Governing violence from within : A comparative study of internal regulation of sexual violence in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how legitimacy-seeking strategies shape rebel leaders’ decisions to regulate, tolerate, or punish sexual violence within their organisations. While existing research on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has demonstrated substantial variation across armed groups, dominant explanations focus primarily on opportunity structures, organisational capacity, or social norms. Less attention has been paid to how rebel leaders respond to sexual violence through internal rules, enforcement mechanisms, and disciplinary practices. To address this gap, the thesis shifts the analytical focus from the occurrence of sexual violence to its internal regulation and advances a legitimacy-based framework linking leadership incentives to patterns of governance. Empirically, the study employs a qualitative comparative case study design analysing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, selected on a most-similar systems logic. Drawing on secondary qualitative sources, the analysis traces the articulation of internal rules, enforcement practices, and leadership responses over time. The findings reveal clear cross-case variation despite broadly comparable contexts of weak external enforcement. FARC exhibited fragmented and inconsistently enforced regulation, with leadership intervention shaped by decentralised command practices. In contrast, LTTE displayed a more centralised and institutionalised approach, embedding regulation of sexual violence within broader strategies of disciplined governance and political credibility. Overall, the analysis demonstrates that legitimacy-seeking operates as a key political incentive shaping whether and how rebel leaders institutionalise internal regulation of sexual violence where organisational capacity exists.