We made a commitment to dip into gender and justice and we are still pursuing that regularly – this time via the case against Malian al Hassan at the International Criminal Court. He was a member of Islamist group Ansar Eddine who took over Timbuktu in 2012-2013 and was de facto head of the Islamic police there.

He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for some of the war crimes and crimes against humanity charges against him. But judges acquitted him of the war crimes of rape, sexual slavery and the crimes against humanity of rape, sexual slavery and other inhumane acts in the form of forced marriage and gender persecution charges not confirmed by the judges.

And in the end, despite what the victims argued for, there was no appeal against the 2-1 ruling by the judges that did find him guilty of persecution on religious grounds, and that did describe in detail what women and girls suffered in Timbuktu under the Islamists.

A few critiques of that judgment here, here and here, which we discuss in the podcast.

So why are we bothering with a gender lens at all?

Well, it is still interesting to ask how the Office of the Prosecutor, for the first time, actually analysed this situation and came up with gender persecution as a central tenet of the charges.

Marta Valiñas was the expert who joined the team and pushed for these alleged crimes and charges

You may also remember when she spoke to us about Venezuela.

She recommended this movie – They will have to kill us first – about Malian music and what happened in Timbuktu.