Amnesty International estimates that 70% of the world’s poor are women, that women own only one percent of the world’s wealth, and that women constitute two-thirds of the illiterate population around the globe. Many women and girls around the world experience unequal access to education, healthcare, political power, compensation for employment, and freedom of movement. The majority of scholars agree that violence against women in armed conflict is the result of exacerbated gender inequalities that already exist in society. However, these changes in the nature of warfare cannot, on their own, explain the type and extent of violence perpetrated against women during armed conflict. Most recently, studies have documented the violence and serious human rights violations experienced by women during armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and other African nations, and which they continue to suffer during ongoing armed conflicts in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). From: Ward, Jeanne and Marsh, Mendy, “Sexual Violence against WOMEN AND Girls in War and Its Aftermath – Realities, Responses, and Required Resources,” A Briefing Paper for the Symposium on Sexual Violence in Conflict and Beyond, United Nations Population Fund, June 2006. This means that even though the majority of soldiers and armed fighters are still male, women and girls have been increasing impacted by violent conflict. By contrast, civilian causalities in the 19th century were as low as five percent. For example, from 1989 to 1997, in 103 conflicts taking place in 69 countries, civilian causalities accounted for seventy-five percent of all deaths resulting from armed conflict. Whereas wars were once fought by men on battlefields largely removed from civilian populations, today civil wars in populated areas, often divided along ethnic or religious lines, are increasingly prevalent. Over the past century, the nature of war has changed.
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