Educational Media Reviews Online

War Babies focuses on the children of wartime rape victims and powerfully exams the relationships between the mothers and children. The documentary begins by following its narrator, the child of a woman raped by a Pakistani soldier during Bangladesh’s war of independence, as he returns to Bangladesh seeking information about his birth mother and his Pakistani father. The film moves onto the stories of women rape victims and children conceived through this crime in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Nicaragua, returning after each section to the narrator and his thoughtful comments on the dimensions and repercussions of this violence.

The women victims describe their horrendous experiences and ongoing struggles to an unseen interviewer, and the film captures the complex interactions between two of the mothers and their daughters. In all the scenes, news footage of the conflicts are interwoven with present day images as the voices of the women are heard. At the conclusion of each scene the narrator is seen typing the number of women raped and the number of children born of rape in each of the conflicts.

The documentary has an impressionistic feel as it moves from scene to scene, yet its storyline is specific-“it happens in every war…the power of having a gun.” Although the sound is merely adequate and there are no frills in this production, its bluntness is extremely effective.

At the conclusion of the film it is noted that in 1998 rape was first recognized as a war crime and a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, but there have only been a total of four convictions for this crime. The juxtaposition of this fact with the images just viewed certainly provides a provocative steppingstone for discussion and study. Highly recommended for interdisciplinary social sciences classes as well as those in specific disciplines such as sociology, criminal justice, psychology and women’s studies.