CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Bhattacharya, Deya |
|---|---|
| Title | Seeking Closure: Can Egyptian Women learn from the Truth Experiments of South Africa & Bosnia? |
| Summary | In this thesis, the phenomenon of politicized sexual violence in Egypt is examined, and an effort is made is categorize it under the existing theory of 'rape as a weapon of war'. My thesis also makes an attempt to understand how South Africa and Bosnia and Herzegovina have dealt with sexual violence against women during their transitions, and whether the peculiar mechanism of truth-seeking can be considered an effective mechanism to deal with sexual violence in Egypt. The Arab Spring in Egypt did something that no previous political agitation had done before. Not only did it help to create an atmosphere for democratic change in the country, but was also instrumental in helping women break away from the private sphere and enter public spaces to pursue protests and demonstrations. Women were at the forefront of several protests and it could be said that they single-handedly brought democratic values into Egypt as Mubarak was overthrown. However, after eighteen days of the Revolution, during its myriad transitions, Egyptian women were pushed back into the private and removed from public spaces utilizing politicized sexual violence, and this has given rise to a problematic 'revolution-within-the Revolution' paradigm. Several attempts, albeit unsuccessful, through laws and policies, have been made to eradicate this 'epidemic'. The first component of the thesis is a background of Egyptian women's struggle with sexual violence during the Arab Spring and its classification within the gender and conflict debate. The second component is a comparison of jurisprudence of sexual violence between South Africa and Bosnia and Herzegovina, keeping the debate limited to means that involved truth-seeking measures. The last component is an examination of the under-enforcement of gender within truth commissions in transitional contexts and re-defining ‘harm’ for gendered crimes, something that will help Egypt to deal with its sexual violence epidemic. Under the present political and judicial climate, standard criminal prosecutions and usual forms of punishment might not be the best option to uproot the problem of sexual violence in Egypt. iv Comprehensive forms of transitional non-judicial processes, such as truth-telling, that attempt to challenge the current public/private structures and bring about normative changes are imperative. South Africa and Bosnia and Herzegovina have battled the problem of sexual violence when they were transitioning into autonomous, democratic states. South Africa chose to use the peculiar mechanism of truth-seeking, while Bosnia, for years, has toyed with the idea of introducing a truth commission over and above the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia to deal with the past but in vain. This thesis, therefore, tries to capture the mechanism of truth-seeking for victims of sexual violence (in these two states), and unravel the under-enforcement of gender within such mechanisms for Egypt. |
| Supervisor | Petrovic, Vladimir |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/bhattacharya_deya.pdf |
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