Impunity in sexual violence against girl children during armed conflict (PDF)

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - Topic: Public International Law and Human Rights, grade: 4.5/6, , language: English, abstract: According to the Former Deputy Force Commander of the UN mission to the DRC "It is more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier in modern conflict". Indeed, sexual violence is the silent crime happening massively during all armed conflicts. The question of the extension of the problem has been tackled several times by several international organizations, researchers, UN bodies, and by the states affected. However, nobody really knows which is the real impact of these crimes.

Women and girls are usually disproportionally affected, and crimes such as these have devastating, long-term effects on the lives of survivors. Noting that this is a crime that affects particularly women and girls, special mention on this issue must be made on girls. Among the categorized six grave violations against children in armed conflicts, sexual violence has, as previously underlined, a specific gender dimension making girl children especially vulnerable, and main target of those practices.

This paper tries to show that sexual violence occurring during armed conflict follows common patterns, that is to say, that regardless of the country where it happens, surprisingly it feels like the practice follows the same template of perpetration. It will also prove that girl children are the main victims, so that it would make sense for them to be the ones more protected by legislation against sexual violence during armed conflict. However, this paper will finish showing that the lack of law enforcement leads to impunity due to different reasons, which happens to be a constant repetition of similar motives every time, and everywhere.