CONVICTIONS OF BOSNIAN SERBS OPENS DOOR TO OTHERS; TRAIL-BLAZING RULING: WAR RAPES

March 7, 2001 – (The Hamilton Spectator Opinion Piece) For centuries, rape during wartime has inspired little more than shrugs. But that is now changing. In a milestone ruling for women last month, a UN war-crimes tribunal convicted three Bosnian Serbs of raping Muslim women and girls during the Bosnian conflict. Two were found guilty of sexual slavery. The men received jail terms ranging from 28 to 12 years.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a three-judge panel sitting in The Hague, said that in 1992-93, the defendants had used rape as an instrument of terror. It further ruled that mass rape is a crime against humanity. In international law, only genocide ranks as a more serious offense.

The decision marked the first time that an international body had prosecuted anyone for war crimes on the sole basis of sexual assault. It was also the first time that sexual slavery was recognized as a war crime.

This elevation of the gravity of rape will almost certainly affect courts around the world. And it could have profound ramifications for regional and civil conflicts beyond Bosnia's. In East Timor, for example, investigators have evidence suggesting that hundreds of women were raped by political foes following that nation's 1999 bid for independence. Because of The Hague ruling, Indonesian soldiers and militia members involved in the abuse may find it harder to evade justice.

The catalogue of what an estimated 20,000 Muslim women and girls suffered during the Bosnian conflict is almost mind-numbing in its grimness. Of the three men convicted last month, Zoran Vukovic was considered the least culpable. He had repeatedly raped and tortured only one victim. She was 15.

It was largely thanks to women's groups that the extent of these crimes was exposed, and that they were pushed onto The Hague tribunal's docket at all. Had such organizations not been active, rape as an aspect of war might have stood just where it was: as a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but for all that, still tolerated.

The tribunal's landmark ruling must certainly be one to rejoice over, especially in this month honouring women's history.

But many will grieve for how long such a decision was in coming.

--Providence Journal