ABSTRACT
This text aims at discussing narratives about Bosnian women as rape victims and how this influenced and affected the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It contends that Bosnian Muslim women came to represent a victimised narrative of a sexualised war policy. The topic came to receive great attention from the international press and was also discussed within academia and feminist discourse. The chapter will argue that the depiction of Bosnian women during the conflict as vulnerable, traumatised and uniformly as sexual assault victims is deeply problematic. Such a degree of orientalism can have wider consequences, and how this affected the way in which the ICTY treated and protected witnesses giving testimony at the ICTY is examined. The chapter will show how this narrative dehumanised women and delegitimised their ICTY courtroom experience, thus, demeaning what could have been an empowering and emancipatory experience.
