CONCEPT NOTE The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria are jointly hosting a symposium on accountability for sexual and gender-based violence in armed conflict at the University of Pretoria from 15 to 17 March 2017. The symposium begins with a welcome reception on the evening of 15 March and continues throughout 16 and 17 March 2017. Sexual and gender-based violence has been a feature of war since the advent of war itself. Rape was endemic to the barbaric logic of colonialism. People of all genders have been victims of rape and sexual violence inside and outside of armed conflict throughout history. Thus, while sexual and gender-based violence in conflict is not a new phenomenon, what is new is the shift in legal and political frameworks for addressing it. Historically, while there was ample knowledge about the scourge of sexual violence in conflict, it was frequently regarded as ‘collateral damage’, or, perversely, as a form of just reward for soldiers. During the Nuremberg Trials, despite evidence of sexual violence, no Nazi leaders were prosecuted for sexual and gender-based violence. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), in the landmark Akayesu case, for the first time recognised rape as an instrument of genocide, thus marking a laudable interruption in jurisprudential history. The role of the ICTR and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as well as a broad range of actors around them, in producing jurisprudence and attracting global attention to the scourge of sexual violence in war is significant. It is against this historical trajectory that the Rome Statute, the founding document of the ICC emerges, with its clear criminalisation of sexual and gender-based violence. At the same time, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the subsequent resolutions related to the Women, Peace and Security Agenda have done much to concretise the importance of accountability for sexual and gender-based violence in conflict. Moreover, the efforts of gender advocacy group initiatives are to be noted as important steps towards the dismantling of the inherently patriarchal notion of rape as a regrettable error, or as a necessary act of war, unworthy of recognition. In March 2016, in the Bemba case, the ICC had its first conviction for sexual and gender-based crimes and, in the same year, the Extraordinary African Chambers convicted former Chadian President Hissène Habré of sexual violence as a crime against humanity. The move towards the recognition of the importance of accountability for sexual violence is a critical interruption of histories of legal and policy ambivalence to the issue. At the same time, there have been many operational challenges to the prosecution of sexual and genderbased violence. Additionally, an increasing body of literature and activism examines the limitations and omissions of a central focus on prosecutorial approaches to sexual and gender-based violence. Some suggest that a legalistic focus that sees the prosecution of perpetrators of sexual and genderbased crimes as the ultimate source of justice may define an agenda both about what justice looks like, and what sexual and gender-based violence in conflict looks like, in turn potentiating hierarchical approaches to sexual violence and its victims. In light of this, at this significant point in the history viii\ Accountability for conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence: Successes, challenges, narratives, and omissions