Global Legalism

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T, Judgment, ¶ 705 (Jun. 20, 2007); Prosecutor v. Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-964-T, Judgment, ¶ 51 (Sep. 2, 1998)). On the other hand, a residuary clause such as ‘Other Inhumane Acts’ cannot have such recognition as it does not address any specific offence. Therefore, a crime as heinous as “forced marriage” must be subsumed within sexual slavery because it necessitates its recognition as a jus cogens norm. It would receive the same recognition even in the rare (perhaps even non – existent) circumstances where the “marriage” is non-sexual in nature, as in such cases it must be prosecuted as enslavement. “When critics charge that specific practices constitute ‘slavery’, or mark a continuation of ‘slavery by another name’, what they are usually suggesting is that they should be equated with the worst excesses of transatlantic slavery. The key question here is not so much whether specific practices are identical to slavery, at least in part because slavery can be defined in a number of ways, but instead whether they share sufficient features in common with slavery to be rendered illegitimate as a result of prior anti-slavery commitments” (Joel Quirk, “Ending Slavery in all its Forms: Legal Abolition and Effective Emancipation in Historical Perspective” (2008) 12:4 Int’l JHR 529 at 532). Jean Allain also argues that the elements of servile marriage (where a woman or girl is purchased, transferred or inherited) fulfil the definition of enslavement as a crime against humanity (Jean Allain, “Servile Marriage as Slavery and its Relevance to Contemporary International Law” (2010) [unpublished]). Amy Palmer concludes, in her analysis of the decision of the Appeals Chamber of the SCSL in the AFRC case, that “forced marriage” “should be prosecuted as a separate crime under international law in order to appropriately recognize its gravity, prevent future tragedies, properly recognize the suffering of the victims, and facilitate an examination of the traditional marital union within differing cultures across the world” (Amy Palmer, “An Evolutionary Analysis of Gender-Based War Crimes and the Continued Tolerance of ‘Forced Marriage’” (2009) 7:1 Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights 133 at 159). Michael Scharf and Suzanne Mattler also argue that “forced marriage” is a “valid and viable category of crime against humanity” (Michael P Scharf & Suzanne Mattler, “Forced Marriage: Exploring the Viability of the Special Court for Sierra Leone’s New Crime Against Humanity” (2005) 1:2 Case Research Paper Series in Legal Studies at 2) and that it ought to be prosecuted as the “unique crime that it is” (ibid, at 24). But this very same argument should be used to support the view that “forced marriage” in a situation of conflict falls within the ambit of enslavement (without reducing the practice to only sexual slavery in the rare cases where sexual elements are absent), because recognising the offence as a jus cogens norm would give to it the widespread denunciation that a crime of its gravity requires. Furthermore, the judgment of the Trial Chamber of the SCSL in the RUF case found that “forced marriage was important to the RUF both as a tactic of war and means of obtaining unpaid logistical support for troops [emphasis added]” (Prosecutor v. Issa Sesay et al, Case No. SCSL-04-15-T, Judgment, ¶ 2107 (2 March 2009)). “Forced marriage” not only provided the fighters with ongoing sexual access to women and household care-giving from women, it also played a central part in establishing a system of overarching control over the civilian population, similar to the institutionalized practice of sexual slavery in other conflict situations. In the RUF Trial judgment, the Trial Chamber described the role that gender-based crimes played in the RUF’s ideology. First, the Chamber observed that “sexual violence was rampantly committed against the civilian population in an atmosphere in which violence, oppression and lawlessness prevailed” (Prosecutor v. Issa Sesay et al, SCSL-04-15-T, Judgment, ¶ 1348 (Mar. 2, 2009)). The RUF created that atmosphere and, within that atmosphere, adopted a “calculated and concerted pattern . . . to use sexual violence as a weapon of terror” (ibid). Second, the Trial Chamber found that this gender-based violence “effectively


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