A world free of wartime rape is within our reach

Conflict-related sexual violence is a war crime mired in myths and shrouded in secrecy and stigma. Perhaps the greatest misperception is that it is an atrocity of a bygone era, and that in today's age of high tech warfare rape is no longer used as a weapon of mass destruction. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Shame and stigma prevent many survivors from reporting rape and other sexual violence crimes, but in the last two decades alone it is estimated that a staggering 60,000 civilians were raped during the civil war in Sierra Leone; 65,000 during the conflict in Liberia; 50,000 during the fighting in Bosnia; and over 200,000 during the genocide in Rwanda. These figures are not just abstract numbers; behind every single attack is a face and the story of an individual, a family and a community devastated. These communities may never recover from the brutality they have experienced if their needs are ignored.

These rapes represent a stain on our collective conscience, a stain that grows with each new rape committed in ongoing conflicts such as those in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mali, Myanmar, South Sudan, Sudan, and Syria.