If Not Now, When? Addressing Gender-Based Violence in Refugee, Internally Displaced and Post-Conflict Settings: A Global Overview

Throughout history, gender−based violence has been an integral component of armed conflict. In the last century, to cite a few examples, Jewish women were raped by Cossacks during the 1919 pogroms in Russia; the Japanese army sexually enslaved and raped thousands of Korean, Indonesian, Chinese, and Filipino "comfort women" during World War II; and hundreds of thousands of Bengali women were raped by Pakistani soldiers during the 1971 Bangladeshi wars of secession. This report attests to GBV against women and girls (and to a lesser extent men and boys) that has been and continues to be a feature of virtually all recently concluded and current armed conflicts.