Rape during the Bosnian War

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Rape during the Bosnian War was a policy of mass systemic violence targeted against women.^[1] While men from all ethnic groups committed rape, the vast majority of rapes were perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) and Serb paramilitary units, who used rape as an instrument of terror and a key tactic^[2] in their programme of ethnic cleansing.^[3][4][5] Estimates of the number of women raped during the war range between 10,000 and 50,000.^[6] Accurate numbers are difficult to establish and it is believed that the number of unreported cases is much higher than reported ones.^[7]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) declared that "systematic rape" and "sexual enslavement" in time of war was a crime against humanity, second only to the war crime of genocide. Although the ICTY did not treat the mass rapes as genocide, many have concluded from the organised, and systematic nature of the mass rapes of the female Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) population, that these rapes were a part of a larger campaign of genocide,^[8][9][10] and that the VRS were carrying out a policy of genocidal rape against the Bosnian Muslim ethnic group.^[11]

The trial of VRS member Dragoljub Kunarac was the first time in any national or international jurisprudence that a person was convicted of using rape as a weapon of war. The widespread media coverage of the atrocities by Serbian paramilitary and military forces against Bosniak women and children, drew international condemnation of the Serbian forces.^[12][13] Following the war, several award-winning documentaries, feature films and plays were produced which cover the rapes and their aftermath.