Violence against Women in and beyond Conflict explores the processes and structures that underlie and contribute to sexual violence and internal displacement in armed conflict, utilizing extensive ethnographic research to provide cutting-edge insights. The author argues that the key to understanding violence against women lies at the intersection of transnational capital, race, and gender that not only contribute to its production but also to its persistence. The book uses the Colombian armed conflict as the primary case study but develops a broader framework for theorizing the relationship between the global political economy, the history of coloniality, and intersectional constructions of gender and race with regard to conflict and violence. It offers an understanding of violence against women as not isolated from, but part and a symptom of, a larger system of political, social, and economic inequality that is rooted in colonialism, and exploited and exacerbated by transnational capital relations. The author also shows how the state and non-state actors, most prominently paramilitaries, are involved in this relationship of violence. The book highlights implications for meaningful and sustainable peace in post-conflict contexts. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, gender studies, and conflict studies; as well as policymakers, (non)governmental organizations, and practitioners interested in conflict and security.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of women become victims of sexual violence in conflict zones around the world; in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, approximately 1,100 rapes are reported each month. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the causes, consequences and responses to sexual violence in contemporary armed conflict. It explores the function and effect of wartime sexual violence and examines the conditions that make women and girls most vulnerable to these acts both before, during and after conflict. To understand the motivations of the men (and occasionally women) who perpetrate this violence, the book analyzes the role played by systemic and situational factors such as patriarchy and militarized masculinity. Difficult questions of accountability are tackled; in particular, the case of child soldiers, who often suffer a double victimization when forced to commit sexual atrocities. The book concludes by looking at strategies of prevention and protection as well as new programs being set up on the ground to support the rehabilitation of survivors and their communities. Sexual violence in war has long been a taboo subject but, as this book shows, new and courageous steps are at last being taken Ð at both local and international level - to end what has been called the “greatest silence in history”.

The originality of this book rests in the application of the human security framework to analyze sexual and gender-based violence in conflict. The human security paradigm is concerned and centered on the individual's security threats holistically and is inclusive of both men and women in its agenda. The author argues that making a balanced narrative of sexual violence that includes both men and women as both victims and perpetrators could be a more effective means of preventing conflict-related sexual violence than when men are excluded. Another positive feature of the book rests in its analysis of the plights of victims and survivors of sexual violence during conflict and post-conflict situations. The author describes the devastating emotional and traumatic pain, the psychological agony, the health problems, stigmatization, and impoverishment that sexual violence causes victims and survivors. Moving beyond victims and survivors, the book also examines perpetrators of sexual violence and the questionable part played by a range of social actors. This book has taken on the challenge of interdisciplinary studies that draws upon and integrates evidence and concepts from peace and conflict studies, gender studies, law and human rights as well as sociology and psychology to offer a balanced and elucidatory narrative of the occurrence, perpetrations, impacts, as well as responses and actions required of the international community. It makes a convincing argument that sexual violence in conflict is prevalent and persistent, and that it is a global threat to human security. The subject matter is timely and the author's writing style is easy to follow without taking down the reader, making this book a suitable reading for students, academics as well as practitioners. REVIEWS and WORDS OF PRAISE Rev. Abara has produced a critically reflective and thought-provoking text documenting how and when sexual violence is used as a strategic weapon of war and poses a real threat to global security. This is an important book in ensuring that the mental, physical and economic health and diversity of the victims of sexual violence in conflict are central to developments in human security. --Professor Amanda J. Broderick, Vice-Chancellor & President, University of East London, UK Francis has taken on the challenge of writing an interdisciplinary book that draws upon and integrates evidence and concepts from peace and conflict studies, gender studies, law and human rights as well as sociology and psychology to offer a balanced and elucidatory narrative of the occurrence, perpetrations, impacts, as well as responses and actions required of the international community. --Professor Giorgia Donà, Co-director of the Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging, University of East London A highly relevant book that underlines contemporary issues facing the world today. In a clear and easy to follow style, the author provides a brilliantly insightful engagement in this complex topic. --Professor Wilson Ozuem, Arden University, UK Rev Francis Abara provides a fresh and comprehensive analysis into one of the greatest afflictions of our times - sexual violence in conflict. The horrific, long-term effects of the physical, emotional, economic, social and mental damage of sexual violence are laid bare. Importantly this book takes a gender inclusive approach and analyses the victimization of both women and men. --Dr Edna Maeyen Solomon, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Greenwich, London This book comprehensively presents a systematic analysis of sexual violence in conflict as a threat to global security which Rev. Abara has drawn from a wide range of sources and synthesized into cogent, coherent, and urgent arguments of global importance. Remarkably, this book is distinctive because it is devoid of prolixity and rhetoric but plainly expresses the social and political upheavals within which sexual violence is unleashed. --Dr Moses Itene, Doctor of International Law and Jurisprudence, University of Huddersfield

"Violence against Women in and beyond Conflict explores the processes and structures that underlie sexual violence and internal displacement in armed conflict, utilizing extensive ethnographic research to provide cutting-edge insights. The author argues that the key to understanding violence against women lies at the intersection of transnational capital, race, and gender - that not only contribute to its production but also to its persistence. The book uses the Colombian armed conflict as the primary case study but develops a broader framework for theorizing the relationship between the global political economy, the history of coloniality, and intersectional constructions of gender and race with regard to conflict and violence. It offers an understanding of violence against women as not isolated from, but part and a symptom of, a larger system of political, social, and economic inequality that is rooted in colonialism, and exploited and exacerbated by transnational capital relations. The author also shows how (post)colonial power asymmetries, the state, and other non-state actors, most prominently paramilitaries, are involved in this relationship of violence. The book highlights the implications for meaningful and sustainable peace in post-conflict contexts. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, gender studies, and conflict studies; as well as policymakers, (non)governmental organizations, and practitioners interested in conflict and security"--

Sexual violence in conflict is not simply a gross violation of human rights—it is also a security challenge.

Since the 1990s, sexual violence in conflict zones has received much media attention. In large part as a result of grassroots feminist organizing in the 1970s and 1980s, mass rapes in the wars in the former Yugoslavia and during the Rwandan genocide received widespread coverage, and international organizations—from courts to NGOs to the UN—have engaged in systematic efforts to hold perpetrators accountable and to ameliorate the effects of wartime sexual violence. Yet many millennia of conflict preceded these developments, and we know little about the longer-term history of conflict-based sexual violence. Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones helps to fill in the historical gaps. It provides insight into subjects that are of deep concern to the human rights community, such as the aftermath of conflict-based sexual violence, legal strategies for prosecuting it, the economic functions of sexual violence, and the ways perceived religious or racial difference can create or aggravate settings of sexual danger. Essays in the volume span a broad geographic, chronological, and thematic scope, touching on the ancient world, medieval Europe, the American Revolutionary War, precolonial and colonial Africa, Muslim Central Asia, the two world wars, and the Bangladeshi War of Independence. By considering a wide variety of cases, the contributors analyze the factors making sexual violence in conflict zones more or less likely and the resulting trauma more or less devastating. Topics covered range from the experiences of victims and the motivations of perpetrators, to the relationship between wartime and peacetime sexual violence, to the historical background of the contemporary feminist-inflected human rights moment. In bringing together historical and contemporary perspectives, this wide-ranging collection provides historians and human rights activists with tools for understanding long-term consequences of sexual violence as war-ravaged societies struggle to achieve postconflict stability.