Acknowledging the Suffering of Victims of Sexual Violence in Iraq: The Iraqi High Tribunal and Crimes Against Women

Abstract

Violence, and the threat of violence, in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a pernicious and pervasive element of everyday life, conditioning the behaviours and attitudes of Iraqis of whatever class, ethnicity, or sect.1 The Ba’th regime was, in this regard, relatively constant in its treatment across society’s many different ethnic groupings, sectarian associations, tribal formations, and socio-economic strata. Episodes of violence in Saddam’s Iraq have been well documented, by human right’s observers during the period in which the Bacth regime ruled (1968-2003), and since then as academics have sought to shed light on events that had taken place in what had been one of the most authoritarian of states to have emerged in the post-Second World War period.