Sexual violence against women in armed conflicts

The use of sexual violence against women as a weapon of war has been, and remains, a horrific common denominator in armed conflicts around the world. The UN includes within this category rape, sexual slavery, deliberate infection with HIV, mutilation, enforced prostitution, marriages of girls… Such practices treat women's bodies as territory for conquest, colonisation and absolute destruction.

As demonstrated by countless examples from history and also the modern world: sex slaves for the Japanese army during the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of victims of sexual violence in Bangladesh in 1971, the Rwanda genocide, the war in Bosnia. More recently: in the Congo, Sudan, Nigeria, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Colombia, Myanmar. In Iraq, in and after 2014, the self-styled Islamic State (ISIS) kidnapped 7,000 Yazidi women and girls, enslaved, raped and tortured them, causing incurable trauma and after-effects even for those who were rescued and able to return to their community.

In regulatory terms, it was not until the late 1990s that international criminal courts recognised women as victims of war. In 2008, the UN Security Council passed the first specific resolution (number 1820) on sexual violence. International asylum law has also made progress in recognising such violence as the basis of persecution. A recent judgment by the European Court of Justice, on 16 January 2024, acknowledges international protection for women exposed in their country of origin to acts of sexual violence.

Film:Mediha