Sexual violence in conflict is not simply a gross violation of human rights—it is also a security challenge.

Sexual violence in conflict is not simply a gross violation of human rights-it is also a security challenge. Wartime rape fuels displacement, weakens governance, and destabilizes communities, thereby inhibiting postconflict reconciliation and imperiling long-term stability.

Since the 1990s, sexual violence in conflict zones has received much media attention. In large part as a result of grassroots feminist organizing in the 1970s and 1980s, mass rapes in the wars in the former Yugoslavia and during the Rwandan genocide received widespread coverage, and international organizations—from courts to NGOs to the UN—have engaged in systematic efforts to hold perpetrators accountable and to ameliorate the effects of wartime sexual violence. Yet many millennia of conflict preceded these developments, and we know little about the longer-term history of conflict-based sexual violence. Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones helps to fill in the historical gaps. It provides insight into subjects that are of deep concern to the human rights community, such as the aftermath of conflict-based sexual violence, legal strategies for prosecuting it, the economic functions of sexual violence, and the ways perceived religious or racial difference can create or aggravate settings of sexual danger. Essays in the volume span a broad geographic, chronological, and thematic scope, touching on the ancient world, medieval Europe, the American Revolutionary War, precolonial and colonial Africa, Muslim Central Asia, the two world wars, and the Bangladeshi War of Independence. By considering a wide variety of cases, the contributors analyze the factors making sexual violence in conflict zones more or less likely and the resulting trauma more or less devastating. Topics covered range from the experiences of victims and the motivations of perpetrators, to the relationship between wartime and peacetime sexual violence, to the historical background of the contemporary feminist-inflected human rights moment. In bringing together historical and contemporary perspectives, this wide-ranging collection provides historians and human rights activists with tools for understanding long-term consequences of sexual violence as war-ravaged societies struggle to achieve postconflict stability.

This book brings together a unique blend of researchers, civil society and community activists all working on different aspects of conflict sexual violence on the African continent. The contributions included here offer a detailed reading of the social and political climate within which some patterns of sexual violence unfold, and the increased policy and institutional responses shaping post-conflict environments. The chapters are organized around three main themes: the continuities between conflict sexual violence and post-conflict insecurity; the troubling category of "victim" and its representation in post-conflict settings; and the international contexts – such as international programming, aid and justice interventions – that shape how conflict sexual violence is addressed. The authors come to the topic from various academic disciplines - anthropology, gender studies, law, and psychology - and from different non-academic contexts, including civil society organizations in affected regions, and policy and activist organizations in the Global North. Collectively the chapters in this volume offer complex and detailed analysis of some of the debates and dynamics shaping contemporary understandings of conflict sexual violence, highlighting, in turn, new insights and emerging topics on which further research and advocacy is needed.

In 2012, the UK introduced the ‘Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative’. This work examines whether it is actually possible to prevent sexual violence being employed as a weapon of war against women, men and children. It assesses existing prevention strategies, uses Daesh as a case study – to illustrate the limitations of the current approaches – and considers additional measures. The author concludes that it is possible to prevent sexual violence in war, provided that all appropriate measures are harnessed and adapted to the specific circumstances of each conflict. It will, though, require improvements to existing strategies, the use of additional prevention measures, more resources and long-term engagement of all actors. This volume was awarded the 2017 first prize in EuroISME’s annual best thesis contest. Im Jahr 2012 führte das Vereinigte Königreich die “Initiative zur Verhütung von sexueller Gewalt” ein. Diese Arbeit untersucht, ob es tatsächlich möglich ist, sexueller Gewalt vorzubeugen, die gegen Frauen, Männer und Kinder angewandt wird. Sie bewertet schon vorhandene Vorbeugungsstrategien, verwendet Daesh als Fallstudie – um die Grenzen der derzeitigen Ansätze zu illustrieren - und zieht zusätzliche Maßnahmen in Betracht. Die Arbeit schlussfolgert, dass es möglich ist, sexuelle Gewalt im Krieg zu verhindern, vorausgesetzt, dass alle angemessenen Maßnahmen nutzbar gemacht und an die spezifischen Umstände jedes Konflikts angepasst werden. Dies wird jedoch Verbesserungen der bestehenden Strategien, den Einsatz zusätzlicher Präventionsmaßnahmen, mehr Ressourcen und langfristiges Engagement aller Akteure erfordern. Diese Arbeit wurde mit dem ersten Preis des Jahres 2017 im EuroISME-Wettbewerb für die beste Abschlussarbeit in Militärethik ausgezeichnet. En 2012, le Royaume-Uni présente l’Initiative de Prévention de la Violence Sexuelle (PSVI). Cet ouvrage étudie la possibilité d’empêcher que la violence sexuelle ne soit utilisée comme arme de guerre contre les femmes, les hommes et les enfants, évalue les approches préventives existantes, prend Daech comme sujet d’étude de cas pour montrer les limites que présentent les approches actuelles, et considère des mesures supplémentaires. Ce travail conclut qu’il est possible d’empêcher l’usage de violence sexuelle en situation de conflit, pourvu que toutes les mesures adéquates soient exploitées et adaptées aux spécificités de chaque conflit. Des améliorations aux stratégies existantes, l’utilisation de mesures de prévention supplémentaires, davantage de ressources et un engagement à long terme de tous les acteurs seront cependant nécessaires. Ce mémoire a reçu le premier prix de l’année 2017 du concours annuel d’EuroISME pour le meilleur mémoire universitaire en éthique militaire.

