Sexual violence


Sexual violence is any harmful or unwanted sexual act, an attempt to obtain a sexual act through violence or coercion, or an act directed against a person's sexuality without their consent, by any individual regardless of their relationship to the victim. This includes forced engagement in sexual acts, attempted or completed, and may be physical, psychological, or verbal. It occurs in times of peace and armed conflict situations, is widespread, and is considered to be one of the most traumatic, pervasive, and most common human rights violations.
Sexual violence is a serious public health problem and has profound short- and long-term physical and mental health impacts such as increased risks of sexual and reproductive health problems, suicide, and HIV infection. Murder occurring either during a sexual assault or as a result of an honor killing in response to a sexual assault is also a factor of sexual violence. Though women and girls suffer disproportionately from these aspects, sexual violence can occur to anybody at any age; it is an act of violence that can be perpetrated by parents, caregivers, acquaintances and strangers, as well as intimate partners. It is rarely a crime of passion, and is rather an aggressive act that frequently aims to express power and dominance over the victim.
Sexual violence remains highly stigmatized in all settings, oftentimes dismissed as a women's issue, thus levels of disclosure of the assault vary between regions. In general, it is a widely underreported phenomenon, thus available data tend to underestimate the true scale of the problem. In addition, sexual violence is also a neglected area of research, thus deeper understanding of the issue is imperative in order to promote a coordinated movement against it. Domestic sexual violence is distinguished from conflict-related sexual violence. Often, people who coerce their spouses into sexual acts believe their actions are legitimate because they are married. In times of conflict, sexual violence tends to be an inevitable repercussion of warfare trapped in an ongoing cycle of impunity. Rape of women and of men is often used as a method of warfare, as a form of attack on the enemy, typifying the conquest and degradation of its women or men or captured male or female fighters. Even if strongly prohibited by international human rights law, customary law and international humanitarian law, enforcement mechanisms are still fragile or even non-existent in many corners of the world.
From a historical perspective, sexual violence was considered as only being perpetrated by men against women and as being commonplace and "normal" during both war and peace times from the Ancient Greeks to the 20th century. This led to the negligence of any indications of what the methods, aims and magnitude of such violence was. It took until the end of the 20th century for sexual violence to no longer be considered a minor issue and to gradually become criminalized. Sexual violence is still used in modern warfare as recently as in the Rwandan genocide and in the Gaza war, targeting both Israelis and Palestinians.

Definitions

General

The World Health Organization in its 2002 World Report on Violence and Health defined sexual violence as: "any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person's sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work". WHO's definition of sexual violence includes but is not limited to rape, which is defined as physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object. Sexual violence consists in a purposeful action of which the intention is often to inflict severe humiliation on the victims and diminish human dignity. In the case where others are forced to watch acts of sexual violence, such acts aim at intimidating the larger community.
Other acts incorporated in sexual violence are various forms of sexual assaults, such as forced contact between mouth and penis, vulva or anus. Sexual violence can include coerced contact between the mouth and penis, vulva or anus, or acts that do not involve physical contact between the victim and the perpetrator—for example, sexual harassment, threats, and peeping.
Coercion, with regard to sexual violence, can cover a whole spectrum of degrees of force. Apart from physical force, it may involve psychological intimidation, blackmail or other threats – for instance, the threat of physical harm, of being dismissed from a job or of not obtaining a job that is sought. It may also occur when the person being attacked is unable to give consent – for instance, while drunk, drugged, asleep or mentally incapable of understanding the situation.
Such broader definitions of sexual violence are found within international law. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has established in article 7 that "rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity" constitutes a crime against humanity. Sexual violence is further explained in the ICC's Elements of Crimes, which the Court uses in its interpretation and application of Article 7. The Elements of Crime establishes that sexual violence is:The United Nations Special Rapporteur on systemic rape sexual slavery and slavery-like practices during armed conflict, in a report in 1998, stipulated that sexual violence is "any violence, physical or psychological, carried out through sexual means by targeting sexuality". This definition encompasses physical as well as psychological attacks aimed at "a person's sexual characteristics, such as forcing a person to strip naked in public, mutilating a person's genitals, or slicing off a woman's breasts". The Special Rapporteur's definition also refers to situations "in which two victims are forced to perform sexual acts on one another or to harm one another in a sexual manner".
The WHO lists a number of examples of circumstances that sexual violence can be committed:
A thorough definition is necessary in monitoring the prevalence of sexual violence and studying trends over time. In addition, a consistent definition helps in determining the magnitude of sexual violence and aids in comparing the problem across demographics. Consistency allows researchers to measure risk and protective factors for victimization in a uniform manner. This ultimately informs prevention and intervention efforts.

Conflict-related and domestic sexual violence

A distinction is made between conflict-related sexual violence and domestic sexual violence:
  • Conflict-related sexual violence is sexual violence perpetrated by combatants, including rebels, militias, and government forces. The various forms of sexual violence can be used systematically in conflicts "to torture, injure, extract information, degrade, threaten, intimidate or punish". Sexual violence can in such cases amount to being a weapon of war.
  • Domestic sexual violence is sexual violence perpetrated by intimate partners and by other family/household members, and is often termed intimate partner violence. This kind of sexual violence is widespread both during conflict and in peacetime. It is commonly believed that incidents of domestic sexual violence increase in wartime and in post-conflict environments.

    Victims

Spectrum

All people can fall victim to sexual violence. This includes women, men, children, and people who define themselves in other terms, e.g., transgender or non-binary individuals.
Most research, reports and studies focus on sexual violence perpetrated against women and in armed conflicts. The majority of victims are women, but men and children are also victims of sexual violence. The crime may be committed in peacetime or during conflict.
It is possible for individuals to be targeted based on sexual orientation or gender-exhibiting behaviour. Such attacks, which are often called "corrective rapes" have been performed to conform an individual to a heterosexual orientation or to more accepted notions of behaviour for the perceived gender of the victim; asexual individuals are also particularly targeted.

Domestic sexual violence

Domestic sexual violence includes all forms of unwanted sexual activity. It is considered abuse even if the victim may have previously engaged in consensual sexual activities with the perpetrator. Men and women can both fall victim to this type of abuse although women are more often the victims than men, and men perpetrate more often than women. Moreover, lesbian, bisexual, and trans women are more likely than cis and heterosexual women to experience intimate partner violence, which includes sexual violence. Male persons are more likely to commit domestic sexual violence regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.
A 2006 WHO study on physical and sexual domestic violence against women conducted across ten countries found that the prevalence of domestic sexual violence ranged, on average, between 10% and 40%. Domestic sexual violence is also considerably less common than other forms of domestic violence. The variations in the findings across and within countries suggest that this type of abuse is not inevitable and can be prevented.