Rape during the Rwandan Genocide

Violence during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 took a gender-specific form when, over the course of 100 days, up to half a million women were raped, sexually mutilated, or murdered. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) handed down the first conviction for the use of rape as a weapon of war during the civil conflict, and, because the intent of the mass violence against Rwandan women was to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular ethnic group, it was the first time that mass rape during wartime was found to be an act of genocidal rape.

The mass rapes were carried out by the Interahamwe militia and members of the Hutu civilian population, both male and females, the Rwandan military, and the Rwandan Presidential Guard. The sexual violence was directed at the national and local levels by political and military leaders in the furtherance of their goal, the destruction of the Tutsi ethnic group.

There was extensive use of propaganda through both print and radio to incite violence against women, with both mediums being used to portray Tutsi women as untrustworthy, and as acting against the Hutu majority. The conflict resulted in an estimated 2,000 to 10,000 "war babies" being born as a result of forced impregnation.

During the conflict Hutu extremists released hundreds of patients from hospitals, who were suffering from AIDS, and formed them into "rape squads". The intent was to infect and cause a "slow, inexorable death". Obijiofor Aginam argues that while throughout history sexual violence against women is replete with such incidents of rape during times of war, more recent conflicts have seen the use of rape as a weapon of war become a "conspicuous phenomenon". He believes that the deliberate infection of women with HIV is evidenced from survivors testimony. Françoise Nduwimana documented testimony from survivors of rape, recounting the testimony of one woman:

For 60 days, my body was used as a thoroughfare for all the hoodlums, militia men and soldiers in the district ... Those men completely destroyed me; they caused me so much pain. They raped me in front of my six children ... Three years ago, I discovered I had HIV/AIDS. There is no doubt in my mind that I was infected during these rapes.

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