Does War equal Sexual Violence? : A study of the circumstances behind sexual violence against women during conflict

Sexual violence against women in war is an issue that is well reported and well known to the public and the international community, but still remains widespread and common in many conflicts in the world. Much research has been done on the topic, yet no substantial analytical framework for the circumstances behind its facilitation has been made, and it has been a common practice to value it as an inevitable part of war. It comes without question that to be able to do something about a problem you need to know what facilitates it. Therefore the objective of this thesis is to investigate what circumstances facilitate sexual violence against women in war. An analytical framework is created out of the existing litterature and tested on five different conflict cases with a high amount of sexual violence and thus using the method of Structured Focused Comparison. The research resulted in the findings that four out of six of the parameters in the analytical framework appeared to facilitate sexual violence, where Impunity and a Patriarchal society or Hegemonic masculinity appeared to facilitate to the highest extent. The other parameters that appeared to be facilitating to a medium extent were an ethnic conflict and military masculinity ideals. Perhaps the main finding of this study is that sexual violence against women in war is not inevitable and that there appears to be certain circumstances behind its facilitation.