CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Sörös, Imola |
|---|---|
| Title | Gender Crimes: An Emerging Category of International Crimes - From Mass Atrocity to Recognition - |
| Summary | International prosecutions of gender-based violence have attracted heightened interest during the last two decades. The hideous and ongoing mass violence committed against women during warfare had finally drawn the spotlight of a wider international community, and brought about a change of prosecutorial attitudes towards charging and trying perpetrators for crimes that seemed non-punishable for a very long time. The mainstreaming of gender-related concerns by a wider international community -and even more importantly within the emerging International Criminal Law regime - helped catalyze a seemingly genuine paradigm shift in apprehending gendered atrocities committed during armed conflict. However, on a second glance it might be rightly said that the international criminal law did not manage to fully grasp women’s wartime experiences in a manner which would reconcile the need for both retribution and recognition of female victims. The argument of my work goes to the very heart of these concerns by asserting that the corpus of International Criminal Law partly failed to embrace wholly the essence of gender-based crimes committed in times of mass atrocity. Therefore, oddly enough, international criminal justice does not always serve the best interest of the victims or the victimized group. The present research features a critical perspective on recent developments in International Criminal Law in respect to gender issues, and further questions whether international criminal justice has been able to thoroughly become cognizant of those particularities which represent the very essence of the distinctiveness of gendered atrocities. Further on, the work shall engage in pinpointing why exactly is it important to include sexual crimes specifically among the other charges, even in cases where notorious war criminals may be convicted for mass atrocity based on other grounds, without including gender-related crimes. The work also engages in a theoretical discussion about the sinister nature of mass atrocities in general in order to illustrate how these features play out for mass assaults including a ‘gender’ element. Therefore, the research represents an attempt to highlight those features which exactly make the crimes of sexual violence different in comparison to other types of mass violence without a gender element. After pinpointing these hallmarks, the usage of the concept of ‘gender’ in the jurisprudence of three international tribunals (the ICTY, ICTR and the ICC) shall be compared in order to draw some conclusions about the advantages and limitations of their approaches. Thus, the research ought to draw a conclusion and give further recommendations for a more gender-sensitive approach which would then appreciate a gender-oriented recognition. Finally, the thesis shall draw on a theory of recognition for victims of gender-based violence, in order to suggest how international criminal law could become a catalyst for a meaningful societal acknowledgement of wrongdoings. |
| Supervisor | Gadirov Javid |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/soros_imola.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University