A/HRC/47/26
in its judgment the Tokyo Tribunal recorded that approximately 20,000 cases of rape had
occurred in the city of Nanking during the first month of its occupation.34
38.
A major legal development under humanitarian law was the adoption in 1949 of the
Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (the Fourth
Geneva Convention). Rape is explicitly prohibited under article 27: “Women shall be
especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced
prostitution, or any form of indecent assault.” Though this represented an important step
forward in making visible the crime of rape as a violation of international humanitarian law,
its wording reflects a patriarchal view of rape as a crime against the morals of women rather
than a crime against the person and their physical integrity.
39.
The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating
to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), adopted in 1977,
largely repeats article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention in its article 76, but omitting the
word “honour”. Article 75 includes the prohibition of any distinction based, inter alia, on
“sex”, and of acts including “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and
degrading treatment, enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault”, whether
committed by civilian or by military agents. In Protocol II Additional to the Geneva
Conventions of 12 August 1949, article 4 prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in
particular humiliating and degrading treatment, rape, enforced prostitution and any form of
indecent assault”.
40.
The next important legal developments took place in 1993 and 1994, with the
recognition of rape in the context of conflict as a crime against humanity in the establishment
of two ad hoc international war crimes tribunals. In May 1993, the International Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia was established by the Security Council in its resolution 827 (1993),
which contained the first ever condemnation by the Security Council of rape in war.
41.
The following year, in 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was
established. Both courts, under their respective statutes, have explicit jurisdiction over rape.
The Statute of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in its article 5 (g) and
the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in its article 3 (g) identify rape
as a separate crime under crimes against humanity, but without defining it.
42.
According to the first Prosecutor of the International Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia: “Substantively, one of the problems we faced in charging rape as a war crime
was the absence of any definition of that crime.”35
43.
Since international law at that time did not define rape, it was the jurisprudence of
those tribunals that provided the definitional elements of rape as an international crime. The
first case of rape that was found to constitute a crime against humanity was in the judgment
of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the case Prosecutor v. Akayesu in
1998.36 The accused was convicted of rape as a crime against humanity, and the rapes, which
had been condoned and encouraged by Akayesu, were further found to amount to the crime
of genocide. The Tribunal also recognized that rape and sexual violence constituted were
among the worst ways of inflicting harm on the victim, “as he or she suffers both bodily and
mental harm”.37
44.
In this case, the Tribunal acknowledged that there was no commonly accepted
definition of the crime of rape in international law and defined it as “a physical invasion of a
sexual nature, committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive”. 38 The
Tribunal noted that coercive circumstances did not need to be evidenced by a show of
34
35
36
37
38
8
The former Special Rapporteur recommended that the Japanese Government take legal responsibility
for the “comfort women” system that existed in Japan during the Second World War (see, for
example, E/CN.4/1996/53/Add.1 and Corr.1).
Richard J. Goldstone, “Prosecuting rape as a war crime”, Case Western Reserve Journal Of
International Law, vol. 34, No. 3 (2002), p. 283.
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Prosecutor v. Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T,
Judgment, 2 September 1998.
Ibid., para. 731.
Ibid., paras. 686 and 688.