Conflict-related sexual violence and women's rights: Africa in global context

Abstract

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) is a grave and dehumanizing act. It is neither a new issue nor is it limited to one geographical region, time period, or conflict. The continent of Africa has not been an exception: from ancient wars to modern conflicts, as populations suffer the impacts of devastating wars, African women endured untold additional harms specifically due to their gender. Several of their rights are routinely violated in wartime. This atrocity constitutes an injustice far too serious to overlook and every injustice that women suffer is a human rights abuse. Consequently, international law and African human rights instruments require states to safeguard women's rights, to prohibit abuses of human rights of women and to take measures to thwart their occurrences even in the time of war. The extent to which this has been successful is the subject of much debate. In addition to advocating the protection of women's rights in the conflict environment by all instrumentalities possible, this chapter recommends that reparation measures for victims should be transformative.