The Politics of Sexual Violence and Subhuman Conditions: The Case of Bosnia and Rwanda

Abstract

This paper examines the subhuman conditions of two critical war cases in Bosnia and Rwanda involving massive sexual violence. The rape of women by soldiers during wartime is considered an unfortunate accompaniment of war. Most scholars in war studies depart their research from a state-centric view rather than from a human security perspective. Therefore, This paper aims to investigate the role of rape and the politics of sexual violence in arms conflicts through the lenses of the "subhuman" theory. The authors seek to shed light on how women raped in war acquire the condition of "sub humans," where they do not have their rights and voices heard and do not exist in the legal framework of any state. Using the theoretical framework offered by the "subhuman" theory, this paper analyses two case studies - the Serbian militia's rape campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s and the mass rape of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. The paper concludes that both cases have exemplified that the military conflicts created acutely vulnerable conditions, which resulted in massive sexual abuse and violence against women. This paper concluded that in the two cases illustrate that subhuman conditions appear at the individual (women victims) and collective (the entire community) levels that we need to pay attention to capture the bigger picture of the incidents.