Fighting forced marriage in war
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2009 a war crimes trial in Sierra Leone ruled that forced marriage was a crime against humanity. It was the first time a court had recognised that charge. The ruling came in a trial of three rebel leaders for crimes committed during Sierra Leone's civil war. The legal turning point came largely as a result of the testimonies of the women who had been victims. The prosecution argued that forced marriage should be considered a crime against humanity distinct from other forms of sexual violence. Farhana Haider has been speaking to the former chief prosecutor Stephen Rapp about the trials.
Photo: Sierra Leone, repatriated refugees reaching Freetown January 2001 Credit: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me for |
| 0:47.2 | Hana Hither. |
| 0:50.3 | In 2009, an international special court in Sierra Leone issued a landmark ruling, convicting |
| 0:59.6 | three former rebel leaders of a number of crimes and atrocities, including forced marriage |
| 1:05.4 | as a crime against humanity. |
| 1:07.9 | It was the first time a court had recognized that charge. |
| 1:11.7 | The women and girls who suffered from what we saw as forced marriage were raped. |
| 1:17.0 | They were sexually enslaved. |
| 1:19.0 | But there was also something else that seen as the consorts of the rebel leaders or soldiers in which they had no decision to make |
| 1:35.9 | about whether they wanted to marry this person or not. |
| 1:38.7 | In 2009 Stephen Rapp was the chief prosecutor in Sierra Leone Special Court in the wake of its long brutal war. |
| 1:47.0 | Previously he'd been the chief of prosecutions at the Rwanda Tribunal after its genocide in 1994. He'd long been passionate |
| 1:55.9 | about defending victims of crime, which was partly as a result of being a victim |
| 2:00.2 | himself. He'd been kidnapped in Washington during an attempted robbery when he was 21. |
| 2:06.4 | These individuals robbed an establishment and left me to die in a hot car trunk in the middle of |
| 2:12.2 | summer and I was a hot car trunk in the middle of summer and I was very very lucky that someone eventually heard my cries of help before I passed out and I was eventually able to testify against the main person who did it to main. |
| 2:23.7 | And so when I've worked as a prosecutor at the national level or at the international level, |
... |
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