Rape is one of the most devastating forms of violence associated with war, and preventing it requires a deeper understanding of its causes. Rape during Civil War represents the most significant scholarly effort to understand this phenomenon. The breadth and quality of the research is remarkable. Dara Kay Cohen combines cross-national statistical work with in-depth case studies, including extensive original ... Read moreresearch and interviews with both victims and perpetrators. The result of the effort is deeply impressive and the book will likely serve as the focus of the debate for scholars writing about these subjects for years to come.
Benjamin Valentino, Dartmouth College, author of Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century In this remarkable work, Dara Kay Cohen first shows that not all rebel groups and state armies rape civilians during war. It is those armed organizations that kidnap their recruits off the streets of their villages and towns that are much more likely to do, she argues. Along the way she debunks many of the myths that dominate policy and public perception.
Elisabeth Jean Wood, Yale University and the Santa Fe Institute, coeditor of Understanding and Proving International Sex Crimes Dara Kay Cohen's extraordinary work breaks new ground in the study of sexual violence in war. Students of violence have struggled to explain why rape occurs in some conflicts and not others and have had difficulties characterizing the functions of sexual violence that distinguish it from other types of abuse. Cohen addresses both challenges by examining the role that sexual violence plays in solidifying bonds in otherwise fragmented fighting groups. Rape is used as a response to organizational weaknesses and is not just a product of them. Cohen develops and tests the argument using a unique dataset that characterizes the behavior of armed groups around the world and probes the logics through in-depth analysis of Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, and El Salvador. This is scholarship on violence at its best: innovative, engaged, informed.
Macartan Humphreys, Columbia University, co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action [Cohen's] achievement is to shift the debate away from the question of whether rape most often occurs as a result of a deliberate military strategy, ethnic hatred, or simple opportunism and to instead focus on what she calls 'combatant socialization.'
Foreign Affairs
Brilliant, groundbreaking.... [Cohen's] ability to address this difficult subject in a way that is analytical and sensitive, and to point to clear policy prescriptions that could apply her findings to very practical solutions to the problem of wartime rape is admirable. Cohen's approach to generating new data through innovative and careful methodologies is one that future scholars who want to study rape and other sensitive topics should follow. Rape During Civil War is an agenda-setting book, a model of high-quality scholarship and a must-read for anyone interested in stopping rape in conflict before it happens.
The Washington Post
Show Less