Professional Women as Perpetrators: A Conversation with Valérie, “Rwanda’s Voice of Death”

ABSTRACT

The literature on women’s participation in genocide and related violence focuses on the actions of women who are either at the very top or at the very bottom of social hierarchies. Exceptional roles played by a select few elite women prosecuted at international criminal tribunals have been recognized. Scholars have also examined the motivations of ordinary women who are swayed by ethnocentric scapegoating or commit violence out of fear and coercion, including social and economic incentives. In-depth analyses of female perpetrators in the professionals category who, along with men in that category, serve as bridgemakers between commoners and leaders are scarce. With the exception of nurses, teachers, and secretaries involved in the Holocaust, the professionals category is gravely understudied in scholarship on perpetrators. This article begins to rectify this gap by examining the case of Valérie Bemeriki who, as a journalist for the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), promoted the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Valérie is a perpetrator who was intimately close to many Rwandans, including her victims, through the radio, yet she is simultaneously unfamiliar as her motivations have not been widely disclosed. The article provides an interpretive analysis of my interview with Valérie, radio transcripts of Valérie’s hate speech obtained by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and Rwandan and international newspapers and secondary source materials concerning Valérie. The findings suggest that perpetrators in the professionals category convey a contradictory experience in their motivations during the violence and their grievances in the aftermath. While Valérie minimized her agency in the genocidal machine, emphasizing structural constraints, she actively distinguished herself from powerless commoners, including Rwandan women living in a deeply patriarchal society. The article portrays Valérie as a strategic professional who hoped to excel by catering to powerful political figures.

KEYWORDS:

• genocide
• Rwanda
• gender
• perpetrators
• hate radio
• media

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the journal’s anonymous reviewers and the journal editor Anthony Dirk Moses for very useful feedback on previous drafts of this article. The author is grateful to Aurore Gakima for translation services, and to Kirsteen E. Anderson for editing assistance. In addition, participants in Women Perpetrators in Atrocity Law (American Society of International Law), including Mark Drumbl, Solange Mouthaan, Kiyala Jean Chrysostome, Jessica Trisko Darden, Margaret deGuzman, and Yvonne Dutton, provided thoughtful comments on this paper. The most important recognition goes to my interviewees in Rwanda, including Valérie Bemeriki.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Erin Jessee, “Rwandan Women No More: Female Génocidaires in the Aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide,” Conflict and Society: Advances in Research 1 (2015): 60–80.

2 On intersectionality, see Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–99.

3 Kjell Anderson and Erin Jessee, Introduction to Researching Perpetrators of Genocide, ed. Kjell Anderson and Erin Jessee (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), 3–4. On “unloved participants,” see Nigel Fielding, “Mediating the Message: Affinity and Hostility in Research on Sensitive Topics,” American Behavioral Scientist 33, no. 5 (1990): 608–20.

4 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009); Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006); and James Dawes, Evil Men (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

5 Anderson and Jessee, Introduction to Researching Perpetrators, 10.

6 See, e.g., Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963); Deborah E. Lipstadt, The Eichmann Trial (New York: Random House, 2011); Steve J. Stern, Reckoning with Pinochet (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 2nd ed. (New York: New Press, 2013); Robert Donia, Radovan Karadžić: Architect of the Bosnian Genocide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); and Louis Sell, Slobodan Milošević and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).

7 Exceptions include Jessee, “Rwandan Women No More”; Izabela Steflja and Jessica Trisko Darden, Women as War Criminals: Gender, Agency, and Justice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020); Olivera Simić, “‘I Would Do the Same Again’: In Conversation with Biljana Plavšić,” International Criminal Justice Review 28, no. 4 (2018): 317–32, and her forthcoming book on Biljana Plavšić.

8 Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry, Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence: Global Politics (London: Zed Books, 2015); Steflja and Trisko Darden, Women as War Criminals.

9 Kjell Anderson, “The Perpetrator Imaginary: Representing Perpetrators of Genocide,” in Researching Perpetrators (see note 3), 28; Susanne Luhmann, “Managing Perpetrator Affect: The Female Guard Exhibition at Ravensbrück,” in Perpetrating Selves: Doing Violence, Performing Identity, ed. Clare Bielby and Jeffrey Stevenson Murer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

10 Steflja and Trisko Darden, Women as War Criminals, 70; also Oyèrónké Oyēwūmi, ed., African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003).

