Rebel Legitimacy and Wartime Sexual Violence Katherine Sawyer University of Maryland Kathleen Cunningham University of Maryland and Peace Research Institute Oslo Kanisha Bond

Explaining Wartime SV Civil conflict and sexual violence Why and how? Our focus: Rebel legitimacy Existing lit emphasized goals of rebels, the need to generate cohesion, inequality, wartimes cleavages such as ethnicity, lack of control of soldier, greed, gender inequality

Rebel Legitimacy Rebel SV: Incentives to constrain SV to retain benefits of legitimacy: Support in population Support of international actors

Hypothesis Rebels with greater legitimacy are less likely to commit acts of sexual violence during the conflict.

Measuring Legitimacy Difficult to measure directly Multiple sources Our measure: How rebel leaders achieve power Information about connection to population and to group members

Rebel Leader Data Categories of ascension types: Election Founder Inherited/Non-democratic Split Merged Third party Rebel officer

Rebel Leader Data (2) Figure 1. Distribution of Rebel Leadership Ascension by Type

Methods Logistic model Dependent Variables: Measures of Legitimacy: Rebel acts of sexual violence Measures of Legitimacy: Quasi-democratically elected leader (compared to all other types) Legal political wing Covariates: Territorial control, troop strength, coercion, abduction, external support, external intervention, ethnic fractionalization, population, GDPpc

Empirical Results – Rebel SV Figure 2. Marginal Effects: Probability of Rebel Acts of Sexual Violence

Concluding Remarks Rebel legitimacy differs Thanks! Impacts battle tactics: Rebel – Acts of sexual violence Thanks!