Date: November 17, 2009
Subject: ANNEXURE A – SUGGESTED DEFINITIONS OF CRIMES (Communal Violence Bill, 2009)

No.
    Crime
Definition
     
1 Sexual violence The perpetrator committed an act of a sexual nature against one or more women or caused such woman or women to engage in an act of a sexual nature of force, or by threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power, against such person or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive environment, or the invasion was committed against a woman incapable of giving genuine consent. It includes acts that inflict physical, mental or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty. Crimes of sexual violence include (but are not limited to) rape, forced nudity, exposure of male sexual organs in front of women, parading women naked in public, enforced sterilization, forced pregnancy, mutilation of reproductive organs, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution and gender-based persecution.
2 Rape
  • The perpetrator invaded the body of a woman by conduct resulting in penetration, however slight, of any part of the body of the woman or of the perpetrator with a sexual organ, or of the anal or genital opening of the woman with any object or any other part of the body.
  • The invasion was committed by force, or by threat of force or coercion, such as that caused by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or abuse of power, against such woman or another person, or by taking advantage of a coercive environment, or the invasion was committed against a woman incapable of giving genuine consent.

Note: It is understood that a person may be incapable of giving genuine consent if affected by natural, induced or age-related incapacity.

3 Gender-based persecution  “Persecution” on the basis of gender means the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights contrary to international law on the basis of gender.
4 Genocide 
The following five acts, if committed with the intention to destroy all or part of a national, ethnical (linguistic & cultural), racial or religious group, may constitute genocide:

  • Killing members of the group
  • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group.
  • Deliberately inflicting on a group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.
  • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group;
  • Forcibly transferring children of a group to another group.

Note: Encouragement to, assistance in and attempts to commit genocide are also acts of genocide

5 Crimes Against Humanity Crimes against humanity means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: murder, extermination, enslavement, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture, sexual violence, gender-based violence, enforced disappearance of persons and other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or mental or physical health.

 

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