War And Rape

Rape is rarely ever the cause of untamed or uncontrolled sexual desire, but rather it is a way to exert power and instill fear in minds of the victims and their community.

Throughout history, aggressive and belligerent people have been using rape as a tool to punish, terrorize and destroy innocence and humanity. In many unfortunate cases, armies, rebel and terrorist groups use sexual violence as a strategy to create more problems and assert the dominance. In other cases, High commanders or higher officials allow their soldiers to rape women and girls as a form of reward.

Sexual violence during war time is very often committed in public that is in the open for everyone to see and by several attackers taking turns. It includes gang rape and attacks with objects and weapons which makes the torture a million folds more horrible and painfully disgusting.

Conflict related sexual violence takes many different forms, such as sexual slavery, sexual torture and forced prostitution. War time rape affects both women and men. A much less talked about subject is that men are victims of sexual abuse and violence and that women can be the perpetrators as well.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820 reads that, sexual violence is “a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or an ethnic group.”

Rape destroys the togetherness of families and societies. Rape is used to destabilize and demoralize communities.

Sexual violence is a characteristic of conflicts all around the world. In the country of Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), rapes and sexual violence has been widespread for two decades. During the civil wars, sexual violence again has been used as a very cheap and crass weapon of war.

Despite the high generality and extended use in history, it’s not like as if sexual violence is not an inevitable feature of war. Rape never happens just accidentally. It is a choice which one chooses to employ or tolerate, and, therefore, it can most definitely be stopped.

Lawlessness during civil conflicts and wars can generate a culture of immunity towards human rights abuses of civilians.

According to UNICEF, "systematic rape is often used as a weapon of war inethnic cleansing," having been used in various armed conflicts already throughout the twentieth century alone, including Bosnia, Cambodia, Uganda, and Vietnam. The United Nations Security Council in 2018 argued that "women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.