Sexual Violence – RightsViews

Manipur Violence: The Weaponizing of Sexual Offenses During Conflicts

September 30, 2023September 30, 2023 by Meryem BahadirNo Comments

By Guest Writer Prabhu Gupta The small Indian state of Manipur has been engulfed in intense civil conflict due to ethnic tensions. The primary Meitei population, along with the smaller Kuki minority, are engaged in a struggle for control and territorial dominance, leading to violent clashes. Recently, a video went viral showing two naked women being paraded naked, molested, and raped by a mob in the violence-inflicted areas resulting in a huge uproar from both within and outside the nation. Factual Backdrop and issues leading to the crisis The northeastern Indian state of Manipur, situated to the east of Bangladesh and sharing a border with Myanmar, has a population of approximately 3.3 million people. The majority population belongs to the Meiteis, while around 43% belong to the Kuki and Naga tribes, which make up the predominant minority groups. In Manipur a situation of ongoing violence began in May, resulting in the death of at least 130 people and injuries to 400 more. The conflict...

Sexual Terrorism and the Quest for Justice for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: The Digital Dialogue Series

November 23, 2020 by Rowena Kosher2 Comments

By Larissa Peltola, a Staff Writer at RightsViews and a graduate student in the Human Rights MA program. Sexual terrorism committed by militant groups like ISIS/ISIL, Boko Haram, and Al Shabaab has gone largely unacknowledged in domestic and international courts, despite its rampant use. Sexual violence is a widespread, endemic issue in all conflicts around the world, affecting individuals, communities, and societies as a whole. The United Nations has identified that the extensive use of sexual violence perpetrated by terrorist groups globally has been used as an incentive for recruitment, a tool for financing, destroying, subjugating and controlling communities and societies, extracting information from detainees, forcing displacement, and as a means of controlling or suppressing women’s reproductive abilities. While the high numbers of sexual abuse have led to international calls to action by civil society, activists, the United Nations Security Council, and state governments, these crimes have still not been prosecuted before any national or international court. What Can (and Should) Justice Look...

Death Penalty for Child Rapists in India: Populist, Hasty, Counterproductive

June 26, 2018September 29, 2018 by Genevieve Zingg4 Comments

by Shardool Kulkarni, a law student at the University of Mumbai This January, an eight-year-old girl hailing from a minority shepherding family in India was abducted, gang raped and brutally murdered in the Kathua region of Jammu and Kashmir. In the subsequent months, the incident generated polarized reactions in India and around the world, with public outcry juxtaposed against the response from individuals in authority and alleged politicization of rape owing to the victim’s minority status. The ensuing public discourse has placed the ruling dispensation headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi under intense scrutiny, particularly in relation to the government's stance and policies regarding child rape. In April 2018, the Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance, 2018 was promulgated. The said ordinance brought in several changes to the existing legal framework pertaining to child rape in India, the most significant being the imposition of the death penalty as punishment for rape of a girl below the age of twelve years. The move, while hailed by...

Sexual Violence, Human Rights and the Media

March 8, 2014March 6, 2016 by editor2 Comments

By Maria Hengeveld, graduate student of human rights at Columbia University _____________________________________________________________________________ Sexual violence is usually not covered as a human rights issue. As the archetypical normalized, invisible, overlooked and structural human right violation, it is more often treated as an everyday, normal problem rather than a violation of women’s rights to health, life, bodily integrity, education, and more. The culture of impunity that surrounds sexual violence, and the fact that rape is notoriously underreported, can hardly be detached from the media’s failure to communicate to people that they actually can report these as crimes. It is a missed opportunity, and a troubling one, because the way the media chooses to frame sexual violence influences how people think about rape. They can shape, challenge and perpetuate dominant perceptions or illuminate harmful misconceptions and shed a light on the contestations and anxieties that surround the topic. Moreover, they can channel the outrage and disgust towards, for example, child-rapists into anger and calls for accountability towards our governments. Making sexual...