As a general matter, the Elements Annex must recognize, as does customary international law, that acts of sexual and gender violence also constitute other crimes against the person within the Court's jurisdiction under articles 5-8. This approach is consistent with customary international law developments particularly as summarized and articulated in the recent decisions of the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals. See, e.g., the ICRC Non-Paper. An explicit statement requiring the consideration of sexual violence in relation to the acts of genocide will ensure that it not be marginalized and treated, as in the past, as less significant than other forms of violence that function as instruments of genocide. Sexual violence as the constituent acts of genocide.
Sexual violence can be the means of causing death in the context of genocide.
Both women and men can be mutilated sexually in a way that causes them to bleed to death. 2 Women are frequently raped and left to die or raped as a predicate to being killed. On the basis of the substantial testimonies brought before it, the Chamber finds that in most cases, the rapes of Tutsi women in Taba, were accompanied with the intent to kill those women. Many rapes were perpetrated near mass graves where the women were taken to be killed. A victim testified that Tutsi women caught could be taken away by peasants and men with the promise that they would be collected later to be executed.