This article contains graphic references to rape and sexual violence.
“I am a woman who is scared for the women in this world,” Oscar-winning actress Jessica Chastain tweeted on October 10. “Sexual violence against women should never be justified. It is an inhuman act.”
In the wake of the attack by Hamas on October 7, in which they killed hundreds of Israeli troops and citizens and took dozens of hostages, witnesses reported that fighters also raped and assaulted women: President Joe Biden listed rape as one of the atrocities committed by Hamas after speaking with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu; a widely circulated video also showed a woman with blood-stained trousers being manhandled into the back of a vehicle; and an Israeli morgue worker volunteering alongside the IDF has reported witnessing evidence of “mass rape so brutal that they broke their victims’ pelvis – women, grandmothers, children” (per the Daily Mail).
Some Twitter users pressed Chastain to specifically speak out for Palestinian women in Gaza, who have been under an Israeli blockade for the past 16 years and are currently facing a daily barrage of fire. With most infrastructure – including hospitals – on the brink of collapse in Gaza, pregnant women and those seeking reproductive healthcare are especially at risk. It's also important to note that the Israeli military faces historic allegations of rape against Palestinian women, which officials have long denied. In 2017, one officer (who legally cannot be identified) was convicted of raping a Palestinian woman, as well as sexually assaulting and extorting other Palestinians. He was subsequently dismissed from the military.
Chastain replied, “I am scared for ALL women.” Her tweet sparked a much-needed conversation around an often-overlooked side to war and conflict. Because, as well as fearing for their lives, women face what a UN advocate recently dubbed “war’s oldest, most silenced and least condemned crime”.
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“Sexual violence during wartime has been going on from time immemorial,” says Janine di Giovanni, executive director of The Reckoning Project, who spent three decades as a journalist covering human rights and crimes against humanity around the world, including during wars in Syria and the former Yugoslavia. “I’ve been working on this for a long time, and it never gets easier.”
From all sides of World War II through to ISIS’ sale of Yazidi women as sex slaves in Iraq and Syria, women’s bodies are often the first targets of war. A UN investigation into war crimes committed in Ukraine found that Russian soldiers had raped and committed sexual violence against women of ages ranging from 19 to 83 years. Today, widespread attacks are reported from Sudan, Tigray and Haiti, among others. And it’s not just in active war zones. The International Rescue Committee has estimated that 14m refugees and displaced women and girls were subjected to sexual violence in 2019.
It’s impossible to put numbers to the problem, as so much remains unreported, shrouded in silence and shame, but the UN estimates 250,000 and 500,000 women and girls were raped in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and more than 60,000 in Sierra Leone’s civil war. For every rape that is reported, between 10 and 20 are not, the UN reports. Behind each of these startling numbers are individual women whose lives are forever altered.
“The example we always look back on as the pivotal and most terrible moment in sexual violence was Bosnia,” Di Giovanni tells GLAMOUR. “Women were held in camps in eastern Bosnia, and they were raped up to 16 times a day.” Bosnian Serbs wanted, she says, to “break the gene pool” of Muslim women by making them pregnant – part of an ethnic cleansing strategy.
It was only following the systemic abuse of women during this war in the early 1990s that the UN Security Council officially recognised organised mass rape in times of conflict as a crime against humanity.
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Although each crisis has its own dynamics, sexual violence in times of armed conflict is “ubiquitous,” says Joanna Bourke, professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London, and author of Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence. “Almost every conflict involves exceptionally high levels of violence against girls and women. The question is, why is this the case?
“You can burn down a village, and there will be post-war reconstruction. But if you violate most of the women in it, you’re completely destabilising the society for generations.”
“The threshold of violence drops extremely low in times of war, and the usual restraints are often no longer there. Legal systems crumble, families get divided, and police and authorities that maintain law and order disintegrate. That leaves a vacuum for acts of sexual violence.” When huge proportions of the population are armed, they have the means to intimidate, she adds, while sexual violence is also used in military conflicts as a way of male bonding or seen as a sense of entitlement of the victors. Ultimately, it’s a way of asserting authority and destroying community ties.
Yet for the vast majority of survivors, their experiences of violence don’t fit the narrative of soldiers raping and pillaging, says Sara Bowcutt, UK Managing Director, Women for Women International.
“Their abusers are likely to be civilians from their own communities. Humanitarian crises disrupt family and social networks, change the roles played by different genders and break down protection structures.” Although there is an epidemic of gender-based violence, men and boys are also targets and are even less likely to report it due to fear of stigmatisation.
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Beyond the physical and mental trauma, in many parts of the world, wartime assault brings enormous stigma. “The shame is so grave and so extensive, and that's why for bad people, it's a very powerful tool,” says di Giovanni, who interviewed Muslim women in Syria who had been deliberately raped because they were virgins and would then never be able to get married.
The impact can far outlast hostilities, affecting women’s social status and economic prospects. “It's transgenerational,” she says. “You can burn down a village, and there will be post-war reconstruction. But if you violate most of the women in it, you’re completely destabilising the society for generations.”
“Conflict-related sexual violence has become predictable – but it is preventable.”
Rape and sexual violence in the context of armed conflict are war crimes – but a tradition of impunity reigns, and prosecutions are rare. “During the conflict itself, there are no repercussions for perpetrators,” says Bourke. “But after the conflict as well, there is almost nothing.”
This is something Di Giovanni is trying to change. The Reckoning Project trains conflict journalists and researchers to gather legally admissible testimonies documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity during the invasion of Ukraine – including sexual violence, primarily seen in prisons and detention centres – with the hope of supporting prosecutors. The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine has recorded 235 cases of sexual violence where victims are willing to testify so far.
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More people are starting to talk about gender-based violence, says Hillary Margolis, senior women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Women’s human rights defenders, activists and survivors have been working for decades to make sure that preventing and responding to gender-based violence is seen as an urgent need in any emergency, not just an afterthought or something that is ‘nice to have’.”
Some recognition was seen in 2018 when gynaecologist and human rights activist Dr Denis Mukwege, from east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – dubbed the ‘rape capital of the world’ – was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his global efforts to end the use of rape as a weapon of war.
Katrien Coppens, Executive Director of the Mukwege Foundation told GLAMOUR, “We believe that for change to happen it is crucial that the silence around sexual violence as a weapon of war needs to be broken. To heal from the harms of sexual violence, victims need to regain agency and control over their lives, their decisions."
“Conflict-related sexual violence has become predictable – but it is preventable,” says Women for Women International's Bowcutt. Education for women and men, and peer support, provide invaluable ways forward. “Meeting in safe spaces with women with similar experiences, women find strength in the sisterhood and many begin to open up and reject dangerous attitudes that alienate and blame survivors.”
As one of the organisation’s programme graduates, Solange, who was raped four times across years of war in the DRC, shared: “There are many young girls who come from my village who are rape victims. When they come, I try to encourage them, telling them, ‘You still have life; one still has value.’ I tell them that they should hope for the future.”
For more information about reporting and recovering from rape and sexual abuse, you can contact Rape Crisis on 0808 500 2222.
If you have been sexually assaulted, you can find your nearest Sexual Assault Referral Centre here. You can also find support at your local GP, voluntary organisations such as Rape Crisis, Women's Aid, and Victim Support, and you can report it to the police (if you choose) here.
