Harassment

Lore & Background

The word harassment derives from the English verb harass plus the suffix -ment, attested from 1753. The verb harass entered English from French, where it was recorded in the late 16th century meaning torment, annoyance, bother, trouble, and by 1609 also referred to exhaustion. The French verb harasser is not found in a 1527 translation of Thucydides' History; its earliest known use is from the late 16th century in French military contexts, where it meant to exhaust the enemy by repeated raids. A 1562 military chant describes a gaunt horse as 'harassée' (overtired). The most commonly hypothesized roots are Old French harer or Old Frankish *hara, not Old Scandinavian hârr (grey horsehair).

Reader's Guide

Harassment is significant as a legal and social concept that covers behaviors ranging from mild irritation to serious abuse. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates, and in the legal sense includes disturbing, upsetting, or threatening actions. Harassment often evolves from discriminatory grounds and can nullify a person's rights. While typically involving repetitive behavior, serious one-off incidents may also qualify. The term's etymology is debated, with hypotheses linking it to Old French harace/harache, the interjection hare or haro, or Old Scandinavian hârr. Types include online harassment (e.g., trolling, cyberbullying), police harassment (unfair treatment by law officials), power harassment (workplace political abuse), psychological harassment (humiliating, intimidating behavior), and landlord harassment (creating uncomfortable conditions to induce tenant abandonment).

Did You Know?

• Harassment derives from the English verb harass plus the suffix -ment, first attested in 1753.
• The French verb harasser first appears in the late 16th century in French military usage, not in a 1527 translation of Thucydides.
• The etymology linking harassment to Old Scandinavian hârr (grey horsehair) is not widely accepted; the more common hypothesized roots are Old French harer or Old Frankish *hara.
• In some jurisdictions, harassment must be connected to a person's protected personal characteristics, but this is not always the case.

Legal Framework and International Prosecution

International law has undergone a dramatic transformation in how it addresses sexual violence committed during armed conflict. For generations, prosecuting individuals for wartime rape was exceedingly rare, and no explicit legal framework specifically named the crime. That changed in the 1990s, when a new generation of international legal instruments was crafted to hold perpetrators accountable. The landmark Akayesu judgment at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda stands as the most celebrated example: the tribunal's ruling marked a historic first in treating rape as a tool of genocide, setting a precedent that reverberated through the broader architecture of transitional justice. The Rwandan and Yugoslav tribunals are widely regarded as pivotal judicial bodies in that framework. Today, the Rome Statute governing the International Criminal Court explicitly enumerates rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, and any comparable form of sexual violence as both crimes against humanity and war crimes. Furthermore, when such acts are carried out with the specific intent to destroy a targeted group in whole or in part, they can be legally recognized as an act of genocide, elevating the offense to the highest tier of international criminal law.

The Spectrum of Violence and Its Contexts

Wartime sexual violence encompasses a broad and disturbing range of behaviors perpetrated by combatants during armed conflict, war, or military occupation. The acts can include gang rape, rape involving the use of objects, and other forms of forced sexual contact. In many historical and contemporary conflicts, such violence has been treated as a kind of spoils of war, a twisted reward for the conquering side. However, in situations of ethnic conflict, the motivations extend well beyond simple conquest, carrying broader sociological dimensions that target identity and community. The violence also functions as a deliberate instrument of psychological warfare, designed to humiliate and terrorize the opposing side far beyond the immediate battlefield. It manifests in diverse contexts: as institutionalized sexual slavery, as violence tied to specific battles or massacres, and as isolated individual acts. Importantly, this category is distinct from sexual harassment or assaults that occur among troops within a military unit. The perpetrators are combatants acting in the context of armed conflict, and the victims are typically civilians or members of the opposing group, making the violence an extension of the war itself rather than a separate criminal act.

Historical Legal Evolution

The legal response to sexual violence in warfare stretches back centuries, though it was inconsistent and often ineffective. In medieval Europe, the Catholic Church introduced the Peace and Truce of God, first proclaimed in 989, which discouraged soldiers from attacking women and civilians during feudal warfare. This was reinforced by the chivalric ideal of a knight who protected the innocent and refrained from lawlessness. In 1159, John of Salisbury composed Policraticus, attempting to regulate the conduct of armies in justifiable wars, though he simultaneously held that a soldier's ultimate duty was obedience to a superior's commands regardless of their morality. By the fourteenth century, some army codes explicitly prohibited rape and pillage, recognizing that such acts bred intense hostility among civilian populations and undermined military discipline. Yet the problem persisted through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Thinkers like Francisco de Vitoria challenged the notion that glory or conquest justified war, while jurist Alberico Gentili argued for the protection of all women. Despite these early efforts, systematic legal accountability for wartime sexual violence remained largely absent until the late twentieth century.

Defining the Scope: Terminology and Classification

Establishing a precise definition of wartime sexual violence remains an ongoing challenge, as scholars and legal bodies disagree on which specific acts qualify and what degree of connection to conflict is required. The terms rape, sexual assault, and sexual violence are frequently used interchangeably, creating ambiguity. The Rome Statute's Explanatory Note offers one of the most detailed legal definitions, describing rape as an invasion of the body committed by force, threat, coercion, or exploitation of a coercive environment, and deliberately using the concept of invasion to remain gender-neutral. The Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict dataset expands this framework to seven distinct categories, from rape and sexual slavery to forced sterilization and sexual torture, and specifically limits its scope to violence committed by armed actors—state militaries, rebel groups, and pro-government militias—during or immediately after conflict. In 2009, the United Nations adopted Resolution 1888, elevating conflict-related sexual violence to a peace and security issue and broadening the definition to include forced marriage and trafficking. More expansive definitions even encompass civilian-perpetrated violence when conflict creates an atmosphere of impunity.

Gallery