This is the first book to analyse the use of rape as a tactic of war and international progress away from tacit acceptance to active rejection of this violation of international law. Including powerful testimonies of victims, it is a much-needed volume for academic and professional communities.

The use of rape as a deliberate tactic of war is a serious human rights issue that needs to be addressed as a threat to human and international security. This ground-breaking book is the first to analyse its use as an act of war against civilians and international progress away from tacit acceptance toward active rejection of this violation of international law. Exploring international responses to sexual violence in war, it introduces the main historical facts, theoretical terms and legal developments behind UNSC resolutions on women, peace and security and the emerging practice of international law in this area. It identifies best practice in moving beyond accepting rape in war as inevitable to the recognition of tactical rape as a security concern for women, men, states and the international community. Powerful testimonies of victims are included to bring the issue alive, making this a much-needed volume for academic and professional communities.

This collection offers a new reflection on rape in war time through 15 case studies, ranging from Greece to Nigeria. It questions the specificity of rape as a universal transgression, its place in memories of war, its legacies, including children born from rape, and the challenge of writing about intimate violence as both a scientist and a human.

This book is a well-researched and moving account of how sexual assault on women has become a potent weapon in virtually all armed conflicts. Chapters giving historical and geographic perspectives describe how rape has been used throughout the ages and around the world. Case histories reveal the individual tragedies within the broad picture.

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.

This is a curated and comprehensive collection of the most important works covering matters related to national security, diplomacy, defense, war, strategy, and tactics. The collection spans centuries of thought and experience, and includes the latest analysis of international threats, both conventional and asymmetric. It also includes riveting first person accounts of historic battles and wars.Some of the books in this Series are reproductions of historical works preserved by some of the leading libraries in the world. As with any reproduction of a historical artifact, some of these books contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. We believe these books are essential to this collection and the study of war, and have therefore brought them back into print, despite these imperfections.We hope you enjoy the unmatched breadth and depth of this collection, from the historical to the just-published works.

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.

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.

All too often in situations of armed conflicts, rape and other acts of sexual violence are used as a military tactic. The use of sexual violence as an element of war strategies is distinctively destructive, and not only leaves victims with significant challenges to cope with their victimisation but also tears apart the fabric of families and affected communities. Challenges facing victims in post-conflict settings are often compounded by the socio-cultural contexts in which such crimes are committed. In fact, the dynamics of conflict-related sexual violence are often highly entrenched within local contexts, making these crimes not only an effective weapon for destroying the lives of individual victims but also add a new component to the social disruption, and exacerbate the devastating impact of armed conflicts on affected communities. This research contributes to the current debate on mechanisms to ensure effective redress for victims of sexual violence as a weapon of war. It adds to the growing literature on the issue in two ways: First, it explores the distinct aspects of these crimes to understand the nature and extent of the needs of the victims in post-conflict settings. Second,it examines the challenges and limitations of international criminal justice in dealing with a wide range of the victims' needs, and provides critical insight into how such limitations can be addressed through domestic transitional justice processes. This study demonstrates that, despite recent developments in international criminal justice with respect to victims, the international criminal justice system is faced with significant limitations in its effort of providing justice and redress to victims of sexual violence as a military tactic, requiring alternative transitional justice processes to complement it domestically. It argues that effective redress for victims of sexual violence as a weapon of war demands more than addressing the victims' justice and reparative needs but also to attend to the complex social dimensions of these crimes. The study, therefore, further explores the strengths and weaknesses of an increasing range of domestic transitional justice approaches to accountability and reconciliation and demonstrates their potential in advancing effective redress for victims of such crimes. The thesis advances an argument that, considering the nature and patterns of sexual violence as a weapon of war, a full range of transitional justice processes must be considered to address the dynamics and complex impact of these crimes on victims and affected communities. The pursuit of redress must include an element of societal change to empower victims and breakdown a myriad of social impacts on them after conflicts. This study is a significant contribution toward understanding of a holistic response to the needs of victims and societies torn apart by mass sexual violence as a weapon of war.