Utilizing the Routine Activity Approach to Understand Rape in Armed Conflict

• In Event: WG-PLACE 1: Research on crime, place and time

Abstract

Attention to sexual violence in armed conflict is growing worldwide. However, wartime rape is still gravely under-researched. Until today, comprehensive theoretical allocations of wartime rape are hard to find. While many scholars refer to single factorial theories, often presented as competing for their explanatory value, others entirely refrain from theorizing wartime rape and confine themselves to risk assessment. To fill this theoretical vacuum, a utilization of the routine activity approach, originally introduced by Cohen and Felson, on the phenomenon of wartime rape is proposed. Drawing from recent empirical findings from a dissertation project, it is shown that the theoretical combination of motivation, opportunity and a lack of adversarial control proposed by the routine activity approach can be fruitfully utilized to frame wartime rape and to account for the influence of the risk factors found to be relevant in the empirical analysis of the phenomenon. It is argued that armed conflicts are an extreme form of structural transformation of a society. War not only changes routine activities as compared to peacetime life, but it also creates new routine activities. Rather than simply being a state of social disorganization, armed conflicts often feature remarkable elements of “order within chaos”. In a way, war creates a new “normal”. The exact composition of this new “normal” then decides over the probability that individuals will be motivated and will converge in space and time with suitable targets in the absence of capable guardians. Viewing wartime rape through the lens of the routine activity approach thus offers remarkable opportunities in understanding not only why rape is more common in wartime than in peacetime, but also in explaining why wartime rape happens in some conflicts but not in others and is perpetrated by some actors but not by others.

Author

• Anouk Noelle Nicklas, Humboldt-University of Berlin