Sexual Violence Against Women During the Algerian Civil War

Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality

Year: 2023

DOI:

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Sexual Violence Against Women During the Algerian Civil War

Hanane Benchama

ABSTRACT: 

In the 1990s, Algeria witnessed a decade of political conflict and violence between the Algerian government and various Islamic fundamentalist groups. This conflict was more than a political crisis and has been considered as a gender crisis because hundreds of women were targeted, killed, kidnapped, and sexually assaulted by the non-state fundamentalist armed groups. Sexual violence was high on the fundamentalists’ agenda in which they used women’s bodies as battlefields. Considering the fact that females during the peak of Islamic fundamentalism in Algeria were oppressed and marginalized by the patriarchy, this study aims at showing the relationship between this violence against women and their status in society. In this context, the major aim of my research is to provide an understanding of the multiple reasons for the fundamentalists to use sexual violence against women and girls and to show the circumstances that helped them. My analysis will focus on the theme of sexual violence as a wartime strategy as represented in Yamina Bachir’s film Rachida (2002), applying feminist theory. The results are that sexual violence is used as a strategy of war for political and religious reasons, because of misogyny, and to humiliate and stigmatize the larger community.

keywords: misogyny, patriarchy, rape, terrorists, war strategy