War and Rape

Ukraine top prosecutor says Russia using rape to spread terror

War and Rape Scores of Ukrainian women have been victims of sexual violence at the hands of Russian soldiers. Now, a brave few are making their voices heard. But to make sense of the present, it can be helpful to look to the past: specifically to the Bosnian war, where the memory of rape is still raw.


War and Rape (2023) on IMDb
Many Ukrainian women have been subjected to sexual violence as a weapon of war. “Never in my worst nightmares could I have imagined that men could treat a woman like that” says one victim who was raped at the very beginning of the separatist conflict in 2014. 20 years earlier, in Bosnia, sexual violence was also rife: “between 20,000 and 50,000 women” were killed or molested in Bosnia. Bakira Hasečić is now President of the Association of Women Victims of War. Her organisation collects testimonies and statements of women to find justice for the victims and accountability for the perpetrators. “Our goal is to identify victims and survivors, but also perpetrators of war crimes” she claims. Men in Bosnia and in Ukraine were also subject to rape and torture. One man, Oleksej, recounts how he was forced to perform humiliating sexual acts. Justice is gradually being served for the perpetrators of the Bosnian war. One third of belligerents tried in The Hague have been found guilty of sexual violence. In Ukraine, prosecutors hope that Russian soldiers will face the same accountability. They continue to search for witnesses to testify.
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