Sexual violence and the common purpose at the international court and ad hoc tribunals

Abstract

The impunity of high-level military and political leaders sits at the heart of the challenge for feminist legal advocates to champion sexual violence's equal recognition of a crime at international law. Repetitively, sexual violence crimes are a particular risk of the failure of the criminal law to surpass a number of pervasive assumptions about the nature of these crimes. In 2014, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) issued three judgments that analysed the relationship between sexual violence and common purpose liability in ground criminal conduct. This paper provides a critique of these judgments by drawing out the inconsistent and limited interpretation of the law and engendering legal concepts for a crime that is inherently gendered.