The Security Council finally began to address and confront tactical rape and sexual violence in conflict as violations of international humanitarian law, and began taking practical steps to institutionalise action to prevent and to prosecute those responsible for these crimes. Significantly, it recognised them as a security threat, falling within the Security Council mandate. The nature of that threat needs to be fully understood. It is a threat that forms the basis for member states, not only the Security Council, to be required to recognise and accept their responsibility to confront tactical rape and sexual violence in conflict.

What sort of security threat?

It is significant that the Security Council has recognised tactical rape and sexual violence in conflict as falling within its mandate as issues of security concern. Writing in 2001, Judith G. Gardam and Michelle J. Jarvis noted that:

Clarity is needed regarding the nature of those security concerns. Security is not just about the absence of threat and not just about uncovering and addressing sources of insecurity. It is also about providing the values that make a person feel secure. The context for women's security needs to be gendered if women's needs are to fairly and appropriately met. Lee-Koo averred that the key was to reconstruct concepts such as ‘international politics’ and ‘security’. She noted that realists define security in political and military terms as the protection of the boundaries and integrity of the state against the dangers of an anarchical international environment. She concluded that within this discourse, women as a gendered grouping cannot be seen or heard, and are placed outside the realm of the ‘international’, which threatens lives and engenders gross insecurity in ‘silenced and unseen space’. While progress has been made at global level in the Security Council, this remains a context designed with and by male understandings of reality and largely concerned with the security of states.