Brandeis-Bar Ilan Conference on Conflict Related Sexual Violence and the Legacy of October 7
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How can the perpetrators of conflict related sexual violence be held accountable? The use of rape in war is not new in modern warfare or Jewish history. Sexual violence was a key element in pogroms against Jews in eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century and in atrocities committed against Jewish women during the Holocaust. What has changed is the ways in which rape and sexualized murder have come to be seen by the law. When the international human rights regime was established after the Holocaust, rape and gender based violence went unmentioned. However, a movement coalesced to take note of and provide remedies for the ways in which women were victimized in times of war, both as women and as symbols of their religious and national community. Feminist international lawyers have named this abuse, “Conflict Related Sexual Violence” (CRSV) and created legal frameworks to prosecute it under international law. This conference will explore how these tools can be used to secure accountability and justice for women in Israel subjected to CRSV on October 7, 2023 and as hostages, and be applied to other conflicts. Co-convened by the The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Project on Gender, Culture, Religion and the Law and The Dinah Project at the Rackman Center, Faculty of Law, Bar-Ilan University, the conference will feature new research that brings the Israeli experience into conversation with responses to other incidents of conflict related sexual violence in Kosovo, Rwanda, and the
