Hastings Women’s Law Journal Volume 22 Article 3 Number 2 Summer 2011 1-1-2011 Dying for the Bonds of Marriage: Forced Marriages as a Weapon of Genocide Carmel O'Sullivan Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj Part of the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Carmel O'Sullivan, Dying for the Bonds of Marriage: Forced Marriages as a Weapon of Genocide, 22 Hastings Women's L.J. 271 (2011). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj/vol22/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Women’s Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Dying for the Bonds of Marriage: Forced Marriages as a Weapon of Genocide Carmel O'Sullivan* I. INTRODUCTION Many thought, no doubt, that the horrors of the Second World War-the camps, the cruelty, the extermination, the Holocaust- could never happen again .... Our time-this decade even-has shown us that man's capacity for evil knows no limits. Genocide-the destruction of an entire people on the basis of ethnic or national origins-is now a word of our times. It is also a heinous reality that calls for a historic response. -Kofi Annan' For centuries, women were regarded as the "spoils of war." Rape and sexual violence against women were seen as inevitable consequences of armed conflict and their occurrence was not effectively regulated or prevented.