The Living Death: Prosecuting Rape as Torture Under International Law [The Presentation]

By Dana P. Stanton
Dana Stanton is a 2013 summa cum laude graduate of Albany Law School. She did her undergraduate work in chemical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and she worked as an engineer for General Electric in the Operations Management Leadership Program.
During law school, Dana was an associate editor on the Albany Law Review, and she interned with the Domestic Violence Prosecution Hybrid Clinic and the Family Violence Litigation Clinic, as well as with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York and the New York State Office of the Attorney General's Environmental Protection Bureau.
Dana is now an associate at the law firm of McNamee, Lochner, Titus and Williams in Albany, NY.
This presentation was prepared for Professor Bonventre’s International Law of War and Crime Seminar. It is the companion to Ms. Stanton's paper of the same title that was published by ILS on Sept.16, 2013.

As was stated in the introduction to that companion paper:
The torture of men has traditionally been taken more seriously under international law than sexual violence against women.   As a consequence, wartime rape was not prosecuted in international tribunals until the late 1990s.
However, the physical and psychological harm to rape victims can be just as severe as the harm to torture victims. International tribunals have begun to bring rape within the realm of jus cogens norm by prosecuting rape as a form of torture.
This presentation outlines how rape was used as a weapon in war, why rape was not prosecuted as a war crime until recently, compares rape to torture, explores the sexual violence in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the significance of jus cogens for international rape prosecutions.

(click to enlarge slides)

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For the entire presentation, open HERE.
(It is then best to Download [by clicking on File] and then Open the downloaded power-point presentation.)

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