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-- Culled from Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme, Vol. 13, May 2006.
In October 2005, Zainab Bangura testified in Trial Chamber II of the Special Court as an Expert Witness on the issue of 'forced marriage' during the war in Sierra Leone. She was commissioned by the Prosecution in February 2005 to prepare a report on forced marriage in respect of the trials against the RUF and AFRC accused persons. In the Report, forced marriage was captioned as the 'Bush Wife Phenomenon'. The Prosecution's objective during the trials was to prove that 'forced marriage' during the war in Sierra Leone constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity. If the Trial Chamber upholds this charge, it would become an international precedent to make criminal this type of wartime gender-based violence.
This article gives a critical analysis of what constitutes 'forced marriage' as encompassed in the "Bush Wife Phenomenon" in the context of the Sierra Leone war. Under which scope this phenomenon becomes a war crime and/or crime against humanity. --
