Sexual Violence in Times of War and Peace

Abstract

Over the past decade, scholarly attention on sexual violence perpetrated in the context of war and armed conflict has grown significantly. Far from its origins on the margins of studies of war, “conflict-related sexual violence” (CRSV) is now a central topic, and efforts to understand its causes and consequences span the disciplines interested in armed conflict, political violence, international security, and humanitarian crises. However, as the issue has become mainstream, much of its early feminist-informed analyses have been lost to increasingly positivist socio-political and scientific approaches to understand CRSV. However, in this move, some of the earlier feminist frames for understanding this violence as rooted in patriarchal relations that pre-exist and continue after war were lost. This chapter surveys what we know about sexual violence in war and peace through the evolution of studies on this violence. It raises critical questions regarding the lines that have had to be demarcated between those acts of sexual violence deemed threatening to peace and security and those of the “everyday” variety, and it argues that taking seriously gender-based violence in the context of war requires us to take it equally seriously in so-called times of “peace”.