Abstract

This chapter examines the gendered politics of fact-finding, including the production and identification of facts, that then enable political and legal positioning on violence against women in general, and sexual violence in particular. The conclusions have particular relevance in the context of the Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict, which reflects a technocratic response. The analysis is advanced in the context of a broader theoretical critique that addresses intimate violence, and concern over the increased emphasis on documenting certain kinds of physical harms over other harms. The chapter affirms the ascendency of sexual violence discourses in international human rights and humanitarian law and the role served by documentation of these ascendant harms, and probes the ways in which data collection about penetrative sexual harms serves multiple, and possibly nefarious, other interests.