Rape and the Failure of Peace: The Destabilizing Force of Sexual Violence in Civil War
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Existing scholarship on post-conflict peace duration fails to account for the level of sexual violence within conflicts as a predictor of the risk of returning to war. This paper presents a new theory, linking the prevalence of rape to post-conflict instability, with the resumption of fighting as a hard test of social and political weakness. Through the merging of two data sets on peace duration and sexual violence within civil conflicts, I offer a unique quantitative, cross-national analysis of the relationship between sexual violence and peace stability. My findings support the theory, and indicate that high rates of sexual abuse in war are indeed correlated with shaky post-conflict peace. The results suggest a need for further analysis and the incorporation of violence against women into security studies.
Author: Mackenzie Israel-Trummel
Institution: Stanford University
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2265933374