Rape during the Bosnian War

During the Bosnian War, and the Bosnian genocide, the violence assumed a gender-targeted form through the use of rape. While men from all ethnic groups committed rape, the great majority of rapes were perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) and Serb paramilitary units, who used genocidal rape as an instrument of terror as part of their programme of ethnic cleansing. Estimates of the total number of women raped during the war vary. The European Union estimates a total of 20,000, while the Bosnian Interior Ministry claims 50,000. The UN Commission of Experts identified 1,600 cases of rape, while experts connected to UNHCR provided evidence of 12,000 rapes. Other estimates confirm the 12,000 to 50,000 range.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) declared that "systematic rape", and "sexual enslavement" in time of war was a crime against humanity, second only to the war crime of genocide. Although the ICTY did not treat the mass rapes as genocide, many have concluded from the organized, and systematic nature of the mass rapes of the female Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) population, that these rapes were a part of a larger campaign of genocide, and that the VRS were carrying out a policy of genocidal rape against the Bosnian Muslim ethnic group.

The trial of VRS member Dragoljub Kunarac was the first time in any national or international jurisprudence that a person was convicted of using rape as a weapon of war. The widespread media coverage of the atrocities by Serbian paramilitary and military forces against Bosniak women and children, drew international condemnation of the Serbian forces. Following the war, several award-winning documentaries and feature films were produced which cover the rapes and their aftermath.

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