Critically assess the reasons for the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war in the former Yugoslavia.

In 1992 media stories began circling about the mass rapes in Yugoslavia, swiftly followed by public outcry and the beginnings of what was to become vast academic and journalistic interest in rape as a weapon of war. 20,000 is the conservative estimate of the number of raped women during the Yugoslav wars, with reports of gang rapes, public rapes, enforced brothels, ritualistic torture, rape camps and forced impregnation. The focus was on Muslim and Croat women raped …

…the particularly brutal nature of some rapes as well as finding explanations in military masculinity, but fails to take into account political, ethnic and strategic explanations. A structural explanation takes these motives into account, but it is too static and makes rape in war seem inevitable. Finally social constructivism expands on the structural explanation but looks at wartime rape through a gendered perspective that is intuitively acceptable yet can overlook the individual nature of rape.