Long perceived as an inevitable consequence of the chaos of wars, rape is actually used as a weapon in its own right and is embedded in virilist military doctrines. How has it been used in contemporary conflicts? How can we fight against its use?
In the collective imagination, war inevitably brings chaos, brutality, and a loss of respect for all norms. Rape, therefore, would be an inevitable consequence, a masculine overflow in the midst of disorder. This deeply rooted representation, however, is based on a specific cultural construct: that of a conquering and uncontrollable male sexuality where the possession of the female body becomes a sought-after and legitimate reward. It mainly reduces sexual violence in war to an act committed by men against women, normalizes rape by legitimizing it, and depoliticizes acts that are actually individual or tactical choices.
Nevertheless, the idea of rape inherent to war does not withstand historical analysis or facts. Since ancient Rome, military conquest has generally been accompanied by total possession that also includes bodies. The rules of war dictate that the men of besieged cities be massacred, while the women, and sometimes children, endure the outrage of rape, seen as the female equivalent of the death of fighters. Women are not perceived as individuals, but as enemy property delivered to the victors as an expected and legitimate reward. Similarly, the period 1930-1945 saw Japan’s imperialist expansion accompanied by a system of euphemistically named military prostitution known as “comfort women” (ianfu). This system, rigorously supervised by military authorities and presented as a means to prevent excesses, actually involved the sexual enslavement of thousands of women subjected to daily medical and logistical surveillance. These examples demonstrate that these practices are not based on uncontrollable impulses, but rather on virilist military doctrines that value predation and possession.
From the 1990s, a dual phenomenon transformed the understanding of sexual violence in times of war. On one hand, contemporary conflicts reveal a new role assigned to rape. It is no longer simply a means of military conquest, but a mechanism of targeted destruction directed against a group as a whole, as evidenced by the conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Furthermore, these practices are no longer exclusively carried out by regular armies but have become common among armed groups, paramilitaries, or terrorists facilitated by impunity, the breakdown of command structures, and the spread of radical ideologies. On the other hand, this evolution is accompanied by new visibility. Driven by feminist mobilizations, gender studies, the work of NGOs, the media coverage of conflicts, and the testimonies of victims, this dynamic breaks the silence and reveals the systemic scale of sexual violence. It leads to international community mobilization and a progressive legal recognition of these crimes. However, despite this awareness, the United Nations continues to document their increase. In 2023, acts of sexual violence were reported in at least 20 armed conflict contexts. This observation calls for more than just legal qualification, to question the conditions of their use, the effects they produce, and the responses that international actors are still struggling to build coherently.
To understand this complex reality and its multiple manifestations, it is necessary to first clarify what is meant by conflict-related sexual violence. The United Nations defines these violences (Conflict-related Sexual Violence, CRSV) as “acts or patterns of rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity, committed against women, men, girls, or boys”.
