One of the most significant shifts in current thinking on war and gender is the recognition that rape in wartime is not a simple by-product of war, but often a planned and targeted policy. For many feminists 'rape as a weapon of war' provides a way to articulate the systematic, pervasive, and orchestrated nature of wartime sexual violence that marks it as integral rather than incidental to war. This recognition of rape as a weapon of war has taken on legal significance at the Rwandan and Yugoslav Tribunals where rape has been prosecuted as a crime against humanity and genocide. In this paper, I examine how the Rwanda Tribunal's record of judgments conceives of rape enacted as an instrument of the genocide. I consider in particular how the Tribunal's conception of 'rape as a weapon of war' shapes what can be known about sexual violence and gender in the Rwandan genocide and what cannot, the categories of victims legally recognised and those that are not, and the questions pursued, and those foreclosed, about the patterns of violence before and during the genocide.

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Over the past decade, the United Nations conference has become an increasingly important site for contesting views on social relations. Although UN conferences cover a broad range of topics, from the environment to development, a recurrent focus of international debate has been on gender, and particularly, women's sexual and reproductive autonomy. The Beijing Conference on Women (1995) represented, in some respects, a culmination of international positioning around gender and women's rights. As such, it attracted the participation of not only a large contingent of women's organizations, but also a significant number of fundamentalist and conservative religious groups. In this article, I explore the participation of the Vatican in the Beijing process. The Vatican has a long history of involvement in international population issues which has positioned it as a leading international actor in opposing women's rights to reproductive freedom. This article focuses on the rhetorical and discursive strategies used by the Vatican at Beijing. By focusing on how the Vatican has responded to a women's human rights agenda, the paper explores some of the tensions and contradictions not only in the Vatican's position, but also in the campaign for women's rights. Through an examination of the Vatican's position at Beijing, the article offers some insight into the internationalization of rights debates and the significance this has for those on the religious right. HE UNITED Nations conference has become an unlikely symbol of t the growth, in size and sophistication, of international womens' move--JL ments. Over the last 20 years, feminist organizations, of varying types, have grown alongside United Nations-sponsored conferences to become highly organized and effective international actors. In the last ten years, the I i SOCIAL

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