Delineating Perpetratorhood : On Race, Masculinities, and Fighting Impunity for Sexual Violence in DRC 1

Abstract

Examining delineations of male “perpetratorhood” in efforts to fight impunity for sexual violence in conflict, this chapter brings into view a discordance between whom these are intended to target and who is typically held to account in practice by local courts. We demonstrate how, why, and with what effect global policy and advocacy discourses underpinning the fight against impunity rest on a carefully curated, but nevertheless restrictive, understanding of sexual violence in conflict. Crudely, this sexual violence is perpetrated by racialized male combatants against female civilians. We subsequently offer a close appraisal of judicial efforts to fight impunity for sexual violence in eastern DRC – which has long been a key focus of global campaigns to end sexual violence in conflict. We demonstrate that quotidian efforts to fight impunity in eastern DRC largely function to punitively regulate masculinities and normative arrangements of intimacy between young people through the courts. We conclude, therefore, with a call to paying closer attention to the nature of sexual violence cases making it to and through the courts to ensure that efforts to fight impunity for sexual violence in conflict contribute to successfully securing gender justice for survivors in the pursuit of a gendered peace