Violence against women during conflict has reached epidemic proportions. Mass rape is frequently used systematically, as a weapon of war. During conflict women are physically and economically forced to become prostitutes, sometimes in order to secure the basic necessities for their families. Women and children are also the majority of refugees and internally displaced persons.

Around the world

  • 80% of the refugees are women and children (UNHCR, 2001).
  • Millions of women and children are caught in 34 communal, ethnic, political and/or international armed conflicts around the world (all active instances of societal armed conflicts as of 1 January 2003, CSP-Centre for Systemic Peace).
  • Trafficking of women and girls was reported in 85% of the conflict zones (Save the Children 2003).
  • In the Democratic Republic of Congo 5,000 cases of rape, corresponding to an average of 40 a day, were recorded in the Uvira area by women associations since October 2002 (UN 2003).
  • In Rwanda between 250,000 and 500,000 women, or about 20% of women, were raped during the 1994 genocide (International Red Cross report, 2002).
  • In Sierra Leone 94 per cent of displaced households surveyed had experienced sexual assaults, including rape, torture and sexual slavery (Physicians for Human Rights, 2002).
  • In Iraq at least 400 women and girls as young as eight were reported to have been raped in Baghdad during or after the war, since April 2003 (Human Rights Watch Survey, 2003).
  • Every 14 days a Colombian woman is a victim of forced "disappearance" according to a 2001 report by the Women and Armed Conflict Work Table (UNIFEM 2001).
  • Approximately 250,000 Cambodian women were forced into marriage between 1975 and 1979. On average, two group marriages may have taken place in every Cambodian village during the Khmer Rouge regime (UNIFEM).
  • In Bosnia and Herzegovina 20,000 - 50,000 women were raped during five months of conflict in 1992. (IWTC, Women's GlobalNet #212. 23rd October 2002).
  • In some villages in Kosovo, 30%-50% of women of child bearing age were raped by Serbian forces (Amnesty International, 27 May 1999).