Gender Report Card on the International Criminal ... - YWCA Canada

OTP Situations and Cases
yet to confirm the reports of sexual violence. 980
Similarly, the UN Commission of Inquiry that was
dispatched to Libya could not confirm findings
of systematic sexual violence in its report. The
report, which was released on 1 June 2011,
stated that although it had received individual
accounts of rape, it was unable to verify these
accounts. 981 Nonetheless, the Commission
found enough evidence to warrant further
investigation into claims of sexual violence.
The report included accounts of rape by armed
civilians as well as forces of the Gaddafi Regime,
and alleged that war crimes were committed by
both sides to the conflict during the fighting. 982
Al-Jazeera’s ‘People & Power’ programme, in
which both the Prosecutor and Cherif Bassiouni,
chairman of a UN commission investigating
human rights violations in Libya, appeared, also
aired an investigative piece on the use of rape
as a weapon in Libya. Similarly it indicated that
though incidences of rape are well-known, exact
details surrounding the victims and systematic
occurrences of rape are difficult to uncover. 983
980 ‘Libyan children suffering rape, aid agency reports’, The
Guardian, 23 April 2011, available at ,
last visited on 27 October 2011.
981 ‘<strong>Report</strong> of the International Commission of Inquiry to
investigate all alleged violations of international human
rights law in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’, UN Human
Rights Council, (A/HRC/17/44), 1 June 2011, available
at , last visited on 27
October 2011.
982 ‘<strong>Report</strong> of the International Commission of Inquiry to
investigate all alleged violations of international human
rights law in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’, UN Human
Rights Council, (A/HRC/17/44), 1 June 2011, p 71-74,
available at , last
visited on 27 October 2011.
983 ‘Libya: war and rape’, Al-Jazeera, 29 June 2011,
available at , last visited on 27 October 2011.
Despite the Prosecutor’s numerous public
statements and the widespread media reports
suggesting that rape and other forms of sexual
violence had been committed in the conflict,
the Prosecutor’s application for Warrants of
Arrest for Gaddafi, Saif Al-Islam and Al-Senussi
did not include any charges of rape or sexual
violence. 984 As of the writing of this <strong>Report</strong>, he
has not sought to amend the Arrest Warrants
to add sexual violence charges. However, in
his statement to the Security Council, the
Prosecutor outlined the continuing efforts of the
Prosecution investigators, with the cooperation
of the NTC, to investigate allegations of sexual
violence committed during the conflict in
Libya. He stated that, due to the potential for
retaliation or ‘honour-based violence’ against
rape victims, the Prosecution had adopted
a strategy of minimising the exposure of
victims by obtaining ‘alternate evidence and
identifying avenues of investigation which
support charges without the need for multiple
victim statements’, although a limited number
of victims had been interviewed directly. 985
The Prosecutor concluded by suggesting that
the capability of the OTP to carry out further
investigations into sexual violence would be
dependent on the budget allocated to the Office
by the Assembly of States Parties. 986
984 ICC-01/11-4-RED.
985 ‘Statement to the United Nations Security Council
on the Situation in Libya, Pursuant to UNSCR 1970
(2011)’, Prosecutor of the International Criminal
Court, 2 November 2011, paras 14-17, available at
, last visited on 3 November 2011.
986 ‘Statement to the United Nations Security Council
on the Situation in Libya, Pursuant to UNSCR 1970
(2011)’, Prosecutor of the International Criminal
Court, 2 November 2011, para 22, available at
, last visited on 3 November 2011.
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