Reports of sexual violence in armed conflict frequently appear in political discussions and news media, presenting a stark contrast to a long history of silence and nonrecognition. Conflict-related sexual violence has transitioned rapidly from a neglected human rights issue to an unambiguous security concern on the agendas of powerful states and the United Nations Security Council. Through interviews and primary-source evidence, Kerry F. Crawford investigates the reasons for this dramatic change and the implications of the securitization of sexual violence. Views about wartime sexual violence began changing in the 1990s as a result of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and then accelerated in the 2000s. Three case studies—the United States' response to sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1820 in 2008, and the development of the United Kingdom’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative—illustrate that use of the weapon of war frame does not represent pure co-optation by the security sector. Rather, well-placed advocates have used this frame to advance the antisexual violence agenda while simultaneously working to move beyond the frame’s constraints. This book is a groundbreaking account of the transformation of international efforts to end wartime sexual violence.

Highlighting gendered violence across layers of social and political organization, from the military to the sexual, this book explores the connections between international security, intra-state conflict and 'domestic' violence. International in scope, it makes the links between the local and the global and between the public and the private, in its discussion of gendered violence. Claiming that it is not enough to simply 'add' women to international relations theory, the contributors to this book brilliantly demonstrate how much more fruitful an in-depth analysis of the different layers of gendered violence can be. This book will be necessary reading for students and academics of women's studies, international relations and political theory.

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - Topic: Public International Law and Human Rights, grade: 4.5/6, , language: English, abstract: According to the Former Deputy Force Commander of the UN mission to the DRC “It is more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier in modern conflict”. Indeed, sexual violence is the silent crime happening massively during all armed conflicts. The question of the extension of the problem has been tackled several times by several international organizations, researchers, UN bodies, and by the states affected. However, nobody really knows which is the real impact of these crimes. Women and girls are usually disproportionally affected, and crimes such as these have devastating, long-term effects on the lives of survivors. Noting that this is a crime that affects particularly women and girls, special mention on this issue must be made on girls. Among the categorized six grave violations against children in armed conflicts, sexual violence has, as previously underlined, a specific gender dimension making girl children especially vulnerable, and main target of those practices. This paper tries to show that sexual violence occurring during armed conflict follows common patterns, that is to say, that regardless of the country where it happens, surprisingly it feels like the practice follows the same template of perpetration. It will also prove that girl children are the main victims, so that it would make sense for them to be the ones more protected by legislation against sexual violence during armed conflict. However, this paper will finish showing that the lack of law enforcement leads to impunity due to different reasons, which happens to be a constant repetition of similar motives every time, and everywhere.

All too often in conflict situations, rape is referred to as a 'weapon of war', a term presented as self-explanatory through its implied storyline of gender and warring. In this provocative but much-needed book, Eriksson Baaz and Stern challenge the dominant understandings of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. Reading with and against feminist analyses of the interconnections between gender, warring, violence and militarization, the authors address many of the thorny issues inherent in the arrival of sexual violence on the global security agenda. Based on original fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as research material from other conflict zones, Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? challenges the recent prominence given to sexual violence, bravely highlighting various problems with isolating sexual violence from other violence in war. A much-anticipated book by two acknowledged experts in the field, on an issue that has become an increasingly important security, legal and gender topic.

"In it's first part, the Global Overview, the report profiles documented conflict-related sexual violence in 51 countries - in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East - that have experienced armed conflict over the past twenty years. The second part of the report, entitled Implications for the Security Sector, explores strategies for security and justice actors to prevent and respond to sexual violence in armed conflict and post-conflict situations"--P. 4 of cover.