A Feminist Critique of Approaches to International Criminal Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: A Case Study of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Prosecutions Before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

This chapter undertakes a feminist analysis of the problem of ‘gender’ in international criminal law (ICL) using the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as a case study. It examines the construction of ‘gender’ within the positive legal norms and the jurisprudence of the ICTY, focusing on conflict-related sexual violence cases. The authors’ critical analysis reveals the gendered framework and values of ICL, and brings into question the gender-neutrality of international criminal justice. It shows the blind spots of this framework, and how it still operates to exclude gender as such. Studying the gendered framework of ICL illuminates the broader ‘gender trouble’ of international humanitarian law (IHL) as a protective and penal regime, and offers an important insight into the gendered operation of conflict and its legal regulation at the international level.