Documenting Mass Rape: Seeking Legal Redress through Medical Routines in Armed Conflict and Humanitarian Emergencies

• In Event: 106 - Regular Session. Human Rights

Abstract

Emerging global networks of human rights activists, doctors, and nurses have advocated for increased collection of medical evidence in conflict-affected countries in order to corroborate allegations of rape and facilitate prosecution in international and domestic courts. Such initiatives often seek to combine medical forensic evidence collection with specialized medical care and treatment for patient-victims. The endorsement of medico-legal approaches to sexual violence as best practice by the World Health Organization and a number of international voluntary organizations appears to signal a newly emerging “transnational legal order” at the interface of medicine and law. However, the degree of implementation and the capacity to collect and analyze forensic evidence vary widely. Combining archival research, fieldwork at international meetings, and over 40 in-depth interviews of activists, healthcare practitioners, lawyers, investigators, and other experts, I trace the development, standardization, and global circulation of medico-legal guidelines to address sexual violence and their adaptation for use in settings of armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies, and mass violence against civilians. Drawing on approaches in science and technology studies, law and society, medical sociology, and critical peace and human rights studies, I argue that medico-legal guidelines reflect their historical origins in place and time. As a result, their character, use, and potential effects are likely to vary in new contexts of armed conflict and mass violence, revealing the as yet unsettled incorporation of criminal justice logics within the routine practice of medicine and their potentially far-reaching effects on patient care and survivors’ access to justice within and beyond courts.

Author

• Jaimie Morse, Northwestern University