Marks, Zoe. "Sexual Violence in Sierra Leone's Civil War: ‘Virgination’, rape, and marriage". African Affairs, Vol.113, No.450 (2014): 67-87.

Marks, Zoe. "Sexual Violence in Sierra Leone's Civil War: ‘Virgination’, rape, and marriage". African Affairs, Vol.113, No.450 (2014): 67-87.

• Discussions of sexual violence during wartime often present a simple and fatuous dichotomy between male perpetrators of rape and female victims of rape. While traditional feminist perspectives have used this dichotomy, more recent research is explored how female experiences of sexual violence during wartime differ, from victimization to perpetration (67-69).
• The author collected interviews from 50 women who were aware of, affected by, or participated in sexual violence during the Sierra Leonean Civil War. The subjects of the interviews included civilians, government officials, and former rebels (70-71).
• Sexual violence was already a problem in the Sierra Leonean Civil War in 1991, when Liberian guerrillas loaned out by Charles Taylor raped civilians in occupied zones. The Revolutionary United Front [RUF] attempted to condemn this behavior, executing a Liberian mercenary as punishment and declaring that rapists would face the death penalty (72).
• Despite firm commands and regulations which condemned rape as 'counter-revolutionary', sexual violence was common among recruits of the United Front, whose soldiers were largely drawn from poor young men eager for sex (72).
• Punishment for rape, if soldiers were found guilty of this or other crimes by superior officers or a disciplinary court, was being send back to training for more ideological repetition. Some commanders also had their own punishments or did not punish rape (73-74, 77). The records of the United Front record frequent execution of rapist soldiers throughout the civil war (74).
• Laws about the prohibition of rape only applied to civilians within the United Front-controlled areas of the country. Most rape took place in disputed territories against 'enemy civilians'. Commanders ignored or encouraged rape in these areas, while generally prohibiting the same violence against civilians in occupied territories (78).
• One of the major reasons that sexual violence continued to be so prevalent during the Civil War was that the United Front's prohibition of rape had a loophole allowing soldiers to take 'wives' or 'girlfriends' with whom any sex was permissible. This essentially allowed and legitimated coercive sexual relations, as long as the victims were declared as 'girlfriends' (73).
• The major concern of the United Front about sexual violence seems to have stemmed from this system of forcible marriages, as officers were concerned about their 'wives' being raped by other soldiers. This was further by the stratification of the United Front between 'married' officers and 'unmarried' soldiery, who were generally denied the right to marry by their commanders (74-75).
• This sexual tension within the United Front is somewhat similar to traditional Sierra Leonean society prior to the war, as younger men were generally unmarried until they reached a position of wealth or power. This traditional divide in marriage rights and access to sex between powerful older men and young men created a fear of young men as sexual threats to older men, either because of rape or consensual affairs with wives or daughters (75).
• The right to marry was, except during the period of 1994 to 1995, restricted to officers. The sexual tension and violence of the military camps created security requirements for marriage, meaning that commanders had to be able to provide shelter and protection to their 'wife' (75-76).
• Both men and women who were members, victims, or both of the Revolutionary United Front described sexual violence in accordance with the ideological norms enforced by the United Front, namely a divide between illegal 'rape' and 'legitimate' non-consensual sex within 'marriage' (76-77).
• "Women and girls in the RUF were isolated from the family and community structures that traditionally monitored marriage and ensured economic and food security in rural Sierra Leone. As a result, they accepted the institutions at their disposal, trying to be ‘protected by the husband at all costs’. Many former RUF women have their own moral frameworks informed by wartime marriages, characterizing ‘good’ husbands as those who provided food and encouragement, while ‘bad’ husbands were abusive, jealous, and neglectful" (86).
• The first experience of most women with the United Front was kidnap and rape, usually gang rape by soldiers. This was recognized as 'rape' by all members of the United Front. The use of weapons, the setting outside of a military camp, and the multiple perpetrators distinguish it as 'rape' versus single-perpetrator coercive sex in 'marriage' (77).
• This type of sexual violence was further distinguished from later coercive sexual violence by the language used in interviews. While women described this rape as a one-way act, such as 'taken' or 'sexed' in which she is acted upon, later sexual violence within 'marriage' is described using two-party phrases like 'have sex with' (79-80).
• The author proposes that the sexual policy and dynamics within the Revolutionary United Front divided women into four categories: non-wives, unprotected wives, protected wives, and senior women.
• Non-wives were women in United Front territory or camps not envisions for sexual use. They were mainly young girls deemed unsuitable for marriage. They were usually attached to households for domestic service or portage. Experiences could vary from adoptive family environments to harsh physical and sexual abuse (80-81).
• Another variety of non-wives were female combatants, who might be initially exposed to sexual violence, but could remove this and other sigmas and rise to prominence in the RUF if they were successful in combat (82).
• Unprotected wives were women who were married to junior officers or foot-soldiers, meaning that their husbands often lacked the social standing to protect them from sexual assault by other soldiers. Since their husbands lacked secure access to resources, these women were more likely to engage in their own economic activity or even seek deployment in combat as a way to gain respect and power (82-83).
• Protected wives were women married to commanders or senior officers. They had access to significant resources from their husband and used their power to order women within the camp, including household servants. They used this power to both order compliance from other women and protect weak women from sexual violence by reporting transgressions to their husbands (83-84).
• Senior women were those women whose societal position transcended the normal male-female power dichotomy in the United Front. By virtue of age, traditional authority, pre-war position, or military prowess, these women were able to exercise non-gendered power and authority in politics or military affairs (84-85).