The sexual abuse and exploitation of women - in war and peacetime - is one of the most widespread and overlooked phenomena. Frequently exposed to violence and sexual exploitation by armed combatants, women and children have throughout history, been kidnapped, raped and forced into work or to fight on the frontline for causes that are not their own. Only since the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda has sexual violence come to be regarded as an international crime, a crime against humanity and, therefore, a grave infraction of the Geneva Conventions.
Exposure to gruesome acts of sexual violence make women and children in conflict-affected areas some of the most vulnerable groups of people in the world and in dire need of protection. It is all the more unconscionable then, when the abuse is perpetrated by United Nations peacekeepers deployed in missions whose mandate is to protect them.
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