11 Nicole Hogg and Mark Drumbl, “Women as Perpetrators: Agency and Authority in Genocidal Rwanda,” in Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century, ed. Amy E. Randall (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015); Steflja and Trisko Darden, Women as War Criminals; Sjoberg and Gentry, Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores.

12 Yvonne Leggat-Smith, Rwanda: Not So Innocent: When Women Become Killers (London: African Rights, 1995); Georgina Holmes, Women and War in Rwanda (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014); Jessee, “Rwandan Women No More”; and Sara E. Brown, “‘They Forgot Their Role’: Women Perpetrators of the Holocaust and the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda,” Journal of Perpetrator Research 3, no. 1 (2020): 156–85.

13 Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013); Barton, Writing and Rewriting the Reich: Women Journalists in the Nazi and Post-War Press (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023).

14 Susan Thomson, “Getting Close to Rwandans since the Genocide: Studying Everyday Life in Highly Politicized Research Settings,” African Studies Review 53, no. 3 (2010): 19.

15 I was unable to determine the total number of RTLM audiotapes featuring Valérie, and thus I was unable to estimate the percentage of Valerie’s broadcasts included in the Rwanda Archive.

16 Lee Ann Fujii, Interviewing in Social Science Research: A Relational Approach (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), 1; See also Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, eds., Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn (Armonk, NY: Sharp, 2014), 133.

17 Erin Jessee and Kjell Anderson, “Toward a Code of Practice for Qualitative Research among Perpetrators,” in Researching Perpetrators (see note 3).

18 Fujii, Interviewing in Social Science Research.

19 On similar challenges of conducting research in the aftermath of mass atrocities, see Erin Jessee, “The Limits of Oral History: Ethics and Methodology amid Highly Politicized Settings,” Oral History Review 38, no. 2 (2011): 287–307.

20 Antony Pemberton, Pauline G. M. Aarten, and Eva Mulder, “Stories as Property: Narrative Ownership as a Key Concept in Victims’ Experiences with Criminal Justice,” Criminology & Criminal Justice 19, no. 4 (2018): 404.

21 Arlene Stillwell and Roy F. Baumeister, “The Construction of Victim and Perpetrator Memories: Accuracy and Distortion in Role-Based Accounts,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23 (1997): 1157–72; see also Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (New York: Viking, 2011).

22 Antonius C. G. M. Robben, “Ethnographic Seduction, Transference, and Resistance in Dialogues about Terror and Violence in Argentina,” Ethos 24, no. 1 (1996): 71–106.

23 Chandra Lekha Sriram, “Perpetrators, Fieldwork, and Ethical Concerns,” in Perpetrators of International Crimes: Theories, Methods, and Evidence, ed. Alette Smeulers, Maartje Weerdesteijn, and Barbora Holá (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 70–1.

24 Lee Ann Fujii, “Shades of Truth and Lies: Interpreting Testimonies of War and Violence,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 2 (2010): 231–41.

25 Thomson, “Getting Close to Rwandans,” 22; see also David Mwabari, Navigating Cultural Memory: Commemoration and Narrative in Post-Genocide Rwanda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

26 See Lekha Sriram, “Perpetrators,” 66.

27 See Mina Rauschenbach, “Interviewing Perpetrators against the Backdrop of Ethical Concerns and Reflexivity,” in Perpetrators of International Crimes (see note 23), 85.

28 Rauschenbach, “Interviewing Perpetrators;” Izabela Steflja, Jessica Trisko Darden, and Amanda Wintersieck, “Breaking through the Legal Binary: Media Labelling of Dominic Ongwen as a Victim-Perpetrator, Social and Legal Studies 33, no. 3 (2024): 443–66.

29 Catherine Newbury, “Ethnicity and the Politics of History in Rwanda,” Africa Today 45, no. 1 (1998): 10.

30 Ibid., 11.

31 René Lemarchand, “Rwanda: The Rationality of Genocide,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 23, no. 2 (1995): 8.

32 René Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1994).

33 Liisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology Among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995), 4.

34 André Guichaoua, From War to Genocide: Criminal Politics in Rwanda 1990–1994 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 2015), 7–8.

35 Rezarta Bilali and Johanna Ray Vollhardt, “Victim and Perpetrator Groups’ Divergent Perspectives on Collective Violence: Implications for Intergroup Relations,” Political Psychology 40 (2019): 81.

