Justice in Transitional Societies: has gender become a central issue?
Transitional justice saw significant advances made in the area of criminal
accountability for sexual violence in the 1990s. The creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) were pioneering in
this regard, helping to redefine how sexual violence is prosecuted under
international law (Turano 2011: 1052). This had the effect of advancing
gender as a central issue in societies emerging from conflict. Although
they are separate tribunals, it is helpful to analyse the jurisprudence that
developed from these tribunals together. The ICTR decision of Akayesu
(1998) is considered a landmark judgment: it saw a defendant convicted
of rape, both as an instrument of genocide and as a crime against humanity, and formulated a conceptual definition of rape in international law
(Chenault 2007: 221). The subject of sexual violence was further developed in the ICTY judgments of Muhimimana (2005), Furunjzija (1998),
Kunarac (2001) and Kvocka (1999). This jurisprudence acknowledged
the importance of sexual violence as a gender-harm and advanced the
issue of gender as a 6V