Can the International Criminal Court prevent sexual violence in armed conflict?

Abstract

Human rights activists, international organizations, and certain governments have championed prosecutions as a strategy to prevent conflict-related sexual violence, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has focused extensively on prosecuting sexual violence crimes during its first two decades of operations. However, even as a growing body of empirical evidence suggests that the ICC contributes to improved human rights practices and the prevention of other atrocity crimes, such as violence against civilians, claims concerning the preventive effects of prosecutions on sexual violence remain largely untested. The purpose of this article is to test these claims. To this end, we analyzed the effects of ICC jurisdiction, interventions, and cross-case actions on sexual violence by government forces in intrastate conflicts from 1989 to 2018, using the Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC) dataset. Contrary to the optimistic claims of proponents of prosecutions, we found that ICC jurisdiction and cross-case actions have negligible effects for this category of actors. We also found that ICC interventions are associated with increased sexual violence by government forces in intrastate conflicts. These findings suggest that prevention might require alternative—and, in some cases, potentially costlier—interventions.