Sexual violence and armed conflict

Janie Leatherman

"Every year, hundreds of thousands of people become victims of sexual violence in conflict zones around the world, most of them women and girls; in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, approximately 200,000 have faced sexual violence since 1998, and those attacks continue to devastate Eastern Congo in particular, leading to the systematic collapse of safe space. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the causes and consequences of, as well as responses to, sexual violence in contemporary armed conflict. It explores the functions and effects of wartime sexual violence as part of a global political economy of violence. To understand the motivations of the men (and occasionally women) who perpetrate this violence, the book analyzes the role played by systemic and situational factors such as patriarchy and militarized masculinity in a tangled web of plunder and profit. Difficult...