Perpetrators of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict

This chapter approaches the topic of perpetrators of sexual violence by analyzing how they are narrated in the proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It explores the sentencing judgments of the nine principal perpetrators sentenced by the ICTY from a narrative perspective, demonstrating a broad variation of how the perpetration of sexual violence in armed conflict is explained, ranging from 'chivalrous militarized individual,' who could have done worse but refrained from doing so, to 'opportunistic military perpetrators' who use their authority to sadistically humiliate the women. The sentences also constitute a shift in international criminal justice from a laissez-faire attitude regarding sexual violence toward moral condemnation of these acts.