Sara Meger

Rape and other forms of sexual violence have always been a consistent feature of war. Yet it is only fairly recently that researchers have identified rape as a deliberate tool of war-making rather than simply an inevitable side effect of armed conflict. Much of the emerging literature has suggested that the underlying causes of rape stem from a single motivation—whether individual, symbolic, or strategic—leading to disagreement in the field about how we can understand and respond to the causes and consequences of sexual violence in war.
In Rape Loot Pillage, Sara Meger argues that sexual violence is a form of gender-based political violence (perpetrated against both men and women) and a manifestation of unequal gender relations that are exacerbated by the social, political, and economic conditions of war. She looks at trends in the form and function of sexual violence in recent and ongoing conflicts to contend that, in different contexts, sexual violence takes different forms and is used in pursuit of different objectives. For this reason, no single framework for addressing conflict-related sexual violence will be sufficient. Taking a political economy perspective, Meger maintains that these variations can be explained by broader struggles over territory, assets, and other productive resources of that motivate contemporary armed conflicts. Sexual violence is a reflection of global political economic struggles, and can’t be addressed only at the local level—it must be addressed through regional and international policy. She concludes by providing some initial ideas about how this can be done via the UN and national governments.

Feminist International Relations (IR) theory is haunted by a radical feminist ghost. From Enloe's suggestion that the personal is both political and international, often seen as the foundation of feminist IR, feminist IR scholarship has been built on the intellectual contributions of a body of theory it has long left for dead. Though Enloe's sentiment directly references the Hanisch's radical feminist rallying call, there is little direct engagement with the radical feminist thinkers who popularised the sentiment in IR. Rather, since its inception, the field has been built on radical feminist thought it has left for dead. This has left feminist IR troubled by its radical feminist roots and the conceptual baggage that feminist IR has unreflectively carried from second-wave feminism into its contemporary scholarship. By returning to the roots of radical feminism we believe IR can gain valuable insights regarding the system of sex-class oppression, the central role of heter...

This article examines the structures of international relations that facilitate political violence in postcolonial states. It explores the intersections of patriarchy and imperialism in the contemporary political economy to understand how armed conflict and political violence in postcolonial states form an integral element of the global economy of accumulation in deeply gendered ways. By focusing on the structural level of analysis, this article argues that the siting of armed conflict in postcolonial contexts serves to maintain neo-colonial relations of exploitation between the West and non-West, and is made both possible and effective through the gendering of political identities and types of work performed in the global economy. I argue here that armed conflict is a form of feminized labour in the global economy. Despite the fact that performing violence is a physically masculine form of labour, the outsourcing of armed conflict as labour in the political economy is 'feminized' in that it represents the flexibilization of labour and informalization of market participation. So while at the same time that this work is fulfilling hegemonic ideals of militarized masculinity within the domestic context, at the international level it actually demonstrates the 'weakness' or 'otherness' of the 'failed'/feminized state in which this violence occurs, and legitimizes and hence re-entrenches the hegemonic relations between the core and periphery on the basis of problematizing the 'weak' state's masculinity. It is through the discursive construction of the non-Western world as the site of contemporary political violence that mainstream international relations reproduces an orientalist approach to both understanding and addressing the 'war puzzle'.

Recent international-relations scholarship tends to view sexual violence, especially rape, as an exceptional—if not aberrant—phenomenon in war and armed conflict. Indeed, it often treats it as the sole form of gender-based violence capable of threatening international peace and security. I challenge the isolation of this particular form of gender violence in the study and governance of international security. I argue that the securitization of sexual violence produced its " fetishization " in international advocacy, policy, and scholarship. The stages of securitization operate as a process of fetishization by first, decontextualizing and homogenizing this violence; second, objectifying this violence; and third, affecting inter-unit relations through the 'selling back' of sexual violence to actors involved in conflict. As such, my argument helps specify why securitization fails to adequately address, an issue like sexual violence—and often results in further retrenchment of disparate power relations.

Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) has been a prominent feature in the conflict in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), committed as a weapon of war, an instrument of terror, and perpetrated opportunistically by armed men from all factions of the conflict. While most feminist analyses identify the link between gender and SGBV, they have tended to privilege individual or cultural accounts of gender construction. This article develops a feminist political economy analysis of SGBV in the ongoing conflict that looks at the relationship between gender as an international structure and the processes of the international political economy that precipitate this violence in Congo’s ongoing war. This article theorizes an important and overlooked relationship between the structures of gender hierarchy and international political economy that may provide insights into the widespread use of SGBV in the conflict in eastern DRC, which this article contends constitutes part of the “global assembly line” of capitalist production.

This chapter argues for a feminist political economy (FPE) approach, which provides better conceptual tools for understanding the motivations and effects of sexual violence in armed conflict. Specifically, by looking at the use of CRSV against men and boys, this approach uncovers the ways in which violence inscribes and exploits differential values on bodies in times of war. Thus, not only is the political economy of CRSV apparent “in the ways that conflicts are often characterized by attempts to gain control over productive and reproductive resources” (Meger, 2015b, p. 416), but also in the way that the perpetration of sexual violence represents an exchange in and exploitation of value, both in terms of the bodies involved, and in the violence itself.

Dominant narratives in international relations and security treat sexual violence in conflict as an exceptional form of gender-based violence, perpetrated primarily against women and girls. Due to underreporting and a programmatic bias of focusing only on women, the sexual violence experienced by men in many contemporary conflicts has been largely overlooked in both policy formation and academic analysis. This paper seeks to understand the occurrence of sexual violence against men and boys in armed conflict by positioning it within (and against) the current feminist discourse on wartime sexual violence. The perpetration of sexual violence against men and boys demonstrates the materiality of sexual violence in conflict and its instrumentality in providing economic, political, and social opportunity to men who would otherwise be marginalised in the formal global economy. This function is served regardless of the sex of the victim(s).

Rape and other forms of sexual violence have been a prominent feature in the conflict in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo, committed as a weapon of war and opportunistically by all groups involved. This chapter seeks to understand the causes of sexual violence in this conflict with a primary focus on structural influences. Through an analysis of literature on rape in war and primary data obtained through interviews conducted in eastern Congo in 2010, this chapter takes the militarization of masculinity and the economic objectives of armed groups to be important factors for understanding the ongoing use of sexual violence in this conflict. This chapter contends that the prevalence and form of sexual violence occurring in this war must be understood in relation to both the social constructs of masculinity fostered in Congo and the political economy of the ongoing war. This chapter argues that while political and economic reforms are essential to ending the conflict, they may be insufficient for ending the use of sexual violence. In order that women’s rights be protected in post-conflict Congo, social reform that addresses the relationship of sexual violence with masculinity must also be implemented.

" Clark has provided us with a sure-footed account of Congolese politics, a carefully considered discussion of the most important factors determining the failure of Congolese democratization efforts, a perceptive critique of the ways that the complexities of such ...