Sexual grooming in armed forces as war crime; the practices of the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam against female, pre-pubescent soldiers

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to identify sexual grooming in armed groups as a current practice inherent to militaries during conflicts, and therefore to understand it as a war crime. It emphasises gaps in the research on sexual violence against female soldiers; and discusses the “chastity obligation” military code as constituting sexual oppression. The following specifically calls to attention the recruitment of young female soldiers by the Tamil Tigers as equivalent to the recruitment of child soldiers in general, which has already been condemned as a war crime. The porosity between recruitment and sexual grooming of Tamil girl soldiers is widely found, as the recruiting phase is a plan for war alone, and sexual grooming is a strategy which prolongs the armed group’s influence in the aftermath of the conflict. From the latter statement, many forms of sexual violence are implied, and targeting sexual grooming as a catalyst of future domestic violence may be a means of improving rehabilitative methods and programmes.