Development of global prohibition regimes: pillage and rape in war.

Abstract

Although rape and pillage in war had been so closely related and so similarly justified, there is a 100-year gap between the prohibition of pillage (with The Hague Conventions of 1899, 1907) and the prohibition of rape (with the Rome Statute of 1998) by modern international law. The question is given that women had historically been considered the property of men, why did the prohibition regime that regulated pillage of property not include “pillage” of women? By addressing this chronological discrepancy in the development of these two prohibition regimes, this project seeks to explain two related theoretical questions: The first one is how does change happen in international relations; in particular why do states make laws binding themselves to change the ways war is conducted? The second question is what is the role of “gender” as a category in this process of change? I argue that three conditions are necessary for the emergence of a global prohibition regime: states must believe that they can comply with the prohibition because non-compliance is costly. Secondly, a normative context conducive to the idea that the particular practice is abnormal/undesirable as well as a normative shock to show this undesirability hence give the final push for the normative change are necessary. Thirdly, state and/or non-state actors actively propagating these ideas to promote the creation of a particular regime should exist. The temporal difference between the emergence of the regimes against pillage and rape reveals the role of gender in this process. By looking at the writing of The Hague Conventions (1899, 1907), the Geneva Conventions (1949), the Additional Protocols (1977) and the Rome Statute (1998), I illustrate that until the 1990s, states did not believe that they could prevent rape in war as opposed to pillage because of the gender ideology that framed rape as an inevitable byproduct of male sexuality. Plus, the exclusion of women from politics like the international law-making process meant that actors to promote change could not be effective. Hence, a normative context and a normative shock to make the prohibition of rape in war possible could not develop.