Short description:

This book contributes to the growing body of literature on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war against women. Sexual violence in this context is finally receiving the attention it deserves, given the immense suffering of its victims and the widespread societal harm it causes.

Long description:

This book contributes to the growing body of literature on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war against women. Sexual violence in this context is finally receiving the attention it deserves, given the immense suffering of its victims and the widespread societal harm it causes.

Focussing on how states legitimise and implement various forms of sexual violence, such as sexual slavery, harassment, and rape, as tools to torture, suppress, and silence women, it takes an international perspective to explore how women’s bodies become battlegrounds and how the state itself often acts as the perpetrator of violence. Beginning with an examination of the historical and legal contexts surrounding rape and sexual violence in international criminal law (ICL), it uses a feminist analysis of sexual violence as a weapon of war to explore the legal and political landscapes of Ukraine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Mexico, and Bangladesh.

Showing how militarised regimes utilise various forms of sexual violence as instruments of political control and oppression, it will be of interest to all scholars and students of gender-based violence, peace and conflict studies, victimology and international law.

"Gendered violence in war and social conflict has a long, grim history. It was protested in Euripides' drama The Trojan Women, 2400 years ago. In our time, criminal law is sometimes called in, but the main problem is not individual perpetrators. With cases and ideas from around the global South, this book reveals powerful social dynamics that produce and magnify the gendered violence. Specific histories matter, and resistance takes different shapes. But most important, struggle against the violence continues."  

Professor Raewyn Conell, University of Sydney, Australia

"This book reframes sexual violence in conflict as a tool of governance in conflict, exposing how it is sustained through institutional power, structural inequality, and regimes of silence. Centring an intersectional lens, it reveals how gender, ethnicity, class, age, displacement, and other axes of identity shape vulnerability, visibility, and access to justice. Through rigorous scholarship and survivor‑centred insight, the chapters in this book challenge reductive narratives and call for transformative, structural approaches to accountability that confront—not obscure—the political orders enabling such harm."

Professor Geetanjali Gangoli, Durham University, UK 

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Weaponised Bodies, Silenced Wars  1.The Evolution of the Concept of Rape and Sexual Violence and Its Criminalization in International Criminal Law  2.No Justice Without Peace for Survivors of Conflict-Related Gender-Based Crimes in Ukraine  3.Conflict related sexual violence in South Sudan: Factors affecting the reporting and response to sexual violence in conflict  4.The Political Myth of State Sexual Violence: Implications for Feminist Resistance in Mexico  5.Weaponising Gender: The Taliban’s Use of Sexual Violence as a Tool of Governance Since 2021  6.Gendered Violence and Resistance in the Islamic Republic of Iran  7.Historicising the Birangona: Interrogating the Politics of Commemorating the Wartime Rape of 1971 in the context of the 50th Anniversary of Bangladesh  8.Rethinking Sexual Violence: Governance, Conflict, and Justice