In most cases, wartime rape stems from the traditional belief that women are the property of men and that, by ravishing them, the perpetrators will gain an upper hand over their male opponents. This act of aggression, motivated by hatred, contempt, oppression, and intimidation, is seldom driven by the perpetrator’s sexual desire, since the rapist’s sexuality is used simply as a mechanical weapon of war to execute a violent act that humiliates and inflicts a spiritual injury upon both the victim and her society. Wartime rape must be regarded as one of the most grievous crimes against humanity. However, the systematic wartime rape of women in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which took on an organized form and was adopted on a massive scale as a strategic weapon of war, leaving tens of thousands of physically and psychologically devastated women, brought this grievous crime into the international legal arena. During both civil and international armed conflicts, women have been victimized at home, in public, and in refugee camps with reference to their ethnic, national, and religious backgrounds. In warfare, as well as in peacetime, women have long been, and still are, targeted for and subjected to different forms of visible and invisible violence, as well as gender-based persecution.
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