This week, the ICC handed down the world’s first conviction for forced pregnancy as a war crime and a crime against humanity, in the case against Lord’s Resistance Army child soldier-turned-commander, Dominic Ongwen (Uganda). The world’s first. In 2021.

Criminalising and prosecuting forced pregnancy is an affirmation of an idea that remains radical even today: that all people, including women and girls, should have autonomy over their bodies and their reproductive capacity.

Dizzying to think of how many people endured the indignity and pain of being forced to become pregnant, or forced to remain pregnant, or forced to give birth, before States eventually decided in 1998 to make forced pregnancy a crime under international law …

… and to think of how many battles needed to be fought and won by advocates in government and civil society, before even a *watered-down* definition of this crime could be included in the ICC Statute ...

… and then to think of the guts it must have taken for survivors to give their testimony in the Ongwen case, and for the prosecutors to bring a charge for which there is no legal precedent ...

Confining a woman who has been made forcibly pregnant, with the intent of keeping her around to use and abuse, has been recognised as war crime & a crime against humanity. It’s one of many violations of reproductive autonomy which, in my view, are crimes under international law.