Eliminating Sexual Violence in Conflict

Women and girls are the primary victims of conflict-related sexual violence, with systematic rape increasingly used as a weapon of war. However, strategies aimed at eliminating this phenomenon must consider the wider context of normalised male violence in order to achieve lasting success.

By Gabriella Ribenfors

In recent years, the UN has warned that it is more dangerous to be a woman in a conflict zone than a soldier. For the past decade, it has commemorated 19th June as International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. Women and girls were recorded as the victims in 95% of verified incidents of conflict-related sexual violence last year. These cases often end in the woman’s murder, a so-called ‘honour killing’ by her family, or her own suicide.

Increasingly, such violence is employed in the service of a strategic military goal. In 2022, the BBC reported on the suspected use of systematic rape as a means of preventing reproduction in Ukrainian women and girls: ‘Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn't want sexual contact with any man.’ Female human rights activists are also frequent targets of sexual abuse, a form of violence calculated to eliminate them from social and political spheres. Rape is thus a one-way message to all women, specifically designed to silence and exclude them from public life.

Political allegiances may differ, but misogyny remains a common language, with women translated into currency between warring factions. Following the fall of Kabul in 2021, the daughter of a former government official was handed over to the Taliban in exchange for the official’s safety.

Yet, despite its prevalence, rape remains ‘war’s oldest, most silenced and least condemned crime’. Societies generally prioritise male experiences, especially in the context of war, where soldiers (typically men) are considered both the heroes and the victims. Meanwhile, sexual assault goes underreported because of cultural stigma and fear of retribution – from all sides. Women and children in many countries have found that it is not the perpetrator but the victim who is shamed, criminalised or executed for ‘adultery’. In 2008, a 13-year-old girl in Somalia was arrested and stoned to death after reporting her rape.

Although hostile forces are perceived as the architects of sexual violence in war, women are also at risk of sexual violence from allied soldiers and groups charged with their protection, while remaining vulnerable to domestic abuse from their own partners. During the 2019 FiLiA panel ‘Feminist Challenges to War’, peace activist Rebecca Johnson emphasised how ‘…predators also operate in places of education, aid and civil society peace and development organisations’. Members of humanitarian and peace-keeping bodies have been found to have committed violations against women in the course of their work, for example, Oxfam in Haiti and the UN itself in the Central African Republic.

In 2014, the European Parliament highlighted a ‘rape epidemic’ in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country in chronic conflict. However, it noted that many cases were carried out by the army or state agents and that 50% of women had experienced sexual violence in a domestic context. In addition, post-conflict zones often escape scrutiny as global attention refocuses elsewhere, despite the fact that the violence against women continues.

Sexual violence is not confined to a shared language across enemy lines in war-torn countries. Gang-rape has been reported as a form of male bonding for football teams and fraternities, friends and strangers. Witnessing the rape of a teenager in a London park last year, a passer-by asked the initial perpetrator ‘Can I have a go next?’

In England and Wales, almost 800,000 women are sexually assaulted every year. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 3 women are victims of physical or sexual violence, and millions suffer what is often legalised abuse via the sex trade. In a 2023 interview with FiLiA, feminist activist Sonia Sanchez defines prostitution as ‘an open-air concentration camp’ and notes the prevalence of PTSD in women who have been trafficked into the industry. In that interview, she declares ‘Feminism is abolitionist; the rest is patriarchy with glitter.’ Prostitution is a dynamic in which women are often considered ‘un-rapeable’, yet one that modern Western societies seek to legitimise as simply ‘sex work’.

Any analysis or countering of sexual violence in conflict must therefore also consider the ‘normal’ rates of male violence that women continue to face. Rebecca Johnson describes the function of violence at a national level, in the organised, ‘fetishised’ form of militarism. ‘I see war and militarism as the armed wings of patriarchy [...] the primary patriarchal means to project fear, power and control over other peoples and enable the imposition of religious and economic belief systems, colonialism, capitalism and sexual violence.’ At the domestic level, abuse is similarly tactical, with men able to identify multiple benefits gained from inflicting violence on their partners, including ‘intimidation’, ‘power’ and ‘total control in decision making’, enabling them to exploit the women financially and sexually.

Can the global elimination of sexual violence in war be achieved without unpicking every thread of misogyny woven into daily life? As Julie Bindel writes in FiLiA’s online presentation of the Violence, Abuse and Women’s Citizenship Conference of ’96:

Radical feminists have long fought for revolution […]. We recognise that men have power over women, and this has shaped personal relationships as well as every institution and every facet of social and political life. The world we seek would be dramatically different on all fronts. It would not be defined by the dynamic of domination and subordination, and all hierarchies would be challenged.

Vive la révolution.

Further listening and reading

· FiLiA podcasts

o Kurdish Women's Voices: Interview with Houzan Mahmoud

o FiLiA meets Zemzem Mohamed

o FiLiA Campaign: Support Lesbians in Kakuma Refugee Camp

o FiLiA meets: Sarit Bloom – Women Wage Peace

o FiLiA meets: Eleanor Nwadinobi – Every Woman Treaty

· FiLiA blog posts

o Feminist Challenges to War

o Women’s Rights Violations in Sudan

o Femicide in Russia