Utblick issue 3 20/21: The Neglected Issue

‘Boys will be Boys Sexual violence victims too’

By Vilma Ellemark “Sexual violence against men is a horrendous crime that often goes unheard, unseen and unspoken” — Centre for African Justice Conflict-related sexual violence is a widespread issue across the globe, from Afghanistan in Asia to Colombia in South America. The term ‘femicide’ and calling it ‘a systematic pattern of destruction toward the female species’ demonstrates the tendency to think of sexual violence survivors exclusively as female, but is this the whole truth? A growing body of research pays attention to the under-reporting of male sexual violence victims. This is not to dismiss the fact that women constitute the majority of conflict-related sexual violence victims, nor to say that the issue of wartime sexual violence is not gendered at all. Rather, this research asks if the issue is as gendered as we might think, and more importantly, “why sexual violence against men and boys often goes unheard”.

The history of conflict-related sexual violence is as old as the history of war and armed conflict itself, but it was not until the 1990s and after the horrifying mass rapes in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, that wartime sexual violence finally became widely recognized as a part, rather than just a tragic by-product, of war.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820 in 2008 marked an important milestone, demanding “the immediate and complete cessation by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians with immediate effect”. The resolution was an 14