36 Kjell Anderson, “‘Who Was I to Stop the Killing?’: Moral Neutralization among Rwandan Genocide Perpetrators,” Journal of Perpetrator Research 1, no. 1 (2017): 39–63.

37 Anderson, “Perpetrator Imaginary,” in Researching Perpetrators (see note 3).

38 Sarah E. Watkins, Erin Jessee, and Emma Brunton, “Women in Rwanda,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedias: African History. Oxford University Press. Published online 21 December 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.522. See also Jennie E. Burnet, Genocide Lives in Us: Women, Memory, and Silence in Rwanda (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012).

39 Sara E. Brown, “Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 16, no. 3 (2014): 448–9.

40 Hogg and Drumbl, “Women as Perpetrators,” 90.

41 Leggat-Smith, Rwanda: Not So Innocent.

42 Adam Jones, “Gender and Genocide in Rwanda,” Journal of Genocide Research 4, no. 1 (2002): 65–94; Hogg and Drumbl, “Women as Perpetrators.”

43 Sjoberg and Gentry, Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores.

44 Erin Jessee, “Seeing Monsters, Hearing Victims: The Politics of Perpetration in Postgenocide Rwanda,” in Researching Perpetrators (see note 3), 70–1.

45 Jean-Pierre Bucyensenge, “When Sons Rape, Kill at the Command of Mothers,” New Times, 7 April 2014.

46 Ivan R. Mugisha, “Women’s Roles Have Evolved – First Lady,” New Times/All Africa, 18 April 2014.

47 Emmanuel Goujon, “Journalist Confesses to Inciting Genocide,” Agence France-Presse, 22 June 1999.

48 Jon Swain, “Justice Looms for Rwanda’s Voice of Death,” Sunday Times, 5 September 1999.

49 Steflja and Trisko Darden, Women as War Criminals; Claire Provost and Lara Whyte, “Why Are Women Joining Far-Right Movements, and Why Are We So Surprised?” Open Democracy, 31 January 2018, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/women-far-right-movements-why-are-we-surprised/ (accessed 15 May 2023).

50 Holmes, Women and War in Rwanda; Provost and Whyte, “Why Are Women Joining Far-Right Movements?”

51 See, e.g., Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem; Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper Perennial Classics, 2004); Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (New York: Harper, 1998); James E. Waller, “Coming to Terms with the ‘Banality of Evil’: Implications of the Eichmann Trial for Social Scientific Research on Perpetrator Behaviour,” in The Eichmann Trial Reconsidered, ed. Rebecca Wittmann (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021), 19–31; Daniel Conway, “Banality, Again,” in The Trial That Never Ends: Hannah Arendt’s ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ in Retrospect, ed. Richard J. Golsan and Sarah Misemer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 67–91.

52 Kimberly Partee, “Evil or Ordinary Women: The Female Auxiliaries of the Holocaust,” in The Evil Body, ed. April Anson (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press and Brill Online, 2011), 1.

53 Sjoberg and Gentry, Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores.

54 Partee, “Evil or Ordinary Women,” 4, 5.

55 Meredith Loken and Hilary Matfess, “Introducing the Women’s Activities in Armed Rebellion (WAAR) project, 1946–2015,” Journal of Peace Research, published 16 February 2023, https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221128340; Fathima A. Badurdeen, “Women and Recruitment in the Al-Shabaab Network: Stories of Women Being Recruited by Women Recruiters in the Coastal Region of Kenya,” African Review 45, no. 1 (2018): 19–48; Azadeh Moaveni, Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS (New York: Penguin, 2019); Jocelyn Viterna, Women in War: The Micro-Processes of Mobilization in El Salvador (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

56 Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins.”

57 Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis,” Signs 38, no. 4 (2013): 788. See also Jane Coaston, “The Intersectionality Wars,” The Highlight by Vox, 28 May 2019. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination (accessed 15 May 2024).

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid., 797. See also Barbara Tomlinson, “To Tell the Truth and Not Get Trapped: Desire, Distance, and Intersectionality at the Scene of Argument,” Signs 38, no. 4 (2013): 993-1017.

60 Catherine A. MacKinnon, “Intersectionality as Method: A Note,” Signs 38, no. 4 (2013): 1020.

61 Dominique Damant et al., “Understanding the Trajectories of Women Who Use Violence Through an Intersectional Feminist Analysis,” Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work 38, no. 3 (2023): 432–47.

