Rape as Genocide: Bangladesh, the Former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda

According to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, “…deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” constitute genocide. However, this Convention does not explicitly state that sexual violence is a crime of genocide. This paper suggests that the convention should be expanded to include mass rape, regardless of whether the victims are raped on the basis of racial/ethnic, national, or religious identity.