ABSTRACT
For some years, I took a ‘break from feminism’ in the words of the American scholar Janet Halley (but in quite a different sense than she suggests) (Halley 2006). At that time, I thought that I had nothing particularly new to contribute towards the debate in my particular field of study, women and international humanitarian law (IHL). I wanted to allow time to refresh myself and see what avenues might open up in the future. Of course, in one sense, all our work as feminists is infused with our world view, and I mean by ‘taking a break’ merely that the word ‘feminist’ did not appear in the title or in the text of my writing. I was aware of the growth in scholarly literature on rape and sexual violence in armed conflict and the burgeoning jurisprudence of the two ad hoc international criminal tribunals established by the Security Council of the United Nations in the 1990s.2 But my mind was on other aspects of IHL and I had not given a great deal of thought to where we were heading with this focus on criminal punishment of sexual violence against women in armed conflict.
