With armed conflicts raging in many parts of the world, the protection of women and girls' rights during armed conflict is a pressing challenge for the international community. In international and internal conflicts, women's rights are often routinely and systematically violated with violence against women commonly used as a means of terrorizing the civilian population. Rape, sexual violence, sexual slavery, forced marriage, and other forms of physical and psychological violence have all been employed as tools of war. Violence against women during armed conflict has generally been viewed as an inevitable consequence of war. Only in recent years with the inauguration of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone has war-time violence against women been effectively prosecuted as war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Many of the resources in this section refer to humanitarian law, also known as the law of war or the law of armed conflict. Distinct from international human rights law, humanitarian law is a set of rules for the treatment of people - civilians and combatants - during hostilities and it restricts the means and methods of warfare.
This section of the WHRR database lists resources addressing international legal responses to the violation of women's rights in armed conflict as well as some resources relating to post-conflict assistance and the rehabilitation of women traumatized by armed conflict and sexual violence. It also provides references to the growing body of literature on sexual violence in conflict situations.