ABSTRACT
The ‘problem’ of sexual violence, in the myriad forms it takes, has been alternatively normalized and challenged through various public responses and narratives. Since the feminist movement in the West began to bring sexual violence to the forefront of political struggle, the heightened visibility of the issue has encouraged a plethora of institutionalized responses and analytical approaches. Legal reform movements have been exposing how law excludes and/or obscures this particular form of violence as such. Cultural codes of approval and implicit social agreements to remain silent about sexual violence have been disrupted by feminist protest and consciousnessraising.1 The national movements have turned international with nongovernmental organizations and international law taking up sexual violence as an actionable offense against human rights which has been brought before international tribunals as itself a war crime.2 The ongoing struggle to create a progressive public/political understanding of and response to sexual violence aiming to ultimately bring it to an end is now global in reach even while differentiated historical contexts sustain very particular regimes of truth about the phenomenon and its impact.
