Adjudication of Gender Based Crimes against Women in International Criminal Courts and Tribunals

Sexual crimes against women have always been a part of war and have occurred in virtually every armed conflict throughout human history. For a very long time, and still today in some cultures, women were not seen as equal to men. Thus, gender based crimes against women were almost invisible to international criminal law. While these crimes were largely ignored after World War I and II, things have recently started changing for the better. This change started in the 1990’s with the establishment of the ICTY and ICTR, as the first international criminal tribunals which had a mission to also punish crimes against women. These tribunals were the first ones that explicitly included rape as a crime against humanity in their statutes and their jurisprudence is of crucial importance for the prosecution of gender based crimes against women. The ICTR in Akayesu provided the first definition of rape in international criminal law and set the precedent that rape could constitute genocide. The ICTY in Kunarac expanded the definition of rape and also became the first international criminal tribunal to convict a perpetrator for enslavement for sexual reasons (sexual slavery). The ICC further continued the work of the ad hoc tribunals and expanded the list of gender based crimes against women by including in its statute several crimes that had never before been explicitly criminalized. Similarly, the SCSL became the first international criminal tribunal to explicitly recognize forced marriage as a crime against humanity. This thesis aims to widen the knowledge of this issue and provide an overview and analysis of the treatment of gender based crimes against women in international criminal law.