Extreme War Rape in Today’s Civil-War-Torn States: A Contextual and Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Rape in today’s civil armed conflicts is particularly widespread and brutal, constituting what I refer to as extreme war rape, in which perpetrators intentionally injure and psychologically torture their victims. Using prior research as the data source, this article examines war rape in ongoing or recently-ended armed conflicts in 27 countries. Findings indicate that extreme war rape is ubiquitous and that across countries, there are similarities in its perpetration as well as in the contextual conditions that facilitate it. Based upon data that also show some variations in war rape prevalence and in the prominence of certain features, e.g., most common perpetrators or rape sites, I introduce four patterns of war rape, along with the distribution of conditions that differentiate them from one another.