The bodies of women and girls have long been a battlefield in war. This week, the UN’s high representative on sexual violence in conflict, Pramila Patten, warned that reports of attacks in Ukraine were increasing exponentially, while Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women, called for an independent investigation into sexual violence there. The brutal accounts of assaults by Russian troops have chilling echoes of wars elsewhere. According to the UN, there were heightened levels of conflict-related sexual violence last year.
Rape is one of the most common atrocities in wartime, though in some wars it is particularly widespread and even systematic. The vulnerable – such as disabled people – are often targeted. And war puts women at increased risk even when they have fled the conflict zone, or when a conflict has ended. Ms Patten fears that a humanitarian crisis is turning into a trafficking crisis, and the UN refugee agency has urged the UK not to allow single men to host lone Ukrainian women following predatory approaches.
