A Gendered Weapon of War

Sexual Violence against Women in Haiti through an Intersectional Feminist International Relations Approach

Abstract

Wartime sexual violence is systematically under-theorized in both realist international relations (IR) and mainstream feminist IR frameworks. Realism's state-centric lens renders gendered violence invisible, while universal feminist approaches fail to account for the complex intersections of race, class, displacement and postcolonial history that shape women's lived experiences of sexual violence. This paper argues that an intersectional feminist perspective, applied through a multifactorial analytical framework, more adequately addresses wartime rape as a deliberate weapon of war. Using Haiti as a case study, the analysis examines how gang-perpetrated sexual violence in Port-au-Prince operates at the intersection of poverty, postcolonial state failure, anti-Haitian racism and gender. Drawing on testimony from Haitian grassroots organizations, survivor accounts and human rights documentation, it demonstrates that wartime rape in Haiti is not an unfortunate by-product of conflict, but a calculated instrument of territorial domination and social control that demands an intersectional analytical response.