David Sverdlov
Cornell International Law Journal: Vol. 50 : No. 2 , Article 6.Women's lives and their bodies have been the unacknowledged casualties of war for far too long. In just the last three decades, militants-on almost every continent-have raped hundreds of thousands of women. Nevertheless, international legal bodies have brought few rapists to justice. Since 2000, international tribunals have convicted only five men and women in Rwanda, twenty-three men in the former Yugoslavia, and one person from the Congo for using rape as a weapon of war. As such, rape remains the least-condemned war crime; thousands of unpunished rapists continue to walk free, and in some cases, on the same streets as their victims.The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the smaller affiliates such as Boko Haram are the most recent and unpunished perpetrators who use rape as a weapon of war. Since invading northern parts of Iraq in 2014, ISIL forced at least six thousand Yazidi women into sexual slavery, three thousand of whom remain enslaved. Likewise, Boko Haram has abducted about five hundred women in Nigeria and forced at least some of them into marriages and slave-like domestic servitude. But no ISIL or Boko Haram militants have been prosecuted for using rape to commit genocide, a crime against humanity, or a war crime.It is important not to leave justice wanting and these women unrecognized. To that end, international organizations must ensure legal prosecution of both ISIL and Boko Haram under either the Genocide Convention or the non-genocidal crimes of the Rome Statute. This Note will explore legal precedent on prosecuting rape as a weapon of war and recommend whether it is feasible to prosecute ISIL or Boko Haram under Articles VI and VII of the Rome Statute. To do so, this Note will rely on the precedents established during the prosecutions of Rwandan and Yugoslavian war criminals. Part II will provide a brief overview of ISIL, the Yazidis, and Boko Haram's histories. Part III will provide facts on the Rwandan Hutu treatment of female Tutsis and the Bosnian Serb treatment of Bosnian Muslim women during their respective genocides and the legal precedent from the tribunals that dealt with both events. Part IV will evaluate the known facts regarding ISIL and Boko Haram under legal precedent and conclude that ISIL leaders can be prosecuted for genocidal rape, but Boko Haram leaders must be prosecuted under different crimes in the Rome Statute. Part V provides suggestions for which militants to charge. Part VI is the conclusion.[1]

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