Avaliação: Teorías de la justicia y derechos humanos – Criminal Justice and the Aftermath of Sexual Violence in a Conflict. A Concept between Internal Affairs and Nationalism

Some of the States involved in an internal conflict have reported sexual violence against their ethnical communities, which has been impinged, in most of the cases, by guerrilla, paramilitary and Public Forces´ members. During the confrontation against guerrillas, some National Army officers have been accused of raping systemically rural indigenous women and children in certain isolated communities in Peru and Guatemala. Sexual violence has been occasionally materialized as a weapon of war and National Truth Commissions have reported a few and limited cases of violence against indigenous and farmer communities. Women non-Governmental organizations have detailed the implication of Public Forces officers within sexual violence attacks and have reported as well the tolerance and connivance of local Rule of Law State members.
The unique and most popular cases in Perú (Manta and Vilca) and Guatemala (Sepur Zarco) enlighten the difficulties, first of all, to identify and judge sexual violence in internal conflicts, and second, to bring public officials to Justice, for investigating and sanctioning their crimes as Human Rights violations and Humanitarian International Law infractions. According to this research, National Penal Codes have just revictimized women and children -the few of them that can confront this sensitive and harmful legal process- facing their aggressors in open hearings or postponing and closing their criminal cases against public officials, accused of sexual violence.
Assuming that we can not infer that States became entirely responsible for public officers’ implication in sexual violence cases in internal conflicts, the aim of this research will be to discuss if States and their Justice can generate a sense of nationalism when there is a responsibility bringing aggressors to Justice accused, allegedly, of sexual violence. According to this, the implication of public official in Human Rights violations and Humanitarian International Law infraction

• sexual violence, transitional justice, human rights, indigenous women, Rule of Law