City Research Online

Abstract

Reproductive violence has been documented in many conflicts, even though it may not have been labelled as such. Nevertheless, there is no established definition of reproductive violence in international criminal law and practice. While acts of reproductive violence have been prosecuted as crimes against humanity, there have not yet been any successful international prosecutions as genocide. This article will use the 2014 genocide against the Yazidis as a case study to examine the knowledge and accountability gaps that arise from the lack of definition of reproductive violence in the current state of play. It argues that formally defining reproductive violence is important not just for fair labelling and to fulfil the principle of legality but, most importantly, from the perspective of the victims, to accurately characterize the full nature of the harm inflicted on them.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Publisher Keywords:	reproductive violence; sexual violence; genocide; crimes against humanity; Yazidis
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform J Political Science > JX International law K Law > K Law (General)
Departments:	The City Law School > Academic Programmes
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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