Mass rape has been a component of wars. The question has become is it safer to be a soldier than a woman? Soldiers are armed, but these women are utterly helpless. While raped females come out alive, a part of them has forever died. Rape in war has existed for a long time. The mass rape of German women at the end of World War II saw an estimated 100,000 female victims in Berlin alone, with ages ranging from 10 to 70 years old. However, it is of much recent phenomenon where war commanders use it as a strategy of war.

Mass rape has proven to be a very effective military strategy. Since, firefight is always risky, it has been more convenient to simply terrorize civilians to drive them away. What easier way to instigate mass terror than inflicting mass trauma among the females of the communities. Mass rape also gets less international scrutiny than killings and genocide in wiping out populations because the victims do not speak up. This is the case with mass rapes that have been conducted in Bosnia, Congo, Rwanda, and Darfur.

Systematic war rape is used as a weapon to terrorize and degrade a particular community so that the pain and humiliation felt by the female victims and their families are enough to make the entire community flee. This has proven to be an effective political strategy in places where there is ethnic cleansing such as Sudan’s Darfur where the phenomenon of mass rape has been condemned by the United Nations. It hasn’t been an isolated case to learn that, for instance, more than 100 women were raped in a single attack carried out by Arab militias in Darfur in western Sudan.

A U.N. report describes details about how dozens of Darfur women were sexually violated in front of everybody else, whacked with sticks, and ordered to cook and serve food to their rapists while eating mere leftovers. The humiliation, pain, terror, physical injuries, and trauma inflicted by the rapists degrade the women’s dignity and virtue. They also strip the entire community of its humanity. Combatants who rape in war wittingly and premeditatedly link their acts of sexual violence to the broader political strategy of social degradation.

Since mass rape has become a weapon of war, it has also become a war crime. The UN has stepped into the picture to finally investigate the war rapes committed in Darfur. It has also accused the government of General Omar al-Bashir of failure to investigate the multiple rapes. Omar al-Bashir is currently indicted at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. He is the very first head of state to be indicted by the ICC. The ICC has coverage for universal jurisdiction, so Omar al-Bashir cannot hide anywhere on this planet and seek asylum, once he is convicted.

One of the points raised in the al-Bashir case with the ICC is the allegation of mass rapes of civilians in Darfur, and that no investigations have been carried out by the government. Based on the testimonies collected by 30 U.N. human rights investigators working in Darfur, it has been confirmed that rape was, indeed, used as a weapon of war “to cause humiliation and instill fear into the local population.” Many of the women were raped in front of their children.

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Via BBC