witnesses. There also need to be special advisers with legal experience on the special issues regarding sexual and gender violence against children. It must be remembered that the victims put themselves in danger by agreeing to testify and the court should take appropriate measures to protect the safety and the physical as well as the emotional well being of the victims. These mechanisms to protect victim rights are crucial to establishing the truth about these serious crimes.

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