Second, perpetrators of sexual violence continue to enjoy near complete impunity. First, it is routinely used on a large scale in most wars against women (though much less frequently, men and boys too are sometimes targeted for sexual attack). By disrupting normal economic activity and destroying bases of economic support, armed conflict also puts women at risk for trafficking and at greater risk for having to engage in “survival” sex or sexual bartering, through which many women are becoming infected with HIV.Īlthough there has been increasing international attention to sexual violence in armed conflict, two essential features have persisted. Women are increasingly, and sometimes deliberately, being infected with HIV through wartime rape.
Now, it may also be a death sentence for many women. Rape has always meant direct physical harm, trauma, and social ostracism for the victim. Sexual violence targeting women and girls has been used in all recent conflicts, including in the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, India (Kashmir), Rwanda, Sri Lanka, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Angola, Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, East Timor, Liberia, Algeria, the Russian Federation (Chechnya), and northern Uganda. More than ten years after the commencement of wars in the former Yugoslavia, and almost a decade after the Rwandan genocide-conflicts notorious for attacks on women and girls-combatants continue to use sexual violence as a tactic of war to terrorize and control civilian populations. > In War as in Peace: Sexual Violence and Women’s Status
Human Rights Watch World Report 2004: In War as in Peace: Sexual Violence and Women’s Status
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