62 Ibid., 434. See also Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality (Malden: Polity Press, 2016).

63 Steflja and Trisko Darden, Women as War Criminals.

64 Lisa Sharlach, “Gender and Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Agents and Objects of Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 1, no. 3 (1999): 388.

65 Brown, “‘They Forgot Their Role’,” 157.

66 Lower, Hitler’s Furies, 24.

67 Leggat-Smith, Rwanda: Not So Innocent, 155–65, 208.

68 Lower, Hitler’s Furies, 42, 52.

69 Barton, Writing and Rewriting the Reich, 4, 8.

70 Jessee, “Rwandan Women No More.”

71 Darryl Li, “Echoes of Violence: Considerations on Radio and Genocide in Rwanda,” Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 1 (2004): 9–10.

72 Scott Straus, “What Is the Relationship between Hate Radio and Violence? Rethinking Rwanda’s ‘Radio Machete’,” Politics and Society 35, no. 4 (2007): 609–37.

73 International Monitor Institute Records, 1986–2006, Rwanda Archive, 22 April 1994, 115 RTLM, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, 3.

74 Mary Kimani, “RTLM: the Medium That Became a Tool for Mass Murder,” in The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, ed. Allan Thompson (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press; Ottawa: IDRC, 2007), 116.

75 Rwanda Archive, 22 April 1994, 115 RTLM, 2 (see note 73).

76 Ibid., 11.

77 “Extremist Radio Fuelled Shelling of Kigali Hotel, Journalist Tells ICTR,” All Africa, 21 May 2001.

78 “Women among the Accused in Rwandan Genocide,” Associated Press, 26 September 1995.

79 Bucyensenge, “When Sons Rape.”

80 Rwanda Archive, 4 June 1994, 134A RTLM, 5, 7, 9. 7 (see note 73).

81 Opération Turquoise was supposed to have humanitarian functions and establish a safe zone, but it has been accused of allowing Hutu extremists and militias to travel into Zaire and escape justice for complicity in genocide.

82 Rwanda Archive, 22 June 1994, 037B, RTLM, 8 (see note 73).

83 Rwanda Archive, 28 June 1994, 137A, RTLM, 4-5 (see note 73).

84 Jessee, “Rwandan Women No More.”

85 Rwanda Archive, 22 June 1994, 037B, RTLM (see note 73).

86 Ruggiu quoted. in Li, “Echoes of Violence,” 13.

87 Elisabeth King, From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

88 Li, “Echoes of Violence.”

89 Valérie broadcasting on RTLM on 22 June 1994, quoted in Li, “Echoes of Violence,” 14.

90 The World’s Most Wanted, Season 1, Episode 2: “Félicien Kabuga: The Financer of the Genocide in Rwanda,” directed by Thomas Zribi. Brighton, UK: Nova Prod/Premières Lignes Télévision, 2020.

91 ICTY, Sentencing Hearing, Prosecutor vs. Plavšić (IT-00-40-S), 17 December 2002.

92 Jonathan Doak, “The Therapeutic Dimension of Transitional Justice: Emotional Repair and Victim Satisfaction in International Trials and Truth Commissions,” International Criminal Law Review 11 (2011): 263–98.

93 “Rusesabagina Responds to Rwanda Government Book on ‘Hotel Rwanda’.” 6 April 2008, https://euxtv.wordpress.com/2008/04/12/rusesabagina-responds-to-rwanda-government-book-on-hotel-rwanda/ (accessed 8 August 2023).

94 Jelena Subotić, “The Cruelty of False Remorse: Biljana Plavšić at The Hague,” Southeastern Europe 36 (2012): 48.

95 Subotić, “Cruelty,” 40.

96 Carina Tertsakian, Le Château: The Lives of Prisoners in Rwanda (London: Arves Books, 2008).

97 Susan Thomson, “Reeducation for Reconciliation: Participant Observations on Ingando,” in Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence, ed. Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 332.

98 Jennie E. Burnet, “Genocide lives in us: Amplified silence and the politics of memory in Rwanda” (PhD Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005); Burnet, Genocide Lives in Us; Susan Thomson, “Engaged silences as political agency in post-genocide Rwanda: Jeanne’s Story,” in Rethinking Silence, Voice and Agency in Contested Gendered Terrains, ed. Jane L. Parpart and Swati Parashar (London: Routledge, 2018); Susan Thomson, “Whispering truth to power: The everyday resistance of Rwandan peasants to post-genocide reconciliation,” African Affairs 110, no. 440 (2011).

