Graduation Year
2018
Date of Submission
4-2018
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
History
Second Department
International Relations
Reader 1
Wendy Lower
Reader 2
Jonathan Petropoulos
Terms of Use & License Information
Abstract
Rape and other forms of sexual violence have been used against civilian populations since the advent of armed conflict. However, recent scholarship within the last few decades proves that rape is not a byproduct of war or a result of transgressions by a few “bad apples,” rather, rape and sexual violence are used as strategic, systematic, and calculated tools of war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Rape has also been used as a means of preventing future generations of children of “undesirable” groups from being born. Rape and sexual violence are also used with the purpose of intimidating women and their communities, destroying the social fabric and cohesion of specific groups, and even as a final act of humiliation before killing the victim. In each conflict that is examined in this thesis, sexual violence is used against civilian populations for the specific purpose of genocide.
Recommended Citation
Peltola, Larissa, "Rape and Sexual Violence Used as a Weapon of War and Genocide" (2018). CMC Senior Theses. 1965.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1965
Included in
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, History Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, International Humanitarian Law Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons
