Reproductive Violence as a Category of Analysis: Disentangling the Relationship between ‘the Sexual’ and ‘the Reproductive’ in Transitional Justice


 There has been limited engagement with reproductive violence in the field of transitional justice. Highlighting how, where this has taken place, reproductive violence has tended to be approached through the lens of sexual violence, this article problematises the category of ‘the sexual’ in understanding conflict-related violence. Advancing an approach to reproductive violence that centralises the notions of reproductive autonomy and choice, along with recognition of the structural conditions within which they can be exercised, the article argues that placing acts of reproductive violence within a frame of ‘sexual violence’ obscures the complexities of harm inflicted on women and masks the distinct gendered structures that underpin different forms of violence. The article ultimately argues that conceptualising reproductive violence in this way can contribute to greater understanding within transitional justice of the diverse harms experienced by women and has the potential to challenge the gendered normalisation of control over their reproductive functions.∞


INTRODUCTION
Within the reproductive sphere many people, especially women and girls, are vulnerable to violence. This holds true in both conflict and peace. Reproductive violence is often connected to sexual violence but is also distinct in that it constitutes 'a violation of reproductive autonomy or [. . .] is directed at people because of their reproductive capacity.' 1 In the context of conflict or large-scale human rights abuses, reproductive violence is more widespread than is often recognised and includes acts such as forced pregnancy, forced sterilisation, forced abortion and forced contraception. While there has been some attention to such forms of violence within human rights mechanisms, reproductive violence has been 'overwhelmingly absent' from transitional justice processes, 'both as a substantive area of focus as well as in the discourse adopted.' 2 Where there has been some engagement with forms of reproductive violence in this context, they have tended to be approached through the lens of sexual violence. As a result, the complexities of these forms of violence, and the connection between reproductive matters and violence or coercion, have not been fully recognised in efforts to address conflict-related or large-scale human rights violations.
Recent developments nevertheless suggest that greater sensitivity to the reproductive dimensions of conflict-related or large-scale violence is beginning to emerge. Two particularly significant developments in this respect are the Colombian Constitutional Court's 2019 decision on forced abortion and forced contraception within the FARC, which is one of the first to directly address reproductive violence in the context of a transitional justice process, and the ICC's conviction in 2021 of Dominic Ongwen on charges of forced pregnancy, which constitutes the first case involving charges for reproductive violence at an international criminal tribunal. Taking these developments as its point of departure, this article seeks to demonstrate the conceptual importance of understanding reproductive violence as a distinct category of harm requiring recognition and redress in transitional justice settings. It does so by problematising the category of 'the sexual' in understanding conflictrelated violence, arguing that placing acts of reproductive violence within a frame of 'sexual violence' functions to obscure the complexities of violence and harm inflicted on women and masks the distinct gendered structures that underpin different forms of violence.
Combining elements of structural feminist critiques of the field of transitional justice with the contributions of reproductive justice scholars, the first section of this article proposes an approach to reproductive violence as rooted in the notions of reproductive autonomy and choice along with recognition of the structural conditions within which they can be exercised. Second, the article illustrates how the limited recognition of reproductive violence in international discourses on conflict-related violence has tended to subsume acts of this nature within the category of sexual violence. Highlighting the complexity of the relationship between 'the sexual' and 'the reproductive' as categories to understand violence, this section challenges the unquestioning categorisation of reproductive violence as simply one of many forms of sexual violence, and considers what may be lost through the framing of reproductive harms in this way.
In this respect, the next section seeks to surface what has long remained invisible in international legal and transitional justice processes by outlining instances of reproductive violence that have taken place in contexts of conflict or large-scale human rights abuses. In doing so, the section sets out the beginnings of a typology of reproductive violence in these contexts, which highlights the continuum of reproductive violence to which women are subjected and the gendered social structures within which this is embedded. The article then goes on to analyse the Colombian Constitutional Court's 2019 decision and the Ongwen trial at the ICC, highlighting how they adopt legal and conceptual approaches that begin to draw out the unique harms and the distinctly gendered normative stakes that attach to reproductive violence.
On this basis, the final section considers what approaching reproductive violence in this way can contribute to the field of transitional justice. It ultimately argues that adopting a reproductive justice approach opens up space to talk about how best to respond to reproductive harm that occurs during periods of conflict and large-scale violence and, importantly, how doing so may have the potential to disrupt the gendered inequalities that make individuals vulnerable to such violence in the first place.

CONCEPTUALISING REPRODUCTIVE VIOLENCE IN TRANSITIONAL
JUSTICE: SETTING THE SCENE In the field of public health, the politics at stake in using the categories of 'the sexual' or 'the reproductive' are evident in how references to sexual health -associated with matters that could relate to pleasure, desire and wellbeing as opposed to parenthood -have been 'carefully wrapped historically, so as not to be too visible, in order not to offend.' 3 This has resulted in the subordination of 'the sexual' to 'the reproductive' in this field. Whereas in the field of public health 'the reproductive' has therefore been privileged over 'the sexual', the opposite is true in international law, where 'the reproductive' has been delicately masked. For instance, in international human rights law, reproductive rights have been advanced by linking experiences related to reproduction to existing rights to life, health, freedom from discrimination and freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, rather than being recognised explicitly as independent rights. 4 In a similar manner, during the drafting of the Rome Statute of the ICC, controversies around crimes involving reproductive violence resulted in definitions of forced pregnancy and forced sterilisation that sought to carefully circumscribe the extent to which their criminalisation could be understood to reflect support for broader principles relating to reproductive self-determination. 5 In contrast to this intentional masking of 'the reproductive', 'the sexual' has assumed particular prominence in international discourses on conflict-related violence, which has given rise to critiques that 'women's conflict-time experiences are increasingly conflated to a singular and reductive typology of wartime rape.' 6 This focus on sexual violation in addressing harms inflicted on women has been problematised in the gender scholarship on transitional justice for how it essentialises female victimhood, reproduces patriarchal, heteronormative and racialised narratives of women's agency and sexuality, and constructs a discourse of exceptionality around conflict-related violence, which naturalises the continuities of every-day, systemic violence experienced by women. 7 A significant component of the critique of this hypervisibility of sexual violence is how it also functions to sexualise women in ways that overlook the varied nature of the gendered harms they may experience, such as displacement or unequal distribution of property, as well as the wider connections between poverty, violence and gender. 8 This article builds on this critique first in how it contributes to the increased recognition of the multiple different forms of gendered harm, beyond the sexual, to which women may be subjected. At the same time, it also seeks to go beyond simply broadening the scope of the forms of violence to which women are identified as being particularly vulnerable, to problematise the category of 'the sexual' in how violence has been framed and understood, and what has been included within it.
The article's analysis also draws on a wider identification of some of the foundational limitations of the field of transitional justice in how it has privileged liberal paradigms of civil and political rights, with the effect that acts of physical violence taking place in the traditionally masculine public, political sphere are prioritised over forms of structural violence and unequal social relations. 9 Within truth-seeking, accountability and reparations processes, this has often resulted in a narrow conception of victimhood where 'the "victim" emerges as the one whose rights to bodily integrity have been violated.' 10 As the ostensibly paradigmatic form of bodily harm to which 5 Grey, supra n 1 at 919. women are subjected, sexual violence has in this way also remained abstracted out from wider structural questions of gender and inequality. 11 Transitional justice processes have for this reason been subject to critique precisely for how they delimit what counts as 'violence' and the narrowly defined notions of 'justice' and 'transition' that are offered in response. This has resulted in a framework that has often failed to address broader structures of inequality and, in this sense, leaves entrenched conditions of gender inequality and power asymmetries in postconflict societies unchallenged. 12 Within the scholarship on gender in transitional justice, there are therefore calls for more transformative notions of transition and gender justice, which capture the 'transformation of the underlying inequalities that provided the conditions in which [. . .] specifically gendered harms were possible.' 13 In the specific context of reproductive health and rights, the significance of structural inequalities has similarly been highlighted by the reproductive justice movement, initially developed by women of colour in the United States, who have emphasised the importance of adopting an intersectional approach to reproductive health. In particular, in the context of abortion rights, reproductive justice scholars have problematised the rhetoric of individual choice for how it reflects a set of assumptions around unfettered agency 'that applies only to a small group of women who are privileged enough to have multiple choices.' 14 For this reason, the reproductive justice movement has challenged the delinking of access to abortion and reproductive health services from other social justice issues such as economic justice, education, race, sexual orientation and gender identity, the environment, disability and immigration. 15 This approach has emphasised the importance of recognising the effect of these broader structural inequalities on an individual's decision-making in the reproductive sphere and their ability to determine their own 'reproductive destiny'. 16 In doing so, reproductive justice scholars have highlighted that 'reproductive "rights" are meaningless without addressing the social contexts in which these rights are exercised, including historically oppressive structures of racial and economic inequality.' 17 Drawing on the parallels between the reproductive justice movement and the discussion on the gendered meaning of transformation within a transitional context, this article proposes a conceptualisation of reproductive violence as rooted in notions of reproductive autonomy and choice embedded within an understanding of transition that incorporates the transformation of structural conditions within which such autonomy and choice can be exercised. Problematising the category of 'the sexual' by surfacing 'the reproductive' within it, and embedding this within a wider account of transition, this article seeks to highlight the importance of distinguishing between forms of violence, and in particular between the different dynamics of power that underpin them, in order to capture the structural links between violence experienced by women before, during and after conflicts. 18

COLLAPSING THE REPRODUCTIVE INTO THE SEXUAL
Reproductive violence has received relatively limited attention within international discourses on conflict-related violence. Where there has been some engagement with forms of reproductive violence within this context, such acts have tended to be placed within the general category of 'sexual violence'. For instance, the annual reports of the UN Secretary-General on conflict-related sexual violence firmly place acts of reproductive violence within the broader category of sexual violence in stating that 'the term "conflict-related sexual violence" refers to rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict.' 19 Similarly, in a legal context, the categorisation of acts that target a victim's reproductive capacity as falling within the category of sexual violence has been made explicit in the Rome Statute, which lists 'rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity' 20 as criminal acts constituting crimes against humanity and war crimes. In this way, these acts are subsumed within the umbrella category of 'sexual violence'. Some commentators have nevertheless questioned the appropriateness of categorising these acts as sexual violence, suggesting, for instance, that enforced sterilisation may not be '"sexual" in the way the word is generally understood.' 21 International law contains no agreed upon definition of sexual violence. The term generally refers to acts that contain two specific aspects: first, the use of force or coercion, or the absence of consent, and second, for the act to be of a sexual nature or to involve a sexual element. 22 What has not been defined, however, is what is or is not considered to be 'sexual' in this specific context. violent act sexual.' 23 She raises a number of questions that highlight the complexity of understanding the sexual dimensions of an act of violence by asking: does an act take on a 'sexual nature' when certain body parts are touched or exposed? If so, what are those body parts-most likely the genitals, anus and breasts, but what about other body parts which some cultures or individuals consider sexual? Alternatively, is the 'sexual nature' of an act determined by the cultural significance of the act, rather than the body parts involved? For example, is the removal of clothing or the cutting of genitals necessarily 'sexual', or does this depend on the context? Finally, are any acts objectively 'sexual,' or is this a subjective question? If it is subjective, whose view matters most: the victim's, the perpetrator's, the prosecutor's or the court's? 24 How to conceptualise 'the sexual' as a category to understand conflict-related violence has also been problematised more recently outside of a legal context. In research on this question with survivors of sexual violence, Dolan, Eriksson Baaz and Stern highlight that '[w]e still know little about what is sexual about sexual violence, according to whom, or why and how this matters in our efforts to prevent and redress its harms.' 25 In other words, what it means for a violent act to be sexual is, to some extent, not fixed. The category of 'the sexual' is not in this sense settled, natural or given. Taken together with the tendency to automatically categorise acts of reproductive violence as forms of sexual violence, this highlights the need to question the relationship between 'the sexual' and 'the reproductive' as categories of analysis, and to consider the implications of categorising acts of violence in a certain way.
There may be strategic winnings to placing forms of reproductive violence within this frame of sexual violence. The heightened visibility of sexual violence in international law has strengthened awareness that what was once considered the 'private sphere of sexuality' 26 is no longer outside the scope of regulation. Further, in many legal contexts, sexual violence is now afforded special attention. For instance, the ICC Office of the Prosecutor's internal policy requires all investigation plans to consider sexual violence, and sound justification is required where a decision is made not to investigate such crimes. 27 In Colombia, prioritisation policies have similarly mandated specific attention to sexual violence within various facets of the transitional justice process. 28 In this context, classifying acts of reproductive violence as sexual violence is pragmatic and legitimate because it provides a pathway for recognition, ensures their inclusion within a framework that is prioritised and provides an Reproductive Violence as a Category of Analysis 7 opportunity for civil society to support accountability for forms of violence that states have been slow, or even reluctant, to address. 29 However, placing reproductive harm solely within a frame of sexual violence also risks conflating the sexual and reproductive dimensions of different forms of violence. It is perhaps revealing that recent civil society guidelines on how to interpret the concept of sexual violence, which argue that 'depriving a person of their reproductive autonomy constitutes a form of sexual violence', 30 nevertheless also note that, in this regard, an act may be understood to be sexual when it is 'not necessarily sexual in itself'. 31 This highlights that acts of this nature do not always fit neatly within the category of sexual violence, and illustrates the complexity of the relationship between the concepts of 'the sexual' and 'the reproductive' in this context. It is therefore pertinent to consider not only what is assuredly gained in pragmatic terms through access to existing accountability frameworks, but also what may be lost or obscured when forms of reproductive violence are unequivocally subsumed into this category of violence of a sexual nature.
As noted in the previous section, feminist scholarship has problematised precisely the tendency in legal discourse to focus on sexual violation when discussing harms experienced by women, which has had 'the effect of sexualizing women in ways that fail to capture [. . .] the array of manners in which women suffer gross injustice.' 32 In this respect, Ruth Rubio-Marín argues that the hypervisibility of sexual harm in transitional justice efforts, and the under-specification of reproductive violence by lumping it together with sexual violence, 'risks doing further harm to women by deviating attention from other non-sexual forms of sex-specific harms.' 33 The effect of privileging sexual violence in this way is especially potent because of the way that it reinforces how women are often identified and defined by sex and sexual victimisation, and reproduces the construction of their bodies and sexualities as violable. 34 What is more, not only has sexual violence been privileged over other forms of harm experienced by women, the sexual dimensions of those very forms of violence that have been included within the category of 'the sexual' have in this way been privileged to the exclusion of others. In this respect, placing acts that target a victim's reproductive capacity or violate their reproductive autonomy within a frame of 'sexual violence' risks further contributing to the continued sexualisation of women's bodies, functions to obscure the complexities of violence and harm inflicted on them, and masks the distinct gendered structures that underpin reproductive violence.

DEVELOPING A TYPOLOGY OF REPRODUCTIVE VIOLENCE
In contrast to international legal discourses, in the public health sphere, the link between violence or coercion and reproductive matters is well-established. 'Reproductive coercion' refers to a range of behaviours that interfere with or 29 The Hague Principles on Sexual Violence, https://4genderjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ The-Hague-Principles-on-Sexual-Violence.pdf (accessed 26 July 2020), 16. 30 Ibid., 19. 31 Ibid., 7. 32 Franke, supra n 8 at 823. 33 Rubio-Marín, supra n 2 at 72-73, 85. 34 Grewal, supra n 7 at 157-158. otherwise seek to control or constrain a person's ability to make decisions about their reproductive health. 35 Reproductive coercion can take many different forms and includes forcing or coercing a person to continue or terminate a pregnancy, controlling or sabotaging someone's use of contraceptive methods, or forcing or coercing someone into sterilisation. 36 Lack of control over one's reproductive health decisions, particularly when it occurs in the presence of violence and coercion, often leads to significant physical, mental, emotional, and sexual health consequences, such as physical injuries, unwanted pregnancies, miscarriage, infections, fistula, sexually transmitted diseases, depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder. 37 Although statistics on the prevalence of reproductive coercion remain limited, research in the United States estimates that between 9 and 25 percent of women have experienced some form of reproductive coercion in their lifetime, 38 with other studies suggesting the risk of unintended pregnancies doubling for these groups. 39 In Côte d'Ivoire, at least 18.5 percent of participants of one study reported having suffered reproductive coercion by their partners, 40 while a study in India found that 1 in 8 women reported having suffered reproductive coercion from either their husbands or their in-laws. 41 Similarly, in population-based sample research in Niger, approximately 1 in 10 married adolescent girls reported having been subjected to some form of reproductive coercion. 42 These statistics speak to the reality that within the reproductive sphere 'women experience continuums of gendered harm from conflict to peace and from public to private spheres' 43 that are rooted in a gendered normalisation of control over their bodies and reproductive functions, which also shape their experiences in situations transitional justice aims to address. This section brings together instances of reproductive violence that have taken place within disparate contexts of conflict and largescale human rights abuses. The aim is first to allow the facts to speak for themselves to substantiate the ontological significance of the category of 'the reproductive' in transitional justice settings. Second, while the examples identified are not exhaustive, the purpose in drawing them out here is to set out the beginnings of a typology of reproductive violence within these contexts. During the conflict in the former Yugoslavia evidence emerged of detained women being raped and forcibly impregnated with the aim of ensuring that they would give birth to children of the perpetrator's ethnicity, as a means of pursuing ethnic cleansing. 44 Similarly, during the genocide in Rwanda many women and girls became pregnant as a result of rape, while women who were already pregnant suffered miscarriages as a result of being raped and beaten by Hutu militia. 45 Practices of forced marriage, with couples often being coerced into having intercourse under threat of punishment, have been employed to increase birth rates and ensure the continued existence of a particular group in a number of contexts, for instance by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a non-state armed group active in northern Uganda and neighbouring countries. 46 Acts of forced sterilisation have also been carried out in different contexts, often against ethnic minority women or marginalised groups, such as indigenous women (e.g., in Peru, Canada, the United States), Romani women (e.g. in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia), women with disabilities (e.g. in Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Switzerland, Iceland), or women living with HIV (e.g. in South Africa, Namibia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela). Regardless of context or underlying motivation, these forced sterilisations have been characterised by similar patterns of coercion involving physical force, threats, deception, and deliberate failures to obtain informed consent, often in medical settings. For instance, women have been subjected to surgical sterilisation procedures without their knowledge while undergoing other medical treatments, or have been coerced into being sterilised during labour, delivery, or caesarean sections, when they were unable to give informed consent, including instances when the victim was unconscious or illiterate. 47 Reproductive violence has also been used as a means of facilitating other forms of violence and abuse. during the civil war in Guatemala, the military forced female members of the rural indigenous community of Sepur Zarco to move to a military base, where they were required to perform domestic duties, were routinely raped and forced to use birth control pills or injections to prevent them from becoming pregnant. 48 Similarly, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) developed a detailed set of rules applicable to the reproductive status of Yazidi women and girls who had been sexually enslaved, as a consequence of which they were forcibly subjected to the use of birth control, in the form of pills or injections, as well as forced abortions. 49 In Colombia, female members of the FARC were required to use contraception of different forms, and when they did become pregnant, were often forced to undergo abortions against their will. 50 This was reportedly done pursuant to an internal policy to ensure that women could continue to fight or fulfil other functions within the group. 51 In the context of the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, local government authorities have reportedly coerced Rohingya couples into using contraception, with non-compliance criminalised and punishable by up to ten years in prison. 52 In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), women repatriated from China have been forced to undergo abortions to keep the Korean race 'ethnically pure' and as punishment for having left the DPRK. 53 In political prison camps, women who have become pregnant have been subjected to forced abortions as part of a policy of 'eliminating the seed of class enemies.' 54 These acts have been inflicted through surgical means, the use of physical violence to induce miscarriage, or the insertion of drugs or chemicals. 55 In China, forced abortions, sterilisations and forced use of intrauterine devices (IUDs) have been inflicted on Uyghur women in the Muslimmajority province of Xinjiang. In so-called 're-education' camps, female detainees have also been subjected to birth control measures, including forced implantation of IUDs without strings, preventing self-removal. 56 Some of the examples outlined here have been addressed by regional human rights mechanisms, international human rights treaty bodies, and national investigative commissions, which have begun to develop an account of the individual rights violated by acts of reproductive violence. These include conclusions that acts such as forced abortion, forced sterilisation and forced contraception violate the prohibition on torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, constitute violations of women's sexual and reproductive health and rights, violate the right to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of children and the right to respect for private and family life, constitute forms of discrimination, breach women's rights to dignity, physical integrity and security of person, and constitute violations of the right to health. 57 Although in some instances reproductive harm may be the result of other forms of violence -such as unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape -there is more to acts of reproductive violence than simply seeing these as consequences of other forms of violence. What connects these disparate examples of reproductive violence is not only that they share common characteristics in terms of their method of commission or motivations. What ultimately unites these examples is that they involve violations of reproductive autonomy and self-determination: the ability to decide if, when, how and under what conditions to have and raise children. While there has been some attention to acts that violate these principles in the human rights context, the notions of autonomy and the ability to make reproductive choices, which are necessarily embedded within and shaped by underlying structures of gender and other inequalities, have not been central to this discourse.
This matters because the naturalisation of female reproductive labour, which has limited women's reproductive agency and relegated them to the 'private' spheres of procreation, domesticity and caregiving, constitutes one of the foundations upon which these unequal gendered structures of power have been constructed. 58 In this sense, while reproductive violence is not only experienced by women, they are more likely to be targeted through this form of violence because of their capacity to become pregnant and the gender and other social norms that have been attached to this reproductive capacity, 59 which ultimately provide the conditions for their limited reproductive agency. These include beliefs that women are natural caregivers whose function in life is to have and raise children, that women are unable to make rational decisions about their sexual and reproductive lives, or that only certain women are good mothers (norms that often discriminate against racialised women, LGBTQI individuals, women living in poverty, people with disabilities, or those otherwise marginalised).
Norms such as these create the conditions in which certain forms of violence are normalised and legitimised. In this regard, population control programmes, for instance, have overwhelmingly been directed at women not just because they can bear children, but because of underlying gender norms that sustain extensive social control over women and their bodies. Population control programmes in this sense embody the idea that 'women are not to be trusted with independent authority over such a significant matter of social policy.' 60 Similarly, coercive sterilisation programmes or forced contraception policies overwhelmingly target women, even though the same results could be achieved through male sterilisation, because 'women's bodies are viewed as being expendable and under state/male control.' 61 Gender norms attached to women's bodies and reproduction in this way have not only created the conditions that legitimise certain forms of violence, but also render these same forms of violence invisible in post-conflict transitional justice efforts, precisely because 'violence that contradicts classic power structures is much more likely to be deemed illegitimate and worthy of punishment, while violence that upholds power structures is more likely to be overlooked and excused.' 62 Drawing out the reproductive dimensions of violence, which are conditioned by entrenched gender and other social norms, and placing them within a common analytical frame can therefore reveal -and in turn challenge -these embedded structures of power in ways that would be lost when reproductive harm is simply subsumed within a category of 'the sexual'.

DRAWING OUT THE REPRODUCTIVE
There are indications that the reproductive dimensions of violence are starting to emerge more fully in transitional justice discourses and practices. Notably, the Colombian Constitutional Court's 2019 decision recognising forced abortion and forced contraception within the FARC and the ICC's 2021 conviction of Dominic Ongwen on charges of forced pregnancy break new ground in how they begin to challenge the unquestioning categorisation of acts of reproductive violence as simply one of many forms of sexual violence. Importantly, by specifically highlighting their impact on reproductive capacity, centralising reproductive rights and the principles of reproductive autonomy and choice, these decisions avoid the tendency to collapse certain acts of violence down to their sexual dimensions only.
In doing so, these decisions not only have the potential to respond to some of the feminist concerns around privileging 'the sexual' when addressing harms inflicted on women, they also advance a more nuanced and expansive account of the nature of violence experienced by them. It is nonetheless important to note that critiques of the essentialising nature of the discourse on sexual violence could also apply to attempts to draw out the reproductive dimensions of violence, in the sense that 'capturing women's stories exclusively through reproduction jurisprudence could be described as essentialising in itself -as if women's stories could not be told without talking about their bodies and reproductive systems.' 63 Just as the focus on sexual violence reinforces the sexualisation of women's bodies, focusing on reproductive harm could risk reproducing narratives that reduce women to their reproductive functions. However, as this section argues, there may nevertheless be certain advantages to drawing out 'the reproductive' as a coherent and meaningful category of analysis in the field of transitional justice.
In its 2019 decision involving forced contraception and forced abortion inflicted on a female member of the FARC, the Colombian Constitutional Court recognised the relevance of reproductive rights in the context of conflict-related violence. This case was brought by 'Helena' (a pseudonym), who was forcibly recruited into the FARC as a child and whose application for victim status under Colombia's victims' law had previously been denied, in part because she had been a member of an armed group. The case centred upon Helena's rights to health and comprehensive reparations for the violations she experienced. While during the majority of her time with the FARC Helena was forced to use contraceptive injections, when she did become pregnant, she was made to take abortion-inducing drugs and was subsequently forced to undergo a caesarean section. As a result of the conditions in which this was carried out, she lost a significant amount of blood. 64 Subsequently, Helena has required surgical intervention to remove bladder stones that had formed as a result of improper sutures used during the caesarean section inflicted upon her, as well as treatment for other health problems including chronic renal failure, chronic pain, post-traumatic stress, and depression. 65 Reversing the previous ruling that had denied her victim status, the Court concluded that she was entitled to reparations for having suffered forced contraception and forced abortion, and found that these acts constituted forms of sexual violence amounting to violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes. 66 In doing so, the decision expands upon the forms of reproductive violence recognised in international criminal law. In addition, the Court's analysis is novel in how it came to this conclusion by referencing a number of human rights obligations and frameworks relevant to reproductive rights. The Court specifically recalled General Recommendation 19 on Article 16(1)(e) of CEDAW, which stipulates that 'compulsory sterilization or abortion adversely affects women's physical and mental health and infringes the right of women to decide on the number and spacing of their children.' 67 The Court also referred to General Comment No. 22 (2016) by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Principle 8 of the Report of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, which address rights to reproductive health, including the right to make decisions on reproduction free from discrimination, coercion and violence. 68 While the decision ultimately includes forced abortion and forced contraception within the category of sexual violence, by taking a reproductive rights-based approach in its analysis, it nevertheless adds nuance to this categorisation in how it brings to the fore the reproductive dimensions and implications of these acts. In doing so, the case importantly highlights some of the specificities of reproductive violence in terms of the harms it inflicts on victims and how these may differ from sexual violence such as, in this case, the enduring consequences of having been subjected to a nonconsensual surgical procedure without proper medical care. The distinct health implications of forced abortions can be particularly significant where procedures take place in unsanitary conditions or without medical supervision. Forced contraception can also result in serious health problems, such as prolonged bleeding, blood clotting, strokes or osteoporosis, when an individual's personal health and medical history is not taken into account. 69 In addition, for victims of forced abortion, sterilisation or contraception, the violence inflicted upon them may result in a profound modification in their life plan, in which they may have aspired to being a parent. Harms experienced by victims of forced abortion may in this sense also include feelings of loss attached to the pregnancy that they were prevented from carrying to term. Further, these types of harms may be compounded by gender norms that influence family and community expectations of women and how they conduct their reproductive lives. For instance, in patriarchal societies where women are supposed to conform to the norm of motherhood, or in contexts where abortion is stigmatised, having suffered forced abortion may create additional forms of harm after the initial victimisation, and will affect how victims understand and process the harm they have suffered. 70 In a further significant development with respect to conflict-related reproductive violence, in 2021, the ICC convicted Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan LRA commander, of forced pregnancy in relation to his responsibility for the abduction, forced marriage, rape and forced impregnation of women and girls, among other charges. Many of the women and girls abducted by the LRA became pregnant as a result of rape and were confined and monitored closely to ensure they did not miscarry, while others who did not become pregnant were often punished as a result. 71 During the trial, witness testimonies reflected some of the forms of specifically reproductive harm attached to forced pregnancy, which were embedded within cultural and gendered norms around family life and the conjugal order within their communities. These included stigma and challenges to reintegration experienced by both the mother and their children upon returning to their communities. Some women were rejected due to their perceived affiliation with the LRA, meaning that their children were viewed as the children of LRA commanders. This also meant that children fell outside social and economic kinship structures, negatively affecting their economic security and their access to health, education and employment. As a result of rejection by communities or new partners, some women were separated from their children, causing them significant emotional distress. Because of gendered norms that placed sole responsibility for the care of children with mothers, witnesses also described the broader impact on their lives of being forced to parent a child at a young age, including obstacles to educational opportunities, professional ambitions and livelihoods. 72 More generally, in relation to forced pregnancy, significant harm may result from the physical demands of pregnancy and the profound loss of bodily autonomy inherent in being forced to carry a child to term without having chosen to do so. In some instances, pregnancy can also pose risks to life and health, which may be exacerbated in young girls and adolescents whose bodies may not be physically mature enough for pregnancy. Additionally, in situations of forced or coerced motherhood, some women may experience conflicting emotions towards a child resulting from rape, at times compounded by internalised gendered perceptions that this makes them a bad mother. More profoundly, forced pregnancy may involve an acute rupture in the victim's life plan, nullifying their ability to decide whether or not, when, how and under what conditions to have and raise children. 73 In this regard, notions of reproductive autonomy and choice have been prominent in the ICC's interpretation of the crime of forced pregnancy in the Ongwen case. The Pre-Trial Chamber in this case asserted that 'the essence of the crime of forced pregnancy is in unlawfully placing the victim in a position in which she cannot choose whether to continue the pregnancy.' 74 In doing so, it articulated an understanding of this crime that places reproductive choice at its very centre. Similarly, in its closing brief, the Office of the Prosecutor reiterated that 'these women and girls had no reproductive autonomy', explaining that 'Mr Ongwen's forced wives were confined and monitored such that they could not refuse to become pregnant, or determine when to get pregnant, as they had no control over their bodies, no contraceptives, and no family planning was practised.' 75 In its February 2021 trial judgment, the Trial Chamber endorsed this analysis, concluding that 'the crime of forced pregnancy is grounded in the woman's right to personal and reproductive autonomy and the right to family.' 76 In this context, the Chamber emphasised the importance of the principle of fair labelling, distinguishing forced pregnancy from other crimes of sexual and gender-based violence partly on the basis that one of its distinctive elements is 'the effect that the woman is deprived of reproductive autonomy.' 77 Within an international discourse in which 'the reproductive' has been delicately masked, the fact that this case centralised the notion of reproductive autonomy in the interpretation of the normative basis of the crime of forced pregnancy is significant. In centralising the exercise of reproductive autonomy by finding that a lack of such control constitutes a form of violence, the Ongwen trial strengthens the understanding that forced pregnancy is not simply a matter of sexual violence or physical harm, but also constitutes violence because the loss of decision-making power specifically over one's reproductive capacity represents a distinct form of harm that requires independent recognition. Framing this crime in terms of the violation of autonomy and choice is particularly significant because it takes place in the highly contested, gendered space of the reproductive, where women's ability to exercise agency is often restricted. In this sense, conceptualising acts of reproductive violence in these terms strengthens narratives around women's agency and control over their bodies and reproductive lives. This, in turn, has the potential to challenge embedded structures of gender inequality that naturalise women's limited reproductive agency and legitimise the continuum of reproductive violence to which they are subjected.
Taken together, these developments represent a significant departure from previous approaches to reproductive harm in transitional justice and reveal how the category of 'the sexual' in understanding conflict-related violence has functioned to mask the complexity of the forms of violence that have been included within it. The Colombian Constitutional Court's decision and the Ongwen case not only demonstrate how unique harms emerge from reproductive violence, but also begin to develop legal and conceptual accounts of such acts that highlight the distinctly gendered normative stakes that attach to reproductive violence.

'THE REPRODUCTIVE' AS A CATEGORY OF ANALYSIS
Exposing the reproductive dimensions of violence within the context of transitional justice is particularly important because it provides an opportunity to expand the recognition of the scope of harm inflicted on women, and to bring greater complexity to the discourse around the social conditions within which certain forms of violence take place. The examples discussed in this article highlight how some of the specific and long-term harms attached to reproductive violence may not be fully or adequately captured by a frame of sexual violence, underscoring the importance of conceptualising them as autonomous forms of violence and harm within transitional justice processes.
Adequate recognition of particularised harms in this way is 'an essential component of redress' 78 because it responds to the symbolic devaluation of the victim by reflecting a perspective that values 'the reality of their individual experiences of suffering and harm'. 79 Additionally, legal recognition of specific forms of violence as 'reproductive' is important because this can function to 'publicly and authoritatively proclaim and transform an unacknowledged harmful experience into an experience, or wrong, that is recognised at law as one that is harmful and that requires legal redress.' 80 Recognition of particularised harms in this sense underpins the wider importance of rendering previously overlooked gendered harms explicitly visible.
Appropriately distinguishing between categories of violence in this way also speaks to the need to create responsive reparations strategies, because it increases the incentive to design programmes that respond to the unique harms that different forms of violence cause. In this regard, reparations strategies that approach reproductive violations exclusively through a frame of sexual violence risk failing to identify the distinct rights engaged and to address the particular harms experienced by, for instance, individuals whose life plans have been disrupted by forced parenthood or the loss of reproductive capacity, parents who may now have to support children born of reproductive violence, or individuals who require extensive medical care as a result of having experienced non-consensual abortions or sterilisations. In addition, because reparation programmes 'illustrate a certain descriptive and normative vision of violence', 81 incorporating attention to reproductive violence into such measures may open a window of opportunity to endorse forms of reparations that unsettle existing gendered norms and practices that legitimise and naturalise the continuum of reproductive violence that women experience. 82 Furthermore, the labelling of certain forms of harm as reproductive is important not only to render them explicitly visible, but also because the specific labelling of violence may lead to increased reporting of such violence. 83 Reproductive violence therefore needs to be understood as a separate category of harm because '[a]sking the question means that answers are gathered,' 84 and better data helps with identifying what constitutes an effective response. In order for greater attention to the reproductive dimensions of violence to be integrated within the field of transitional justice, future research will therefore need to ask these questions. For such research to be meaningful, it is important that reproductive violence is conceptualised, as proposed in this article, not only as rooted in the notions of reproductive autonomy and choice, but also in a way that captures the structural conditions within which such autonomy and choice can meaningfully be exercised.
In this sense, it is necessary to recognise that '[f]ull exercise of autonomy requires that choices be meaningful, not limited by discrimination or lack of opportunities.' 85 In other words, while the emphasis on individual rights and agency reflected in the examples discussed in this article is innovative, approaches to reproductive violence in transitional justice must also reckon with the conditions that enable the meaningful exercise of such rights. Drawing on the reproductive justice framework, with its problematisation of the assumption of individual agency in the context of reproductive choice, brings to the fore not only the underlying gender norms that condition and restrict this choice, but also broader dimensions and structural drivers of inequality, such as health, socio-economic status, sexual orientation and gender identity, or race. In this sense, if transitional justice processes are understood as 'presenting political openings enabling the renegotiation of gender and political orders', 86 adopting a reproductive justice approach to violence opens up a space to talk about the conditions within which such choice is ultimately exercised. Doing so brings structural drivers of gender, economic, social and racial inequality -all of which affect the ability of women and their communities to assert reproductive autonomy -into the discussion on transition.
Within the context of reproductive violence, therefore, this entails not simply creating normative assertions that women are entitled to exercise choice and autonomy over their reproductive functions, but creating the positive conditions within which women and communities are able to meaningfully exercise this choice. This includes designing transitional justice strategies that address structural barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive healthcare, such as in indigenous or rural communities, or as a result of poverty or illiteracy. As such, embedding a reproductive justice approach more strongly within truth seeking, accountability and reparations processes allows not only for certain forms of violence to be explicitly 'seen', and therefore to make visible what previously remained invisible, but also problematises the social conditions in which reproductive rights and agency are exercised and the intersecting ways in which they impact women's lives.

CONCLUSION
While there may be inherent limits to the nature of transformation that transitional justice is able to achieve, this article has sought to outline how attention to reproductive violence as a category of analysis within this field can not only ensure better responses to the distinct injuries and harms caused by this form of violence, but may also contribute to problematising the gendered structures of inequality within which reproductive violence takes place. This article stops short of proposing concrete measures through which the transformation of such structures may be achieved, as these must always be contextualised to the social and gendered context in which such a transition is being enacted. Rather, it makes the more modest but prerequisite claim that by moving the focus away from sexual victimisation towards an approach that recognises the reproductive as an interrelated category within the broader category of gendered harm, the distinct drivers of reproductive violence begin to emerge more clearly. Surfacing the structures around the reproductive in this way contributes to efforts to better capture the complexity of harms inflicted on women and constitutes a first step towards determining how to develop transitional justice frameworks that can disrupt the gendered normalisation of control over women's bodies and their reproductive functions during periods of conflict, transition and peace.