99 Jeff Horowitz, “Five Top Genocide Suspects Are Living Free in Canada, says Rwanda – and It Wants Them Back to Stand Trial,” Montreal Gazette, 1 September 2007.

100 “Former Rwanda Spy Chief Convicted: Pascal Simbikangwa Given 25 Years in Prison for Role in 1994 Genocide,” Toronto Star, 18 March 2014.

101 World’s Most Wanted.

102 “Rusesabagina Responds.”

103 Gretchen Baldwin, “Nation-Building Confessions: Carceral Memory in Postgenocide Rwanda,” Ethics Forum 14, no. 2 (2019): 171.

104 “Bemeriki Says She Lied to Save Her Skin,” JusticeInfo.Net Hirondelle News, 9 April 2003, https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/17328-en-en-bemeriki-says-she-lied-to-save-her-skin80948094.html (accessed 15 May 2023); “Prosecution Questions Bemeriki’s Testimony,” JusticeInfo.Net Hirondelle News, 10 April 2003, https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/17326-en-en-prosecution-questions-bemerikis-testimony80928092.html (accessed 10 August 2023); “Rwanda: Defence Teams Criticize Media Trial Verdict,” BBC, 10 December 2003.

105 Human Rights Watch, “Rwanda: Paul Rusesabagina Convicted in Flawed Trial, 20 September 2021.

106 Human Rights Watch, “Rwanda”; Ignatius Ssuuna and Caroline Kimeu, “Hotel Rwanda’s Paul Rusesabagina Released from Prison,” The Guardian, 25 March 2023.

107 “Hotel Rwanda: A Work of Fiction?” 1 April 2008, https://kenyanbooks.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/hotel-rwanda-a-work-of-fiction/

108 For a view on Rusesabagina’s culpability, see Joseph Ngunjiri, “Hotel Rwanda’s Fictional Hero,” All Africa, 15 November 2010.

109 Nicola Palmer, Courts in Conflict: Interpreting the Layers of Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 15.

110 See, e.g., United Nations International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, “Three Media Leaders Convicted for Genocide,” press release, 3 December 2003, https://unictr.irmct.org/en/news/three-media-leaders-convicted-genocide (accessed 15 May 2023); and André Guichaoua, “What’s at Stake in the Kabuga Trial,” All Africa, 2 October 2020.

111 Steflja and Trisko Darden, Women as War Criminals; Lila Hassan and Max Green, “American Mom Who Pleaded Guilty to Terrorism Charges Sentenced to 6.5 Years,” PBS, 9 November 2020, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/american-mom-pleaded-guilty-terrorism-charges-sentenced/

112 The Prosecutor v. Georges Ruggiu, ICTR-97-32-I, https://unictr.irmct.org/en/cases/ictr-97-32 (accessed 15 May 2023); “ICTR/ITALY – Genocide – Convict Journalist Ruggiu Set Free in Violation of ICTR Statute,” JusticeInfo.Net Hirondelle News, 28 May 2009, https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/21479-en-en-280509-ictritaly-genocide-convict-journalist-ruggiu-set-free-in-violation-of-ictr-statute1228612286.html (accessed 15 May 2023).

113 Li, “Echoes of Violence.”

114 Quoted in The Local, 26 April 2007; see Subotić, “Cruelty,” 49.

115 Jessee, “Seeing Monsters” and “Rwandan Women No More.”

116 Steflja and Trisko Darden, Women as War Criminals.

117 Brown, “Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide,” 456.

118 Brown, “They Forgot Their Role,” 171.

119 A Mots Couverts, directed by Violaine Baraduc and Alexandre Westphal, Paris: Les Films de l’embellie, 2015.

120 Steflja and Trisko Darden, Women as War Criminals.

Additional information

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledges funding for fieldwork from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and for translation from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Notes on contributors

Izabela Steflja

Izabela Steflja is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research concerns local perceptions of international criminal trials, women’s participation in war crimes, and children associated with armed groups. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in East and Central Africa and the Balkans. Steflja is the author of Women as War Criminals: Gender, Agency, and Justice (Stanford University Press 2020, with Jessica Trisko Darden) and her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Third World Quarterly, Nationalities Papers, Social & Legal Studies, Human Rights Review, Europe-Asia Studies and Global Change, Peace & Security.